Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  He stalked into the lounge where Mrs. Bliss was sitting. She hailed him with her widest smile.

  “There you are, Colonel!” she said. “How kind and dear of you to have sacrificed your walk. How the poor little mites must have enjoyed it! What brightness you have brought into lives full of Error! I’ve been demonstrating over the pleasure you have been giving ever since you started. Tell me all about it!”

  Colonel Chase’s suspicions about Mind deepened to real distrust. But perhaps Mrs. Bliss could explain it.

  “I can’t make it out,” he said. “I meant to give pleasure but when I got to the ghost forming itself in the far corner the children burst into sobs and howls. The matron hurried in and asked me to go away at once. Very disconcerting. What do you make of it?”

  Mrs. Bliss was not in the least disconcerted.

  “Poor little mites!” she said. “You see they are surrounded with thoughts of illness: everything round them suggests illness: doctors, nurses, materia medica, and as you know now it is all Error. You came in, radiating Mind, and Error boiled up to the surface, violent for the moment, but dispersing rapidly. It often happens like that. All is Mind. Mind is all. Terror and evil and sickness flee before it. There is no reality in them. There is a wonderful page or two about it in the Manual.”

  She picked up the Manual and turned quickly over the pages. “Yes, here it is,” she said. “Shall I read it? Sweet words and so true! ‘Often when Error is brought under the influence of Mind, there takes place a chemicalisation. Error surges to the surface only to be instantly dispersed. An apparent relapse may occur, and this is often the first sign that the healing process is going on.’ Quite convincing, is it not? The dear little mites will be so much better in consequence of your visit. I am so glad you went.”

  CHAPTER VI

  For the rest of the week Miss Howard had very little time to attend to Mind, and just about as little inclination. She considered that Mind had shewn the greatest inattention to her improvisation: she had committed herself and it to Mind with the complete trust that a passenger puts in the engine-driver when he makes a journey by train, and there had been an accident. Not only had she quite forgotten the end of the passage for octaves, but there had been no sign whatever of an encore, whereas Colonel Chase who had already been cured of a cold, the tantrums and the loss of a pedometer, had been loaded with benefits. It was not fair, and though Mrs. Bliss assured her that those last few chords would linger for ever in her memory like the sound of a great Mental Amen, Miss Howard would far sooner have got back into the Chopin waltz and finished according to plan, than have so agreeably affected Mrs. Bliss. Besides, those chords composing the great Mental Amen, would have come in anyhow.

  Mind, too, was doing nothing for Mr. Kemp, and Mrs. Bliss’s argument that his baths and massage were a materialistic hindrance to his recovery was met with the deadly parry that she was having baths and massage too, and was improving enormously.

  But she only smiled unweariedly, and repeated that she submitted to baths and massage for her husband’s sake, and that they did not hinder her progress because she was quite sure that they had no effect whatever on her. But the fact of submitting to them (not the baths and massage themselves) perhaps did her good for this was a sacrifice made to love, and Mind liked that. What did hinder progress was to have faith in materia medica and wouldn’t dear Mr. Kemp give up his treatment for a week, for he was still believing it might do him good, and see how much better he would be? It was clearly no use arguing with Mrs. Bliss for she only smiled and said it all over again with loving pity (which was so exasperating), but every night as he had a few sips of hot milk or a glass of lemonade without sugar, and a rusk, he argued the position out with Florence. Florence could not make up her mind either, and so after lengthy debate they sat with smiles and closed eyes, and since he was no better in the morning he had his reclining bath as usual. Mr. Kemp in fact served both Mind and Mammon with equal devotion and no reward from either.

  But Miss Howard during the few days that remained before the opening of her exhibition of pictures in the Green Salon, worked away, relying entirely on herself and not at all on Mind: she had become, for the time being, a rank a-mentalist. The question of prices was truly difficult, for she wanted to get as much as she could for her pictures, but had not the vaguest idea what anybody would be willing to give. So instead of closing her eyes, and seeking guidance, she looked at her pictures with a critical eye, and eventually made the scale. ‘Evening Bells’, with a five-and-sixpenny frame positively given away, was two guineas: Mrs. Oxney’s cat under the title of ‘Pussy-dear’ and ‘Geraniums’ were one guinea, and everything else was half-a-guinea. This price list, to be produced on application, was entrusted to the care of one of the handsomest of the liveried pages at the Baths (who generally spent their days in playing leap-frog with each other) whom Mr. Bowen guaranteed to be the brightest boy in Bolton. He was also given a roll of perforated paper, much like a roll of exceedingly narrow toilet-paper, on each numbered section of which was printed an advertisement of Mr. Bowen, plumber, decorator, picture-framer and carpenter: these rolls were supplied by Mr. Bowen free of charge, for the sake of the publicity. The leap-frog boy, thus made doorkeeper, cashier and bureau of information, had merely to tear off one of these sections, and hand it on payment of sixpence to the visitors to the Green Salon: the device seemed fool-proof. But he had to be tactful as well, for if he observed a visitor looking very attentively at the exhibits, he was to touch his cap with an insinuating smile, and ask if he would like to see a price-list. In his left trouser pocket there was a pill box thrown in gratis with ‘Souvenir d’Orient’ by Mr. Amble, containing some minute red adhesive stars, and in case a picture was purchased, he had to write down the name and address of the purchaser and with a genteel application of the tip of his tongue to the adhesive star, affix it to the corner of the picture, to indicate that it was sold. For these services he received a shilling a day in addition to the salary he earned from the establishment for playing leap-frog.

  The hanging of the pictures was a task no less difficult than their pricing. In some places the walls were so crumbly, (owing probably to the action of the brine) that large flakes came away under the lightest impact of that useful little nail called the ‘Small Brad’, while in others the walls were so adamantine (owing probably to the action of the rotten-egg water) that the Small Brad curled up and became a minute croquet hoop. In the end a taut copper wire had to be hung from corner to corner of the walls of the Green Salon and the pictures hooked on to it. They had a tendency to sag towards the centre where the wire drooped a little. An advertisement appeared on Friday and Saturday in the Bolton Gazette, and Mr. Bowen, who was part-owner of the paper said he was confident that Miss Howard would not regret that little trifle of expense, when all was said and done. This was a dark oracular saying, but Mr. Bowen seemed quite certain about it.

  By Saturday afternoon every picture was in its place: Evening Bells, and Pussy-dear, and Geraniums and Reflections and Lengthening Shadows and God’s Acre and Bethesda and Healing Springs and Golf Links Wentworth, and Leafy Warwickshire and June’s Glory and Suntrap and Frosty Morning and Dewy Eve and Harvest Moon, and Gloaming and Beeches and Hawthorns and St. Giles’s Church and Still Life and Matins and Evensong and ‘Oh, to be in England now that April’s here’, and Campions and Sheep-feeding and Mist in the Valley and Mist on the Hills and Swans and the ‘Curfew tolls the knell of parting Day’ and many others. Miss Howard then went through the pantomime of being a visitor with the custodian who pretended to tear off a section of toilet-paper quite correctly in return for her imaginary sixpence and looked seraphic as he sidled up to her while she examined ‘Pussy-dear’ with close attention, and offered to show her the price-list. The light through the scrubbed skylight was admirable and after giving the Green Salon a final whiff of Souvenir d’Orient, Miss Howard, in order to be on the safe side, closed her eyes and smiled, committing the entire undertaking, alrea
dy terribly expensive, to Mind. The Baths would be shut on Sunday, and she would not look on her handiwork again till it was open to the inspection and the purses of the public. She hoped the purses would be open too.

  To say that Miss Howard came down to breakfast on Monday with either appetite or confidence or calm would be highly misleading. She had passed a worried and wakeful night, and her rare snatches of sleep had been chequered by villainous dreams in which she saw with agony that she had hung all her pictures upside down, or that the Green Salon, crowded with Dowager Countesses of forbidding aspect, had no pictures at all on the walls, or that they were entirely occupied with one vast fresco representing Pussy-dear ringing Evening Bells. . . . She was early down after an unrefreshing night, and no one else had yet appeared, but the papers had come in, and there on her table was not only her usual periodical but a copy of the Bolton Gazette. She supposed that Mr. Bowen had sent it up as he had done on Friday and Saturday to show that the advertisement for her exhibition had duly appeared, but on the outside leaf he had written in blue pencil underlined ‘see page 8’, and accordingly she turned there. Big head-lines, that seemed to dance before her enraptured gaze, instantly shewed why she should turn to page 8. A column was entitled ‘Exhibition of Water-Colours in the Green Salon at Bolton Baths’. She read:

  “Seldom has a greater treat been afforded to the lover of the beautiful in Bolton (and we know there are many such) than this exhibition of Miss Alice Howard’s water-colours which opens to-day. For perfection of technique, for subtle and exquisite observation, for radiant fancy, for that nameless je ne sais quoi without which all art is as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, we doubt whether any modern artist can rival this gifted lady who has at last done justice to and conferred immortality on our lovely countryside. Nor are Miss Howard’s truly poetical interpretations of Nature confined to landscape alone: all lovers of the feline species will long to be the happy possessor of ‘Pussy-dear’, and we could have wished she had given us more animal studies. The Green Salon at the Baths, we are sure, will be thronged all day with eager purchasers. A veritable cabinet of gems.”

  The artist gave a gasp of delight. She had so lost herself in the perusal of this masterly and sympathetic account of her work, that she had not observed that other guests had entered the dining-room. There they sat at their tables, all silent, and all, oh wonder of wonders, immersed in the Bolton Gazette. Admirable Mr. Bowen, whose oracular speech was now explained, must have sent copies of it to everyone at Wentworth.

  Mrs. Bliss was the first to finish this eulogy, and catching Miss Howard’s eyes, blew her a kiss (which Florence thought a very forward proceeding) and pointed to it.

  “Not half what you deserve, dear,” she said. “But very nice as far as it goes. I told you how it would be. Mind!”

  Murmurs of approval and applause came from other quarters of the dining-room as the breakfasters finished this little appreciation in the Bolton Gazette, and Mrs. Oxney said she felt quite upset at the thought that somebody else might purchase “Pussy-dear” before she had time to go down and snap it up. It was so tiresome that on Monday morning household affairs always detained her till lunch-time. The simple expedient of paying Miss Howard a guinea and thus purchasing “Pussy-dear” without more ado did not seem to occur to her, and delicacy naturally prevented the artist from suggesting it. . . . As for Miss Howard, now treading on air, and with her appetite fully restored, she gobbled up her breakfast and hurried warbling away in order to get down to the Baths by the time the Green Salon opened. She meant to go in and out with a busy but diffident air, and everyone who knew who she was would tell those who didn’t, and she would be a Public Character. Her one regret at the moment after regarding the Lobgesang in the Gazette was that she had not priced all the pictures at double the modest sum that appeared in the list. Such modesty just now seemed almost morbid.

  Shortly after she had left the dining-room, Colonel Chase came down to breakfast, extremely late and in a worse temper than he had been in since Mr. Amble had failed to send his quinine and thermogene. He had been drinking his early morning tea and eating his toast when a furtive and adamantine piece of crust caused an important front tooth to part company from its parent plate. In itself that would have been no great inconvenience, for he had a beautiful row of uppers left but he remembered with sad vividness how, only last night, when Mrs. Holders mentioned that she had to pay a visit to the dentist’s, he had said in his favourite rôle of the entirely robust and healthy man, ‘I never have any bother with my teeth, thank goodness.’ In a way that was quite true, because, strictly speaking, he had not got any, but the inference which he had no doubt had been drawn, was that he had got them all. So before he came down to breakfast he spent a long time in front of his looking-glass making the mouth-movements of speech and laughter to see whether the loss would be apparent. He thought that would pass undetected unless he incautiously allowed himself to be very much amused about anything, and he would have to go up to London some day soon. Then, being in a hurry, he cut himself shaving, for he never condescended to the ‘safety mowing-machines’, as he contemptuously termed the modern type of razor. ‘I’m not afraid of the bare blade’, he used to say. But he was very angry just now with the bare blade. . . .

  These untoward incidents were quite enough thoroughly to ruffle a temper that was never very equable early in the day, and when, on sitting down to his breakfast he demanded a couple of sausages, he was not soothed at being told by the parlour-maid that there were none left; she recommended some ‘beautiful’ bacon instead. He cast a glance of peculiar annoyance at the unsolicited copy of the Bolton Gazette which lay by his plate, and opened it.

  “What have they sent me this provincial rag for?” he muttered. “And why page 8? Some local charity, I’ll be bound. Children’s Hospital probably. I’ve had enough of the Children’s Hospital. Hullo, picture exhibition . . . !”

  A sideways glance told him that Miss Howard was not present, and folding the paper back he emitted frequent pshaws and faughs as he read. Then he flung it on the floor.

  Mrs. Bliss observed those signs of Error (there was no mistaking them) with tender regret, and put on her brightest smile as she rose from her meal and passed, hardly limping at all, close to his table. Error must not be allowed to poison the sweet morning.

  “Such a lovely little notice of Miss Howard’s pictures,” she said, “So appreciative. Have you seen it?”

  “Yes, indeed I have,” said he, “and for myself I don’t find it lovely. Ludicrous flattery I call it, laid on with a spade. I wonder who wrote it, eh? A little suspicious.”

  Quite suddenly as he said the word ‘suspicious’, a loud cheerful whistle sounded through the dining-room. Everybody looked up, wondering where it came from. Colonel Chase himself thought that some rude person had interrupted him (as when the kites whistled in the tiger-story) and angrily resumed.

  “Our friend is indeed endowed with all the gifts,” he said. “Pianist, artist, and now shall we add, art critic, Mrs. Bliss?”

  Once again came that piercing whistle, and Colonel Chase could not doubt, nor indeed could anybody else, that his own unwilling lips had produced it through the gap in the front teeth. He realised at once that he must avoid sibilants (so difficult to do) as the gouty avoided sugar, and go up to London on business without delay, for his speech betrayed him. If he hurried he would be able to catch the ten o’clock train and be back to-night. Most annoying. The only bright spot, and that a small one, was that he could not go at any rate to-day, to Miss Howard’s exhibition, and if that eulogy he had just read was really by an unbiassed hand, all the pictures ought to be sold by tomorrow. He gobbled up his bacon and found an urgent call to go to London among his letters.

  All that morning and all that afternoon, Miss Howard was diffidently gliding in and out of the Green Salon and welcoming friends who came in to look at her pictures with little deprecating speeches but nobly refraining from accompanying them round, for t
hat would have made it difficult for them to avoid a purchase, and Miss Howard had a pride. But the custodian had his eye on them, and whenever anyone lingered by God’s Acre or Bethesda she saw him glide up to them with his insinuating smile and politely tell them of the existence of a catalogue of prices. Unfortunately this information only seemed to have the effect of making them hurry on, and she could not help noticing that as they neared the end of the exhibition, they looked round to see if she was near and glided stealthily from the Green Salon in a way that suggested prisoners escaping. Once the custodian got as far as producing the pill box with the adhesive stars from his trousers pocket, but nothing came of it. It was all a little discouraging, and the rapture inspired by the notice in the Bolton Gazette gradually grew dim. Mrs. Bowen, however was a tonic, for she made Miss Howard come all the way round with her, and poured forth a continuous stream of admiring comment.

  “And there’s St. Giles’s Church again,” she said. “I should know it anywhere. No. 9 — what does the catalogue say about it? Reflections: there they are in the river. Beautiful: so clear! And what an enthusiastic notice wasn’t it, in the Gazette, though not a word too much. Mr. Bowen was sure you’d like that. It was written by a very clever young man on the staff, whom Mr. Bowen was kind to not so long ago. He’s not here himself to-day, and so busy that he was afraid he mayn’t be able to pop in before closing time, and I shall get a fine scolding if I can’t tell him all about the pictures. I do think he’s made a good job of the frames: so quiet and tasteful, and shewing them off, you may say, to the best advantage. Why if that isn’t Mrs. Oxney’s cat: I could recognise it and pick it out if there were fifty pictures of cats. What does the catalogue say about that? ‘Pussy-dear’. Not a doubt about it: so good-natured, and never scratches. And Evening Bells: perhaps that’s my favourite, but with so many lovely bits, I hardly know what I like best. How sweet any of them would look above my piano in the parlour! I must have one more look at ‘Pussy-dear’” — the custodian glided to her side— “but I mustn’t deprive Mrs. Oxney of that, or she would be in a way about it.”