Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “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 tiling 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. Realty, 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.

  CHAPTER IV.

  MARGERY finished her breakfast with a sense of relief. She wanted this portrait to be done quickly and easily, without incident or difficulty, and the fact that Frank had completely got over his odd inability to draw the face as he wished was very encouraging. She left a parting injunction with him to eat his breakfast before lunch, and take himself out for half an hour’s stroll.

  Frank got his palette ready and stood brush in hand. He glanced at his own reflection in the looking-glass and back to the face on the canvas, then back again.

  “It is very odd,” he murmured to himself. “I saw it so clearly just now.”

  He stood looking from one to the other, and a frown gathered on his face. When Margery had been there with him he had seen something quite different to what he saw now. He had seen himself as she saw him, but the face which frowned back at him from the looking-glass was the face of another man.

  He laid the palette and the dry brushes down, and took a piece of paper and began drawing on it. Line for line he reproduced the face he had drawn earlier in the morning, which he had erased once.

  “It is no good,” he said; “I must draw what I am, not what Margery thinks me.” And, taking apiece of breadcrumb from the breakfast-table, he rubbed out the face which he had drawn when Margery was standing at his side. He looked again at the sketch he had made. He felt that he could not draw it any other way. The eyelids were a little drooped; the whole face a little faded, but still eager. The noises of a gay city were in its ears; the eyes, half unfocussed, looking outward and a little sideways, were half amused, half wearied. The mouth smiled slightly, and the lips were parted; but the smile was not altogether wholesome. But through it all the face had a wistful expression — the tired eyes seemed to long for something different from the things which were sweet and bitter and bad, but had not the strength to cease from looking on them.

  Frank took up his crayon again. There was still something about the mouth which did not satisfy him. He looked at his reflection and back again several times before he saw what was wanting. Then he made two rapid strokes, increasing the line of shadow in the month, and the thing was finished. The expression he had tried to catch for so long was there, and he wondered whether Margery would see it with the same eyes as he did.

  Later in the morning Margery strolled into the studio again, expecting to find him painting. He was drawing busily when she entered, and did not look up. The face which she had seen him draw at breakfast-time was gone, and some faintly indicated lines of another face had taken its place. Frank always drew with extreme care, but usually with great rapidity, and to her eyes he seemed to have done nothing since she had left him.

  “Well, how goes it?” she asked.

  “It goes slowly, but I am working very carefully,” he said.

  He stood away from the portrait and let her see it. He had strengthened the outline since she had been in at breakfast, and sketched in the background.

  “Why, it’s splendid!” she said. “That’s exactly the way you loll on the edge of the table. Frank, it’s awfully good. But why have you rubbed out the face?” Frank looked up.

  “Ah, yes; I rubbed it out directly after you left me, and made a sketch of what it was going to be like, and I forgot to put it in again. I’ll do it now. There is a great deal of careful work about the hands, too.”

  “What are you doing?” asked Margery, examining them. “It looks as if you were smoothing out a crumple
d piece of paper.”

  “Ah, you think that?” said Frank, absently. “I wondered if you would think I was crumpling a piece of paper up.”

  “Oh no,” said she, confidently; “you are smoothing it out. What does it mean? What’s the paper — a programme or something?”

  “Yes, a programme or something.” He emphasized the faint lines on the face, and again stood aside.

  “Look!”

  “Oh, Frank, that won’t do at all. You look as if you were a convict or something horrible, or as if that piece of paper in your hands was an unpaid bill which you were trying not to pay.” Frank laughed a little bitter laugh.

  “My drawing has been very successful,” he said.

  Margery was still looking at the face. “It is horrible,” she said. “Yet I don’t see where it is wrong. It’s very like you, somehow.”

  She looked from the picture to her husband, and saw that his face was puzzled and anxious.

  “I see what it is,” she said. “You’ve been worrying and growling over it till your face really began to look something like what you were drawing. Oh, Frank, you haven’t had breakfast yet. Sit down and have it at once. It all comes of having no breakfast.”

  Is that all, do you think?” asked he. “Is that the face of a man who is only guilty of not eating his breakfast? It looks to me guilty, somehow.”

  “Yes, that’s why it’s guilty. Your face is guilty, too. When you’ve eaten your breakfast and smoked that horrid little black pipe of yours, it won’t look guilty any more.”

  Frank was looking at what he had done with the air of a disinterested spectator.

  “It seems to me that that brute there has done something worse than not eat his breakfast,” he said.

  “Nonsense. I’m going to get you some fresh tea because this is cold, and there’s that sweet little cold grouse dying, so to speak, to be eaten. You begin on it while I get the tea.”