THORLEY WEIR

BY E. F. BENSON.

CHAPTER IV.

CHARLES was in camp again at the little peninsula fringed with meadow-sweet and loose-strife below Thorley Weir, scarcely hearing, far less listening to its low thunder, diminished by the long continuance of the drought, scarcely seeing, far less looking at, the dusky crimson behind the trees which shewed where the sun had set. Probably his unconscious self, that never-resting observer and recorder of all the minutest unremembered incidents of life, saw and took note; but though his eyes were open and his ears alert, his conscious brain was busy with what concerned him more vividly than those things. Besides, in a way he had already made them his own; he had painted them half a dozen times in sketches and studies, he had guessed their secret, learned the magic of their romance, and they were his. All that was not his, all the life that was expanding and opening about him, could not but claim and receive this surrender of his brain and his heart.

He had come back here two days ago, and on the morning following had presented his card at the Mill House to a parlour-maid, who had taken it in, leaving him and the canvas, easel, and paintbox he had brought with him to grill at the door. This rather superior young person returned after a while and, bidding him follow, took him upstairs into what looked like a disused nursery, overlooking the lawn and river, and pointed at a picture propped against the end of a sofa.

'Mr. Wroughton hopes there is everything you require,' she said, and please to ring if you want anything.'

She rustled out of the door, which she closed with elaborate precaution, exactly as if an invalid Charles had fallen into the sleep which was necessary for his recovery.

Charles' grave grey eyes had been twinkling with amusement, as he was thus led through an empty house, and stowed away like a leper in this sequestered chamber, and, left alone, a broad grin spread over his face. Then, before looking at the picture which

1 Copyright, 1913, by E. F. Benson, in the United States of America.

stood with its face towards the end of the sofa, his eye made an observant tour of the room. Certainly it had been a nursery, for here stood a doll's house, here a child's crib, here a chair with a confining bar between the arms, so that no child imprisoned there could by any means escape. But there were signs of a later occupancy--a couple of big armchairs and a revolving bookcase stood there also, on the top of which, evidently in recent use, lay a writingpad with ink-bottle and pen-tray attached. Also there was that indefinable sense in the air, manifest subtly but unmistakably, that the room was still in use.

A rap at the door which indicated not May I come in?' but 'I am coming in,' interrupted this short survey, and the parlourmaid entered. She cast a vulturine glance round the room : she saw and annexed the writing-pad. But again before leaving she spoke like a Delphic oracle up-to-date.

'If you desire to rest or smoke there is the garden,' she observed. Now Charles had already drawn his conclusions about the room, and he resented the removal of the writing-pad by anybody but its owner. For it required but little constructive imagination to re-form the history of this room. Surely it had been the nursery of the girl of the punt, and was still used by her as a sitting-room. She ought to have come and got her blotting-pad herself. However, she had done nothing of the sort, and in the meantime it was his business not to dream dreams, but see and reproduce another painter's vision. He took hold of the picture that stood against the end of the sofa, turned it round, then gave a short gasp of amazement. For here was the girl of the punt, inimitably portrayed. Just so, and in no other fashion had she turned opposite their tent and looked at Charles while his brother execrated that which should have been an omelette. There was no question that it was she there was no question either that it was a superb Reynolds.

Instantly the artistic frenzy awoke the dream that lay deep down in his young soul, dim and faint and asleep, seemed suddenly to awake and merge and personify itself in the treasure that it was his to copy. Instantly the whole room, too, burst into life, when this prototype of its owner was manifested. Nor, apart from the sweet and exquisite pleasure that it gave him to work here, had the room been badly chosen there was an excellent north light, and by drawing down the blinds of the window opposite, he could secure exactly the illumination he required. In five minutes he had adjusted his easel, and with his canvas already mapped faintly out into

squares to guide his drawing, the charcoal began its soft grating journeys.

For a long time he worked on in one absorbed pulsation, and was just beginning to feel that his arm was momentarily unable to continue without some pause for rest, when an interruption, unlooked for, and for the moment inexplicable, occurred. A faint continued scratching, not impatient but entreating, came at the door, and, rightly rejecting the first idea that had presented itself to him, that the indomitable parlour-maid, suddenly brought low, besought admittance, Charles opened to the intruder. A big golden collie stood outside, who sniffed at him with doubt and hesitancy, and then, deciding that he was harmless, came softly by, and established itself on the sofa. Established there in the haven where it would be, it thumped gently with its tail, as a signal of gratitude.

Charles stood with the open door in his hand a moment, but it seemed impossible to continue drawing into the passage, so to speak, and with a tremor of anticipation in his wicked young heart, he closed it again. A parlour-maid could remove a writing-pad, but it might easily require someone with greater authority to entice away that other possession. Then, before going back to his work, he tested the friendliness of his visitor, and, finding he was welcome, spent a minute in stroking its ears, and received as thanks a rather dry hot nose thrust into his hand. Clearly the dog was not well, and, with that strange canine instinct, was grateful for the expression of even a stranger's sympathy. Then it lay down with muzzle on its outstretched paws, and eyes wide-open and suffering and puzzled. Charles went back to his canvas, but he expected further interruptions now.

In a little while they began. Through the open window on the side towards the river, where he had drawn down the blind, he heard a footstep on the gravel path below, a whistle, and then a voice calling Buz!' Buz heard, too, for he pricked a languid ear and just moved a languid tail, but did not feel equal to a more active recognition. Again and once again Buz was whistled for and called, and it seemed to Charles that he was in the position of an unwilling accomplice who had better turn King's evidence. So as quietly as he could he pulled up the blind and looked out. Below on the grass stood Buz's mistress, and perhaps the whisper of the blind had caught her listening ear, for on the moment she looked up, and saw Charles at the window.

'I beg your pardon,' he said, ' but I was shewn up here, and I think it must be Buz who asked to come in. He is lying on the sofa.'

There was a sudden surprise in the girl's face it might only be due to being thus addressed by a stranger from the upper storey. But as a matter of fact, it was not a stranger quite who addressed her she perfectly recognised him, though the surprise was there.

'Oh, thank you,' she said. 'I will come up to fetch him.' Charles stood there waiting, with his blood somehow strangely a-tingle and alert. It seemed to him as if this had all happened before, yet he could not remember what happened next. But it all seemed very natural. Then he heard her quick step on the stairs and she entered.

She smiled at him rather remotely, but not without friendliness, and certainly without embarrassment.

'Thank you so much,' she said. 'I could not find him. Buz, dear, come along.'

She stood in the doorway, with head already half-turned to leave the room again, just as in the hundred-year-old portrait of her. Buz tattooed languidly with his tail.

'I'm afraid he is not very well,' said Charles, with the sense of taking a plunge. His nose is hot and dry.'

'I'm afraid so. The dogs always think of this room as their sick-room if they don't feel what's called The Thing. Buz, come along.'

Buz thought not.

'But won't you leave him here?' said Charles.

Joyce came a couple of steps into the room.

'Oh, I hardly like to,' she said. 'Won't he disturb you?' 'Not an atom. Do leave him if he feels like stopping. He doesn't mind me.'

That last sentence won Joyce's heart: it was easy to reach it through her dogs. But she detached herself from Charles again, as it were, and went up to her ailing dog.

'Buz, darling, I'm so sorry,' she said. 'You can stop here if you like. Not quite well? Oh, I'm afraid not well at all.'

...

She bestowed a kiss on Buz's head, who wrinkled puzzled eyebrows at her. It appeared she could not help him, and he did not understand . . . Then she turned to Charles again. 'Please forgive my interrupting you,' she said. And weren't you painting below Thorley Weir a week ago? Yes: I thought it was you.'

Before he had time for more than the bare affirmative, she had left the room again. And all the way downstairs she mingled with compassion for Buz a wonder why she had felt as if she could not help asking that, although she was perfectly certain it was he.

It was characteristic of Charles that he flew to his drawing again, for that expressed his feelings better than any mooning reverie would have helped him to do. He must draw, he must draw, just as an eager young horse must run, to give outlet to the life that rejoices in its limbs. Besides, each moment of industry brought him nearer to the painting of the face and the half-turned neck. But before he began again, with Buz's permission, he kissed the top of his flat golden head, and went to his work with a heightened colour, feeling a little ashamed of himself.

Perhaps an hour passed, while from the house came no sound at all, nor any from the room where Charles worked, except the scrape of his charcoal, and the rather quick uneasy breathing of the dog. Then came an interruption which did not excite him in the least, for he had not forgotten the manner of access peculiar to the parlour-maid.

'Will you be working here this afternoon, sir, Mr. Wroughton wants to know,' she said. 'And if so, will you take some lunch?' Charles' foolish heart leaped.

'I should be delighted to,' he said.

Again silence descended. Then, with a heart that leaped down again, he heard a subdued clink on the stairs. It was even so: there re-entered the parlour-maid with a neat tray on which was set an adequate and austere refreshment. And as Charles ate his excellent cold mutton and rather stringy French beans, he grinned largely at his mental picture of himself as the prisoner in solitary confinement, who might take exercise in the prison yard when he wanted to smoke. But Buz shared his confinement, and the apparition of Buz's mistress was not unknown. By-and-by he would take his exercise . . . And then again the glory of the Reynolds portrait, the exquisite satisfaction, too, of being able to see, from his studies in the National Gallery, the manner of its doing, and the knowledge that he could, owing to his long and careful practice, put on the paint somewhere in that manner, swallowed up his entire consciousness again.

A gong sounded from below, and Buz from mere force of habit, knowing this was dinner-time, got off his sofa, before he realised that