He thrust me out.
‘An asylum, Mr Benlian,’ I thought as I crossed the yard, ‘is the place for you!’ You see, I didn’t know him then, and that he wasn’t to be judged as an ordinary man is. Just you wait till you see . . .
And straight away, I found myself vowing that I’d have nothing more to do with him. I found myself resolving that, as if I were making up my mind not to smoke or drink – and (I don’t know why) with a similar sense that I was depriving myself of something. But, somehow, I forgot, and within a month he’d been in several times to see me, and once or twice had fetched me in to see his statue.
In two months I was in an extraordinary state of mind about him. I was familiar with him in a way, but at the same time I didn’t know one scrap more about him. Because I’m a fool (oh, yes, I know quite well, now, what I am) you’ll think I’m talking folly if I even begin to tell you what sort of a man he was. I don’t mean just his knowledge (though I think he knew everything – sciences, languages, and all that) for it was far more than that. Somehow, when he was there, he had me all restless and uneasy; and when he wasn’t there I was (there’s only the one word for it) jealous – as jealous as if he’d been a girl! Even yet I can’t make it out . . .
And he knew how unsettled he’d got me; and I’ll tell you how I found that out.
Straight out one night, when he was sitting up in my place, he asked me: ‘Do you like me, Pudgie?’ (I forgot to say that I’d told him they used to call me Pudgie at home, because I was little and fat; it was odd, the number of things I told him that I wouldn’t have told anybody else.)
‘Do you like me, Pudgie?’ he said.
As for my answer, I don’t know how it spurted out. I was much more surprised than he was, for I really didn’t intend it. It was for all the world as if somebody else was talking with my mouth.
‘I loathe and adore you!’ it came; and then I looked round, awfully startled to hear myself saying that.
But he didn’t look at me. He only nodded.
‘Yes. Of good and evil too – ’ he muttered to himself. And then all of a sudden he got up and went out.
I didn’t sleep for ever so long after that, thinking how odd it was I should have said that.
Well (to get on), after that something I couldn’t account for began to come over me sometimes as I worked. It began to come over me, without any warning, that he was thinking of me down there across the yard. I used to know (this must sound awfully silly to you) that he was down yonder, thinking of me and doing something to me. And one night I was so sure that it wasn’t fancy that I jumped straight up from my work, and I’m not quite sure what happened then, until I found myself in his studio, just as if I’d walked there in my sleep.
And he seemed to be waiting for me, for there was a chair by his own, in front of the statue.
‘What is it, Benlian?’ I burst out.
‘Ah!’ he said . . . ‘Well, it’s about that arm, Pudgie; I want you to tell me about the arm. Does it look so strange as it did?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I thought it wouldn’t,’ he observed. ‘But I haven’t touched it, Pudgie –’
So I stayed the evening there.
But you must not think he was always doing that thing – whatever it was – to me. On the other hand, I sometimes felt the oddest sort of release (I don’t know how else to put it) . . . like when, on one of these muggy, earthy-smelling days, when everything’s melancholy, the wind freshens up suddenly and you breathe again. And that (I’m trying to take it in order, you see, so that it will be plain to you) brings me to the time I found out that he did that too, and knew when he was doing it.
I’d gone into his place one night to have a look at his statue. It was surprising what a lot I was finding out about that statue. It was still all out of proportion (that is to say, I knew it must be – remembered I’d thought so – though it didn’t annoy me now quite so much. I suppose I’d lost my fresh eye by that time). Somehow, too, my own miniatures had begun to look a bit kiddish; they made me impatient; and that’s horrible, to be discontented with things that once seemed jolly good to you.
Well, he’d been looking at me in the hungriest sort of way, and I looking at the statue, when all at once that feeling of release and lightness came over me. The first I knew of it was that I found myself thinking of some rather important letters my firm had written to me, wanting to know when a job I was doing was going to be finished. I thought myself it was time I got it finished; I thought I’d better set about it at once; and I sat suddenly up in my chair, as if I’d just come out of a sleep. And, looking at the statue, I saw it as it had seemed at first – all misshapen and out of drawing.
The very next moment, as I was rising, I sat down again as suddenly as if somebody had pulled me back.
Now a chap doesn’t like to be changed about like that; so, without looking at Benlian, I muttered a bit testily, ‘Don’t, Benlian!’
Then I heard him get up and knock his chair away. He was standing behind me.
‘Pudgie,’ he said, in a moved sort of voice, ‘I’m no good to you. Get out of this. Get out –’
‘No, no, Benlian!’ I pleaded.
‘Get out, do you hear, and don’t come again! Go and live somewhere else – go away from London – don’t let me know where you go –’
‘Oh, what have I done?’ I asked unhappily; and he was muttering again.
‘Perhaps it would be better for me too,’ he muttered; and then he added, ‘Come, bundle out!’
So home I went, and finished my ivory for the firm; but I can’t tell you how friendless and unhappy I felt.
Now I used to know in those days a little girl – a nice, warm-hearted little thing, just friendly you know, who used to come to me sometimes in another place I lived at and mend for me and so on. It was an awful long time since I’d seen her; but she found me out one night – came to that yard, walked straight in, went straight to my linen-bag, and began to look over my things to see what wanted mending, just as she used to. I don’t mind confessing that I was a bit sweet on her at one time; and it made me feel awfully mean, the way she came in, without asking any questions, and took up my mending.
So she sat doing my things, and I sat at my work, glad of a bit of company; and she chatted as she worked, just jolly and gentle and not at all reproaching me.
But as suddenly as a shot, right in the middle of it all, I found myself wondering about Benlian again. And I wasn’t only wondering; somehow I was horribly uneasy about him. It came to me that he might be ill or something. And all the fun of her having come to see me was gone. I found myself doing all sorts of stupid things to my work, and glancing at my watch that was lying on the table before me.
At last I couldn’t stand it any longer. I got up.
‘Daisy,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to go out now.’
She seemed surprised.
‘Oh, why didn’t you tell me I’d been keeping you!’ she said, getting up at once.
I muttered that I was awfully sorry . . .
I packed her off. I closed the door in the hoarding behind her. Then I walked straight across the yard to Benlian’s.
He was lying on a couch, not doing anything.
‘I know I ought to have come sooner, Benlian,’ I said, ‘but I had somebody with me.’
‘Yes,’ he said, looking hard at me; and I got a bit red.
‘She’s awfully nice,’ I stammered; ‘but you never bother with girls, and you don’t drink or smoke –’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Well,’ I continued, ‘you ought to have a little relaxation; you’re knocking yourself up.’ And, indeed, he looked awfully ill.
But he shook his head.
‘A man’s only a definite amount of force in him, Pudgie,’ he said, ‘and if he spen
ds it in one way he goes short in another. Mine goes – there.’ He glanced at the statue. ‘I rarely sleep now,’ he added.
‘Then you ought to see a doctor,’ I said, a bit alarmed. (I’d felt sure he was ill.)
‘No, no, Pudgie. My force is all going there – all but the minimum that can’t be helped, you know . . . You’ve heard artists talk about “putting their soul into their work”, Pudgie?’
‘Don’t rub it in about my rotten miniatures, Benlian,’ I asked him.
‘You’ve heard them say that; but they’re charlatans, professional artists, all, Pudgie. They haven’t got any souls bigger than a sixpence to put into it . . . You know, Pudgie, that Force and Matter are the same thing – that it’s decided nowadays that you can’t define matter otherwise than as “a point of Force”?’
‘Yes,’ I found myself saying eagerly, as if I’d heard it dozens of times before.
‘So that if they could put their souls into it, it would be just as easy for them to put their bodies into it? . . . ’
I had drawn very close to him, and again – it was not fancy – I felt as if somebody, not me, was using my mouth. A flash of comprehension seemed to come into my brain.
‘Not that, Benlian?’ I cried breathlessly.
He nodded three or four times, and whispered. I really don’t know why we both whispered.
‘Really that, Benlian?’ I whispered again.
‘Shall I show you? . . . I tried my hardest not to, you know . . . ’ he still whispered.
‘Yes, show me!’ I replied in a suppressed voice.
‘Don’t breathe a sound then! I keep them up there . . . ’
He put his finger to his lips as if we had been two conspirators; then he tiptoed across the studio and went up to his bedroom in the gallery. Presently he tiptoed down again, with some rolled-up papers in his hand. They were photographs, and we stooped together over a little table. His hand shook with excitement.
‘You remember this?’ he whispered, showing me a rough print.
It was one of the prints from the fogged plates that I’d taken after that first night.
‘Come closer to me if you feel frightened, Pudgie,’ he said. ‘You said they were old plates, Pudgie. No no; the plates were all right; it’s I who am wrong!’
‘Of course,’ I said. It seemed so natural.
‘This one,’ he said, taking up one that was numbered ‘1’, ‘is a plain photograph, in the flesh, before it started; you know! Now look at this, and this –’
He spread them before me, all in order.
‘2’ was a little fogged, as if a novice had taken it; on ‘3’ a sort of cloudy veil partly obliterated the face; ‘4’ was still further smudged and lost; and ‘5’ was a figure with gloved hands held up, as a man holds his hands up when he is covered by a gun. The face of this one was completely blotted out.
And it didn’t seem in the least horrible to me, for I kept on murmuring, ‘Of course, of course.’
Then Benlian rubbed his hands and smiled at me. ‘I’m making good progress, am I not?’ he said.
‘Splendid!’ I breathed.
‘Better than you know, too,’ he chuckled, ‘for you’re not properly under yet. But you will be, Pudgie, you will be –’
‘Yes, yes! . . . Will it be long, Benlian?’
‘No,’ he replied, ‘not if I can keep from eating and sleeping and thinking of other things than the statue – and if you don’t disturb me by having girls about the place, Pudgie.’
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I said contritely.
‘All right, all right; ssh! . . . This, you know, Pudgie, is my own studio; I bought it; I bought it purposely to make my statue, my god. I’m passing nicely into it; and when I’m quite passed – quite passed, Pudgie – you can have the key and come in when you like.’
‘Oh, thanks awfully,’ I murmured gratefully.
He nudged me.
‘What would they think of it, Pudgie – those of the exhibitions and academies, who say “their souls are in their work”? What would the cacklers think of it, Pudgie?’
‘Aren’t they fools!’ I chuckled.
‘And I shall have one worshipper, shan’t I, Pudgie?’
‘Rather!’ I replied. ‘Isn’t it splendid! . . . Oh, need I go back just yet?’
‘Yes, you must go now; but I’ll send for you again very soon . . . You know I tried to do without you, Pudge; I tried for thirteen days, and it nearly killed me! That’s past. I shan’t try again. Now off you trot, my Pudgie –’
I winked at him knowingly, and came skipping and dancing across the yard.
3
It’s just silly – that’s what it is – to say that something of a man doesn’t go into his work.
Why, even those wretched little ivories of mine, the thick-headed fellows who paid for them knew my touch in them, and once spotted it instantly when I tried to slip in another chap’s who was hard up. Benlian used to say that a man went about spreading himself over everything he came in contact with – diffusing some sort of influence (as far as I could make it out); and the mistake was, he said, that we went through the world just wasting it instead of directing it. And if Benlian didn’t understand all about those things, I should jolly well like to know who does! A chap with a great abounding will and brain like him, it’s only natural he should be able to pass himself on, to a statue or anything else, when he really tried – did without food and talk and sleep in order to save himself up for it!
‘A man can’t both do and be,’ I remember he said to me once. ‘He’s so much force, no more, and he can either make himself with it or something else. If he tries to do both, he does both imperfectly. I’m going to do one perfect thing.’ Oh, he was a queer chap! Fancy, a fellow making a thing like that statue, out of himself, and then wanting somebody to adore him!
And I hadn’t the faintest conception of how much I did adore him till yet again, as he had done before, he seemed to – you know – to take himself away from me again, leaving me all alone, and so wretched! . . . And I was angry at the same time, for he’d promised me he wouldn’t do it again . . . (This was one night, I don’t remember when.)
I ran to my landing and shouted down into the yard.
‘Benlian! Benlian!’
There was a light in his studio, and I heard a muffled shout come back.
‘Keep away – keep away – keep away!’
He was struggling – I knew he was struggling as I stood there on my landing – struggling to let me go. And I could only run and throw my-self on my bed and sob, while he tried to set me free, who didn’t want to be set free . . . he was having a terrific struggle, all alone there . . .
(He told me afterwards that he had to eat something now and then and to sleep a little, and that weakened him – strengthened him – strengthened his body and weakened the passing, you know.)
But the next day it was all right again. I was Benlian’s again. And I wondered, when I remembered his struggle, whether a dying man had ever fought for life as hard as Benlian was fighting to get away from it and pass himself.
The next time after that that he fetched me – called me – whatever you like to name it – I burst into his studio like a bullet. He was sunk in a big chair, gaunt as a mummy now, and all the life in him seemed to burn in the bottom of his deep eye-sockets. At the sight of him I fiddled with my knuckles and giggled.
‘You are going it, Benlian!’ I said.
‘Am I not?’ he replied, in a voice that was scarcely a breath.
‘You meant me to bring the camera and magnesium, didn’t you?’ (I had snatched them up when I felt his call, and had brought them.)
‘Yes. Go ahead.’
So I placed the camera before him, made all ready, and took the magnesium ribbon in a pair of pincer
s.
‘Are you ready?’ I said; and lighted the ribbon.
The studio seemed to leap with the blinding glare. The ribbon spat and spluttered. I snapped the shutter, and the fumes drifted away and hung in clouds in the roof.
‘You’ll have to walk me about soon, Pudgie, and bang me with bladders, as they do the opium-patients,’ he said sleepily.
‘Let me take one of the statue now,’ I said eagerly.
But he put up his hand.
‘No, no. That’s too much like testing our god. Faith’s the food they feed gods on, Pudgie. We’ll let the S.P.R. people photograph it when it’s all over,’ he said. ‘Now get it developed.’
I developed the plate. The obliteration now seemed complete.
But Benlian seemed dissatisfied.
‘There’s something wrong somewhere,’ he said. ‘It isn’t so perfect as that yet – I can feel within me it isn’t. It’s merely that your camera isn’t strong enough to find me, Pudgie.’
‘I’ll get another in the morning,’ I cried.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘I know something better than that. Have a cab here by ten o’clock in the morning, and we’ll go somewhere.’
By half-past ten the next morning we had driven to a large hospital, and had gone down a lot of steps and along corridors to a basement room. There was a stretcher couch in the middle of the room, and all manner of queer appliances, frames of ground glass, tubes of glass blown into extraordinary shapes, a dynamo, and a lot of other things all about. A couple of doctors were there too, and Benlian was talking to them.
‘We’ll try my hand first,’ Benlian said by and by.
He advanced to the couch, and put his hand under one of the frames of ground glass. One of the doctors did something in a corner. A harsh crackling filled the room, and an unearthly, fluorescent light shot and flooded across the frame where Benlian’s hand was. The two doctors looked, and then started back. One of them gave a cry. He was sickly white.
‘Put me on the couch,’ said Benlian.
I and the doctor who was not ill lifted him on the canvas stretcher. The green-gleaming frame of fluctuating light was passed over the whole of his body. Then the doctor ran to a telephone and called a colleague . . .
The Dead of Night Page 14