Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  CHAPTER II.

  JACK ARMITAGE, as we know, though he was aware it was tea-time, was filling his pipe. He had accomplished this to his satisfaction, and had just got it comfortably under way when Mrs. Trevor, also with tea in her mind, came down the steps leading from the terrace and strolled towards him.

  “Where’s Frank?” she asked. “I thought he said he was going to sit about with you till tea?”

  “He said so,” said Jack; “but he went into his studio to get a book, and he has not appeared since.”

  “Well, I suppose he’s in the house,” she said. “In any case it’s five, and we sha’n’t get more than two hours on the river. So come in.”

  Jack often caught himself regretting he was not a portrait-painter when he looked at Mrs. Trevor. She was, he told himself, one of the beauties of all time, and her black hair, black eyes, and delicately chiselled nose had caused many young men on the slightest acquaintance to wish that she had not decided to change her maiden name to Trevor. It was also noticeable that as their acquaintance became less slight their regret became proportionately keener. Frank had done a portrait of her, the first that brought him prominently into notice, and, as Jack thought, his best. By one of those daring experiments which in his hands seemed always to succeed, he had represented her a tall, stately figure, dressed in white, standing in front of a great Chinese screen covered with writhing dragons in blue and gold, a nightmare of hideous forms in wonderful colors. It was a bold experiment, but certainly, to Jack’s mind, he had managed with miraculous success to bring out what was almost as characteristic of his wife’s mind as her beauty was of her body, and which, for want of a better word, he called her wholesomeness. The contrast between that and the exquisite deformities behind her hit eyes, so to speak, straight in the face. But it hit fair, and it was triumphant.

  Mrs. Trevor paused on the edge of the gravel-path and picked up the lonely tennis-ball.

  “To think that it should have been there all the time!” she said. “How blind you are, Mr. Armitage!”

  Jack rose and knocked out his pipe. “The Fates are unkind,” he said. “You call me in to tea just when I’ve lit my pipe, and then go and blame me for not finding the tennis-ball, which you told me was not worth while looking for.”

  “I didn’t know it was in the gutter,” she said. “I thought it had gone into the flower-beds.”

  “Nor did I know it was in the gutter, or I should have looked for it there.”

  Margery laughed.

  “I wish you were stopping on longer,” she said, “and not going to-morrow. Surely you needn’t go?”

  “You are too kind, but the Fates are still unkind,” he said. “I have already put it off a week, during which time my brother has been languishing alone at New Quay.”

  “To New Quay? I didn’t know you were going there. Frank and I know New Quay very well.”

  Frank was in the drawing-room when they went in, giving orders that the studio should be thoroughly swept out and dusted that evening.

  “I’m going to begin painting to-morrow,” he announced, abruptly, to the others as they came in.

  Margery turned to Jack.

  “No more tennis for me unless you stop,” she said. “Have you ever been with us when Frank is painting? I see nothing of him all day, and he gobbles his meals and scowls at the butler.”

  The footman came in again with the tea-things.

  “And take that big looking-glass out of the spare bedroom,” said Frank to him, “and put it in the studio.”

  “What do you want a looking-glass for?” asked his wife, as the man left the room.

  Frank got up, and walked restlessly up and down. “I begin to-morrow,” he said; “I’ve got the idea ready. I can see it. Until then it is no use trying to paint; but when that comes, it is no use not trying.”

  “But what’s the looking-glass for?” repeated Margery.

  “Ah, yes, I haven’t told you. I’m going to paint a portrait of myself.”

  “That’s my advice,” observed Margery. “I’ve often suggested that to you, haven’t I, Frank?”

  “You have. I wonder if you did wisely? This afternoon, however, other things suggested it to me.”

  “Have you been meditating?” asked Jack, sympathetically. “I’ve been meditating all afternoon. Why didn’t you come out, as you said you would, and meditate with me?”

  “I had a little private meditation of my own,” said Frank. “It demanded solitude.”

  “Is it bills asked Margery. “You know, dear, I told you that you’d be sorry for paying a hundred guineas for that horse.”

  Frank laughed.

  “No, it’s not bills — at least, not bills that make demands of cash. Give me some tea, Margy.”

  The evening was warm and fine, but cloudless, and after dinner the three sat out on the terrace listening to the footfalls of night stealing on tiptoe in the woods round them. The full moon, shining through white skeins of drifting cloud, cast a strange, diffused light, and the air, alert with the coming rain, seemed full of those delicatescents which are imperceptible during the day. Once a hare ran out from the cover across the lawn, where it sat up for a few moments, with ears cocked forward, until it heard the rustle of Margery’s dress, as she moved to look in the direction of Frank’s finger pointing at it, and then scuttled noiselessly off.

  They had been silent for some little time, but at last Frank spoke. He wanted to tell Margery of his fantastic fear, that fear which she might hear about; or, rather, to let her find it out, and pour cool common-sense on it.

  “I feel just as I did on my last night at home, before I went to school for the first time,” he said. “I feel as if I had never painted a portrait before. I have had a long holiday, I know; but still it is not as if I had never been to school before. I wonder why I feel like that?”

  “Most of one’s fears are for very harmless things,” observed Jack. “One sees a bogie and runs away, but it is probably only a turnip and a candle.

  Naturally one is nervous about a new thing. One doesn’t quite know what it may turn out to be. But, as a rule, if it isn’t a turnip and a candle, it is a sheet and a mask. Equally inoffensive really, but unexpected.”

  “Ah, but I don’t usually feel like that,” said Frank. “In fact, I never have before. One is like a plant. When one has flowered once, it is fairly certain that the next flowers will be like the last, if one puts anything of one’s self into it. Of course if one faces one’s self one may put out a monstrosity, but I am not facing myself. Yet, somehow, I am as afraid as if I were going to produce something horrible and unnatural. But I can’t face myself; I can’t blossom under glass.”

  “That’s such a nice theory for you, dear,” said Margery, “especially if you are inclined to be lazy.”

  Frank made a little hopeless gesture of impatience.

  “Lazy, industrious — industrious, lazy; what have those to do with it? You don’t understand me a bit. When the time has come that I should paint, I do so inevitably; if the time has not come, it is impossible for me to paint. I know that you think artists are idle, desultory, Bohemian, irregular. That is part of their nature as artists. A man who grinds out so much a day is not and cannot be an artist. The sap flows, and we bud; the sap recedes, and for us it is winter-time. You do not call a tree lazy in winter because it does not put out leaves?”

  “But a tree, at any rate, is regular,” said Margery; “besides, evergreens.”

  “Yes, and everlasting flowers,” said Frank, impatiently. “The tree is only a simile. But we are not dead when we don’t produce any more than the tree is dead in December.”

  Margery frowned. This theory of Frank’s was her pet aversion, but she could not get him to give it up.

  “Then do you mean to say that all effort is valueless?”

  “No, no!” cried Frank; “the whole process of production is frantic, passionate effort to realize what one sees. But no amount of effort will make one see anything
. I could do you a picture, which you would probably think very pretty, every day, if you liked, of ‘Love in a Cottage,’ or some such inanity.”

  Jack crossed his legs, thoughtfully.

  “The great objection of love in a cottage,” he said, “is that it is so hard to find a really suitable cottage.”

  Frank laughed. “A courageous attempt to change the subject,” he said.

  “But I’m not going to talk nonsense to-night.”

  “I think you’re talking awful nonsense, dear,” said Margery, candidly.

  “You will see I am serious in a minute,” said Frank. “I was saying I could paint that sort of thing at any time, but it would not be part of me. And the only pictures worth doing are those which are part of one’s self. Every real picture tells you, of course, something about what it represents; but it tells you a great deal about the man who painted it, and that is the most important of the two. And I cannot — and, what is more, I don’t choose to — paint anything into which I do not put part of myself.”

  “Mind you look about the woods after I’ve gone,” said Jack, “and if you see a leg or an arm of mine lying about, send it to me, Beach Hotel, New Quay.”

  Frank threw himself back in his chair with a laugh.

  “My dear Jack,” he said, “for a clever man you are a confounded idiot. No one ever accused you of putting a nail-paring of your own into any of your pictures. Of course you are a landscape-painter — that makes a certain difference. A landscape-painter paints what he sees, and only some of that; a portrait-painter — a real portrait-painter — paints what he knows and feels, and when he paints the virtue goes out of him.”

  “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.