Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

“Ah, my God!” cried Frank, suddenly.

  “What is it?” asked she.

  Frank ran the boat into a little hollow made in the side of the creek by a small stream, now nearly summer dry, and came and sat down on the bank just above her.

  “Margy dear,” he said, “I want to ask you something quite soberly. I am not excited nor overwrought in any way, am I? I am quite calm and sensible. It is not as if that horrible thing were with us. It is about that I want to talk to you — about the picture. All this morning, as I told you, I knew I ought not to go on with it, but I went on because it had a terrible evil fascination for me. And now, too, I know I ought not to go on with it. It is wicked. This morning I thought of that afternoon we spent here before, and I knew I was sacrificing that. Then I did not care, but now you are all the world to me, as you always have been except when I am with that thing. It was that first day we came here to this very spot that was fixed in my mind. And now we are here in the same place, and on just such another day, let us talk about it.”

  “Oh, Frank, don’t be a coward,” said Margery, appealingly. “You know exactly what I think about it. Of course all my inclination goes with you, but, but—” She raised herself from the boat and put her hand on his knee.

  “Frank, you don’t doubt me, do you? There is nothing in the world I could weigh against you and your love, but we must be reasonable. If you had a very strong presentiment that you would be drowned as we sailed home I should very likely be dreadfully uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t have you walk back instead for anything. There are many things of which we know nothing — presentiments, fears, all the horrors, in fact — and it would be like children to take them into our reckoning or let them direct us. It is for your sake, not mine, that I want you to go on with that portrait. If I followed my inclination I should say, ‘Tear it up and let us sit here together for ever and ever.’” Frank leaned forward and spoke entreatingly.

  “Margy, tell me to tear it up — ah, do, dear, and you may do with me whatever you wish — only tell me to destroy it!”

  Margery shook her head hopelessly. “Don’t disappoint me, Frank,” she said. “I care for nothing in the world compared to you; but what reason could I give for doing this? I think you often get excited and upset over your work, but that is worth while, because you do good work and you are not permanently upset. You wouldn’t give up being an artist for that. And if I saw any reason for telling you to stop this, I would do it. It is because I care for you and all your possibilities that I tell you to go on with it.” Margery thought for a moment of the portrait and the terrible likeness it bore to her husband, and she hesitated. But no; the whole thing was too fantastic, too vague. She did not even know what she was afraid of.

  “It isn’t the pleasant or the easy course I am taking,” she continued. “That wasn’t a pleasant look on your face when you shouted at me to give you your palette this morning?”

  Frank looked puzzled.

  “What did I do?” he asked. “When did I shout at you?”

  “This morning, just before we came out. You shouted awfully loud, and you looked like Macbeth. It is just because I don’t want you to look like Macbeth permanently that I insist on your going on with it. I want you to get Macbeth out of your system. That fantastic idea of yours, that you would run a risk, was the original cause of all this nonsense, and when you have finished the picture and seen that you have run no risk, you will know that I am right.”

  Frank stood up.

  “To-morrow may be too late,” he said. “Do you really tell me to go on with it?”

  “Frank, dear, don’t be melodramatic. You were just as nice as you could be all the way up here. Yes, I tell you to go on with it.”

  Frank’s arms dropped by his side, and for a moment he stood quite still. The leaves whispered in the trees, and the rippling stream tapped against the boat. Then for a moment the breeze dropped, and the boat swung round with the current. The water made no sound against it as it moved slowly round, and there was silence — tense, absolute silence.

  Then Margery lay back in the boat and laughed. Her laugh sounded strange in her own ears.

  “I am sure this is one of the occasions on which we ought to hear only the beating of our own hearts; but, as a matter of fact, I don’t. Come, Frank, don’t stand there like a hop-pole.”

  Frank slowly let his eyes rest on her, but he did not answer her smile.

  Margery paused a moment.

  “Come,” she said again, “let us go a little higher. There is plenty of water.”

  Frank pushed the boat out from the bank and jumped in.

  “Then it is all over,” he said. “I must go home at once. I must get on with the portrait immediately. I cannot last if I am not quick. There’s no time to lose, Margy. Please let me get back at once.”

  He paused a moment.

  “Margy, give me one kiss, will you?” he said. “Perhaps, perhaps — Ah, my darling, cannot you do what I ask?”

  He had raised himself and clung round her neck, kissing her again and again. But she, afraid of yielding, afraid of sacrificing her reason even to that she loved best in the world, unwound his arms.

  “No, Frank, I have said I cannot.

  Oh, my clear, don’t you understand? Frank, Frank!”

  But he shook his head and took up the oar.

  “Why are you in such a hurry?” she asked, after a moment, seeing he did not look at her again. “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Frank, quickly. “I only know that if I am to finish it I must finish it at once. It will take us nearly an hour to get home, and it is too dark to work after five.”

  The wind, since that sudden lull, had blown only fitfully by gusts, and by the time they had emerged into the estuary it had died out altogether.

  “The wind has dropped,” said he. “The winds and the stars fight against me. We sha’n’t be able to sail.”

  He took up the sculls, and rowed as if he were rowing a race.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Margery. “Why are you in such a hurry? It is not late.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “There is a hurry. I must get back. Oh, why can’t you understand? I must have you or it, and you — you have given me up.”

  “Frank, what do you mean?” asked Margery, bewilderedly.

  “You have given me up for it — it, that painted horror you saw, that — that — Margery, do listen to me just once more. You don’t understand, dear, but I don’t mind that. Only trust me; only tell me to stop painting it — to destroy it!”

  He leaned on his oars a moment, waiting for her answer.

  “What is the matter with you?” she asked. “Why do you speak to me like that? What nonsense it all is! I can’t advise you to give it up because I think it much better for you that you should go on with it.”

  He waited for her answer, and then bent to the oars again. The green water hissed by them as the light boat cut through the calm surface. Margery was sitting in the stern managing the rudder, and it required all her nerve to guide the boat among the rocks that stood out from the shallower water. Frank’s terrible earnestness troubled her, but it did not shake her resolution. Look at it what way she might, her deliberate conclusion was that it was better he should go on with it. There was no reason — there really was no reason why he should not, and there was every reason why he should. She wondered if he had better see a doctor. That he was in good health two days ago she knew for certain, but the mind can react upon the body, and his mind was certainly out of sorts. However, she had decided that the best ultimate cure for his mind was to finish the picture, and she determined to let things be.

  “When will it be done?” she asked, after a pause.

  “To-morrow,” said Frank, without stopping rowing, “and the part that is important will be done to-night. Don’t come into the studio, please, till it is too dark to paint. I can’t paint with you there.”

  Margery felt à little hurt in her mind. She ha
d meant to sit with him, as he had asked her to that morning. However, it was best to let him have his way, and she said no more.

  It was scarcely half an hour after they had left the creek that they came opposite the little iron staircase leading down to the rocks. The tide was out, and Frank beached the boat on the shingle at the bottom of the rocks, jumped out, and drew it in. His pale face was Hushed and dripping with sweat.

  “You’d better change before you begin work,” said Margery, as he helped her out, “or you’ll catch cold.”

  Frank burst out with a grating, unnatural laugh.

  “Change! I should think I am going to change! I wonder if you’ll like the change!”

  He walked on in front of her, and when he reached the terrace broke into a run. Margery heard the door of the studio bang behind him.

  CHAPTER IX.

  MARGERY followed Frank more slowly up to the house. She had won her point; she had refused in the face of all her own inclinations and his feelings to tell him to leave the picture unfinished or to destroy it, and having succeeded in that for which she had been so intensely anxious, the reaction followed. Left to herself, she wondered if she had been right; whether she were wise to trust to reason rather than instinct; whether she had not perhaps in some dim, uncomprehended way put Frank in a position of terrible danger. But where or what, in the name of all that is rational, could the danger be? Yet there rose up before her, as if in answer to her question, the remembrance of Frank’s face while he was painting. Could she account for that rationally? She was bound to confess she could not.

  It was a great relief to know that it would soon be over. The important part Frank had told her would be done to-day, in an hour or two. In the whole range of human possibilities she could think of nothing which could happen in an hour or two which would justify Frank’s fears. He was not well, she thought; but she regarded the finishing of this portrait as a sort of slight surgical operation which would remove the cause of his mental disease from which his bodily indisposition sprang.

  For the present she had to get through an hour or two alone, and she busied herself with small, unnecessary duties, and read more of the small, unnecessary book, by a popular author, which we have referred to before. A little before five the post came in, and among other letters for her was a note from Jack Armitage.

  “And how goes the portrait?” he concluded, “and am I to be summoned to see a descent into Bedlam or an ascent into Heaven? Oddly enough, there is an artist here of transcendental tendencies who holds exactly the same views as Frank. He believes in the danger of losing one’s personality, but he also believes in the danger of raising ghosts from one’s past life if one paints a portrait of one’s self. Luckily, Frank feels only the danger of losing his personality, and does not think about the ghost-raising. I am glad for his peace of mind — and, perhaps, for you too — that this is so. To fight two sets of ghosts simultaneously might well be too much for one woman, even for you!”

  Margery laid down the letter, and the voice of reason within her became gradually less insistent, and then died away. Frank had spoken of another danger more terrible than the one he had told her about, and she would not hear him. There had been a look on his face that frightened and horrified her, and she would not think of it. Once on the beach at New Quay he had wished to tell her something, and she would not hear him.

  But the thing was impossible. True; but she was afraid. She felt suddenly unable to cope with his fears, now that she had begun to share them. Then Armitage’s last words came back to her—” Beach Hotel, New Quay. I will come at once.”

  Margery felt ashamed of yielding, but she justified her yielding to herself. The presence of another person in the house would be a good thing. She knew the absolute necessity of keeping her nerves in perfect order, and there is nothing so infectious as disorders of the nerves.

  She got her hat and walked straight off to the village in order to send the telegram. She felt as if she did not even wish her own servants to know she was doing it, and preferred to send it herself than giving it to one of them. The sun was already sinking to its setting, but there would be plenty of time to walk down and get back before it was dark. Frank had said that the portrait was terrible after sunset, and though she tried to laugh at the thought, the laugh would not come. Decidedly, Armitage’s presence would be a good thing.

  It took her a minute or two to send the telegram satisfactorily, but eventually she wrote: “Nothing is wrong, but please come. Frank is rather trying.”

  She left the office and walked back quickly up the village, only to run into Mrs. Greenock, at the corner by the vicarage. Though she was anxious to get back, it was impossible not to exchange a few words.

  “And how does the portrait get on?” asked that estimable woman. “I had such a deeply interesting conversation with Mr. Trevor about it when we dined at your house. Is it wonderful? Is it a revelation? Does it show us what he is, not only what he looks like?”

  “Frank’s very much excited about it,” said Margery, “which is always a good sign. I think he is satisfied.”

  “And when will it be finished?” asked Mrs. Greenock. “Your husband was so good as to tell me I might see it when it was done. I am looking forward to an intellectual as well as an artistic treat.”

  “It ought to be done to-morrow,” said Margery. “He has been working very hard.”

  “A giant,” murmured Mrs. Greenock—” a gigantic personality. Are you walking home? May I not accompany you a little way? I too have been hard at work to-day, and I have come out to get a breath of fresh air, and perhaps an idea or two.”

  Mrs. Greenock walked with Margery up to the lodge-gates, beguiling the tedium of the way with instructive discourse, and kept her several moments longer there, bidding her observe the exquisite glow in the western sky where the sun had already gone down.

  Margery saw with annoyance that Mrs. Greenock had been quite right — the sun had already set, and the twilight was falling in darker and darker layers over the earth when she reached the house. She went quickly up the passage leading to the studio and opened the door.

  Frank was standing on the other side of the room, with his face turned towards her, a piece of crumpled paper in his hands. The shadow cast from the window fell on the right side of his face, but in the dim light she could see that there was that expression of guilt and horror on it which she had seen there twice before.

  “Why, Frank,” she said, “you can’t paint by this light!”

  Something stirring at her elbow made her turn round quickly. Frank was sitting in a deep chair in the shadow, staring blankly before him.

  She had mistaken the portrait for her husband.

  For a moment neither of them spoke or moved. Then Frank got out of the chair where he was sitting and crossed the room to where the horrible facsimile of himself stood against the wall, and putting himself unconsciously, Margery felt, into the same attitude, turned to her.

  “I have worked quickly to-night,” he said. “I have almost finished.”

  Margery looked suddenly back at the portrait, and noticed with a cold, growing horror that she had been the victim of some illusion. The light from the window cast no shadow at all on to it, and the shadow on the face was painted on the left side, not the right.

  Frank paused, and Margery knew that her telegram would be useless.

  The matter was between herself and Frank. If help could reach him it must come from her. In a moment she understood all. The vague fear, the disconnected hints, the thing he had wished to tell her once at New Quay, and once again that morning, the guilty face, her own shrinking, formed links of a connected chain. She had shrunk from what was evil, as Frank had shrunk from it and loathed it when she was there; but the fascination of which, interpreted by his artistic passion, he had been unable to resist. His own skill had raised the thing that he had thought was dead into new life, and now it asserted its old supremacy.

  In a few moments he spoke again.


  “Do you see how like we are?” he said, speaking slowly, as if he had some difficulty in finding words. “No wonder you mistook it for me. You cannot see it properly in this light; in the daylight the likeness is even more extraordinary. Is it not clever of me to have painted such a picture? There is no picture like it in the world. It must go to the Academy next year, Margery, as a posthumous work. It is a creation. I have made a man!”

  Frank paused, but Margery said nothing.

  “There were some things about me you did not know before — things which were part of me, and had been vital to me,” he went on. “Once or twice I wished to tell you of them, but you would not hear. Now you see them. I think you cannot help seeing them. You can see them in the portrait’s face and in mine — clearest in mine; but tomorrow they will be quite as clear in the other. They say that hearing firing brings corpses to the surface. I dare say it is true — at any rate, I have brought corpses to the surface. They are not pretty; corpses seldom are.”

  Margery came a step nearer to him, though her flesh cried out against it.

  “Frank! Frank!” she said.

  “Wait a moment,” said he. “I wish to tell you more. A critic has no right, as I said, to criticise unless he knows more about the picture than the artist, but the artist may criticise his own picture. This is my picture — all mine. And it is me. It is all true. Do you remember last Sunday, Margy, when Greenock read about the judgment books being opened, and every man being judged by what was written in them? By - the - way, Mrs. Greenock writes sonnets. He said she was an accomplished sonneteer. Well, do you know what those books are? They are nothing else than the faces, the real faces, of the men who are being judged. What chance do you think I shall have, for that is my book you see painted there — an illuminated manuscript. Why did you wish me to do it so much? Can you read it all? Can you see the Café Chantant in it? Can you see Paris, and the cruelty and the sweetness and bitterness of it? Can you see Claire in it, petite Claire, and the end, the whole of it, the pleasure, the weariness, the — the morgue? Yes, that was where I saw her last.”