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Updated: June 23, 2025
But the next day it was all right again. I was Benlian's again. And I wondered, when I remembered his struggle, whether a dying man had ever fought for life as hard as Benlian was fighting to get away from it and pass himself. The next time after that that he fetched me called me whatever you like to name it I burst into his studio like a bullet.
"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!
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. 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.
It had been jacked up on a heavy base; and as it would have taken three or four men to put it into position, and scarcely a stranger had entered the yard since I had been there, I knew that the figure must have stood for a long time. Sculpture's weary, slow work. Benlian was pottering about with a taper at the end of a long rod; and suddenly the overhead gas-ring burst into light.
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. "We'll try my hand first," Benlian said by-and-by.
"Then you ought to see a doctor," I said, a bit alarmed. "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. "You've heard them say that; but they're charlatans, professional artists, all, Pudgie.
"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!" You see, I didn't know him then, and that he wasn't to be judged as an ordinary man is. Just you wait till you see.... And straight away, I found myself vowing that I'd have nothing more to do with him.
I, Hopkins tells me, had got down on my knees in the crane cab, and was jabbering away cheerfully to myself. When I asked him what I said, he hesitated, and then said: "Oh, you don't want to know that, sir," and I haven't asked him since. What do you make of it? It would be different if you had known Benlian.
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 it didn't seem in the least horrible to me, for I kept on murmuring, "Of course, of course." Then Benlian rubbed his hands and smiled at me. "I'm making good progress, am I not?" he said. "Splendid!" I breathed. "Better than you know, too," he chuckled, "for you're not properly under yet. But you will be, Pudgie, you will be " "Yes, yes!... Will it be long, Benlian?"
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