Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Hullo, Mr. Craddock,” he said, “my mother wanted to come and look at herself. So I brought her. Here she is. What a jolly show.”

  Craddock made his answer to Mrs. Lathom.

  “Are you proud?” he said. “Are you more than proud, satisfied?”

  She shook hands with him.

  “I am even that,” she said. “And what am I to do with this foolish boy?”

  “Lead him about, show him to everybody: he has got to get used to it. I expected a great deal myself, but I have yet to get used to this.”

  Charles’ eyes went back to the crowd in front of his picture again.

  “What has happened?” he asked. “Is it — do you mean it’s a huge success, huge, you know?”

  “Walk up and down again with your mother, my dear fellow, and judge.”

  Charles became wild-eyed again.

  “But it’s a dream,” he said. “It’s — oh, Lady Crowborough.”

  Lady Crowborough was sufficiently moved to recognize Craddock.

  “How de do, Mr. Craddock?” she said. “Well, Charles, my dear, you’ve gone and done it. There ain’t an artist here but what’s cursing you. There never was such a private view, and I’ve seen somewhere about eighty of them. Now, I’m going to have my lunch. There’s nobody as can say a sensible word this morning all along of your pictures. And don’t you forget to be at Paddington in good time tomorrow afternoon for the train down to Thorley. And if you get there before me, lay hold of an empty carriage and put the windows tight up.”

  Charles was instantly and completely diverted by this new topic.

  “Oh, Mr. Wroughton does expect me?” he asked. “Yes, he told me to tell you. And if you find you’re enjoying yourself we’ll stop over till Tuesday. I hate those Saturday to Monday things, running away again before you get your boxes unpacked. I daresay you’ll find enough to amuse you till Tuesday. You can bring down your paint-box if you want something to occupy you, and make a drawing of me or my maid or Joyce or something.”

  And with a very broad grin on her face she moved away.

  Frank descended next on them.

  “Libel-action imminent, Charles,” he said, looking firmly at Craddock (this he found inevitable). “I’ve been standing in front of my portrait for an hour, and listening. Two timid little people come up to it and say ‘Good gracious, what a dreadful-looking young man. Who is it? Turn up a hundred and seventy-five, Jane.’

  ‘Sunrise on the Alps! It can’t be! Youngest daughter of Lady Jellicoe. No, a hundred and seventy-five! Oh, Mr. Frank Armstrong, is it? Fancy! And we liked “Easter Eggs” so much.’ I’ll have damages for that sort of thing. You’ve spoiled my public.”

  “Lord, if I had wished to libel you,” said Charles, “I wouldn’t have let you off like that.”

  “Your mother too,” said Frank. “Why, it’s the kid seething its mother in its own vitriol. I haven’t seen it yet, I was too occupied. Libellous fellow! What does she say to it all?”

  Mrs. Lathom turned to him.

  “She doesn’t say much, Mr. Frank,” she said. “But — but she’s having rather a happy morning.”

  “Well, then take me to have a look at you, and I’ll take you to have a look at me. After that, Charles’ brass band which I’ve ordered will be ready. ‘See the conquering,’ you know.”

  Charles lingered with Craddock.

  “Now tell me really,” he said, “without chaff I mean, like Lady Crowborough and Frank.”

  “They have told you really,” he said. “If you want it in other words, say that your price for a full-, length is a thousand pounds. That’s practical, isn’t it?”

  Charles shook his head.

  “But I still don’t understand,” he said.

  Then all the boyish spirits surged high, high too surged all his true artistic ambitions and passions, rising to that splendid point of humility which must always accompany triumphant achievement and its recognition. The utter surprise and the shock of this last quarter of an hour which had unsteadied and bewildered him cleared away: what had happened began to be real.

  “But what gorgeous fun!” he cried. “And how I must work. There’s everything to learn yet.”

  Craddock wondered whether he would find at Thorley that which should be the centre and the sun of his wakening. Almost he hoped that he would, for so radiant a completeness burned envy away, or at the most left a little negligible dross. Joyce a centre sun, loving and loved, and her lover this splendid star.... With that inspiring bliss what was there that this young hand and eager eye might not see and accomplish. The love of a son for his mother, the comradeship of a friend, the mere presence of a pretty woman, a brother’s well-made limbs in act to spring, had been sufficient to bring forth the work of just one astounding year. What when the love-light of man and woman flashed back and forth between him and the exquisite girl down by the riverside? Might that not open a new chapter in the history and records of the beautiful? It did not seem to him an outrageous fantasy to imagine that the possibility was a real one.

  It was seldom that those who were to travel with Lady Crowborough were privileged to reach the appointed station before her arrival; for no amount of contrary experience convinced her that trains were not capable of starting half an hour or so before their appointed times. Also she liked to get a carriage to herself, and dispose on all available seats so enormous a quantity of books, parasols, cloaks, rugs and handbags, that the question whether all these seats were taken could scarcely be ventured on, so heavily and potently were they occupied. Consequently on the next afternoon Charles found her already in possession, with the windows tightly shut, and a perfect bale of morning and evening papers by her. She had bought in fact a copy of every paper published that day, as far as she could ascertain, with the object of utterly overwhelming Philip with all the first notices of the Academy, in order to impress him as by a demonstration in force, with Charles’ immensity. She had attempted to read some of these herself, but being unused to artistic jargon, had made very little of them. Still there could be no doubt as to what they meant to convey.

  “That’s right, my dear,” she said as he appeared, “and jump in quick, for though there’s time yet, you never can tell when they won’t slide you out of the station. Clear a place for yourself, and then we’ll both sit and look out of the window, and they’ll take us for a couple on their honeymoon, and not dream of coming in, if they’ve any sense of what’s right. And when we’ve started you can read all about yourself, and it’s likely you’ll find a lot you didn’t know before. I can’t make head or tail of it all: they talk of keys of colour and tones and what not, as if you’d been writing a bundle of music. And leit-motif: what’s a leit-motif? They’ll say your pictures are nothing but a lot of accidentals next. Chords and harmonies indeed, as if you’d put a musical-box in the frames. There’s that Craddock got a column and a half about your keys and what not. But I was so pleased yesterday I had to pass the time of day with him.”

  “But what have you bought all these papers for?” asked Charles. “Oh, yes: here’s Craddock.”

  “Don’t you mind him. Why to let Philip see what they all think of you. But that’s my affair, my dear. I’m going to stuff them under his nose one after the other. You’ll see. And there we are off. Now don’t expect me to talk in the train. You just read about yourself, and if you see me nodding, let me nod. There’s half an hour yet before we need be thinking of putting my things together.”

  Great heat had come with the opening of May, and spring was riotous in field and hedgerow, with glory of early blossom and valour of young leafage. All this last month Charles had been town-tied among the unchanging bloomlessness of brick and stone and pavement — it had scarcely seemed to him that winter was overpast, and the time for buds and birds had come. Already on the lawn by the water-side the summer-batswing tent had been set up, and across the grass Joyce and the unbrothered Huz came to meet them, with a smile and a tail of welcome. A faint smell of eucalyp
tus had been apparent as they passed through the house and Lady Crowborough drew an unerring conclusion.

  “Well, Joyce, my dear, here we are,” she said, “and I won’t ask after your father because I’ll bet that he has got a cold. I smelt his stuff the moment I set foot in the house.”

  “Yes, darling grannie,” said Joyce, “but it’s not very bad. He’s really more afraid of having one than — than it. How are you, Mr. Lathom?”

  Lady Crowborough’s maid was standing a little way behind, looking like Tweedledum prepared for battle, so encompassed was she by a mass of miscellaneous objects. Prominent among them was the file of to-day’s papers.

  “You’ll find out how he is, my dear,” said Lady Crowborough, “when you’ve dipped into that little lot. He’s just a grand piano of keys and harmonies.”

  “Ah, I read the notice in the ‘Daily Review,’” said Joyce. “I was so pleased. I long to see your pictures.”

  “Well, then, you’ll have to wait your turn, my dear,” said Lady Crowborough. “We all took our turns like a peep-show. Drat that dog; he’s always licking my hand. Now take me and give me my tea at once, and then he’ll get something else to lick. Are we to see your father?”

  “Yes, he’s coming down to dinner, if he feels up to it. Shall we have tea in the tent?”

  “Well, it ain’t so cold for the country!” said Lady Crowborough, as if the Arctic region began at the four mile radius.

  “It’s broiling, Grannie. And do you want quite all those cushions and wraps? They’ll hardly go into the tent.”

  “Yes, I want them every one. And I want my tea after my journey. Go back to the house, Charles, my dear, and tell them to bring it out.”

  She waited till Charles had passed beyond earshot on his errand. “Now, Joyce,” she said, “I don’t want to see any fiddle-faddling between that boy and you, and talking about the moon and the stars and Mr. Browning’s poetry and what not, as if that had anything to do with it.”

  “Grannie, darling,” said Joyce with an agonized look at Tweedledum.

  “She don’t hear,” said Lady Crowborough, “who could hear through that lot of cushions and veils. And what I say to you, Joyce, I’m going to say to him.”

  Joyce grew suddenly grave.

  “Oh, indeed, you mustn’t do anything of the kind, Grannie,” said she. “Why how could I look him in the face, and have a moment’s ease with him, if I thought you had?”

  Lady Crowborough’s face smiled all over.

  “Very well, then,” she said. “I don’t want you not to look at the face. But you take my advice, Joyce. Lord, if I were seventy years younger I’d take it myself, in less than a jiffy. You make up your mind you’re going to have him and let there be no nonsense about it. Mercy on us all, girls get red in the face and look away, and think one’s a shocking old woman, when one advises them to do exactly what they want to do. You keep all the stuff about the moon and poetry till afterwards, my dear. It’ll serve to talk about then, only I expect you’ll find you’ve plenty else to say. He’s a nice clean clever young fellow, with a good head and a good heart, and they’re not too many of that sort going about. Lord, you should have seen all the girls and women, too, staring at him yesterday at the picture-show. I thought somebody would catch him up and marry him under my very nose. They’ll be at him now like wasps round a jam-pot. But you get in first, my dear, and we’ll put the lid on. Well, here he comes! Don’t you look shocked. I’ve talked very good sense. You haven’t got a mother, but if you had she’d tell you just the same, with no end of beautiful words scattered about like the flowers on a dinner-table, just to hide the victuals as she always did. But the victuals are there just the same: it wouldn’t be much of a dinner without ‘em.”

  Any intercourse, flippant or nugatory, or concerned with what Lady Crowborough summed up under the head of the “moon and Mr. Browning’s poetry” is sufficient cover for the hidden approach of two souls that are stealing towards each other; any channel sufficient to conduct the conveyance of such streams; and when not long after, Lady Crowborough left them to go indoors to make her salutations to Philip, and get out of the “nasty damp draught” that was blowing up from the river, it was under the most insignificant of shelter that they crept nearer, ever nearer. But, for they talked over the happenings little and not so little, that concerned them jointly in the past, it was as if they gathered in the store that should so soon burst the doors of its granary, or sat telling their beads in some hushed sacred place before it blazed out into lights and music and banners.... All this was below, as leaven secretly working, on the surface a boy and girl by the Thames-side talked as comrades talk with laughter and unembarrassed pauses.

  “Wonder if it’ll be a June like last year,” said Charles, sliding from his chair onto the grass. “I was camped up there, half a mile away, for three weeks of it and there was never a drop of rain. Oh, except one night for half an hour: it smelt so good.”

  “I know: the best watering carts in a dusty street,” said she. “You were doing that picture of the weir and your brother.”

  “And then one afternoon you punted up with Craddock. And that’s how it all began.”

  “All what?” asked Joyce, knowing he could give only one answer, but longing for the other answer.

  “My career, large C,” said Charles with pomp. “He came and bought the picture next morning. I couldn’t believe it at first. I thought — I thought he was a fairy.”

  “Mr. Craddock does not answer my idea of a fairy,” said Joyce after a little consideration. “Oh, you left out about Reggie — isn’t he Reggie? — trying to make an omelette, and succeeding only in producing a degraded glue.”

  “I don’t think I noticed that,” said Charles, looking at her.

  “No, you were staring at us as if we were all fairies. Oh, but you did notice it. It made you laugh, and me too.”

  Charles went back to a previous topic.

  “No, strictly speaking, he isn’t a fairy,” he said. “At least not completely. But it was a fairylike proceeding. Oh, yes, grant him something fairy-like. He got me the commission to copy your Reynolds, and he started me on my feet, and believed in me. I found him a fairy for — for quite a long time.”

  “Of course there are bad fairies as well,” said Joyce, conceding the point.

  “Yes: do you mind my asking you one thing? Did you ever —— —— —”

  “Of course not,” said Joyce. “What on earth do you think of me?”

  “But you don’t know what—”

  “Yes, I do. I never, never believed one word. Does that show you? Talk about something else. I don’t want to be sick on such a lovely evening.” Charles relapsed into laughter.

  “Isn’t it so distressing on a wet day?” he asked. “No. Do you know, I think what he did to father about the picture wasn’t nearly so bad. That only made me feel rather unwell. Have you seen him since you knew about it all?”

  Charles made a little conflagration of dry leaves with the match he had just lit before he answered.

  “Yes, once or twice,” he said. “I’m rather ashamed of not having seen him oftener. I believe he was sorry, and if people are sorry — well, it’s all over, isn’t it?”

  “What a painfully noble sentiment,” said Joyce. “But I don’t think I should caress a scorpion, however grief-stricken. Besides, how can you say that it’s all over, just because a person is sorry. He has become, to you, a different person if you find out he has done something mean, something — something like that. Not that I thought very much of Mr. Craddock before,” she added.

  “Well, I did,” said Charles.

  “Don’t bias me,” said Joyce.

  She was silent a moment.

  “In a way an injury done to oneself is easier to forgive than an injury done to somebody else —— —” she began.

  Charles rudely interrupted.

  “Painfully noble sentiment?” he enquired.

  “Yes: perhaps it was. Let us be car
eful: we might die in the night if we became more edifying.”

  “And the real point is that Mr. Craddock’s little plot didn’t come off,” said he. “At least that seems to me the most important thing.”

  For a moment their eyes met, and for that moment the huge underlying reality came close to the surface.

  She smiled and nodded her assent to this.

  “Leave it there,” she said... “and then, where were we? O, yes: then you came to copy the Reynolds. Up in my room, do you remember? And dear old Buz lay on the sofa and got worse and worse?”

  She leaned back in her chair so that he could not see her face.

  “Oh, what a coward I was!” she said. “I knew there was only one thing I could do for him, poor darling, and yet I let you do it instead of me.”

  “Well, there was no delay,” said Charles. “It was done.”

  “Oh, but you understand better than that,” she said. “It was I who failed: now that’s a thing hard to forgive oneself. I loved Buz best: it was my privilege to help him in the only way possible. Yes, I know, the thing in itself was nothing, just to press a syringe. But there was the principle behind it, don’t you see — of course you do — that I threw love’s right away.... And I don’t believe I ever thanked you for picking it up, so to speak. But I was grateful.”

  Charles’ little conflagration had burned itself out.

  “Poor Buz!” he said.

  Joyce sat up.

  “He didn’t have such a bad time,” she said, “though why I expect you to be interested in Buz I really don’t know. But I’ve confessed. I always rather wanted to confess that to you — Penance?”

  “I think a turn in the punt might do you good,” said he, “especially if I take the pole.”

  That, for the present, was the end of anything serious. Charles exhibited the most complicated incompetence, as regards propulsion, though as a piece of aquatic juggling, his performance was supreme. Joyce told him how to stand, and like that he stood, and the juggling began. He thrust his pole into the water and it stuck fast: he pulled hard at it and the punt went a little backwards, but a second wrench landed a chunk of mud and water-weed on his trousers. He pushed again, this time with so firm and vigorous a stroke that they flew into midstream, and only by swift antic steps in the direction of the stem did he recover balance and pole. Once again he pushed, this time in unfathomable water, plunged his arm up to the shoulder in the astonished flood, and fell in an entangled heap of arms and legs on the top of the stupefied Huz.