Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “In fact I don’t think much of Mind,” she added.

  Mrs. Bliss remained quite unshocked by this blasphemy. That was one of the truly annoying things about her, thought Miss Howard: you couldn’t stop her smiling any more than you could stop an express train by defying it, nor could you cool her exasperating certainty that everything was perfect, and that everybody was a skipping lamb in green pastures. She laughed merrily.

  “You darling rebel!” she said. “What joy it will be when your dear blind eyes are opened.”

  “I intend to keep them shut,” said Miss Howard in the vain attempt to shake this fearful confidence. “I’ve got to face the fact that nobody wants to see my pictures or to buy them. So it’s no use saying that Mind is looking after my exhibition. I give up Mind.”

  Even this did not dim Mrs. Bliss’s radiance.

  “Dear thing!” she said. “But Mind won’t give you up. Think of all the wonderful things Mind has done for us quite lately at our pretty Wentworth. Colonel Chase’s cold, his pedometer, his success at the entertainment. All Mind! Look at me, too, in spite of the baths and the massage.”

  “And look at Mr. Kemp,” said Miss Howard. “He’s no better. If anything, he’s worse.”

  Mrs. Bliss laughed again.

  “But, dear, he’s well,” she said. “He doesn’t know it yet but he is. It often happens that Error still blinds people even when they are cured, and they still think they are suffering. But soon that passes. You’re just the same about your pictures. Only wait a little: abide patiently.”

  It was a relief to Miss Howard when they got to Wentworth, and Mrs. Bliss went to lie down on her bed not to rest but to work, for she found such optimism harder to bear than her own pessimism. She felt that after this solitary morning in the Green Salon, a similar afternoon would be intolerable, and determined not to go down again that day. It would be time enough to-morrow morning to learn that not a sixpence had been recorded on the toilet-roll, or a red star appeared on the walls. She occupied herself till lunch-time with the sketch of the lounge.

  Now while she was trying to make the staircase appear scaleable, two very important scenes took place in the hollow where the town lay. The first of these began with Mrs. Holders and Tim coming simultaneously out of the ladies’ and gentlemen’s sections of the establishment after their baths, and meeting in front of the Green Salon. The door was open, and the custodian had gone to eat his dinner and have a little exercise with his friends. They looked in.

  “My word, what rubbish, isn’t it, Tim?” she said. “She can’t paint. I think I shall give a vocal recital, or act Ophelia.”

  “Do: may I be Hamlet?” said he. “Look at Bethesda falling down, and Healing Springs. I wish they would heal me. And not a picture sold yet, or they would have labels.”

  “And God’s Acre: it’s not nearly an acre,” said Mrs. Holders. “What a fool the woman is to think they could sell. But rather pathetic: all that trouble, not to mention the frames. I hate middle-aged spinsters being disappointed because they’ve nothing to look forward to. Tim, I think we shall be obliged to buy some.”

  “I’m damned if I do,” said Tim.

  “You’ll be damned if you don’t, dear, because you’ll have been a brute. And I said ‘some’. It’s no use our buying just one each. We’re both rich, thank God. And she hasn’t warbled all to-day and all yesterday. Not a note.”

  “Well, don’t set her off again,” said Tim.

  “And the improvisation wasn’t a success. And she’s feeling terribly down. Now be a man.”

  The custodian at this moment returned from dinner and leap-frog, and seeing somebody in the Green Salon rushed gleefully in and pulled out the toilet-roll.

  “Sixpence each, please, sir,” he said.

  “How many people have been in to-day?” asked Tim.

  “Only one and he didn’t pay. Said he was the press. Sixpence—”

  “And yesterday?” asked Mrs. Holders.

  “We didn’t have any visitors yesterday, ma’am. Catalogue free, and there’s a price catalogue, too.”

  They hobbled round together with it.

  “What’s that squirrel?” asked Tim.

  “Pussy-dear,” said she. “One guinea. Oh, it’s the Wentworth cat. Mrs. Oxney ought to buy that of course. . . . Tim, I think you and I must have five each. That’ll make a start. Half-guinea ones will do. No, we can’t do that quite.”

  “I’m glad,” said he.

  “I don’t mean what you mean. What I mean is that if you and I each buy five, there’ll be a sort of indelicacy about it. Compassion you know, which is always objectionable. We must think of another plan. I know. Bring me a chair, you boy, or I shall fall down.”

  “Two,” said Tim.

  The conspirators seated themselves.

  “Now attend, Tim,” she said, “for I’m being very bright. This morning, just now in fact, quite a lot of people came in to the show. You and I, that’s two and four more.”

  “Then they had to pay for admission,” said Tim.

  “I’m glad you thought of that. Of course they had. Four more tickets, boy. You pay, Tim. I haven’t got a sou.”

  “You’re running me into a great deal of expense,” said Tim.

  “I’m going to run you into more. Give this gentleman four more tickets, boy, and he gives you two shillings. That’s right, isn’t it? Now go away till we call you again.”

  Mrs. Holders sat silent a moment, arranging the conspiracy.

  “What has happened, Tim, is this,” she said at length. “These four people whose tickets you have just so kindly paid for each bought two of Miss Howard’s pictures. You must think of two friends of yours and I’ll think of two friends of mine, and we’ll give their names and addresses and money to the boy, and write to them to say that they will shortly receive two sad little water-colours each. They’ll get them, of course, when the exhibition closes. You can tell your friends to send the pictures back to you, if you like. That will be eight pictures, and you and I each buy one on our own account, and that makes ten. Now you’ve got to think of the names and addresses of two friends: after that all you have to do, is to pay and look just as unpleasant as you choose. I don’t mind. I’ll give you a cheque for my share.”

  “Good old thing,” said Tim. “Now we’ll get the boy and din it into his head.”

  Leap-frog showed himself very intelligent, and after two minutes coaching, he repeated without flaw the following remarkable occurrences. Mrs. Holders and Mr. Bullingdon (address Wentworth) he rehearsed, had come in, and paid their sixpences, and each had bought a picture (numbers 2 and 11). They hadn’t been gone more than a minute, when two ladies came in, and after paying for admittance (toilet-roll as before) called for the price catalogue. They each bought two pictures (numbers 7, 13, 24 and 31) which they paid for, and gave their names and addresses which he duly entered. Just before (or after) they left two gentlemen came in, paid their sixpences and went round. They too called for the price-list — seeming to admire the pictures very much — and bought two each (numbers 20, 35, 39 and 40). They paid their money and gave names and addresses. . . . The custodian then went to the bar to get change, and put into his breast pocket five pound notes and five shillings. A half-crown, the reward of intelligence he put into the pocket where was the pill box. The conspirators waited to see him lick ten adhesive red stars, and fix them to the corners of pictures, 2, 7, 11, 13, 20, 24, 31, 35, 39 and 40. There seemed no possible risk of detection. Then they found they had missed the Wentworth bus, and took a taxi, arriving late for lunch and rather cross with each other.

  The other important event was concerned with the spiritual life of Colonel Chase, and was therefore of deeper significance than these mere financial benefits to Miss Howard. He had started that morning meaning to pay a visit to the exhibition at the cost of sixpence, though of course he would not dream of buying one of her faint little daubs. But her pleasure and gratification at his visit would efface from her mind
that impression of paltry fibbing which might possibly be rankling there owing to Mrs. Oxney’s silly chatter about his mackintosh. Having thus re-established the candour of his character, he would go for a fine ride to make up for having missed one yesterday. . . . But as he went quietly down the hill (it was not worth while getting up speed if he was to dismount so soon) the thought of Miss Howard’s exhibition began to arouse acute annoyance in his mind; it was a barefaced levying of blackmail on her friends, they could not in decency refuse to put at least sixpence into Miss Howard’s pocket. The thought of this moral compulsion revolted him, and he determined to strike a blow for English freedom, and not go at all. He therefore put on speed and was seen by the custodian pedalling, as if for a wager, past the Baths, feeling that he was a champion of liberty. He did not mind giving Miss Howard sixpence, but he refused to be obliged to . . .

  The roads had dried up wonderfully after the deluge of yesterday, he drew in long breaths of the cool fresh air, and his great fat legs revolved as if nothing could ever tire them. It was impossible (and so he did not attempt it) not to reflect with strong satisfaction on his own health and vigour and heartiness. His Indian contemporaries were mostly wizened and yellow little men suffering from liver, or obese waddlers who sat all day in arm-chairs, and perhaps occasionally played a couple of rounds of golf, six or seven miles all told, and were very tired after it, whereas here was he active in mind and body, ready to cover mile after mile on foot or saddle without fatigue, and be fit afterwards for strong brain-work over reading or crossword puzzles or bridge.

  These gratifying thoughts put him in a better temper, and forgiving Miss Howard for her exhibition he registered the fact that he had never felt so well as he had done during the last fortnight. His superb vitality had thrown off in a single night the most undoubted symptoms of a crashing cold and his mind shifted to Mrs. Bliss and that extraordinary gospel of hers. Was it perhaps she who had called down on him this amazing access of health and prosperity? There was his cold, there was his pedometer, there was his huge success (though not quite in the manner he had anticipated) at the entertainment, and as for that small distressing incident in the Children’s Hospital, she had assured him, though in terms he did not attempt to fathom, that Mind was acting just as beneficently there as in its more obvious manifestations. He had never completely determined whether he seriously ascribed all this benefit to her agency: his cold might possibly have disappeared through natural causes, but the reappearance of the pedometer fairly puzzled him. She had no account to give of it: it had just come to her, like manna, miraculously. But to her it was not miraculous at all: it was a perfectly normal result of relying on Omnipotent Mind, and being full of loving and trusting thoughts. After all he was a thoroughly good-natured fellow: people had only to make themselves pleasant to him, and give him his way on every occasion, and he was as jolly as possible with them. He must keep that up, and with the hope of obtaining further benefits from Mind, he resolved to go to Miss Howard’s exhibition. Mind would like that: it would be a good-natured act towards poor Miss Howard who had not got an encore at the entertainment nor roused the smallest enthusiasm, and who had not sold a picture. To be sure the whole thing was blackmail but he felt that, in view of Mind, he was big enough to overlook that, and give pleasure to Miss Howard. Her little place in Kent too: he wondered . . .

  Though a swift bicyclist, Colonel Chase was not a rapid thinker, and by the time he had arrived at this conclusion, he saw that he had been riding for over an hour. Absorbed in these spiritual problems, he had been paying little attention to the passage of the landscape, and now, looking about him again, he saw that the country was wholly new to him. He had certainly started by the Denton road, and had followed its familiar windings, but here he was at the end of an hour quite beyond his usual beat. Never had an hour or a bicycle sped so swiftly: he could not believe that so much time had passed or so much ground been covered. Behind him lay a long stretch of upward incline, which had flowed under his wheel as if it had been level, and he was neither out of breath nor conscious of any fatigue: he had climbed as if on eagles’ wings. “It must be Mind,” he said to himself, “it can’t possibly be anything else. I shall go to poor Miss Howard’s show this very afternoon, and I’m not sure that I shan’t buy one of her well-meaning little sketches. I was wrong to think of her as a blackmailer. All is health, kindliness and prosperity!”

  A sign post confirmed his immense distance from home, making him exult in the splendour of his powers, and after a round which he had not previously believed was traversible by a leg-driven wheel he found himself back in Bolton again. There had been a slight abrasion on his ankle yesterday and not wanting to bother Mind over so small a matter, he stopped at Mr. Amble’s to purchase a phial of New Skin. You painted it on the place and it smarted, but, relying on Mind, very likely he wouldn’t feel it. Mr. Amble was delighted to see him in his shop again, for this visit was a token of reconciliation after those choleric speeches on the telephone, and he entirely forgot the existence of the ‘little secret’ between him and that odd though affable lady. . . .

  “New Skin, sir?” he said. “Yes, I can supply you with that. And I was very pleased, Colonel, to have been the means of restoring your pedometer to you. My lad picked it up—”

  “Eh, what’s that?” said Colonel Chase.

  “Your pedometer, Colonel, which you lost last week. My lad picked it up on the Denton road; let me see it would be ten days ago now and I gave it a clean and sent it — Good Lord, why I quite forgot that the lady I gave it to, asked me not to mention it. But there’s no harm done, I hope, and anyhow she’s not been in here since, nor bought anything then. She saw the notice in my window that a pedometer had been found, and since she looked respectable and said she came from Wentworth, I let her take it to return to you. I hope there’s been no — no mistake, and that she did give it you.”

  Mind’s greatest miracle of all had collapsed, as if a flood of corrosive light from some devilish Higher Criticism had been poured on it. Colonel Chase’s faith in Mind trembled, tottered and crashed: it was an infidel who stood there holding a bottle of New Skin in his shaking hand. What liars women were! To think that this abandoned wretch distinctly said that she had no notion how she got the pedometer. She said that she was lost in meditation, and, lo, it was in her hand. He felt positively sick.

  “No, there was no mistake,” he said — the irony of that!— “she gave it me.”

  He went out of the shop, and pedalled up the hill with a mind reeling with atheism. If this was the true history (and it certainly was) of the most inexplicable of all Mind’s miracles it was not any longer possible to credit Mind with his restoration from his cold, or with his success at the entertainment. And if Mind had not showered these benefits upon him, why propitiate it by going to Miss Howard’s Green Salon, let alone buying anything therein? Even the joy of having certainly beaten all records this morning almost faded, when he dismounted at Wentworth and when he looked at his pedometer it was completely extinguished, for once more the pedometer had stopped. The hands sarcastically affirmed that he had gone six miles.

  Lunch had begun, and he entered the dining-room in the manner of Hyperion “full of wrath.” He stopped opposite Mrs. Bliss’s table, who, unconscious of what was coming, smiled gaily up at him.

  “What a lovely morning you’ve had for your ride, Colonel,” she said. “I expect you’ve been ever so far away over the blue, blue hills.”

  He raised his voice. It was right that what he had to say to her should be known to all.

  “I have to thank you, Mrs. Bliss,” he said, “for restoring to me the pedometer I lost, which Amble the chemist gave you. He tells me that his shop-boy found it.”

  She did not sink into the earth or behave like Sapphira. She laughed delightedly and clapped her hands.

  “That was it!” she said. “I could not recollect how I got it. I only knew I had to give it back to you. But it comes back to me now.”

&
nbsp; Dead silence had fallen on the lunchers and had it not been for Colonel Chase’s heavy tread, as, leaving her without a word, he went to his place, anyone might have heard a pin drop. Then hurried conversation broke out, and Miss Howard so far forgot her malicious design of guessing that he had gone eighty miles as to say to him, “And how far have you been this morning, Colonel?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said. “Once more the pedometer on my bicycle (pedometer, he repeated) got out of order and stopped. Odd things happen to my pedometer.”

  This withering remark had no effect whatever on Mrs. Bliss. She finished her fish and sat gazing out of the window in happy reverie, till the parlour-maid brought her the next dish.

  CHAPTER VII

  Mr. Banks in his sermon last Sunday had made a very profound observation. It must not be supposed from this statement that profound observations coming from his pulpit were of rare occurrence. They were on the contrary so common that they often passed unnoticed or at any rate not fully appreciated. For instance, when in this same sermon he said, ‘If, dear friends, we all invariably acted on our noble rather than our baser impulses, the world would be a very different place,’ there was scarcely anyone in his congregation who grasped the whole of the tremendous truth that lurked in these simple words. Shortly afterwards he uttered another truth, which likewise attracted no particular attention at the time but was soon seen to be not only profound but, as regards the affairs of Miss Howard, prophetical.

  “People,” said this subtle observer, “are like sheep. If one leads, in things great and small, the rest will follow. Let each of us therefore lead in all high thought and selfless deeds, and we shall speedily find that we are not alone as we tread the upward path of Christian endeavour. And now—”

  Mrs. Banks had been much struck by this analogy between people and sheep: it seemed to her ‘very teaching’, and at lunch afterwards she thanked her husband for the enlightenment it had brought her. She was of a quaintly humorous disposition and she knew that a playful application of his words would not displease him, for he often said that what we learn in church we should use in daily life.