Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Nancy, ignorant of these undercurrents, pursued her review of the events which led up to the question which she had to decide, as she undressed before the guttering candles in her looking-glass...The charcoal sketch was far from satisfying Mr. Giles: he said he must use his paints on her. So for a couple of weeks now she had been sitting to him on occasional afternoons for a study of her head and shoulders in oils. She had put on that straw hat trimmed with the red bow and artificial cherries, with which she had been making effects just now, and he was delighted with it. It just suited her face, he said, and indeed he could not have devised a more characteristic headgear. Very particular he was, too, about the light: she stood in the darkest corner of his studio, and he lit two big oil-lamps just over her head, and these had to be adjusted so that her face was brilliantly lit up, while the brim of her hat, with a couple of cherries lolling over it, threw a fantastic shadow on her left cheek. He put up his easel twelve feet or more from her, so that while he painted by daylight she stood in a flood of artificial illumination. She had thought that a great waste of paraffin: paraffin, she told him, must be cheap where he came from...There was always a glass of champagne for her when she got tired of standing to freshen her up: this gave her that added touch of natural colour that made the rouge, which she always put on for these sittings, betray itself. In all ways-champagne, compliments and the payments he made her which she knew to be in excess of the usual tariff for artists’ models-he showed himself the perfect gentleman which she had instantly recognised him to be.

  But long before his picture was done, Nancy had begun to feel a little piqued that he made no direct personal tribute to her charms, for she had taken an immense fancy to him, and not even a hint at a kiss or anything innocent like that! He was glib with his compliments, it is true, in order to make her smile, but he seemed not to want the smile for himself, but only for his paint-brush. “There, that is exquisite, you look perfectly entrancing now,” he would say. “Stop like that just one moment!” Then he would look eagerly at her, with no answering smile, but a frown as like as not, biting the end of his brush: then he would give a couple of minute touches, and stand back from his canvas, seeming to forget all about her, looking backwards and forwards from her to the picture, just as if his picture meant more to him than she did, as was indeed the case.

  To-day she had sat for him an hour or more while John Pentreath was reading his Bible in the garden, and he had scarcely noticed her at all, so absorbed he was in his work, and Nancy, rather piqued, had said to herself that he wanted nothing of her except to get her likeness and then ta-ta. But suddenly, what a change!

  “It’s done,” he cried. “Come and look at yourself, and tell me what you think!”

  Nancy walked across the studio to where he stood. Now at last she would know whether he had any thought of her for herself, or whether it was going to be “ta-ta.” She might give him a hint, in case he was one of those shy ones...

  “Well, I must say you’ve caught my expression something beautiful!” she said. “What a thing to be able to paint like that! That’s just how I look, I’m sure, when I’m talking to someone who’s taken my fancy.”

  With that last biting of his brush-handle, his last frown in answer to her smile, his last touch of bright red where the light shone through the rim of her ear, he put the artist from him for the present. He had got exactly what he wanted, captured it, recorded it, so that it was his. But that was done, and now he knew that all the while he had been looking at her, there had been storing up, drop by sensual drop, his desire for her. She was an exceedingly good-looking woman, and he did not mind her commonness. Indeed, common women were more fun: they demanded no effort: they just enjoyed, and enjoyment was the whole object of the business.

  “That’s good hearing,” he said,” because, as you’ve been talking to me, I flatter myself that I take your fancy. Is that it?”

  So she had kindled his spark: he did not frown on her now when she smiled at him, his paint-brushes were laid aside, and the eagerness of his eyes was for her and not for his picture. All the joylessness of her wasted years of maturity clamoured to her and sharpened her sexual hunger. In spite of her rumoured looseness with men at St. Columb’s, Harry Giles was right about the legend he had read in her face: she was not a woman who had sought or given herself promiscuously. A few years ago she had had a week’s intrigue with a young artist hardly more than a boy, with the dew of youth still on him, and the first down on his lip. That had been a good bit of fun certainly: such laughter and violence, such a frolic of the flesh, but signifying nothing. Then again, last summer, coming up late to the farm in dusk that was almost darkness, she had met a stranger on the path by the Circle. Scarce a word had passed between them, a bit of madness that was, and she had never set eyes on him again. But this was not a mere rampant boy who flamed into brief lust for her, nor one who had met her casually under the soft lascivious spell of the night, and went his way whistling half an hour afterwards. Harry Giles had looked at her and studied her: they had got to know each other a bit first, and now if he wanted her it was no momentary whim. She felt herself “all of a tremble,” as she answered.

  “Why, Mr. Giles,” she said, you don’t suppose I should have spent all these hours here, and drunk your champagne and all, unless I’d had a fancy for you? But with you just looking at me and frowning and turning to your picture again and forgetting all about it, I began to think I was no more to you than the blackthorn where I stood for you first. I wasn’t one to thrust myself forward, I hope.”

  Giles had been here a month: he wanted a woman, and this one attracted him far more than any he had seen yet. She was handsome and she was common and she was keen, and if you weren’t content with that, you were hard to please. “Darling Nancy,” he said. “You’re delicious. I want you. Give me a kiss.”

  It was their mouths that met, and that was no wonder, for each sought each, and that close animal clinging of man to woman was wine to Nancy. That was a nice kiss, she thought: not just a peck, and then get on to something else, but it had a sweetness in itself. She withdrew her mouth, and her breath came in quick pants through her open lips, betraying her.

  “Lor’, Mr. Giles,” she said, “I never would have sat to you at all, if I’d thought it would come to this.”

  “Then I’m glad you didn’t think,” said he, “and so are you. Where’s the harm? If you want and I want, what does it concern anybody else? Or shall I say, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Pentreath. So good of you to have looked in.’ Perhaps that would be best. So good afternoon, Mrs. Pentreath—”

  “Lor’, I do like you,” she said, still pressed close, bosom to chest, in his encircling arm. “You’ve got such nice ways. I shouldn’t be here if I didn’t like you, should I?”

  He drew her with him on to the big sofa under the large window to the north.

  “Oh, this won’t never do,” she whispered, without the faintest show of resistance. “And you’re crumpling my hat.”

  “Take it off then.”

  “But Sunday afternoon and all,” she said, as she unpinned it. “Besides, some of your friends might be coming in to see you, and then what a to-do?”

  “My dear, don’t go on like that! The old woman who looks after me is out, and she won’t be back till supper-time. I’ll go and lock the front door, if that will content you.”

  An hour later, she was pinning on her hat in front of the big mirror in the studio, for it was time to get back to the farm to make supper ready before John Pentreath came back from church. This way and that she moved it, half an inch at a time: it was most important that it should be just right. And now it was she who put her arms round him.

  “Well, it has been nice,” she said. “And you do like me a little bit, don’t you?”

  “No: a big bit. When shall I see you again?”

  “Well, we must be careful,” she said. “There’s lots of sharp eyes in St. Columb’s, and sharper yet up at the farm.”

  “Can’
t I come up there?” he asked, “when they’ve all gone to bed?”

  “Save us, no!” cried Nancy. “Too much of a risk: we could never be comfortable. But I’ve got a notion. ’Twould be easy for me, every now and then, when supper’s over, to say I was fair dropping with sleep, and go up to bed, and then nip down the stairs by my room, and out through the door in the studio, for there’s no lodger there now, and no one would know whether I came or went.”

  “Capital. And now there’s another thing, Nancy,” said he. “You must come down by daylight too, and stand for me again, not your head only, but all of you. You’ve got a lovely skin, I know that now, and my word, what a figure, fit for a goddess. And I’m badly wanting a nude model for another picture, and you’re the one for me.”

  “Eh, Mr. Giles; I shouldn’t like that at all,” said she.

  “But I should: I should like it immensely. If you won’t, I shall have to get another girl—”

  “Girl! Get along with you!” cried Nancy.

  “Well, woman if you like, and a fine one, too. Do come in and stand for me to-morrow afternoon. Else I must get another fine woman instead.”

  It was that she was thinking over as she undressed to-night. In the queer way of a woman of her type, some sense of respectability, of delicacy, made her hesitate. It was one thing to lie in a man’s arms in the dark: that was quite proper and natural; but it was another to stand naked in front of him and have him staring at you in broad daylight. Then there was another consideration: was she fit to bear that scrutiny now? And she stood stripped in front of the big looking-glass with a candle from the dressing-table in her hand, examining herself. It would never do if she wasn’t fit to look at. As yet he had only had a glimpse of her in the darkened room.

  She raised and lowered the candle, so that by its direct light she could judge of herself. There were hints of sagging skin, of slackness in what should have been firm. That soft luminous marble, faintly rosy, of girlhood was hers no longer, and she stood frowning and undecided. An awful thing would it be, if, when he looked at her, his eyes grew stale and indifferent. But then he had said that if she would not serve him he must get someone else, and instantly her jealousy stirred at the thought of being supplanted in other ways as well by some woman who was willing. He might get one of those girls from St. Columb’s in the first vigour of young womanhood, and who knew whether she might not take her place altogether? And then what would be left for poor Nancy Pentreath but to go back, after this brief flame of fulfilment, to the dreary routine at the farm and the joyless existence of work? All over again would start the succession of drab days, the early rising to light the kitchen fire, the cooking of meals, the sweeping of rooms, right on to the grey end, with perhaps a carnal adventure or two which only made her hungry for more. She had got a man now who had given her an hour of joy, and she had satisfied him well, too; he wanted her again, and he wanted her badly, and she was risking a lot if she let another woman have a chance with him. Very soon no man would desire her at all, not even her tipsy old father-in-law, who called her Jezebe1, and yet gave her such a squeeze, and but a few years yet remained in which she could hope to light the spark of longing in a man’s eye, and warm herself in its blaze. She mustn’t imagine, too, that she was irreplaceable to Mr. Giles: it had only just “commenced,” and what chance would she have if every day some girl stood white-flowering before him? Indeed, she had had wonderful luck already in taking his fancy; and it would be pure madness not to let him have his way in this.

  “I’ll chance it,” she said to herself with a final look at her reflection in the glass. “I’m not so bad, after all.”

  The house had long been silent, but at the very moment that she slipped on her nightgown, she heard a stealthy step in the passage that betrayed itself by a creaking board, and then came a tap at her door. She went close to it, but did not unlock it.

  “Who is it?” she said.

  Then came her father-in-law’s voice. “Open the door, Nancy,” he said. “I want but a word with you.”

  She hesitated. His voice sounded quiet and sober enough, and a fair wonder he was, for an hour ago he had been as drunk as ever she had seen him, and now he could walk quietly and steadily and control his voice. She put her ulster over her nightdress, and opened the door a couple of inches.

  “What is it, then?” she said.

  “I was hard on you to-night, Nancy,” he said; “I called you a lot o’ sour names at my praying. You don’t bear me any ill-will?”

  “Sure, is that all?” she said. “Why, of course I don’t. You were properly boozed to-night, and didn’t know what you were saying. Get you to bed, Mr. Pentreath, and sleep it off, and we’ll be all cosy and bright again come morning.”

  He pushed the door a little wider open with his shoulder.

  “God! Richard was in luck when he set eyes on you, Nancy,” he said. “And you’re still just as you were when you came back to us before Dennis was born. It’s little pleasure that has come your way all these years.”

  Outside in the passage or on the dark stairs at the end some board creaked again, and he looked round. The light of the oil-lamp from the open door of his room threw an oblong ray of illumination across the passage, and that beam cut off all that the darkness behind it might hold.

  “Hush, go to bed,” said Nancy. “’Tis someone moving.”

  “No one there,” he said. “You never gave me a good-night kiss to-night, Nancy. Give me one now to show you forgive me.”

  Up the stairs came Mrs. Pentreath from the garden. She had heard the sound of voices, and now stood looking through the stair-banisters, ready to pop her head down. Her husband’s figure was visible to her half inside Nancy’s door.

  “There then,” she said. “And now go quiet to bed.”

  “Ah, there’s a good girl,” he hiccupped. “You’re a morsel fit for a king, you are, Nancy. King David, he liked a pretty woman to the end of his days, and mayn’t a poor sinner, like old John Pentreath, do the same?”

  She giggled, and pushed him from the room, waiting to hear him shuffle away down the passage. Then locking her door again, she got into bed. What a day it had been! First of all there was that hour with Mr. Giles, and now there was her own father-in-law coming tapping at her door at this time of the night, and she his son’s widow! What an old man, to be sure!

  “I declare I shall have to lock my door every night,” said Nancy delightedly to herself, “if he’s beginning to feel like that about me. Why, I believe he’s really gone on me. And two men after me on one day, and me turned forty!”

  CHAPTER III. DENNIS

  ONE Window in Dennis’s room looked eastwards, and he knew very well by the quality of the light that came in there in the morning whether it was time for him to be getting up and going out to his work: it told him, as if he looked on the face of a clock that had only the short pointer, what sort of hour it was. Now the spring days were lengthening, and dawn was coming earlier, and when next morning he drowsily stirred and stretched himself in bed, a glance at the window was enough to show him that he could lie awhile, if he chose, lightly dozing before he need leave his bed. In midwinter, when he had to be at work in cowhouse and stables with a lantern, before the darkness of the night was dispersed, he would drag himself yawning from his blankets, and feel for his clothes with sleep-laden eyes, knowing that for him day had begun, while in midsummer the sun would be hot on his yellow head, and he could still sleep again.

  This morning, however, he roused himself before he need, for it was not yet day. The birds in the bushes were chirruping with faint tentative flutings and whistlings, but presently they would cease, to break into fuller song at dawn, when the activity of bird-life began in earnest. But now he did not doze again with the cessation of tuning-up; instead he pulled himself up in his bed, with hands clasped behind his head, and his chest raised above the clothes. He never slept in any sort of nightdress, but rolled himself tight in his blankets, like a moth full-formed in its coc
oon. Sometimes his mother would put a couple of sheets on his bed, and he lay in fine linen much darned, marked with some old Pentreath monogram, and dating from the more opulent days, but oftener there were no sheets, and he lay curled and warm in the good rough wool. In winter it was hard to break that outstretched comfort beneath the blankets which his body had heated and go out into the rain-soaked darkness, but on these mild mornings there was no struggle. To-day life was bubbling within him; it was not enough to lie there in lazy quiescence.

  It was the thought of Nell that claimed his vigour, and reaching out a bare arm and turning over in bed, he took a gimlet that he had brought upstairs in his pocket last night, and began boring into the partition wall above his head. This was in execution of a plan that he and Nell had made yesterday, when their singing and whistling had been stopped. Nell was an adept at oversleeping herself in the morning: so deep did she lie in slumber when it was time for her to get up and help Nancy in the kitchen that the noise of his thumping on the wall did not permanently arouse her. She but groaned at the interruption, and as soon as it ceased went to sleep again. So through this hole which Dennis was now boring was to be passed a string, the end of which she faithfully promised to tie to thumb or to wrist before she went to sleep, while the other end of it dangled in his room. Thus, when he got up, he would continue pulling on the string, until, as by the strugglings of a hooked fish, she would show that she was really awake. However fine a sleeper, she would find it impossible to compose herself again when her arm was being drawn and jerked towards the hole. She would tap when she had had enough.

  It was not long before the point of the gimlet encountered no further resistance from the thin partition, and after withdrawing it, Dennis put his eye to the hole to see that it was all clear for the passage of the string. The hole was far out of the straight: it inclined steeply downwards, and, putting his eye close to it, Dennis had a glimpse of her lying there in bed, and a loose plait of her black hair on the pillow. The plan had been a mere bit of ingenious foolery, but now there was a sort of spice to it, as he squinted on her and pictured her struggling up, tied to him, to tap the wall. They must begin it to-morrow morning.