Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Buz isn’t a bit well,” she said. “I’ve sent for the vet to come again to-morrow. Oh, isn’t it dreadful when animals are ill? They don’t understand: they can’t make out why one doesn’t help them. Buz has always come to me for everything, like burrs in his coat and thorns in his feet, and he can’t make out why I don’t pick his pain out of him.”

  “Sorry,” said Charles, scooping some water out of the river in his water-tin, but looking at her. Their eyes met, with the frankness, you would say, of children who liked one another. But for all the frankness, only a few seconds had passed before the unwritten law, that a boy may look at a girl a shade longer than a girl may look at a boy, prevailed, and Joyce bent over the tea-cups. She was not the less sorry for Buz, but... but there were other things in the world, too.

  “I know you’re sorry,” she said, “and so does Buz, and we both think it nice of you. And how long really do you think your copy will take? And what will you do if the weather becomes odious?”

  “I shall get a cold in my head,” said Charles, drawing his brush to a fine point, by putting it between his lips.

  Joyce looked at him with horror.

  “Oh, don’t put the brush in your mouth!” she said. “They always used to stop my doing it at the drawing-school. Some of the paints are deadly poison.”

  “Oh, do you paint?” said Charles. “You ought to have painted and I to have washed up — please stop still for a moment, exactly like that. So sorry, but I shan’t be a minute. Damn!”

  An unfortunate movement of his elbow jerked his straw hat which was lying by him into the Thames: it caught and pirouetted for a moment on an eddy of water, and then hurried gladsomely down-stream.

  “But your hat?” said Joyce in a strangled whisper, as if, being forbidden to move, she must not speak.

  “I’m afraid I’ve already said what I had to say about that,” said Charles. “Just one second.”

  He worked eagerly and intensely with concentrated vision and effort of its realization for half a minute. Then again he used that forbidden receptacle for paint-brushes, and dragged off the excessive moisture from his wash.

  “Now I’ll get it while that dries,” he said.

  He picked up the punt-pole and ran down the edge of the bank to recapture his hat. But it had floated out into mid-stream and his pursuit was fruitless.

  “And it looked quite new,” said Joyce reproachfully, on his return. “I’m afraid you are extravagant.”

  “Just the other way round. It would have been false economy to have saved my hat — price half-a-crown, and have risked losing the — the sight I got of you just for that minute while my hat started voyaging. But now,” he said, gleefully washing out his brushes — now that I’ve got you, let the great river take it to the main.”

  He made the quotation simply in the bubble of high spirits, not thinking of the context, nor of the concluding and following line, “No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield.” But instantaneously the sequel occurred to him — for the words were set to a tune which he very imperfectly sang with his light tenor, and accompanied on his banjo.

  “You talk of too many things in one breath, Mr. Lathom,” said Joyce. “You said if the weather broke you would catch cold here, so of course you must go to the inn in the village, if it rains. Men have no sense: I believe you would stick on here, while you get congestion and inflammation and pneumonia. Then you asked me if I painted, and I may tell you I don’t. I used to try: if I have any sketches left the sight of them would convince you of the truth of what I say.”

  Charles’ art and heart tugged for his whole attention. For another minute he was silent and absorbed.

  “Quite done,” he said. “Thank you so much, Miss Wroughton.”

  Charles looked at her, and all thought of his art passed from him. She was entrancing, and he suddenly woke to the fact that in the last quarter of an hour they had made friends.

  He came towards her, stripping the sketch off its block.

  “Do let me give it you,” he said rather shyly. “You see, I shall enjoy the fruits of your labour, as I shan’t have to wash up. It’s only fair that you should have the fruits of mine — at least if you would care for them at all.”

  She could not but take in her hand the sketch not yet dry which he held out to her, and looking at it, she could not but care. Never was there anything more admirably simple, never had an impression been more breezily recorded. There was no attempt at making a picture of it; there were spaces unfilled in, a mere daub of hard edged blue in the middle of the sky was sufficient note to indicate sky: the weir was a brown blob, and a brown blot of reflection and a splash of grey, as if the brush had spluttered like a cross-nibbed pen, showed where the water broke below. Against it came the triumphant painting of a head, her own on the head in the Reynolds picture, but so careful, so delicate — and for the rest of her there was a wash of stained blue for her dress; a patch of body colour, careless apparently, but curiously like a tea-cup against it. At her feet was a scrabble of blue lighter than her dress, but none could doubt that this meant forget-me-nots... they were like that, though the scrabble of pale blue seemed so fortuitous. Probably Charles never painted more magically than in those ten minutes, even when the magic of his brush had become a phrase in art criticism, a cliché. There was all that a man can have to inspire it there, and the inspiration had all the potential energy of the bud of some great rose. It had the power of the full blossom still folded in it, the energy of the coiled spring, the inimitable vigour of a young man’s opening blossom of love.

  It was no wonder that she paused when he handed it to her. Her own face, her own slim body and gesture, as he saw her, leaped at her from the sketch, and she thrilled to think, “Is that what he sees in me?” No array of compliments, subtly worded, brilliantly spoken, could have told her so much of his mind. It was an exquisite maiden that he saw, and that was she. She could not but see how exquisite he thought her: she could not fail to glow inwardly, secretly, at his view of her. Those few minutes’ work, at the cost of the straw hat, came as a revelation to her. He shewed her herself, or at least, he shewed her how he saw her. The insatiable and heaven-born love of all girls to be admired shot in flame through her. Now that she saw his sketch, she knew that she had longed for that tribute from a man, though till now she had been utterly unconscious of any such longing. Mr. Craddock when he proposed to her lacked all spark of such a flame; had even he but smouldered — She knew she was loved. That in itself seemed almost terrifyingly sufficient. She let herself droop and lie on it, on the thought of it... it was transcendent in its significance.

  Her scrutiny lasted but a moment. Then from the sketch she looked back to Charles again, him who had seen her like that.... And had she possessed his skill of brush, and could have painted him, there would have been something in her sketch, as in his, of the glimmering light that trembles high in the zenith when the day of love is dawning. Back and forth between them ran the preluding tremor, a hint, a warning of the fire that should one day break into full blaze, fed by each; but to the girl, at present, it was but remotely felt, and its origin scarcely guessed at. To him the tremor was more vibrant, and its source less obscure; the waters were already beginning to well out from their secret spring, and he beginning to thirst for them.

  The moment had been grave, but immediately her smile broke on to it.

  “Oh, that is kind of you,” she said. “I shall love to have the sketch. And I retract: it was worth a lot of straw hats to do that. Perhaps you have not even lost one. I may overtake it on its mad career as I go back home. I will rescue it for you, if I come across it, and give it first aid. I must be getting back now. Thank you ever so much for the delicious tea, and the delicious sketch. You will be at work again, I suppose, to-morrow morning?”

  Such was the history of the two days, which Charles revolved within him that evening, after he had eaten his supper and sat out by the water-side, unwitting of the dusky crimson in the west, and th
e outpouring weir. Things fairer and more heart-holding than these absorbed and dominated his consciousness.

  Day by day his copy of this wonderful Reynolds wonderfully grew beneath the deftness and certainty of his brush. Though he had said that it would take much longer than he had originally contemplated, he found that he was progressing with amazing speed, and though he would gladly have worked more slowly and less industriously so as to lengthen out the tale of these beautiful days, it seemed to be out of his power to keep back his hand. He was dragged along, as it were, by the gloriously-galloping steeds of his own supreme gift: once in the room opposite the portrait, he could no more keep his fingers off his brush, or his brushes off his canvas, than could a drunkard refrain, alone with his cork-drawn intoxicants. Nor could he, for another and perhaps more potent reason, keep away from the house where the picture was, or after a reasonable morning’s work lounge away the afternoon on the river. By cords he was drawn to the Mill House, for there was the chance (of not infrequent fulfilment) of meeting Joyce: and then he had to go to his extemporized studio, and the other frenzy possessed him.

  But poor Buz had no pleasures in these days and as they went by the old dog grew steadily worse. He was a constant occupant of the sofa, where he had established himself on the first morning of Charles’ occupation, and if he was not, as was generally the case, in his place when Charles arrived of a morning, it was never long before there came at the door the request for admittance, daily feebler and more hesitating. Charles had to help him to his couch now, for he was too weak to climb up by himself, but he always managed a tap or two with his tail in acknowledgment of such assistance, and gave him long despairing glances out of dulled topaz eyes, that expressed his dumb bewilderment at his own suffering, the abandonment of his dismay that nobody could help him. Once, on entering, Charles found Joyce kneeling by the sofa, crying quietly. She got up when he entered, and openly wiped her eyes.

  “I’m so glad you don’t think me silly,” she said, “for I feel sure you don’t. Other people would say, as darling Grannie does, ‘It’s only a dog.’ Only! What more do you want?”

  Charles laid a comforting hand on Buz’s head, and stroked his ears.

  “I could easily cry, too,” he said, “for helplessness, and because we can’t make him understand that we would help if we possibly could. What did the vet say yesterday?”

  Joyce shook her head.

  “There’s no hope,” she said. “There would have to be an operation anyhow, and probably he would die under it. He wouldn’t get over it altogether in any case. He’s too old. Mr. Gray told me I had much better have him killed, but I can’t bear it. I know I ought to, but I am such a beastly coward. He sent a bottle and a syringe this morning. There it is on the chimney-piece. I can’t bear that the groom or coachman should do it, or the vet. And I can’t do it myself, though it’s just the only thing that I could do for poor darling Buz.”

  Charles turned from the dog to her.

  “Let me do it, Miss Wroughton,” he said. “I know what you mean. You can’t bear that a stranger like a coachman should do it. But Buz always liked me, you know, and rather trusted me. You mean that, don’t you?”

  Joyce gave a great sigh.

  “Yes, oh, just that,” she said. “How well you understand! But would you really do it for me?” Charles went across to the chimney-piece, and looked at what the vet had sent.

  “Yes, it’s perfectly simple,” he said. “I see what it is. I did it for a dog of my own once. It’s quite instantaneous: he won’t feel anything.”

  “And when?” said Joyce piteously, as if demanding a respite.

  “I think now,” said Charles. “He’s dying: he won’t know anything.”

  Joyce bit her lip, but nodded to him. Then she bent down over the sofa once more, and kissed Buz on his nose, and on the top of his head. Then without looking at Charles again she went out of the room.

  This aroused Buz, but before many minutes were past he had dozed off again. Then Charles filled the little syringe, wiped the end of it, so that the bitterness should not startle him, and gently pushing back the loose-skinned corner of his lip he inserted the nozzle, and discharged it. A little shiver went through the dog, and he stretched out his legs, and then moved no more at all.

  Charles went to the door, and found Joyce standing outside.

  “It’s all over,” he said. “Buz felt nothing whatever.”

  Joyce was not up to speaking, but she took his hand between both of hers, pressing it

  CHAPTER V

  A dark October day with slanting flows of peevish rain tattooing on the big north window of Charles’ new studio, was drawing to a chill and early close, and the light was rapidly becoming too bad to paint. His mother, at whose picture he had been working all day, was sitting in front of the plain deal table from his old studio, with fingers busily rattling on her typewriter, and Charles had put his easel on the model’s-stand and worked from this elevation, since the figure in the picture was looking upwards. It was nearing completion, and the last steps which were costing him so much biting of the ends of his brushes, and so continual a frown that it seemed doubtful if his forehead could ever again lose its corrugations, were being taken, and his progress which up till now had been so triumphantly uninterrupted was beginning to shuffle and mark time. Admirable though the wistful welcoming love in her face was, thrice admirable as Craddock had thought it, Charles knew now it did not completely represent what he saw. All day he had been working at it, making his patient model keep rising and looking at him, and not only was he dissatisfied with the inadequacy of it, but he knew that he was losing the simplicity and brilliance of his earlier work on it. Hence these knottings in his forehead, and the marks of teeth in the handles of his brushes.

  “Mother, darling,” he said, “stand up once more, will you, and that will be all. Now!”

  By incessant repetition she had got the pose with unerring accuracy, and she pushed back her chair and rose facing him. He looked back from her to his canvas, and from it back again to her, and the frown deepened. It was not the best he could do, but he could not better it by patching and poking at it For one moment he wavered; the next he had taken up his palette knife and with three strokes erased the whole of the head. Then he gave a great sign of relief.

  “Thank God, that’s done,” he said, “and tomorrow I will begin all over again. I was afraid I wasn’t going to do that.”

  “My dear, what have you done?’’ she asked, leaving her place and coming to look. “Oh, Charles, you’ve scraped it all out.”

  “Yes, thank God, as I said before.”

  “But when Mr. Craddock saw it this afternoon he said it was so wonderful.”

  “Well, I daresay it wasn’t bad. But if Craddock thinks that I’m going to be content with things that aren’t bad, he’s wrong,” said Charles. “It’ll be time for me to say ‘That will do,’ in twenty years from now. For the present I’m not going to be content with anything but the best that I can do, and that wasn’t the best, and that is why there’s that pat of paint on my palette knife, and no head on your dear shoulders.”

  Mrs. Lathom still looked troubled “But he had ordered it, dear,” she said. “He had chosen it as the picture he was going to buy from you this year.”

  Charles rapidly turned on all the electric light.

  “I don’t care a straw,” he said. “Nobody is going to have pictures of mine that aren’t as good as I can make them. I see more than I saw when I painted it first, and I couldn’t inlay that into it. Your face isn’t a patch-work counter-pane. No, we begin again. Now, mother dear, do be kind and toast muffins for tea, while I give the place where your head was a nice wash-down with turpentine, so that there’s no speck of paint left on it. Reggie’s coming in, and as soon as we’ve got greasy all over our faces with muffins we’ll go and stand in the queue at the theatre. We shall have to go pretty early. ‘Easter Eggs’ is a tremendous hit and the pit’s always crammed.”

&
nbsp; Charles scrubbed away at his canvas for a minute or so in silence, beaming with satisfaction at his erasure of the head.

  “I’m blowed if we stand in the queue at all,” he said. “As a thanks-offering for my own honesty, I shall go and get the three best places that are to be had. Now I won’t be thwarted. I shall get fifty pounds this week for the Reynolds copy, and I choose, madam, I choose to go to the stalls. I will be economical again to-morrow for weeks and weeks. Hullo, here’s the child. Reggie, come and look at my picture of Ma. Haven’t I caught the vacant expression of her face quite beautifully? I think I shall let Craddock have it just as it is, and he can call it ‘The guillotine at play.’”

  “Charles, you are the most tiresome—” began his mother.

  “I know: I touch the limits of endurance. But I am pleased to have wiped your face for you. I shall want you at ten o’clock to-morrow morning. Goodness, how it rains! I am glad I’m not going to stand outside for a couple of hours.”

  Reggie had subsided into a large chair, and was toasting his feet at the fire.

  “Mother’s morose,” he said, “when I was prepared to enjoy myself. She always was a kill-joy. Mother, darling, you shouldn’t indulge in these melancholy fits. Consider what a great girl you are. Consider anything, but put lots of butter on the muffins. Charles, history repeats itself. Mr. Ward — opulent American, you know — came in again to-day with Craddock, and again he drew a cheque at my desk, and again, though I lent him my pen, he didn’t tip me. He must be indecently rich, because to-day he gave Craddock a cheque for ten thousand and one hundred pounds.”

  “What had he bought?”

  “Dunno. Some little trifle for the servants’ hall I suppose. Ten thousand for the picture, one hundred for the frame, do you think? Oh, another thing: there was a long notice in the ‘Whitehall’ about the Exhibition at the ‘British Painters and Etchers.’ I brought it home. It says all kinds of things about the picture of me. Here it is: catch hold.”