Kitabı oku: «The Judgment Books», sayfa 2

"And the more he knows, the more virtue goes out of him, I suppose," said Jack. "You know yourself pretty well – what will happen when you paint yourself?"

Frank grew suddenly grave.

"That's exactly what I want to know myself. That was what I meant when I said I felt like a little boy going to school for the first time – it will be something new. I have only painted four portraits in my life, and each of them definitely took something out of me – changed me; and from each – I am telling you sober truth – I absorbed something of the sitter. And when I paint myself – "

"I suppose you will go out like a candle," interrupted Jack. "Total disappearance of a rising English artist; and of the portrait, what? Shall we think it is you? Will it walk about and talk? Will it get your vitality?"

Frank got quickly out of his chair and stood before them. His thin, tall figure looked almost ghostly in the strange half-light, and he spoke rapidly and excitedly.

"That is exactly what I am afraid of," he said. "I am afraid – I confess it – I am afraid of many things about this portrait, and that is one of them. I began to paint myself once before – I have never told even Margery this – but I had to stop. But this afternoon several things made themselves irresistible, and I must try again. I was in bad health when I tried before, and one evening when I went into the studio and saw it – it was more than half finished – I had a sudden giddy feeling that I did not know which was me – the portrait or myself. I knew I was on the verge of something new and unknown, that if I went on with it I should go mad or go to heaven; and when I moved towards it I saw it – I did see it – take a step towards me."

"Looking-glass," said Margery. "Go on, dear."

"Then I was frightened. I ran away. Next day I came back and tore the picture into shreds. But now I am braver. Besides, brave or not, I must do it. I lost a great deal, I know, by not going on with it, but I could not. Oh yes, you may laugh if you like, but it is true. You may even say that what I lost was exactly what one always does lose when one is afraid of doing something. One loses self-command. One is less able to do the thing next time one tries. I lost all that, but I lost a great deal more: I lost the chance of knowing what happens to a man if he parts with himself."

"Don't be silly, Frank," said Margery, suddenly. "How can a man part with himself?"

"In two ways at least. He may go mad or he may die. I dare say it doesn't matter much, if one only has produced something worth producing; but it frightened me."

Despite herself, perhaps because fear is the most contagious of diseases, Margery felt a little frightened, too, about this new portrait. But she rallied.

"When the time comes for us to die we die," she said, "and we can't help it. But we can all avoid being very silly while we live – at least, you can, and you are the case in point."

Frank resumed his seat, and spoke less quickly and excitedly.

"I know it all sounds ridiculous and absurd," he said; "but if I paint my portrait as I think I am going to, I shall put all myself into it. It will be a wonderful thing – there will be no picture like it. But I tell you, plainly and soberly – I am not feverish, you may feel my pulse if you like – that if I paint it as I believe I can, something will happen to me. It will be my soul as well as my body you will see there. Ah, there are a hundred dangers in the way. What will happen to me I don't pretend to guess. Moreover, I am frightened about it."

Once again, for a moment, Margery was frightened too. Frank's fear and earnestness were very catching. But she summoned her common-sense to her aid. Such things did not happen; it was impossible in a civilized country towards the end of the nineteenth century.

"Oh, my dear boy," she said, "it is so like you to tell us that it will be a wonderful thing, and that there will be no picture like it. It will be even more like you, if, after you have made an admirable beginning, you say it is a horror and put your foot through it, vowing you will never set brush to canvas again. I suppose it is all part of the artistic temperament."

Frank thought of his other fear, of which he could not tell Margery, which she had refused to hear of before. He laid his hand on her arm.

"Margery, tell me not to do it," he said, earnestly. "If you will tell me not to do it, I won't."

"My dear Frank, you told us just now that it was inevitable you should. But why should I tell you not to do it? I think it would be the best thing in the world for you."

"Well, we shall see. Jack, why should you go away to-morrow? Why not stop and be a witness?"

"No, I must go," said Jack, "but if Mrs. Trevor will send me a post-card, or wire, if you show any grave symptoms of going to Heaven or Bedlam, I will come back at once – I promise that. Dear me, how anxious I shall feel! Just these words, you know: 'Mr. Trevor going to Bedlam' or 'going to Heaven,' and I'll come at once. But I must go to-morrow. I've been expected at New Quay for a week. Besides, I've painted so many beech-trees here that they will say I am going to paint all the trees in England, just as Moore has painted all the English Channel. I hear he's begun on the Atlantic."

Frank laughed.

"I fear he certainly has painted a great many square miles of sea. However, supposing they lost all the Admiralty charts, how useful it would be! They would soon be able to reproduce them from his pictures, for they certainly are exactly like the sea."

"But they are all like the Bellman's chart in the 'Hunting of the Shark,'" said Margery, "without the least vestige of land."

"What would be the effect on you, Frank," asked the other, "if you painted a few hundred miles of sea? I suppose you would be found drowned in your studio some morning, and they would be able to fix the place where you were drowned by seeing what you were painting last. But there are difficulties in the way."

"He must be very careful only to paint shallow places," said Margery, "where he can't be drowned. Oh, Frank, perhaps it's your astral body that goes hopping about from picture to picture!"

"Astral fiddlesticks!" said Frank. "Come, let's go in."

He paused for a moment on the threshold of the long French window opening into the drawing-room.

"But if any one, particularly you, Margery," he said, "ever mistakes my portrait for myself, I shall know that the particular fear I have been telling you about is likely to be realized. And then, if you wish, we will discuss the advisability of my going on with it. But I begin to-morrow."

CHAPTER III

Armitage had to leave at half-past eight the next morning, for it was a ten-mile drive to Truro, the nearest station, and he breakfasted alone. Rain had fallen heavily during the night, but it had cleared up before morning, and everything looked deliciously fresh and clean. Ten minutes before his carriage came round Margery appeared, and they walked together up and down the terrace until it was time for him to be off. Margery was looking a little tired and worried, as if she had not slept well.

"I shall have breakfast with Frank in his studio after you have gone," she said, "so until your carriage comes we'll take a turn out-of-doors. There is something so extraordinarily sweet about the open air."

"Frank didn't seem to me to profit by it much last night."

Margery frowned. "I don't know what's the matter with me," she said. "All that nonsense which Frank talked last night must have got on my nerves. Don't you know those long, half-waking dreams one has sometimes when one is not quite certain whether what one hears or sees is real or not? Once last night I woke like that. I thought at first it was part of my dream, and heard Frank talking in his sleep. 'Margery,' he said, 'that isn't me at all. This is me. Surely you know me. Do I look so terrible?'"

"Why should he think he looked terrible?" said Jack.

"I don't know. Then he went rambling on: 'I tried to bury it, and you would not let me tell you.' Of course, his mind must have been running on what he said yesterday evening as we came in, for he went on repeating, 'Don't you know me? Don't you know me?' And this morning he got up at daybreak, and I haven't seen him since."

Margery stopped to pick a couple of rosebuds and put them in the front of her dress. She had no hat on, and the light wind blew through her hair with a deliciously bracing effect. She turned towards the sea, and sniffed in the salt freshness with wide nostrils like a young thorough-bred horse.

"If Frank would only be out-of-doors for two hours a day while he was working, I shouldn't mind," she said; "but he sticks in his studio, and then his digestion gets out of order, and he becomes astral. And my mother wants us to go to the Lizard to-morrow – they've taken a house for the summer – and spend a couple of days. I think I shall go, but yet I don't like to leave Frank. It's no use trying to get him to come."

"But you aren't nervous, are you?" asked Jack. "I thought you were so particularly sensible last night. Frank is awfully fantastic – he always was; but fundamentally he's sane enough. Probably it will be a wonderful picture – he is usually right about his pictures – and he will be excessively nervous and irritable while he is doing it, and refreshingly idle when it's done. That's the way he usually has."

"But it's an unhealthy way of doing things," said Margery. "I wish he was more regular."

"The wind bloweth where it listeth," said Jack, "and it blows very often on him. Isn't that enough?"

"Well, then, I wish I had a barometer," said she. "The hurricane comes down without warning. But I'm not nervous – at least, I don't mean to be. It is just one of Frank's ridiculous notions. All the same, as he said last night, when he does do a really good portrait it has a very definite effect on him."

"In what way? I don't understand."

"Do you remember his picture of Mr. Bracebridge? It was in the Academy the year after his portrait of me, though it was painted first. You know every one said it was wicked to paint a thing like that – that he might as well have painted Mr. Bracebridge without any clothes on as without any body on."

"Without any body on?"

"Yes; somehow – even I felt it, and I am not artistic – Frank managed to paint his soul. I could have written an exhaustive analysis of Mr. Bracebridge's character from that portrait."

"And the effect on Frank?"

"Mr. Bracebridge is a charming man, you know," said Margery, "but he is really unable to tell the truth. It sounds very ridiculous, but for six weeks Frank really became the most awful liar."

Jack stopped short.

"But the thing is absurd. In any case, what does he mean by saying that he doesn't know what will happen when he paints himself? It seems to me that in the case of Mr. Bracebridge, so far from Frank putting a lot of himself into the picture, he unfortunately absorbed a lot of Mr. Bracebridge into himself."

"Frank was quite unconscious he had become a liar," said Margery; "but what he means is this: he put a lot of his own personality into the picture – really the whole thing is so absurd that I am ashamed to tell you about it – and consequently weakened himself, or, as he would express it, emptied himself. And being in this state, Mr. Bracebridge's little weakness impressed itself on him. That certainly happened, and it seems to me only likely. We are all affected by any one with whom we are much taken up, but what Frank assumes is the loss of his own personality. That is absurd."

"Frank was like a hypnotic subject, in fact," said Jack – "at least, they say that they give themselves up, and subject themselves to another's will. But even then – and, like you, I think the whole thing is nonsense – how will the painting of his own portrait affect him?"

"Like this: he puts his whole personality into it and receives nothing in exchange; no other personality will, so to speak, feed him. Really, he is very silly."

The sound of carriage-wheels caused them to turn in their stroll and walk back again to the house.

"Incidentally," asked Jack, "how did he cease to be a liar?"

Margery looked at him openly and frankly.

"Oh, by painting me. I am very truthful."

"Did he absorb any other characteristic?"

"Yes; he became less fantastic for a time. You see I am very unimaginative."

"Then you had better get him to paint another portrait of you while he is doing this. Won't that preserve the balance?"

The fresh air and sunshine were having their legitimate effect on Margery, and had sufficiently cancelled her troubled night. She broke out into a light laugh.

"Oh, that would be too dreadfully complicated," she said. "Let's see – what would happen? He would put his personality into both portraits, and get back some of mine, and so he would cease to be himself and become a watery reminiscence of me. It's as bad as equations. Really, Mr. Armitage, I am beginning to think you believe in it yourself."

"No, I don't; not a bit more than you do. Well, I must say good-bye to Frank, and tell him not to become too astral."

Frank was standing in front of his easel with the charcoal in his hand. He had caught a very characteristic pose of his figure with extraordinary success, and Margery and Jack exchanged a rapid glance as they saw it; for though they had both avowed that they did not believe a word of "Frank's nonsense," they both felt it to be a certain relief when they saw how brilliantly Frank had sketched it in. There was a certain sureness about his lines that seemed to give both Bedlam and Heaven a most satisfactory remoteness. But they both noticed that Frank had drawn the face already and erased it, and it was only represented by a few half-obliterated lines.

Frank did not look up when they entered, and Jack crossed the room to him.

"I'm just off," he said, seeing that the other did not look up, "and I've come to say good-bye. I've enjoyed my visit enormously – quite enormously."

Frank started and winced as if he had been struck, and, looking up, saw Armitage for the first time. He drew his hand over his eyes as if he had just been awakened and his eyes were still heavy with sleep.

"Ah, Jack, I didn't see you. What time is it? Where are you going?"

Even as he spoke he turned to the easel again and went on drawing.

"I'm going away," said Jack. "I'm going to New Quay."

"Of course you are. Well, good-bye. Drop in and see us at any time. I'm very busy," and he was lost in his work.

Jack laid his hand on his shoulder.

"Don't overdo it, old boy," he said. "You soon knock up, you know, if you don't take exercise. And it won't be half so good if you slave at it all day. Half the artistic sense is good digestion."

"No, I'll be very careful," said Frank, half to himself. "Take your hand away, please; I'm drawing in that piece."

"I shall tell them to send breakfast in here at once, Frank," said Margery. "I'm going to have breakfast here with you."

Frank made no reply, and the two left the room together. Armitage was suddenly loath to go, but the carriage was at the door, and it was obviously absurd to stop just because – because Frank had talked a great deal of nonsense the evening before, and had made a wonderfully clever sketch of himself, but for some reason had been dissatisfied with the drawing of the face. Somehow that little point interested him, and he wanted to assure himself that no significance was to be attached to it. Besides, Frank was in better hands than his, for he left behind him this splendidly sensible woman, a sort of apotheosis of common-sense, in whom that rare but prosaic virtue became something keen and subtle. She had said that she thought all this idea of Frank's about his personality was ridiculous. Besides, she could always telegraph to New Quay.

That obliterated face had caught Margery's attention as well as his, and as they walked down the corridor to the front door she said:

"Did you notice that Frank had drawn in the face and then rubbed it out?"

"Yes; I wondered if you had noticed it too."

"Why do you think he did that?" asked Margery.

"I don't know; I suppose it didn't satisfy him."

Margery frowned.

"I don't know either. Frank is usually so rapid about the drawing. And he always draws the face as soon as he has got a few of the lines of the body in. Really I don't know, only I noticed it."

But just before Jack drove off an impulse prompted him to say, "Beach Hotel, New Quay, you know. I will be sure to come if you telegraph."

"Yes, many thanks. I shall remember. It is very good of you to promise to come at once; but I don't think it's very likely, you know, that I shall telegraph. Good-bye."

Margery waited till the carriage disappeared between the trees, and then went in to tell them to send breakfast to the studio at once. And as she walked back there she allowed to herself, with her habitual honesty, that her will was in collision with her inclinations. She had a great gift of forcing herself to do anything which her will told her she had better do. In dealing with other people also her will asserted its predominance, and if it was in collision with theirs they had been heard to remark that she was obstinate, while if it went in harness with them they said, "Dear Margery is so firm!" and congratulated themselves and her. And when, as on this occasion, her will was in collision with her own inclinations, it exhibited itself in a splendid self-control.

She felt a trifle lonely and inadequate when she saw Armitage drive off; but, as she told herself, her sense of loneliness and inadequacy were not due to the fact that she was frightened at being alone with Frank and his ghostly enemies, but because she had determined to fight those ghostly enemies; to force Frank, as far as in her lay, to paint the portrait of himself, and finish it at all costs. This, she persuaded herself, would be a real and final defeat of his fantastic tendencies, his irregularity, his fits of complete laziness whenever ideas did not beat loud at the door of his imagination. It was absurd to sit at home and wait for the idea to call; art had to look for ideas in all sorts of places. And it was with a fine show of justification that she said to herself that many of his wild ideas would be routed if she could only make him go through with this portrait, and see him stand in front of the finished work and say, "It is all I ever hoped it would be, and I am still a sane man." Surely if she could help in any way to make him do that, it would be no slight cause for self-congratulation. Genius was often bitter, but Frank was not that; more often it was fantastic, and Frank should be fantastic no longer.

"What harm can come to him through this?" she reasoned. "I am quite sure" – already she liked to tell herself she was quite sure – "that he will not lose his personality, because such things do not happen. That he will be awfully savage and silent while he is painting I fully expect; but that does not matter. What does matter is that he should see, when it is finished, what a goose he has been."

Breakfast had just been brought in when Margery returned to the studio, but Frank was still working. She sat down at once and began to make tea.

"You'd much better have your breakfast now," she said, "and go on working afterwards; but I suppose, as usual, you will let everything get cold and nasty. Eggs and bacon and cold grouse. I'm going to begin."

Margery helped herself to eggs and bacon, and poured out some tea; but she had scarcely caught the flavor of her first sip when Frank suddenly left his canvas and sat down by her.

"I'm tired," he said, "and my hand is heavy."

"It will be lighter after breakfast," said Margery, cheerfully. "Eat, Frank."

"No, I shall eat soon. I want to sit by you and look at you. Margery darling, what a trial it must be to have me for a husband!"

There was something very wistful and pathetic in his voice, and Margery felt moved.

"Ah, Frank," she said, "I don't find it so."

Frank was looking at her with eager eyes, as a dog looks at his master. He had taken up her hand, and was stroking it gently with his long, nervous fingers. Suddenly he jumped up.

"I see, I see," he said. "I have been drawing something that wasn't me at all. I can do it now. Margery, will you come and stand very close to me, so that when I look in the glass I can see you too?"

Margery rose from her half-eaten breakfast, and went across the room to where his easel was.

"So?" she said.

Frank picked up the charcoal, and began drawing rapidly. In ten minutes he had done what he had been trying to do for the last two hours.

"There," he said, "that is your husband. And now go back to your breakfast, Margery. I must begin to paint at once!"

Margery looked at the face he had drawn.

"Why, it is you," she said. "And, Frank, you look just as you looked when I met you that morning on the beach at New Quay."

"That is what I mean," said Frank.