Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Mrs. Greenock stared at him in amazement. This was not at all her idea of the cultured, refined artist, the man who would say pretty things in beautiful language, and ask to borrow the Penalva Gazette which contained her poem on “A Corner in a Country Church-yard.” She drew on her gloves as if to shield herself from a blustering wind.

  Frank, I am sorry to say, felt an evil pleasure in the shock he had given her. “He had spoken without malice aforethought, but the malice certainly came in when he had finished speaking. What right had this verse-idyl woman to tell him what a portrait should be, to speak to him of that which he hardly dared think of himself, and drag his nightmare out on to the table-cloth?

  His voice rose a tone as he went on.

  “You call one thing pretty, another ugly,” he said. “Believe me, Art knows no such terms. A thing is true or it is false, and the cruelty of it is that if we have as much as a grain of falsehood in our whole sense of truth, the thing is worthless. Therefore, in this picture I am doing I have tried to be absolutely truthful; as you said at dinner, I have tried to paint what I am without extenuation or concealment. Would you like to see it? You would probably call it a hideous caricature, because in this terribly cruel human life no man knows what is good in him, but only what is bad. It is those who love us only who know if there is any good in us—”

  His voice sank again, and as his eye rested on Margery the hardness softened from his face and it was transformed.

  “Dear me, I have been talking a lot of shop, I am afraid,” he said; ‘but I have the privilege or the misfortune — I hardly know which — to be terribly in earnest, and I have committed the unpardonable breach of manners to make you the unwilling recipient of my earnestness. Ah, Margery is going to sing to us.”

  Poor Mrs. Greenock felt as if she had asked for a little bread and been pelted with quartern loaves. She felt almost too sore and knocked about to eat it herself, much less to put pieces in her pocket for Tom and Harry and Jane. But the fact that Margery was singing made it natural for her to be silent, and she finished putting on her gloves, and, so to speak, tidied herself up again. In fact, before they left she had recovered enough to be able to thank Frank for the extremely interesting conversation they had had, and to remind him of his promise to show her the picture.

  “I will send you a note when it is done,” said he. “Margery is going away to-morrow for the inside of two days, and I expect it will be finished in three or four days at the most.”

  CHAPTER VI.

  MARGERY left early next morning, since, by the ingenious and tortuous route pursued by the Cornish lines, it was a day’s journey from Penalva to the Lizard. Frank drove with her to the station, and promised to do as he was told, and not work more than seven hours a day and not less than four. He had quite recovered his equanimity, and spoke of the portrait without fear or despair. But when they got in sight of the station, and again when a puff of white steam and a thin, shrill whistle came to them as they stood on the platform, through the blue-white morning mist, a terror came and looked him in the face, and he clung to Margery like a frightened child.

  “Margery, you will come back tomorrow, won’t you?” he said. “Ah, need you go at all?”

  Margery was disappointed. She had thought that Frank had got over his fantastic fears, he had been so like himself during the drive. But she was absolutely determined to go through with this. To yield once was to yield twice, and she would not yield. Frank must be cured of this sort of thing, and the only way to cure him was to make him do what he feared — to make him give himself absolute final evidence that personalities did not vanish away before portraits like ghosts at daybreak. But, as a matter of fact, Frank’s fear was the fear he had not spoken to her of. The danger of losing her swallowed up the danger of losing himself.

  “Oh, Frank, don’t be a fool!” she said. “Here’s the train. Have you had my bag labelled? Of course I shall be back to-morrow. Good-bye, old boy!”

  And with another whistle and puff of steam the train was off.

  Frank drove home again like a man possessed. Margery had gone, and there remained to him only one thing, and until he was with that time ran to waste. The horses, freshened by the cool, clean air, flew over the hard road, but Frank still urged them on. As soon as they drew up by the door Frank jumped down, leaving the reins on their backs, and went to his studio. There in the corner stood his worst self, and he set to work in earnest. To-day there was no waiting, no puzzling over an idea he could not realize. The evil face smiled as it looked at the yellow little programme, and the long-fingered hands smoothed out its creases with a lingering, loving touch. Desire and the fulfilment of desire were there, and into the soul had the leanness of it entered. And because, as he had said, no man knows the best of himself, but only the worst, there was but little trace in the face of the man who had loved Margery and whom Margery had loved; yet in the eyes was the trace of what had been lost, and if not regret, at least the longing to be able to regret. The better part was not wholly dead, though half smothered under the weight of evil. As he painted he began to realize that it would be so. Had Margery been there, he felt the better part would have been recorded too; but the devil is a highwayman who waits for men who are alone, and he is stronger than a solitary man, though he be St. Anthony himself. But Margery was away, and her absence was almost as the draught that transformed Jekyll into Hyde. So for those two days he worked alone, as he had never worked before, but as he has often worked since, utterly absorbed in his painting, and eating ravenously, but for a few moments only, when his food was brought to him. As the hours went on the conviction came over him that he was right both about the strange fear he had spoken of to Margery and about the other fear of which he had spoken to none. His conscious self seemed to be passing into the portrait, and one by one, like drops of bitter water, his past life flowed higher and higher round him. Far off he thought he could see Margery, but she gave no sign. She did not beckon to him to come, she was not alive to the danger of the rising waters. Soon it would be too late.

  The first evening, after the daylight had fallen and he could no longer paint, he threw himself down on the sofa. The work of the last few days stood opposite him, and the red glow of the sunset, not yet quite faded from the sky, still made it clearly visible, though the value of the colors was lost. Frank felt like a man who, after a long, sleepless night of pain, feels that if only he could forget everything for a moment he might doze off into a slumber that would take an hour or two out of life. But the pain, as it were, stood before him, mastering him.

  It may only have been that his nerves, abnormally excited after the strain of working, played him false; but it seemed to him that, in spite of the fading light, the portrait was as clear as ever; and as he was sitting wondering at this, half encouraging himself to believe it, he was suddenly aware that the figure he had painted cast a shadow on to the background which he had never put there. As he had painted it, the shadow fell on the left side of the face, but now it seemed that the shadow was on the right side of the face, exactly as it would naturally be cast by the light coming from the window. At that moment he knew what fear was — cold fear that clutches at the heart — and he sat there a moment unable to move, almost expecting to hear it speak to him. Then, with an effort of will so strong that it seemed like a straining of the body, he walked up to it, turned it round to the wall, and left the room.

  That night he had an odd dream, the result again of the excitement of the day, but so strangely natural that he hardly knew next morning whether it had happened or not. He dreamed he went back to the studio, finding everything exactly as he had left it — the portrait turned with its face to the wall, and his brushes and palette where he had laid them down when it had become too dark to paint. The servants had brought in lights, and had laid the day’s paper on the table. He was conscious of utter weariness of mind and body, and he longed for Margery, but knew that she was away. The yellow programme of the Café Chantant lay on a shelf of t
he bookcase, where he had put it in the leaves of Jekyll and Hyde, and he took the two down together, as he had done a few days before, and mechanically his mind again retraced the life it had before suggested to him. Suddenly an utter loathing of it all, more complete than he had ever felt, came over him, and he tried to tear the programme up. But it seemed to be made of a thin sheet of some hard substance, and it would not tear. Then he tried to crush it under his foot, but it would not even bend. The bitter, unimaginable agony of not being able to destroy it awoke him, and he found morning had come.

  All that day he worked, and once again as evening fell he sat on the sofa, staring blankly at what he had done. Once again the shadow shifted on the painted face, and fell where the light from the window would naturally cast it, and once again cold fear clutched at his heart. At that moment he heard steps along the passage, steps which he knew, and Margery entered.

  “Frank,” she said, opening the door, “are you there?”

  A long figure sprang off the sofa and ran across the room to her, half smothering her in caresses.

  “Oh, Margery, I’m so glad you’ve come,” he said—” so glad. You don’t know what it has been without you. Margery, promise you won’t go away again till it is finished. You won’t go away again, will you?”

  Margery shuddered and drew back a moment, she hardly knew why.

  “Why, Frank, what’s the matter?” she asked. “Have you seen a ghost — or what?”

  “The place is full of ghosts,” said he. “But they won’t trouble me any more now you’ve come back. Let’s go out, away from here.”

  “But I want to see the portrait first,” said she.

  “Ah, the portrait!”

  Frank took two quick steps to where it was standing, and wheeled it round with its face to the wall.

  “Not to-night,” he said. “Please don’t look at it to-night. You can’t see it by this light.”

  “I know I can’t,” said she, “but I only wanted to peep at it to see if it had got on.”

  “It has got on,” said Frank, “it has got on wonderfully. But don’t look at it to-night. It is terrible after sunset.”

  Margery raised her eyebrows.

  “Oh, don’t be so silly,” she said. “However, I don’t mind waiting till to-morrow. Is it good?”

  “Come out of this place, and I’ll tell you about it.”

  Outside the west was still luminous with the sunken sun, and as they stepped out on to the terrace Margery turned to look at Frank. His face seemed terribly tired and anxious, and there were deep shades beneath his eyes. But again, as a few moments before in the shadow, she involuntarily shrank from him. There was something in his face more than what mere weariness and anxiety would produce — something she had seen in the face he had sketched two days ago, and the something she knew she had shrunk from before, though she had not seen it. But in a moment she pulled herself together; if she were going to go in for fantastic fears too, the allowance of sanity between them would not be enough for daily consumption. Frank, however, noticed it at once.

  “Ah, you too,” he said, bitterly—” even you desert me.”

  Margery took hold of his arm.

  “Don’t talk sheer, silly nonsense,” she said. “I don’t know what you mean. I know what’s the matter with you. You’ve been working all day and not going out.”

  “Yes, I know I have. I couldn’t help it. But never mind that now. I have got you back. Margery, you don’t give me up really, do you?”

  “Frank, what do you mean?” she asked.

  “I — I mean — I mean nothing. I don’t know what I am saying. I’ve been working too hard, and I have got dazed and stupid.”

  He turned to look at the blaze on the waters to the west.

  “Ah, how beautiful it is!” he exclaimed. “I wish I were a landscape-painter. But you are more beautiful, Margery. But it is safer to be a landscape-painter, so much safer!”

  Margery stopped and faced him. “Now, Frank, tell me the truth. Have you been out since I left you yesterday morning?”

  “No.”

  “How long have you been working each day?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t look at my watch. All day, I suppose; and the days are long — terribly long — and the nights too. The nights are even longer, but one can’t work then.”

  Margery was frightened, and, being frightened, she got angry with herself and him.

  “Oh, you really are too annoying,” she said, with a stamp of her foot. “You get yourself into bad health by overworking and not taking any exercise — you’ve got the family liver, you know — and then you tell me the house is full of ghosts, and conjure up all sorts of absurd fancies about losing your personality, frightening yourself and me. Frank, it’s too bad!”

  Frank looked up suddenly at her. “You too? Are you frightened too? God help me if you are frightened too!”

  “No, I’m not frightened,” said Margery, “but I’m angry and ashamed of you. You’re no better than a silly child.”

  “Margery,” said he, in his lowest audible tone, “I’ll never touch the picture again if you wish. Tell me to destroy it and I will, and we’ll go for a holiday together. I — I want a holiday; I’ve been working too hard. Or it would be better if you went in very quietly and cut it up. I don’t want to go near it. It doesn’t like me. Tell me to destroy it.”

  “No, no!’’ cried Margery, “that’s the very thing I will not do. And fancy saying you want a holiday! You’ve just had two months’ holiday. But that’s no reason why you should work like a lunatic. Of course any one can go mad if they like — it’s only a question of whether you think you are going to.”

  “Margery, tell me truthfully,” said Frank, “do you think I am going mad?”

  “Of course I don’t. I only think you are very, very silly. But I’ve known that ever since I knew you at all. It’s a great pity.”

  They strolled up and down for a few moments in silence. The magic of Margery’s presence was beginning to work on Frank, and after a little space of silence he laughed to himself almost naturally.

  “Margery, you are doing me good,” he said. “I’ve been terribly lonely without you.”

  “And terribly silly, it appears.”

  “Perhaps I have. Anyhow, I like to hear you tell me so. I should like to think I had been silly, but I don’t know.”

  “I’m afraid if you’ve been silly the portrait will be silly too,” said she. “Is it silly, Frank?”

  “It’s wonderful,” said be, suddenly stopping short. “It is not only like me, but it’s me — at least, if you will stop with me while I work it will be all me. I shall feel safer if you are there.”

  “Then I won’t be there,” said Margery. “You are not a child any longer, and you must work alone. You always say you can’t work if any one else is there.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose it matters,” said Frank, with returning confidence. “The fact that I know you are in the house will be enough. But the portrait — it’s wonderful! I can’t think why I loathe it so.”

  “You loathe it because you have been working at it in a ridiculous manner,” said Margery. “To-morrow I regulate your day for you. I shall leave you your morning to yourself, and after lunch you shall come out with me for two hours at least. We will go up some of those little creeks where we went two years ago. Come in now. It’s nearly dinner-time.”

  When they were alone and a portrait was in progress they often sat in the studio after dinner; but to-night, when Margery proposed it, Frank started up from where he was sitting.

  “No, Margery,” he said, “please let us sit here. I don’t want to go to the studio at all.”

  “It’s the scene of your crime,” said Margery.

  Frank turned pale.

  “What crime?” he asked. “What do you know of my crimes?”

  Margery put down the paper she was reading and burst out laughing.

  “You really are too ridiculous,” she said. “Ar
e you and I going to play the second act of a melodrama? Your crime of working all day and taking no exercise.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Frank. “Well, don’t let us visit the scene of my crimes tonight.”

  Margery had determined that, whatever Frank did, she would behave quite naturally, and not allow herself to indulge even in disturbing thoughts. So she laughed again, and wiped off Frank’s remark from her mind.

  Otherwise his behavior that evening was quite reassuring. Often when he was painting he had an aversion to being left alone in the intervals, and though this perhaps was more marked than usual, Margery did not allow it to disquiet her. The painting of a portrait was always rather a trying time, though Frank’s explanation of this did not seem to her in the least satisfactory.

  “When one paints,” he had said to her once, “one is much more exposed to other influences. One’s soul, so to speak, is on the surface, and I want some one near me who will keep an eye on it, and I feel safe if I have your eye on me, Margery. You know, when religious people have been to church or to a revivalist meeting, they are much more susceptible to what they see, whether it is sin or sanctity; that is just because their souls have come to the surface. It is very unwise to go to see a lot of strange people when you are in that state. No one knows what influence they may have on you. But I know what influence you have on me.”

  “I wish my influence would make you a little less silly,” she had replied.

  Margery went to bed quite happy in her mind, except on one point. She had been gifted by nature with a superb serenity which it took much blustering wind to ruffle, and in the main Frank’s behavior was different, not in kind, but only in degree, from what she had seen before when he was painting. He always got nervous and excited over a picture which he really gave himself up to; he always talked ridiculous nonsense about personalities and influences, and though his childlike desire to be with her when he was not working was more accentuated than usual, she drew the very natural conclusion that he was more absorbed than usual in his work.