An Act in a Backwater

by E. F. Benson

Both his father and mother were out when he arrived at the house, and, with the spell of soothing still on him, he sauntered off again, meaning to return home for tea, and leaving the town, struck into a foot-path that led through the water-meadows by the river. It has been stated how his mother regretted that, if he was to be a painter at all, he had not been a landscape-painter, and this afternoon the regret was his also. Portrait-painting, he told himself, was an inspiration which might or might not be at one’s command. For every hundred faces he looked at he only saw one or two that suggested anything. Before now he had caused offence, when given an order for a portrait, by insisting on seeing his sitter before he promised anything, and then declining the task. It was not beauty he looked for in a face, nor was it exactly intelligence. The quality, whatever it was, might be altogether absent in the most admired features, and present in every line of the face when there were, so to speak, no features at all. It was this eternal search for this, the refusal to paint where he did not find it, and a magical brush when he did, that had already given him a somewhat unusual standing among the younger painters of the day. His pictures were few, but, as a natural consequence of the integrity and honesty of his art, his refusal to paint without the conviction that his subject was for him, there was nothing in any of them to show a want of grasp. That everything was proper material for art he did not deny, but he emphatically affirmed that everything was not proper material for each artist.

But, compared to the portrait-painter who thus limited himself, how fortunate, he thought, was the landscape-painter. All trees were paintable if you could paint a tree at all; all clear and running water was beautiful, all clouds “composed.” This green bank on which he wandered, the lower grasses of which waved in the suck of the brilliant stream, the stretch of meadow beyond, tall with loose-strife and the hundred herbs of watery places, the great austern downs beyond with the clump or two of pines, the remnants of the great southern forests of England—what landscape-painter could fail to find his subject in any of these?

He paused on the edge of the stream where the water was running in steadfast haste toward a mill which stood a hundred yards below, and looked long into that translucent coolness. Subaqueous plantations of green weed undulated backward and forward in the thrust of the water like the tail of a poised fish, alternating with bare spaces pebble-sown, but the pebbles were glorified to topaz and amber. Here and there tall tufts of pithy rushes stood breast-high in the water, making strange movements of twitching as the current struck them, causing the smooth crystal to be broken with a sudden dimple. Over the surface from time to time there would run like a wreath of mist a darker line, as if some finger had traced on the stream a letter which the water was trying to efface; then the mark would change from a circle to a half-circle, straighten itself out for a moment, and then be broken. From below came the gush of the mill mixed with the bourdon note of the machinery, and Jack could see the rush of water coming out of the dark passage in torrents of white foam, a soda-water of bubbles. There, he knew, the weeds would be altogether different; they would be close as velvet, or moss on a tree, offering little surface to the flood, and not like thick, branching forests, which would be torn away in the mill-race.

He had waited so long looking into the water that he saw it was nearly time to go back, but the attraction of the stream held him by cords, and he could not but go on, just to look at the jubilant water escaping from the prison of the mill and perhaps extend his wandering to a pool he knew of a hundred yards below where the water deepened suddenly and resumed again its sedater going. A plank bridge crossed at the head of this, just below a red brick wall which bounded the garden belonging to the mill. He would go as far as that corner, cross the stream, and return to Wroxton by the path on the other side of the meadows.

So on he went: the channel below the mill was all it should be, and the sun, for his delight, caught the white spray of the plunging river and hung a broken rainbow on it. This Jack felt was a gift thrown in; he had not anticipated it, and it gave him a thrill of pleasure. Yet, even as he looked, he shook his head. The need of the artist for expression was on him, and he could only tell himself that this was all beautiful, and he wished he was a landscape-painter. And, thinking thus, he turned the corner of the red wall, and stopped.

In the centre of the plank bridge by which he intended to cross was standing a girl opposite him, with a face full of laughter and anxiety, and with her parasol she kept at bay a small retriever puppy who had just left the water, and, still dripping, was evidently coming to his mistress in order to shake himself and receive her congratulations on his having had a swim. Even as Jack turned the corner the puppy began his shake, and to his trained, quick eye the whole scene was as complete and as faithful as an instantaneous photograph. The puppy’s head was already shaken, and down to his shoulders he was black and curly set in a halo of spray, but the shake had not yet touched his back and tail, the hair of which was still shining and close. The girl was also dressed in black; with one hand she drew her skirts away from the dog, with the other she held out her open parasol so that the puppy should be compelled to keep his distance, for the bridge was narrow, and he could hardly pass. Her face, with its wide, laughing eyes set in an expression of agonized dismay, which her smiling mouth contradicted, was a moment’s miracle. Obviously every nerve of her body, every cell, however secret, in her brain was taken up and lost in the amused fear that the puppy would wet her. She had no hat on, and the perfect oval of her face was crowned with the most glorious black hair. And Jack gave a quick-drawn breath. A moment before he had lamented that he was not a landscape-painter; now, for all he cared, the world might be made of Portland cement, if only that girl would laugh and that puppy would shake itself.

The infinite moment was soon over. Even while he stared, oblivious of all else, the puppy had grown curly from nose to tail, the anxiety had faded like a breath from the girl’s face, and she looked up and saw him. She turned and retraced her steps over the plank, and stepped into the meadow, where, only a few yards off, was sitting an oldish lady reading a book. The girl’s hat was lying by her, and there was a tea-basket out, the silver of which twinkled pleasantly in the sun. Jack walked straight past them, and did not look again. He had recorded in his brain all he wanted, and to stop and stare would be not only rude but, what in his present frame of mind was more important, unnecessary. He did not even look round when he heard short, scuffling steps behind him, and impatient barkings, and a voice said, “Toby, come here at once.”

He knew instinctively that it was the girl who had spoken, and not the elder lady, for the voice had the timbre which belonged to that face. Who she was he did not know, and really he did not care. She had given him a vision, and she might disappear again. He would have liked, he longed, in fact, to paint her, but no more, and, except as a sitter, she was nothing to him. He could even, on reflection, have thought twice about that, for his one moment had been so complete and was so indelible. Perhaps she was a poseuse, startled for once into a genuine emotion, though on so small a matter as the wetting of her gown. It was more than possible that she would never serve him again, though she sat to him for a score of years, as she had served him at that moment. She did not concern him as long as the puppy was not shaking itself close to her, and in that regard she was his already. And as he walked back along the water-meadows he thought no more about the amber pavement of the stream, and envied not any mood of the landscape-painter, for whom a water-meadow held no such exquisite surprises. But the girl was to him no more than a subject, and though the puppy was an essential factor in the scene, he valued it not on the principle of “Love me, love my dog.”

All the way home his vision remained vivid, and in his mind he settled the composition of it. The girl should stand facing full, with the dog almost straight in front of her, cutting the canvas in two by a long black line. Behind should be the green meadow, with a narrow strip of broken ground just indicating the stream bank, and the moment should be when the dog had shaken its head curly again, while the rest of it was still drowned and sleek. And in the joy of creation he laughed aloud and let his pipe go out.

He found his father and mother had both come in, and was told they were having tea in the garden. Canon Collingwood welcomed him warmly, and his mother evidently remembered she was his mother. These first moments were always a little awkward, for Jack was apt to forget how few subjects they had in common, and would pour himself out in matters that were near his life before perceiving that what he said was, if not distasteful to his mother, at any rate alien to her. He did so on this occasion.