“I’ve never learned to see the ’idden beauty in things,” she said humbly. “I’ve never even learned to see the outward beauty. I’ve never done anything but just scramble along. You’ll ’ave to teach me. I ’ardly know even ’ow to behave.”
The collapse of her h’s, tumbling away so fast out of her lovely lilting speech, was suddenly Ben’s undoing, and he could scarcely wait for Brockis Island. They were nearly there. He took her hand and they ran along the sun-dappled path to the fallen tree-trunk that spanned the amber stream, and crossed it, quick and sure-footed as wild creatures of the woods.
— 2 —
They pushed their way through the loosestrife and bog-myrtle on the farther side, and came through the break in the rampart of thorn and crab-apple trees to the hidden depth of peace that lay inside. For that was how it appeared to Zelle as she looked round at the small perfect green lawn, roofed with branches, cool and fresh, fragrant with the scent of the bog-myrtle and silent with the silence of the deep woods in one of those midsummer pauses when the birds and the winds are still. This place had the same quiet as the deep peace within her where her suffering self lay hidden. Only just now that self did not suffer. There was nothing but joy to feel in this green shade that was so unbelievably lovely that it couldn’t be true.
Then she was in Ben’s arms and being kissed with a thoroughness not met before in Ben. Yet still there was the gentleness that she loved. She could yield herself to it, her whole body pliant in his arms, without any sense of fear, and laughing with amused delight.
“Why do you always laugh when I kiss you?” asked Ben, holding her away from him and looking down at her. He loved to see her like this, with the laughter banishing the taut look that was usually stretched like a mask across her face, and the sadness of her eyes that was so disquieting. There was nothing demanding in his eager look, only a delight in her and adoration of her that made her feel queen as well as woman, crowned as well as loved in this enchanted island that suddenly seemed her throne as well as her hiding-place. Outwardly she would seem to rule this man through their life together, but secretly he would be her refuge, though no one but themselves would know it. A love that is worth anything has its secrets, she thought, and they are fun to keep.
“I think I laugh because the unexpected is always some ’ow funny,” she said. “I thought it was only in dreams and story-books that men and women love this way. But, look, it ’as happened.”
He picked her up and carried her to a fallen tree-trunk and sat beside her. Facing them was an old thorn-tree, and between the roots of it was the entrance to a badger’s holt. They sat watching it, both of them oddly stirred. There was a home inside there, warm and intimate. “The brockis,” said Ben softly. “Do you know him? He’s stripey, with one of those fascinating retroussé noses, rather like yours.”
“You Eliot men!” complained Zelle. “Do you always compare the women you love to wild animals? I’ve ’eard Monsieur Eliot telling Sally she looked like a lioness. That lovely Sally! It’s an insult.”
“Not at all,” said Ben. “What’s lovelier than a lioness? Or a brockis either. Black and white, he is. Beautiful markings. I’ll tell you you look like a shy violet, if you’d rather, perjuring myself though I should be.” He paused, and spoke again with a slight trace of exasperation. “Though maybe there’s some truth in that simile, too. Heloise, why can’t we have this out in the open? I hate holes and corners.”
“Is this an ’ole and corner?” she flashed back at him. “This beautiful ’idden place?”
“No, no, no,” he said, and swung round and took her face between his hands. He hated it when anger suddenly flamed up between them like this, as it did sometimes just when they were at their happiest. “There must always be the secret places of love, but why should love itself be secret? I want to tell the whole world that I love you, and you won’t even let me tell Mother.”
Least of all his mother, she thought. She might lose him that way. He adored his mother, and she had no illusions as to what Nadine would think of her as wife for her eldest son. Or the General either. The daughter of a murdered Jew and a secret-service agent, who had been left alone to look after herself as best she could from her teens upwards and was now nursery governess to their great-niece. Not at all the sort of daughter-in-law they would have hoped for or expected. These English might say they were democratic, and pride themselves upon their broad-minded tolerance, but she was shrewd, and she had noticed that the family pride of the English gentry died hard in them. At heart they were still deeply intolerant, whatever they might say, and Ben was not strong in character, anwhat rd almost morbidly conscientious. He was vacillating and perpetually undecided as to which way duty lay. He had already, after torturing months of indecision, relegated his painting to the status of a hobby and chosen the Civil Service as a career, under pressure of what his parents told him was his duty. And he cared for his painting only a little less than he cared for her. Tommy, of course, would have let the whole world go to blazes before he would have given up his own will, even for Nadine. But then Tommy, if he ever loved at all, would love suitably and in keeping with the English aristocratic tradition.
“Wait,” she said, her flash of anger dying at the touch of his hands. “Never force things to ’appen, Ben, but wait and let what ’appens show you the way. I’ve learnt that. The spring comes slowly. The way will open out for us if we wait and are patient. You’ve never learnt patience, but I ’ave. Patience, mon Dieu! I’ve learnt it!”
He took her hands and held them tightly. The laughter had gone out of her face, and her eyes were sombre. He thought of the little that she had told him about her life. Her French mother had married against the wishes of her family, distinguished scientist though her husband was. But they had been very happy, and the little Heloise had been as loved by her parents, and as loving, as was Meg. The war had caught them on a visit to Poland and her father had been murdered there, and his wife and daughter had seen him die. Somehow, through the chaos of those days, they had struggled back to France, and France had fallen. Penniless now, and filled with hatred, Heloise’s mother had worked for the Maquis through much of the occupation. Then the Nazis had got her and she had died, and Heloise at seventeen years old had carried on where her mother had left off. She had hoped she would die, too, and so she had lived, as those do who hope for death. After the war she had done a great many things, and gradually life had come to seem to her not so bad after all, for she was healthy and still young. Then she had thought she would like to come to England to perfect her English. She was a clever girl, and she might have got a good teaching post, but she chose instead the care of little children. For she adored children. It was the child in Ben, so much in need of looking after, that had made her fall in love with him the moment she had set eyes on him . . . But that she had not told him, and never would, for she was a supremely tactful woman. She was four years older than he was, and that, too, was a matter that she would never obtrude upon his attention.
“Forgive me,” he said. “No, I’m not patient. There has been nothing to teach me patience. What have I ever suffered, compared with you? I’ll go slow.”
She pressed home her advantage. “You didn’t go slow when you chose the F.O.,” she said, and still holding his hands she bent forward and kissed him, so that he should not be too much hurt by what she said.
“I dithered for months,” he said drearily.
“Dithered, yes; but that’s not the same as going slow. Dithering is just going round in a circle, and giving in just the same at the end, as you might have done at the beginning. When you go slow you go patiently on, not round. And you get there, Ben. You get there.”
“At the F.O. it won’t take me too long to make a home for you,” said Ben. “As a painter it might have been years before I’d been making enough to keep a wife.”
“Do you think I want a comfortable ’ome at the cost of your int
egrity?” said Zelle hotly. “I’d rather be very poor with you, or wait years before I married you, than commit murder.”
“Murder?” asked Ben, shocked.
“Yes, murder,” flashed Zelle. “If I kill the artist in you, demanding a comfortable ’ome, that will be murder. And if you kill ’im, just to please your parents or marry me quickly, that will be suicide. Oh yes, it will, Ben. That is if you mean by integrity what I mean. What do you mean?”
“Constancy in service to my own vision,” said Ben slowly. “My vision may not be the same as another man’s, but if I serve his instead of mine I’ve lost my integrity. I see that that’s a sort of murder. The vision and the man who might have served it are both killed. I don’t know if I’ve quite understood what the Bible means by the sin against the Holy Ghost, but in my own mind I think of it as believing that I have seen the truth and believing that I know how I must serve it, and then deliberately doing the other thing. But I don’t see what that’s got to do with the F.O.”
“Everything,” said Zelle. “You’ve ’ad your vision; something within creating shape and color, you said. You tried to explain to me, though I don’t think I understood very well, and per’aps you did not either. But there is something you ’ave seen. Could you serve it as a Civil Servant?”
“Yes,” said Ben obstinately. “All honest work serves it.”
“Work isn’t honest unless it’s done by honest men,” said Zelle. “Are you being honest when you deny you are a painter? For you do that when you were made one and won’t be one. First you lie and then you kill.”
“You’re making the most enormous mountain out of a very small molehill,” groaned Ben. “And I’m a rotten painter, anyway. If I were a genius it would be a different thing altogether.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” said Zelle. “The question is, are you a painter or aren’t you. Are you?”
“Yes,” groaned Ben.
“Darling, don’t let’s talk about it any more,” said Zelle. “I ’ad to say it once. I ’ad to tell you ’ow I feel. Now let’s talk about the brockis.”
But Ben could find nothing more to say about the brockis. What she had said had been so like what John Adair had said when he had talked to him once. Only John Adair had expressed himself with less concern for Ben’s feelings. That argument, and others that had taken place during the months of dithering, came jostling so vividly into Ben’s memory that Zelle and Brockis Island lost outline and reality.
“Damn fool,” said John Adair, his red beard bristling with fury. “Rotten painter, are you? So you are. Rotten. So am I. So are most of us. The point is we are painters. Sit on your behind filling in forms at the F.O. if you want to. It’s your affair, not mine. They’ll pay you well. Your mother will be pleased. Pretty woman, your mother. I fell in love with her once, but I soon got over it. I never fell permanently in love with anything except painting. I had that much sense. No mothers or wives could ever take my mind off it for more than five minutes. What’s that? Paint as a hobby? You young fool. If you say that again I’ll knock you down. You remind me of a maiden aunt of mine. She painted roses in oils on velvet tea-cosies. Very pretty, they were. Well, it’s a free country, as far as murder goes. Nothing to prevent you hitting the other fellow on the head with an umbrella if you want to. Murder Ben the painter if you wish. Rotten fellow, as you said. Well, I won’t say any more, except that if you go to the F.O. I’ll never speak to you again, and if you choose the paint I won’t lift a finger to help you. You’ll start from scratch, as I did. I don’t say I won’t lend you my old easel with the woodworm in it, and look at your work now and again and tell you how damn bad it is. And should you do a good bit of work which isn’t likely, I might talk about it, as I would about any young chap’s work that appealed to me, but that’s all I’ll do. I won’t use my influence to help you, and I won’t lend you money. I didn’t become the rich man I am (or would be, but for this damned income tax) by lending money to young fools. Let ’em starve, I say. Do ’em good. Now get out and think it over.”
At that point Ben went to Lucilla for help, but she would not help. “No, darling,” she said. “You must decide. I’ve advised people too much in the past. I’ve imposed my will on them too much. I don’t do it any more . . . At least,” she added, striving, as always in these days, after absolute truth, “I try not to do it any more.”
And always there had been the pressure of his parents’ deep anxiety. In a changing anxious world they wanted to see their sons safely settled in careers of financial and social security. They knew nothing at all about painters and their life, but they were quite sure struggling young artists could be certain of neither. They didn’t know where their next penny was coming from and they consorted quite often with very odd people. Knowing Ben’s weakness of health and of will, Nadine and George were worried to death. A life of financial uncertainty would bring back his asthma. Noisy parties in airless studios, drinking and smoking to all hours, would bring back his tendency to lung trouble. The very odd people would undermine his morals. He’d marry the wrong sort of girl. Meals at irregular hours would upset his digestion. From the moment of Ben’s birth George had set his heart on his eldest son following him into his old regiment, and it had nearly broken his heart when Ben refused categorically to go into the army. But the Civil Service was the profession of a gentleman, according to George, and art was not. Of course when fellows painted the royal family and became royal academicians like John Adair, that was another story. But there was no likelihood of Ben being asked to paint the Queen, so far as George knew. George thought Ben’s paintings were very pretty, but he couldn’t see the promise of that much eminence in them. Nadine said that even if there had been, Ben would never live to attain it. At this point, one day, she broke down and cried, and Ben, holding her in his arms and trying to comfort her, realized with a shock that this was the first time in his life that he’d seen his mother cry.
“See what you’ve done to your mother,” said George.
It wasn’t as though they were asking him to give up his painting altogether, Nadine and George both said pathetically, when Nadine was feeling a little better. He could paint as much as he liked over the week-ends. They liked him to paint. His sketches were very pretty and his portraits and miniatures charming, and the anatomy in his allegorical works had improved a great deal lately. But they didn’t want him to make it his profession. At least, not at present. Of course in years to come, if he should really turn out to be a genius, the whole matter could be reconsidered again. But at present surely it wasn’t too much to ask that he should at least give the F.O. a trial. Didn’t Ben feel he owed something to his parents? Couldn’t he do just this one thing to please them? And Ben said he would. Later he wavered again, but Nadine cried again, and he came back once more to the beginning of the circle.
“Thank heaven surgery is considered the profession of a gentleman,” was Tommy’s private comment to Ben. “But what rot it is! Poor old Pop, how he dates! Almost antediluvian. Kipling and so on. And Mother the same. She’s a damn pretty woman, and she dresses well, and that makes her look less prehistoric than Pop, but in point of fact there’s not much to choose between them. To all intents and purposes both of them might have been dead for years. It’s odd how soon people date. David’s starting to date now. Have you noticed?”
Ben said miserably that he hadn’t. He longed for David, who had never confined his acting to week-ends, but David was in America.
“Badly,” said Tommy. “And as for his acting, it’s positively ham. It makes me squirm. I don’t know how it is he still rakes in the dough. But look, Ben, I’m like Mother and Pop in this. Painting’s all very well as a recreation, but it’s a pretty poor show as a life’s work unless you happen to be a genius, which, old boy, speaking quite frankly, I don’t think you are. The painters one knows are so wet. They just drool around with locks of hair falling over their eyes. Of course if you’re a commer
cial kind of chap you can make a bit by it, like old Adair, but you’re not that sort. Not forceful. You’re more the wet sort. Or at least you will be if you don’t look out. You need to counteract the tendency. Better try the F.O. Don’t take my remarks to heart, old boy. They are all for your own good.”
Hilary, appealed to, was not much more helpful than Lucilla. “I know nothing about painting,” he said. “I don’t even know if your work is good or if it isn’t. And even if I did know I should hesitate to advise you. The older I get the morewo chary do I become of giving advice, especially upon the matter of vocation, which lies between a man and his God. A true vocation is inspired, and if you deliberately refuse it, even for such good motives as love of parents and so on, you run the risk of spiritual disaster. There is a sin against the Holy Ghost which is not forgiven either in this world or the next, and the refusal of inspiration is a part of it. As to whether painting is your vocation, I don’t know. Only you know. And if you don’t know, it’s your business to find out.”
“But how?” groaned Ben.
“For a start, leave off allowing your female relatives to make up your mind for you upon all the trivial matters of your life. Make up your own mind as to which toothpaste you prefer. Try to get a little practice in decisiveness, indecisive fellow that you are. And in this non-trivial matter, go slow. The movement of events sometimes shows one the will of God. But once you honestly believe you’ve seen it, nothing in earth or hell should deflect you from it.”
But in the end it was Nadine who made up his mind for him. She came to his room one night, when he had gone up early with a headache, and sat on the edge of his bed, beautiful and slim in the moonlight. She slipped her cool fingers over his forehead and up into his hair, as she had so often done when he was a child and was ill. As a mother she had never been very free with her caresses, and for that reason they were doubly precious to her children. They all adored her, but her aloofness had never made it easy for them to tell her that they did. Ben, especially, had always longed for her to know how much he loved her. He saw now the anxiety in her face and a look in her eyes that he had never seen there before: the look that he’d seen in Sally’s eyes once when Meg had mumps. He had had no idea, until that moment, that his cool, reserved mother ever felt like that about him. He sat up in bed suddenly and flung his arms round her. When he had done that as a small boy she had laughed and gently withdrawn herself from the bear-like hugs she did not much appreciate, but she did not withdraw now. She yielded to him as Heloise did, pliant and lovely, her cheek against his, more as a woman to a man than a mother to her son. In the moonlight she seemed as young as Heloise. It was thrilling to be a man and have a woman yield to him like this. His sense of his own power roused all the chivalry of his unselfish nature. He would have died for her at that moment, so surely to please her he could just try the blasted F.O. for a few years. It was not a denial of vocation (if painting was his vocation), only a postponement of it.