Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Tom, what was the matter when I came in?”

  “We had been talking about what I told you,” he said. “I can’t possibly afford to give more than I do for models, and I am rather in a hole.”

  “Poor old boy!” said she. “But what can we do? You must have a model, you say, and you have to pay her.”

  “Unfortunately I have very little to pay her with. We must make the little we have last as long as possible.”

  “What did Maud Wrexham say?”

  “She offered to lend me some.”

  May got up from where she had been sitting next to him with her cheeks blazing. The idea of borrowing at all had been distasteful to her, and the idea that Maud should have offered it was intolerable.

  “She offered to lend you money — you? And you — what did you say to her?”

  “May dear, don’t behave like that. I said, of course, that I must ask you.”

  May was all on fire with indignation. The offer appeared to her an insult, and she smarted under it as a horse under a lash. She felt that her vague disquietude for the last week or so was explained and justified. What business had Tom to be on such terms with another? Her anger included Tom too. He had not rejected it with surprise and scorn.

  “You said you would consult me?” she asked. “And what answer did you suppose I should give you? Did you think I should say, ‘Take it’? Tom, you know me very little.”

  “May, do be reasonable,” said Tom. “Perhaps I ought to have told you sooner, but the state is this: if no one offers to buy the Demeter, we have to face the fact that in a limited time we shall have no money left What am I to do?”

  But May hardly seemed to hear what he said.

  “You accepted her offer provisionally!” she exclaimed. “Tom, how could you do it? And you said you would consult me? you told her that? And she knows that you and I are talking the matter over, discussing whether we should be her pensioners!”

  Tom grew impatient “My dear, you really are talking nonsense,” he said; “there is no question of being anybody’s pensioners. It is to a certain extent always a matter of time before one is recognized. If I can manage to work on at the things I think worth doing, good. If not, what is to happen to us? Maud Wrexham is an old and great friend of mine. But you are unreasonable. Do not be unreasonable. It is not like you. You have given me your answer, and of course I accept your decision. Don’t let us discuss it any more. It is no manner of use.”

  He walked to the door and paused, looking at her. But she made no sign, and he left the room.

  Tom stood still for a moment on the narrow landing outside the room. A patch of ruddy sunlight came through the window which lit the stairs and struck on the narrow strip of oilcloth which did duty for a carpet The window was bordered with hideous orange-coloured glass, and a ray through it fell on Tom’s foot as he stood there, and the orange on the blacking made an abhorrent tone. He felt beaten and dispirited, and the whole place suddenly seemed intolerably sordid. The narrow strip of oilcloth was continued along the landing, and was bordered on each side by a foot or two of imperfectly stained board. The banisters were of that particularly flimsy build which is characteristic of cheap lodgings. There were two bad prints on the walls, one of King Alfred and the cakes, the other of the Duke of Wellington with an impressionist background of the battle of Waterloo. To Tom in his present mood the whole scene seemed to him to be a sort of spectre reflected on to space from his own mind. Everything was unlovely and impossible.

  He felt sore and angry with May. She did not understand what his art was to him. She did not understand Maud Wrexham’s offer. She did not understand him. More than once the impulse came on him to go back into the room and try to explain, but it seemed useless. She was angry and indignant, and anger is a bandage over our eyes. And he knew, and was honest enough to confess, that he was angry too, disappointed chiefly, but also angry. Maud’s offer had come to him like manna. For himself he would as soon have thought of not drinking of a spring that suddenly welled up in a desert when he was dying of thirst, as of not accepting it. But May could not understand that. She felt it as an insult to him and to herself, and to disregard May’s feelings was impossible.

  He took his hat and went downstairs. It was a broiling August afternoon, and the world seemed dying of heat-apoplexy. The streets were breathless and baked, and the sky was brass. At the corner of the street a watercart had just passed, and Tom stood still a moment inhaling a whiff of air which had a certain freshness in it. It reminded him of the smell of a morning in the country, after a rainy night. He knew that he ought to go back and work, but it was not to be done. His heart was heavy and his eye was dull. Well, there was the British Museum only a hundred yards off, and a man must be in a very bad state, he reflected, if the Elgin marbles have nothing to say to him. The place was nearly empty, and he sat down in front of the eternal figures from the Parthenon pediments with a little sigh of relief.

  He had made up accounts that morning with infinite difficulty, for it was an operation to which he was not accustomed. The rapidity with which twos and threes added up into tens and twenties seemed to him simply amazing. And really it was absurd that there should only be twenty shillings in a pound. There ought to have been at least twenty-five or thirty. And the net result had been that at their present rate of living they could go on for three weeks more, still leaving the bill for the piece of Carrara unpaid. He had faced the situation manfully. He had determined to go on for three weeks more, giving his heart and soul to what he thought best in art. But at the end of those three weeks there stood a blank wall, separating him completely and irrevocably from those shining gods and goddesses who were of the golden age. May’s five hundred pounds he had determined quite definitely he could not touch. More than once she had wanted him to let her sell out, and though he had thrilled all over with pleasure that she should make the offer, it was impossible to say yes. There was too much at stake; he might die and leave her alone with the baby. Mr. Markham’s tithes had been falling off lately, and if she went to live with him, as she would have to do, she must be able to help in household expenses.

  But for the half-hour that he sat before the marbles he forgot it all. What did it matter after all if he produced beautiful things or not? Beautiful things had been produced; the high-water mark of art had been touched. A race of men had produced a race of gods, and he felt himself becoming sanely and healthily small in his own eyes. Meantime May was at home; they had parted in anger and indignation. Poor darling! perhaps she was unhappy, perhaps she thought he did not care — that he was angry with her. Tom smiled inwardly at the absurdity of the thought, and half unconsciously took off his hat as he looked his last at the still marble figures and thanked them for what they had taught him.

  But into May’s mind there had definitely entered that afternoon a certain subtle poison. For such a poison there is one unfailing antidote which Tom held, and it is pure love. But when that poison, which is as minute in dose as a drop of morphia injected from a silver syringe, has once entered the system, however plentifully the antidote is administered the body is never quite as healthy again as it was before. Where the syringe has pricked the skin there is a little sore spot, and now and again the nerves shrink instinctively at the thought that perhaps it may be introduced again. And the clear drop which it holds is called jealousy. For the last week, and once before that — one night soon after they had come up to London for the first time, when she and Maud and Manvers and Tom had dined together — she had seen the little green-eyed fiend hovering round her, and been vaguely disquieted at him. She thought that Tom felt more interest in Maud than he did in her. She could not talk smartly, she could not say those rather amusing things, which meant nothing, with which Maud was so glib, and which Tom apparently enjoyed hearing. But after that the baby had been born, and the little greeneyed fiend had put his syringe in his pocket and gone away. But for the last week he had been about, and this afternoon he had come again, and had sai
d, “Allow me — or would you rather do it for yourself?” and had just pricked her with that fine point, and the poison was coursing through her veins.

  Anger is blinding, but jealousy is blind: she could not be reasonable, and she would not. Tom had disgraced himself and degraded her, and his step was on the stairs. Her anger would have allowed her to throw herself into his arms, and say, “Forgive me, Tom, I was angry,” but her jealousy forbade her. So she stood where she was with her back to the window, so that her face was in shadow, and when he came in she neither spoke nor gave any sign.

  He sat down near her, and after a moment’s silence held out his hand to her. May had long white fingers, and they often sat together talking, she twining her fingers into his, and the action was common with him. But she stood quite still, and his hand dropped again to his side. At length he spoke.

  “May, how can you treat me like this?” he said. “What have I not done that I can do? It was not very pleasant to have you speak to me as you spoke this afternoon; but I accepted your decision at once; I did not attempt to persuade you?”

  “It would not have been much use trying,” said May in a high cool voice.

  “I should not have tried in any case,” said he. “I only wished to know what you thought, and I was content to abide absolutely by your decision.”

  “Why did you open the subject again, then,” said she with a sudden spasm of jealousy, “unless it was to try to persuade me?”

  Tom thought of the marble figures he had been looking at, and remembered what they had taught him.

  “May dear, please don’t speak to me like that,” he said quietly. “You know — you know that was not the reason.”

  “Then what was the reason?”

  “The look of your face and the tone of your voice was the reason. You are not generous to me; you will not meet me halfway or go a step towards me.”

  “No, you are right. Do you expect me to come towards you on that road?”

  “On what road?” asked Tom, wonderingly.

  Then quite suddenly and for the first time the real reason for his wife’s attitude struck him. He got up and stood before her, and at that moment she was desperately afraid of him. The anger which had possessed her seemed to have transferred itself to him. “May, how dare you think that?” he asked.

  Are you not ashamed of yourself?”

  The least tremor passed through her, and she stood there not daring to meet his eyes. The next moment he had turned from her and was walking towards the door. Once she tried to find her voice and failed, but before he had left the room she managed to speak.

  “Tom, wait a minute,” she said.

  He turned at once. He had been longing with all his soul that she should say just that one word. He had been horribly wounded by her. Yet he felt that he had never cared for her before as he cared now. He crossed the room, sat down where he had sat before, and waited. The next moment she had flung herself on her knees by him, and her face was buried on his shoulder.

  “My poor darling! what is it?” whispered Tom. “No, dear, don’t tell me yet; wait a moment — yes, wait so. Come closer to me, May, closer. Your place is here.”

  In a few minutes her wild sobbing had become less passionate, and she raised her face to his.

  “I want to tell you,” she said. “I could never look you in the face again unless I told you. You know, but I must tell you. I thought — oh, Tom, Tom, what a brute I have been — I thought you cared for her, that she amused you, when I didn’t. I can’t amuse you, I know. I’m not amusing by nature, dear. And — and I thought your being willing to accept money from her, when you wouldn’t let me sell out mine and give it you, meant just that I wish you would take it, Tom. Tom, I can’t tell you how I want to do something for you. Or take hers — that would be better. It will show that I know what a brute I have been, if I ask you to. Please do, Tom. But say you forgive me first. Oh, I have spoiled it all — it can never be the same again!”

  She spoke with the fatal conviction of experience.

  She had felt poisonous jealousy run through her veins — a poison that cannot but leave some trace behind. But of that Tom knew nothing.

  And Tom forgave her from the fulness of his heart, and he believed that he could forget what had passed, hoping an impossible thing. All events and memories, as scientists tell us, write their record on our brains, as the sea writes its ripples on the sand, and there they remain till the sweet hand of death smooths the wrinkles out.

  That evening Tom wrote to Maud, thanking her again for her offer, but refusing it. On that point he could not give way. He himself felt as acutely, or more acutely than May had done that afternoon, that to accept it now was impossible. And he began to learn at once that bitter lesson, even in the first glow of their reconciliation, the impossibility of forgetting. The thing had been like a thunderstorm which had passed over and left the air fresh and cool, but in the foreground stood the tree stripped and split by the lightning.

  All that week Tom worked as he had never worked before. Doubts, fears, and disappointments left him when he took up his chisel. The statue was approaching completion, he had finished with the claw chisel, and was working only with the fine point. Sometimes as he entered the studio, his heart gave a sudden throb. Was his dream really coming true? Was the Demeter really good — of the best? An artist’s conceptions are his religion, and when he sees his religion becoming incarnate before him how can he but be filled with joy and trembling? He knew that he saw before him his conception. The thing was as he had meant it to be. He had realized his best And when she stood there finished, artists and others came and looked and admired, and went away again. The Academy, they thought, would be sure to take it; it was admirably conceived and wonderfully executed. But how on earth would Tom get it down those little front stairs? Ha, ha! he would have to take the roof off, or break off Demeter’s arm and say she was an antique.

  But Tom felt singularly content It was done: he had touched his own high-water mark, and if no one else cared what cause was there for blame or regret? The moment which he had feared and dreaded had come and passed. Manvers was quite right; no one wanted the Demeter. They said it was beautiful; some one had said it was Praxitelean, and that was enough. And for the next three or four days he waited, doing nothing, walking out with May when the day grew cooler, going through any amount of baby cult, serene and content, knowing that in a little while the pause would inevitably be over, and that he would have to do something — what he knew not He spent two days in shaping a little wax model of Persephone, which was to have been his next statue, lingeringly, lovingly, regretfully, knowing he would never make it About a week after Demeter had been finished, the end came. The baby had not been well, and May, who was not usually anxious, had sent for the doctor. Tom was out when he came, and she sat alone in the gathering dusk waiting for him to come in. The room was nearly dark, and her chair was in the shadow, so that when Tom entered the room he did not see her at once.

  “May, are you there?” he said.

  May’s voice answered him, and he sat down beside her.

  “I sent for the doctor this evening, Tom,” she said; “baby’s not well.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said there was nothing really wrong, but that we ought to leave town — to take baby to the seaside or somewhere. It’s this heat and stuffy air. The nursery is terribly hot, you know; and I have to shut the window, or the noise in the streets wakes him.”

  Tom got up and walked up and down the room. “There’s hardly any money,” he said. “I don’t see how we can manage it.”

  “Mr. Holders was here again this afternoon,” she said, “and he saw the statuette — that little halffinished one you gave me. He said it was so good, and told me to ask you to finish it at once for him. He said it was the best thing you had ever done.” There was a long pause. Tom stopped in his walk and stood with his forehead pressed against the window. The sun had just gone down, but the west was still lum
inous.

  “She cannot understand,” he thought to himself. “She will never understand.”

  And to confirm his thought, after a few moments May spoke again.

  “I know how distasteful it will be to you, dear, because of course the other style is what you really like. But we must have money. Even if baby was quite well we should only be putting it off a little longer. And then if you will do that, and perhaps do one or two more, you will have money enough to go on with what you like. Mr. Holders admired it so awfully. He said it was the best thing you had ever done, and he is a very good critic, isn’t he?”

  But still Tom did not answer. His time had come, and he knew it, but he lingered a moment more by the window looking at the red colour in the west. At last he turned and sat down by her. She took his hand and twined her fingers into his.

  “Yes, darling, you are quite right,” he said. “I will finish it at once; and then we’ll take baby off to some seaside place, and — and build sand-castles, and have a little jaunt generally.”

  * * * * *

  May went to bed early that night, and when the house was still Tom took up the little rough sketch of Persephone, and with a candle in his hand went into the studio. Demeter stood shining there, her head bent in sorrow for her child. Tom looked at her long and steadily. The candle threw her shadow vaguely and distortedly on to the walls and ceiling, but the statue itself stood out radiantly from the obscurity round. He took hold of the cold marble hand and stood there looking up to the down-bent face.

  “Good-bye,” he whispered. “You are not wanted. And I — I have another goddess and another child.”

  EPILOGUE.

  TOM and Manvers were sitting at the bottom of a punt in one of the upper reaches of the Thames on a September afternoon. Tom had taken out a fishing-rod, but it was too hot to do more than smoke. Smoke produces silence, and neither had spoken for some time. Manvers had arrived ten days ago, and was staying with Tom in a small house he had lately bought, in which he spent the summer months.