Oliver Onions

“ All the way home in the cab Benlian chuckled to himself.
"That scared 'em, Pudgie!" he chuckled. "A man they can't X-ray—that scared 'em! We must put that down in the diary—"
"Wasn't it ripping!" I chuckled back.
He kept a sort of diary or record. He gave it to me afterwards, but they've borrowed it. It was as big as a ledger, and immensely valuable, I'm sure; they oughtn't to borrow valuable things like that and not return them. The laughing that Benlian and I have had over that diary! It fooled them all—the clever X-ray men, the artists of the academies, everybody! ”

“ I tell you, what's seen at a glance flies away at a glance. Gods 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!" ”

“ But he shook his head.
"A man's only a definite amount of force in him, Pudgie," he said, "and if he spends it in one way he goes short in another. Mine goes—there." He glanced at the statue. "I rarely sleep now," he added.
"Then you ought to see a doctor," I said, a bit alarmed. (I'd felt sure he was ill.)
"No, no, Pudgie. My force is all going there—all but the minimum that can't be helped, you know.... You've heard artists talk about 'putting their soul into their work,' Pudgie?"
"Don't rub it in about my rotten miniatures, Benlian," I asked him. ”

“ Now a chap doesn't like to be changed about like that; so, without looking at Benlian, I muttered a bit testily, "Don't, Benlian!"
Then I heard him get up and knock his chair away. He was standing behind me.
"Pudgie," he said, in a moved sort of voice, "I'm no good to you. Get out of this. Get out—"
"No, no, Benlian!" I pleaded.
"Get out, do you hear, and don't come again! Go and live somewhere else—go away from London—don't let me know where you go—"
"Oh, what have I done?" I asked unhappily; and he was muttering again. ”

“ Benlian had now got frightfully weak; it's awfully hard work, passing yourself. And he had to take a little milk now and then or he'd have died before he had quite finished. I didn't bother with miniatures any longer, and when angry letters came from my employers we just put them into the fire, Benlian and I, and we laughed—that is to say, I laughed, but Benlian only smiled, being too weak to laugh really. He'd lots of money, so that was all right; and I slept in his studio, to be there for the passing.
And that wouldn't be very long now, I thought; and I was always looking at the statue. ”

“ I suppose some of these real, regular artists wouldn't have called me an artist at all; for I only painted miniatures, and it was trade-work at that, copied from photographs and so on. Not that I wasn't jolly good at it, and punctual too (lots of these high-flown artists have simply no idea of punctuality) ; and the loft was cheap, and suited me very well. But, of course, a sculptor wants a big place on the ground floor; it's slow work, that with blocks of stone and marble that cost you twenty pounds every time you lift them; so Benlian had the studio. ”

“ When I got back he was sitting in the chair he'd hardly left for weeks, and the diary was on the table by his side. I'd taken all the scaffolding down from the statue, and he was ready to begin. He had to waste one last bit of strength to explain to me, but I drew as close as I could, so that he wouldn't lose much.
"Now, Pudgie," I just heard him say, "you've behaved splendidly, and you'll be quite still up to the finish, won't you?"
I nodded.
"And you mustn't expect the statue to come down and walk about, or anything like that," he continued. "Those aren't the really wonderful things. ”

“ You've heard them say that; but they're charlatans, professional artists, all, Pudgie. They haven't got any souls bigger than a sixpence to put into it.... You know, Pudgie, that Force and Matter are the same thing—that it's decided nowadays that you can't define matter otherwise than as 'a point of Force'? ”

“ When I opened the door, there he stood on the platform; and I gave a bit of a start, having come straight from my ivory, you see. He was one of these very tall, gaunt chaps, that make us little fellows feel even smaller than we are; and I wondered at first where his eyes were, they were set so deep in the dark caves on either side of his nose. Like a skull, his head was; I could fancy his teeth curving round inside his cheeks; and his zygomatics stuck up under his skin like razorbacks (but if you're not one of us artists you'll not understand that) . ”

“ Show them the ocean, the heavens, infinity, and they ask, 'Is that all?' If they saw their God 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!... ”

“ But just you ask anybody: When you get yourself just over half-way passed, the other's dragged out of you, and you can't help yourself. His "Aaaaahs!" became so loud and horrid that I shut my eyes and stopped my ears.... Minutes that lasted; and then there came a high dinning that I couldn't shut out, and all at once the floor shook with a heavy thump. When all was still again I opened my eyes.
His chair had overturned, and he lay in a heap beside it.
I called "Benlian!" but he didn't answer....
He'd passed beautifully; quite dead. I looked up at the statue. ”

“ There was a stretcher couch in the middle of the room, and all manner of queer appliances, frames of ground glass, tubes of glass blown into extraordinary shapes, a dynamo, and a lot of other things all about. A couple of doctors were there too, and Benlian was talking to them. ”

“ Now off you trot, my Pudgie—"
I winked at him knowingly, and came skipping and dancing across the yard.
III It's just silly—that's what it is—to say that something of a man doesn't go into his work.
Why, even those wretched little ivories of mine, the thick-headed fellows who paid for them knew my touch in them, and once spotted it instantly when I tried to slip in another chap's who was hard up. Benlian used to say that a man went about spreading himself over everything he came in contact with—diffusing some sort of influence (as far as I could make it out) ”