It would be different if you had known Benlian. It would be different if you had had even that glimpse of him that I had the very first time I saw him, standing on the little wooden landing at the top of the flight of steps outside my studio door. I say "studio"; but really it was just a sort of loft looking out over the timber-yard, and I used it as a studio. The real studio, the big one, was at the other end of the yard, and that was Benlian's.
Scarcely anybody ever came there. I wondered many a time if the timber-merchant was dead or had lost his memory and forgotten all about his business; for his stacks of floorboards, set criss-crosswise to season (you know how they pile them up) were grimy with soot, and nobody ever disturbed the rows of scaffold-poles that stood like palisades along the walls. The entrance was from the street, through a door in a billposter's hoarding; and on the river not far away the steamboats hooted, and, in windy weather, the floorboards hummed to keep them company.
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. His name was on a plate on the door, but I'd never seen him till this time I'm telling you of.
I was working that evening at one of the prettiest little things I'd ever done: a girl's head on ivory, that I'd stippled up just like ... oh, you'd never have thought it was done by hand at all. The daylight had gone, but I knew that "Prussian" would be about the colour for the eyes and the bunch of flowers at her breast, and I wanted to finish.
I was working at my little table, with a shade over my eyes; and I jumped a bit when somebody knocked at the door--not having heard anybody come up the steps, and not having many visitors anyway. (Letters were always put into the box in the yard door.)
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). A bit of smoky, greenish sky showed behind him; and then, as his eyes moved in their big pits, one of them caught the light of my lamp and flashed like a well of lustre.
He spoke abruptly, in a deep, shaky sort of voice.
"I want you to photograph me in the morning," he said. I supposed he'd seen my printing-frames out on the window-sash some time or other.
"Come in," I said. "But I'm afraid, if it's a miniature you want, that I'm retained--my firm retains me--you'd have to do it through them. But come in, and I'll show you the kind of thing I do--though you ought to have come in the daylight ..."
He came in. He was wearing a long, grey dressing-gown that came right down to his heels and made him look something like a Noah's-ark figure. Seen in the light, his face seemed more ghastly bony still; and as he glanced for a moment at my little ivory he made a sound of contempt--I know it was contempt. I thought it rather cheek, coming into my place and--
He turned his cavernous eyeholes on me.
"I don't want anything of that sort. I want you to photograph me. I'll be here at ten in the morning."
So, just to show him that I wasn't to be treated that way, I said, quite shortly, "I can't. I've an appointment at ten o'clock."
"What's that?" he said--he'd one of these rich deep voices that always sound consumptive.
"Take that thing off your eyes, and look at me," he ordered.
Well, I was awfully indignant.
"If you think I'm going to be told to do things like this--" I began.
"Take that thing off," he just ordered again.
I've got to remember, of course, that you didn't know Benlian. I didn't then. And for a chap just to stalk into a fellow's place, and tell him to photograph him, and order him about ... but you'll see in a minute. I took the shade off my eyes, just to show him that I could browbeat a bit too.
I used to have a tall strip of looking-glass leaning against my wall; for though I didn't use models much, it's awfully useful to go to Nature for odd bits now and then, and I've sketched myself in that glass, oh, hundreds of times! We must have been standing in front of it, for all at once I saw the eyes at the bottom of his pits looking rigidly over my shoulder. Without moving his eyes from the glass, and scarcely moving his lips, he muttered:
"Get me a pair of gloves, get me a pair of gloves."
It was a funny thing to ask for; but I got him a pair of my gloves from a drawer. His hands were shaking so that he could hardly get them on, and there was a little glistening of sweat on his face, that looked like the salt that dries on you when you've been bathing in the sea. Then I turned, to see what it was that he was looking so earnestly and profoundly at in the mirror. I saw nothing except just the pair of us, he with my gloves on.
He stepped aside, and slowly drew the gloves off. I think I could have bullied him just then. He turned to me.
"Did that look all right to you?" he asked.
"Why, my dear chap, whatever ails you?" I cried.
"I suppose," he went on, "you couldn't photograph me to-night--now?"
I could have done, with magnesium, but I hadn't a scrap in the place. I told him so. He was looking round my studio. He saw my camera standing in a corner.
"Ah!" he said.
He made a stride towards it. He unscrewed the lens, brought it to the lamp, and peered attentively through it, now into the air, now at his sleeve and hand, as if looking for a flaw in it. Then he replaced it, and pulled up the collar of his dressing-gown as if he was cold.
"Well, another night of it," he muttered; "but," he added, facing suddenly round on me, "if your appointment was to meet your God Himself, you must photograph me at ten to-morrow morning!"
"All right," I said, giving in (for he seemed horribly ill). "Draw up to the stove and have a drink of something and a smoke."
"I neither drink nor smoke," he replied, moving towards the door.
"Sit down and have a chat, then," I urged; for I always like to be decent with fellows, and it was a lonely sort of place, that yard.
He shook his head.
"Be ready by ten o'clock in the morning," he said; and he passed down my stairs and crossed the yard to his studio without even having said "Good night."
Well, he was at my door again at ten o'clock in the morning, and I photographed him. I made three exposures; but the plates were some that I'd had in the place for some time, and they'd gone off and fogged in the developing.
"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, shining through the wreathing river-mists, and sometimes I heard him moving about, and the muffled knock-knocking of his hammer on marble.
