Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Lady Crowborough held out her little smooth thin hand.

  “Charmed to see you,” she said. “Of course, I knew what my silly granddaughter has told me. Such a to-do as we’ve had settling where you were to paint, and where to stow all Joyce’s bits of things, and what not.”

  Charles had excellent manners, full of deference, and void of embarrassment.

  “And my name’s Lathom,” he said, as he shook hands.

  “Well, Mr. Lathom, and so you’ve come out for a breath of air,” continued the vivacious old lady. “Get yourself a chair from the tent there, and sit down and talk to us. Only go quietly, else you’ll wake up my son, who’s having a nap there, and that’ll cause him indigestion or perspiration or a sinking, or I don’t know what. Perhaps Joyce had better get it for you: she won’t give him a turn, if he happens to wake.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t possibly—” began Charles.

  “Well, you can go as far as the tent with her, while she pops round the corner and carries a chair off, and then you can take it from her. But mind you come back and talk to us. Or if you want to be useful you can go to the house and tell them I’m ready for tea, and I’ll have it here. Ring the first bell you see, and keep on ringing till somebody comes. The whole lot of them go to sleep here after lunch. Such a pack of nonsense! What’s the night for, I say. And then instead of dropping off at the proper time, they lie awake and say a great buzzing, or a dog barking, or a grasshopper sneezing prevented their going to sleep.”

  Charles went swiftly on his errand, and accomplished it in time to join Joyce outside the tent and take the chair from her. Already the comradeship which naturally exists between youth and maiden had begun sensibly to weave itself between them: in addition Charles had been kind to Buz and seemed to understand the significance of dogs.

  “It was good of you to let my poor Buz stop with you,” she said. “He has adopted you, too, for he came out when you came, didn’t he?”

  “Yes: I hope he feels better. What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know, and the vet doesn’t know, and the poor lamb himself doesn’t know. He’s old, poor dear, and suffers from age, perhaps like most old people, except darling Grannie. I shall send for the vet again if he doesn’t mend.”

  They had come within earshot of Lady Crowborough, who was profoundly indifferent to the brute creation. She preferred motors to horses, mousetraps to cats, and burglar-alarms to dogs. She was equally insensitive to the beauties of inanimate nature, though her intense love, contempt, and interest for and in her fellow creatures quite made up for these other deficiencies.

  “Now you’re talking about your dog, Joyce,” she said. “I’m sure I wish he was well with all my heart, but if his life’s going to be a burden to him and you, I say, put the poor creature out of his pain. A dab of the stuff those murderers use in the East End and the thing’s done. I say the same about human beings. Let the doctors do the best they can for them, but if they’re going to be miserable and a nuisance to everybody, I should like to put them out of their pain, too. Give ’em time to get better in, if they’re going to get better, but if not snuff them out. Much more merciful, isn’t it, Mr. Lathom? I hope they’ll snuff me out before I’m nothing but a mass of aches and pains, but they haven’t got the sense, though I daresay they’ll so stuff me up with drugs and doctor’s stuff that I shall die of the very things that were meant to cure me.”

  Joyce giggled.

  “Darling Granny!” she said. “You wouldn’t like it if I came to you one morning and said, ‘Drink it down, and you’ll know no more.’”

  “Well, I’m not a nuisance yet with rheumatics and bellyache,” observed Lady Crowborough. “Lor’, the medicine your father takes would be enough to sail a battleship in, if he’d collected it all, instead of swilling it, and much good it’s done him, except to give him a craving for more. Why, when I was his age, a good walk, and leave your dinner alone if you didn’t want it, was physic enough. But I’ve no patience with all this talk about people’s insides. It’s only those who haven’t got an inside worth mentioning, who mention it. And did you come all the way back from your tent in the heat, Mr. Lathom, to go on painting this afternoon?”

  “Oh, no,” said Charles, “they very kindly sent me a tray up with some lunch on it.”

  “And you sat there all by yourself, mum as a mouse, and ate up your tray?” she asked. “You don’t do that again, mind! You come and talk to me at lunch to-morrow. I never heard of such a thing! Joyce, my dear, pour out tea for us. I want my tea and so does Mr. Lathom. I warrant he got nothing for lunch but a slice of cold mutton and a glass of sarsaparilla if your father had the ordering of it. Now I hear you live in a tent, Mr. Lathom? Tell us all about it. Ain’t you frightened of burglars?”

  “There’s nothing to steal except a tin kettle and me,” said Charles.

  “Well, that makes you more comfortable, no doubt. Joyce, my dear, it’s no use giving me this wash. Put some more tea in, and stir it about, and let it stand. I like my tea with a tang to it. And your tent doesn’t let the rain in? Not that I should like to sleep in a tent myself. I like my windows closed and my curtains drawn. You can get your air in the daytime. The outside air is poison to me, unless it’s well warmed up in the sun. But I should like to come and see your tent.”

  She regarded Charles with strong approval: he was certainly very good to look upon, strong and lean and clear-skinned, and he had about him that air of manners and attentiveness which she missed in the youth of to-day. He sat straight up in his chair when she talked to him and handed her exactly what she wanted at the moment she wanted it.

  “Ah, but do come and see it,” he said. “Mayn’t I give you and Miss Wroughton tea there some afternoon? I promise you it shall be quite strong.”

  “To-morrow,” said Lady Crowborough with decision. “I’ll go in the punt for once, and Joyce shall push me along.”

  Charles excused himself soon after, in order to get another hour of his work, and he was scarcely out of earshot when Lady Crowborough turned to Joyce.

  “Well, my dear,” she said. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but I’ve fallen in love with that young man. And to think of him having his lunch all alone, as if he was your father’s corn-cutter or hairdresser. When Philip awakes, he shall know what I think about such rubbish! Where’s my cup? I don’t want to tread on it as I did yesterday. Why, Mr. Lathom’s put it back on the table for me!”

  “I think he’s a dear,” said Joyce. “And he was so nice to poor Buz.”

  “Don’t begin again about your dog now,” said Lady Crowborough, “though I daresay Mr. Lathom has been most attentive to him and no wonder.”

  With which rather Delphic utterance, she picked up her needlework again, while a smile kept breaking out in chinks, as it were, over her face. For though she liked presentable young men to be attentive to her, she liked them also to be attentive to any amount of their contemporaries. Young men did not flirt enough nowadays to please her: they thought about their insides and that silly Scotch golf. But she had noticed the change of expression in Charles’ respectful eyes when he looked at Joyce. She liked that look. It was many years since she had seen it directed to her, but she kept the pleasantest recollection of it, and welcomed the sight of it as directed at another. And in her opinion, Joyce well deserved to have a handsome young fellow looking at her like that, she, so strictly dieted on the somewhat acid glances of her father. A little judicious flirtation such as Lady Crowborough was quite disposed to encourage, would certainly brisken the house up a bit. At present, in spite of her own presence there, it seemed to have no more spring in it than unleavened bread.

  Next day, according to the indisputable orders of Lady Crowborough, Charles had taken his lunch with the family, and though Philip Wroughton had thought good to emphasize the gulf which must exist between his family and a young man who copied their portraits for them, by constantly using the prefix “Mr.” when he spoke to Charles, the meal had gone
off not amiss. Irrespective of Lady Crowborough there was the inimitable lightness of youth flickering round it. a lightness which Joyce by herself felt unable to sustain, but which instinctively asserted itself when a little more of the proper mixture was added. Afterwards Charles had paddled back to his encampment in order to prepare for his visitors, and soon after, while Philip slept the sleep of the dyspeptic, his daughter and mother left in the manner of a riverside Juliet and a very old nurse, to go to what Lady Crowborough alluded to as “the party.” She had dressed herself appropriately in a white linen frock with little rosebud sprigs printed on it, and an immense straw hat with a wreath of rose to embellish it. She had a horror of the glare off the water, which might cause her to freckle, and wore a thick pink veil, which, being absolutely impenetrable, served the additional purpose of keeping the poisonous air away from her. Her whole evergreen heart rejoiced over this diversion, for not only was she going to have tea with her handsome young man—” my new flirt,” as she daringly called him — but, having had a good go of flirtation herself, she was prepared to encourage the two young people to advance their intimacy. Most of all she hoped that they would fall in love with each other, and was then prepared to back them up, for she had guessed in the twinkling of an eye that Craddock had Philip’s consent in paying attentions to Joyce, and with her sympathies for youth so keen, and her antipathy for middle-age so pronouncedly contemptuous, she altogether recoiled from the idea of Joyce ever having anything to do “with that great white cream-cheese” as she expressed it to herself.

  She found the cream-cheese agreeable enough at lunch and dinner to give her the news of the town, and a “bit of tittle-tattle” in this desert of a place, but she had no other use for him, either for herself or her granddaughter.

  Charles received them at the edge of his domain, ankle-deep in forget-me-nots, and conducted them a distance of three yards to the shadow of his tent where tea was spread. There were two deck-chairs for the visitors, the box of provisions with a handkerchief on the top for table, and a small piece of board for himself. He had pinned up against the tent side two or three of his sketches, and his sole tumbler stood by the tea things with a bunch of forget-me-nots on it. He made no apologetic speeches of any description about the rudimentary nature of the entertainment, because he was aware that he had nothing else to offer them. Besides the tea was strong, and there was a pot of strawberry jam.

  “Joyce’ll be saying she must live in a tent, too,” remarked Lady Crowborough withdrawing her veil. “Upon my word, Mr. Lathom, I like your diningroom very much. That thicket behind cuts the beastly wind off. That’s the colour I like to see tea.”

  “It’s been standing a quarter of an hour, Lady Crowborough,” said Charles with his respectful glance. “Are you sure it’s not a little — well — a little thick?”

  “Not a bit — Joyce and you may add water to yours if you like. And are those sketches yours?

  They seem very nice, though I don’t know a picture from a statue.”

  She looked at them more closely.

  “And has Joyce been sitting to you already?” she asked, in a tremor of delight. (They had been sly about it!)

  The ingenious Charles looked mightily surprised.

  “Oh, that?” he said, following her glance. “That’s only a little water-colour sketch I did of the head of the Reynolds picture. But it is like Miss Wroughton, isn’t it?”

  It was indeed: so for that matter was the Reynolds.

  Lady Crowborough was a little disappointed that Joyce hadn’t been giving clandestine sittings, but she knew as well as Charles himself that he had executed this admirable little sketch with Joyce, so to speak, at his finger-tip, and not her great-great-grandmother, and her new flirt rose higher than ever in her estimation.

  “And when will you have finished your copying?” she asked.

  Here again Charles did not fail.

  “I can’t possibly tell,” he said. “When I came down I imagined it would take a week or ten days, if I worked very hard. But I see how utterly impossible it will be to do it in anything like that time. But it’s lovely work. I don’t care how long it takes.”

  “Bless me, how sick and tired you’ll get of it,” said she.

  “Not if you’ll come and have tea with me, Lady Crowborough,” said this plausible young man.

  Lady Crowborough grinned all over: she knew just how much this was worth, but she liked it being said.

  “Well, anyhow this American, Mr. Ward, is quick enough about his part of the bargain,” she said. “My son received his cheque this morning, sent by your friend Mr. Craddock, Joyce, my dear. Five thousand pounds! There’s a sum of money!”

  Charles paused a moment, some remembrance of an American and a cheque for £5000 stirred in his brain, without his being able to establish the connection.

  “What? Has he got it for five thousand pounds?” he asked.

  “Yes: plenty, too, I should say, for a bit of canvas and a lick or two of paint on it. I’m sure when you have finished his copy none of us would be able to tell the one from the other. Isn’t five thousand pounds a good enough price, Mr. Lathom?”

  “Well, it’s a very good picture,” said Charles.

  Joyce was watching him, and saw the surprise in his face.

  “Why did Mr. Craddock send father the cheque?” she asked.

  “Lord, my dear, I don’t know,” said Lady Crowborough. “Cheques and Bradshaws are what I shall never understand. I suppose it was what my bankers call drawn to Mr. Craddock. His name was on the back of it anyhow. Whenever I get a cheque, which is once every fifty years, I send it straight to my bank, and ask them what’s to be done next, and it always ends in my writing my name somewhere to show it is mine, I suppose. But as for Bradshaw, it’s a sealed book to me, and I send my maid to the station always to find out.”

  Suddenly Charles remembered all about this American and the cheque for five thousand pounds, and the slight film of puzzle, uncertainty, though nothing approaching suspicion, rolled off his mind again. Reggie a week ago had mentioned the drawing of this post-dated cheque at Thistleton’s Gallery. It was all quite clear. But undoubtedly this Mr. Ward had obtained his picture at a very reasonable figure. Then, as if to abjure what had never been in his mind, he spoke, not more warmly than his heart felt, about Craddock.

  “Mr. Craddock has been tremendously good to me,” he said. “It’s scarcely a week ago that he first saw me, when I was painting here one afternoon, and you brought him by in the punt, Miss Wroughton. The very next day he bought my picture off my easel—”

  “Well, I hope he gave you five thousand for it, too,” said Lady Crowborough.

  Charles beamed at her: she had finished her second cup of positively oily tea, and was smoking a cigarette with an expression of extreme satisfaction.

  “He did more for me than that, Lady Crowborough,” he said, “he gave me a chance, a start. Then he came to see my studio, and gave me the commission to paint this copy. And then—”

  Charles’ simple soul found it hard to be silent, but he remembered Craddock’s parting admonition.

  “And then, my dear?” asked Lady Crowborough.

  “Then he’s made me feel he believes in me,” he said. “That’s a lot, you know, when nobody has ever cared two straws before. By Jove, yes, I owe him everything.”

  Certainly her new flirt was a charming young fellow, and Lady Crowborough saw that Joyce approved no less than she. She felt he was probably extremely unwise and inexperienced, and would have bet her veil, and gone back veilless, the prey of the freckling sun, that Craddock had made some shrewd bargain of his own. It was now time for her flirt to have an innings with Joyce. She was prepared to cast all the duties of a chaperon to the winds, and inconvenience herself as well in order to secure this.

  “Well, I’ve enjoyed my tea and my cigarette,” she said, “and all I’ve not enjoyed is Joyce’s punt. I shouldn’t wonder if it leaked, and the gnats on the river were something awfu
l. They get underneath my veil and tickle my nose, and I shall walk home across the fields, and leave you to bring the punt back, my dear. And if you’ve got a spark of good feeling, Joyce, you’ll help Mr. Lathom wash up our tea things first.”

  And this wicked old lady marched off without another word.

  Joyce and Charles were left alone, looking exactly like a young god and goddess meeting without intention or scheme of their own, in some green-herbaged riverside in the morning of the world. They did the obvious instinctive thing and laughed.

  “Everyone does what darling Grannie tells them,” said Joyce, “so we had better begin. The only suggestion I make is that I wash up, because I’m sure I do it better than you, and you sit down and sketch the while, because I shouldn’t wonder if you do it better than me.”

  “But I wash up beautifully,” said Charles.

  “I think not. There was egg on my tea-spoon.”

  “I’m sorry. Was that why you didn’t take sugar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have some now by itself?” said he.

  “I think I won’t. Where’s a tea-cloth?”

  Charles wrinkled his brows.

  “They dry in the sun,” he said. “We thread them, tea-cups that is, on to the briar-rose.”

  “And the plates? Do begin sketching.”

  “They dry also. They are placed anywhere. But one tries not to forget where anywhere is. Otherwise they get stepped on.”

  Charles plucked down the Reynolds head from the tent wall.

  “I began it from the picture,” he said, “but may I finish it from you? If you wash up by the forget-me-nots, and I sit in the punt, at the far end, I can do it. Oh, how is Buz to-day? He didn’t come up to the nursery.”

  She neither gave nor withheld permission to finish the head in the way he suggested, but her eyes grew troubled as she emptied the teapot into the edge of the water. It was choked with tea-leaves, gorged, replete with them. He picked up his water-colour box, and climbed out to the cushions of the punt.