Read Ebook: The Judgment Books: A Story by Benson E F Edward Frederic Hatherell William Illustrator

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Ebook has 540 lines and 24355 words, and 11 pages

"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.

"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."

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.

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