Widdershins Part 19

"I'm awfully sorry," I said; "but I'm going out this afternoon, and will get some more, and we'll have another shot in the morning."

One after the other, he was holding the negatives up to the light and examining them. Presently he put them down quietly, leaning them methodically up against the edge of the developing-bath.

"Never mind. It doesn't matter. Thank you," he said; and left me.

After that, I didn't see him for weeks; but at nights I could see the light of his roof-window, s.h.i.+ning through the wreathing river-mists, and sometimes I heard him moving about, and the m.u.f.fled knock-knocking of his hammer on marble.

II

Of course I did see him again, or I shouldn't be telling you all this. He came to my door, just as he had done before, and at about the same time in the evening. He hadn't come to be photographed this time, but for all that it was something about a camera--something he wanted to know. He'd brought two books with him, big books, printed in German. They were on Light, he said, and Physics (or else it was Psychics--I always get those two words wrong). They were full of diagrams and equations and figures; and, of course, it was all miles above my head.

He talked a lot about "hyper-s.p.a.ce," whatever that is; and at first I nodded, as if I knew all about it. But he very soon saw that I didn't, and he came down to my level again. What he'd come to ask me was this: Did I know anything, of my own experience, about things "photographing through"? (You know the kind of thing: a name that's been painted out on a board, say, comes up in the plate.)

Well, as it happened, I _had_ once photographed a drawing for a fellow, and the easel I had stood it on had come up through the picture; and I knew by the way Benlian nodded that that was the kind of thing he meant.

"More," he said.

I told him I'd once seen a photograph of a man with a bowler hat on, and the shape of his crown had showed through the hat.

"Yes, yes," he said, musing; and then he asked: "Have you ever heard of things not photographing at all?"

But I couldn't tell him anything about that; and off he started again, about Light and Physics and so on. Then, as soon as I could get a word in, I said, "But, of course, the camera isn't Art." (Some of my miniatures, you understand, were jolly nice little things.)

"No--no," he murmured absently; and then abruptly he said: "Eh? What's that? And what the devil do _you_ know about it?"

"Well," said I, in a dignified sort of way, "considering that for ten years I've been--"

"Chut!... Hold your tongue," he said, turning away.

There he was, talking to me again, just as if I'd asked him in to bully me. But you've got to be decent to a fellow when he's in your own place; and by-and-by I asked him, but in a cold, off-hand sort of way, how his own work was going on. He turned to me again.

"Would you like to see it?" he asked.

"_Aha_!" thought I, "he's got to a sticking-point with his work! It's all very well," I thought, "for you to sniff at my miniatures, my friend, but we all get stale on our work sometimes, and the fresh eye, even of a miniature-painter ..."

"I shall be glad if I can be of any help to you," I answered, still a bit huffish, but bearing no malice.

"Then come," he said.

We descended and crossed the timber-yard, and he held his door open for me to pa.s.s in.

It was an enormous great place, his studio, and all full of mist; and the gallery that was his bedroom was up a little staircase at the farther end. In the middle of the floor was a tall structure of scaffolding, with a stage or two to stand on; and I could see the dim ghostly marble figure in the gloom. It had been jacked up on a heavy base; and as it would have taken three or four men to put it into position, and scarcely a stranger had entered the yard since I had been there, I knew that the figure must have stood for a long time. Sculpture's weary, slow work.

Benlian was pottering about with a taper at the end of a long rod; and suddenly the overhead gas-ring burst into light. I placed myself before the statue--to criticise, you know.

Well, it didn't seem to me that he needed to have turned up his nose at my ivories, for I didn't think much of his statue--except that it was a great, lumping, extraordinary piece of work. It had an outstretched arm that, I remember thinking, was absolutely misshapen--disproportioned, big enough for a giant, ridiculously out of drawing. And as I looked at the thing this way and that, I knew that his eyes in their deep cellars never left my face for a moment.

"It's a G.o.d," he said by-and-by.

Then I began to tell him about that monstrous arm; but he cut me very short.

"I say it's a G.o.d," he interrupted, looking at me as if he would have eaten me. "Even you, child as you are, have seen the G.o.ds men have made for themselves before this. Half-G.o.ds they've made, all good or all evil (and then they've called them the Devil). This is _my_ G.o.d--the G.o.d of good and of evil also."

"Er--I see," I said, rather taken aback (but quite sure he was off his head for all that). Then I looked at the arm again; a child could have seen how wrong it was....

But suddenly, to my amazement, he took me by the shoulders and turned me away.

"That'll do," he said curtly. "I didn't ask you to come in here with a view to learning anything from you. I wanted to see how it struck you. I shall send for you again--and again--"

Then he began to jabber, half to himself.

"Bah!" he muttered. "'Is that all?' they ask before a stupendous thing.

Show them the ocean, the heavens, infinity, and they ask, 'Is that all?'

If they saw their G.o.d face to face they'd ask it!... There's only one Cause, that works now in good and now in evil, but show It to them and they put their heads on one side and begin to appraise and patronise It!... I tell you, what's seen at a glance flies away at a glance. G.o.ds come slowly over you, but presently, ah! they begin to grip you, and at the end there's no fleeing from them! You'll tell me more about my statue by-and-by!... What was that you said?" he demanded, facing swiftly round on me. "That arm? Ah, yes; but we'll see what you say about that arm six months from now! Yes, the arm.... Now be off!" he ordered me. "I'll send for you again when I want you!"

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 sc.r.a.p 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.