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had lived, grown decrepit and, in the lethal chamber, gone the way of all pets. 'T'ang,
come here.' Even in this emergency Mrs. Bidlake was careful to pronounce the
apostrophe. Or rather she was not careful to pronounce it; she pronounced it by cultured
instinct, because, being what nature and education had made her, she simply could not
pronounce the word without the apostrophe even when the fur was threatening to fly.
The little dog obeyed at last. The cat ceased to spit, its fur lay down on its back, it
walked away majestically. Mrs. Bidlake went on with her weeding and her vague,
unending meditation among the flowers. God, Pinturicchio, dandelions, eternity, the sky,
the clouds, the early Venetians, dandelions....
Upstairs in the schoolroom lessons were over. At least they were over as far as
little Phil was concerned; for he was doing what he liked best in the world, drawing. Miss
Fulkes, it is true, called the process 'Art' and 'Imagination Training,' and allotted half an
hour to it every morning, from twelve to half-past. But for little Phil it was just fun. He
sat bent over his paper, the tip of his tongue between his teeth, his face intent and serious,
drawing, drawing with a kind of inspired violence. Wielding a pencil that seemed
disproportionately large, his little brown hand indefatigably laboured. At once rigid and
wavering, the lines of the childish composition traced themselves out on the paper.
Miss Fulkes sat by the window, looking out at the sunny garden, but not
consciously seeing it. What she saw was behind the eyes, in a fanciful universe. She saw
herself--herself in that lovely Lanvin frock that had been illustrated last month in
_Vogue_, with pearls, dancing at Ciro's, which looked (for she had never been at Ciro's)
curiously like the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, where she had been. 'How lovely she
looks!' all the people were saying. She walked swayingly, like that actress she had seen at
the London Pavilion--what was her name? She held out her white hand; it was young
Lord Wonersh who kissed it, Lord Wonersh, who looked like Shelley and lived like
Byron and owned half Oxford Street and had come to the house last February with old
Mr. Bidlake and had perhaps spoken to her twice. And then, all at once, she saw herself
riding in the Park. And a couple of seconds later she was on a yacht in the Mediterranean.
And then in a motor car. Lord Wonersh had just taken his seat beside her, when the noise
of T'ang's shrill barking startlingly roused her to consciousness of the lawn, the gay
tulips, the Wellingtonia and, on the other side, the schoolroom. Miss Fulkes felt guilty,
she had been neglecting her charge.
'Well, Phil,' she asked, turning round briskly to her pupil, 'what are you drawing?'
'Mr. Stokes and Albert pulling the mow-lawner,' Phil answered, without looking
up from his paper.
'Lawn-mower,' Miss Fulkes corrected.
'Lawn-mower,' Phil dutifully repeated.
'You never get your compound words right,' Miss Fulkes continued. 'Mow-
lawner, hopgrasser, crack-nutter--it's a sort of mental defect, like mirror-writing, I
suppose.' Miss Fulkes had taken a course in educational psychology. 'You must'really try
to correct it, Phil,' she added, earnestly. After so long and flagrant a dereliction of duty (at
Ciro's, on horseback, in the limousine with Lord Wonersh) Miss Fulkes felt it incumbent
upon her to be particularly solicitous, scientifically so: she was a very conscientious
young woman. 'Will you try?' she insisted.
'Yes, Miss Fulkes,' the child answered. He had no idea what she wanted him to try
to do. But it would keep her quiet if he said yes. He was busy on a particularly difficult
bit of his drawing.
Miss Fulkes sighed and looked out of the window again. This time she
consciously perceived what her eyes saw. Mrs. Bidlake wandered among the tulips,
dressed flowingly in white, with a white veil hanging from her hat, a sort of Pre-
Raphaelitic ghost. Every now and then she paused and looked at the sky. Old Mr. Stokes
the gardener, passed carrying a rake; the tips of his white beard fluttered gently in the
breeze. The village clock struck the half-hour. The garden, the trees, the fields, the
wooded hills in the distance were always the same. Miss Fulkes felt all at once so
hopelessly sad that she could have cried.
'Do mow-lawners, I mean lawn-mowers, have wheels?' asked little Phil, looking
up with a frown of effort and perplexity wrinkling his forehead. 'I can't remember.'
'Yes. Or let me think...' Miss Fulkes also frowned; 'no. They have rollers.'
'Rollers! ' cried Phil. 'That's it.' He attacked his drawing again with fury.
Always the same. There seemed to be no escape, no prospect of freedom. 'If I had
a thousand pounds,' thought Miss Eulkes, 'a thousand pounds. A thousand pounds.' The
words were magical. 'A thousand pounds.'
'There!' cried Phil. 'Come and look.' He held up his paper. Miss Fulkes got up and
crossed to the table. 'What a lovely drawing!' she said.
'That's all the little bits of grass flying up,' said Phil, pointing to a cloud of dots
and dashes in the middle of his picture. He was particularly proud of the grass.
'I see,' said Miss Fulkes.
'And look how hard Albert is pulling!' It was true; Albert was pulling like mad.
And old Mr. Stokes, recognizable by the four parallel pencil strokes issuing from his
chin, pushed as energetically at the other end of the machine.
For a child of his age, little Phil had an observant eye, and a strange talent for
rendering on paper what he had seen--not realistically, of course, but in terms of
expressive symbols. Albert and Mr. Stokes were, for all their scratchy uncertainty of
outline, violently alive.
'Albert's left leg is rather funny, isn't it?' said Miss Fulkes. 'Rather long and thin
and...' She checked herself, remembering what old Mr. Bidlake had said. 'On no account
is the child to be taught how to draw, in the art-school sense of the word. On no account.
I don't want him to be ruined.'
Phil snatched the paper from her. 'No, it isn't,' he said angrily. His pride was hurt,
he hated criticism, refused ever to be in the wrong.
'Perhaps it isn't really,' Miss Fulkes made haste to be soothing. 'Perhaps I made a
mistake.' Phil smiled again. 'Though why a child,' Miss Fulkes was thinking,'shouldn't be
told when he's drawn a leg that's impossibly long and thin and waggly, I really don't
understand.' Still, old Mr. Bidlake ought to know. A man in his position, with his
reputation, a great painter--she had often heard him called a great painter, read it in
newspaper articles, even in books. Miss Fulkes had a profound respect for the Great.
Shakespeare, Milton, Michelangelo...Yes, Mr. Bidlake, the Great John Bidlake, ought to
know best. She had been wrong in mentioning that left leg.
'It's after half-past twelve,' she went on in a brisk efficient voice. 'Time for you to
lie down.' Little Phil always lay down for half an hour before lunch.
'No!' Phil tossed his head, scowled ferociously and made a furious gesture with
his clenched fists.
'Yes,' said Miss Fulkes calmly. 'And don't make those silly faces.' She knew, by
experience, that the child was not really angry; he was just making a demonstration, in
order to assert himself and in the vague hope, perhaps, that he might frighten his
adversary into yielding--as Chinese soldiers are said to put on devils' masks and to utter
fearful yells when they approach the enemy, in the hope of inspiring terror.
'Why should I?' Phil's tone was already much calmer.
'Because you must.'
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