Frank got up, as his custom was, very early next morning, and went
straight to the studio; and Margery, keeping to the resolve of the
night before, left him alone all morning. She had sent his breakfast in
to him, but ate hers alone in her morning-room.
The knowledge that she was with him had had a quieting effect on Frank,
and he had slept deep and dreamlessly. As he walked along the passage
to his studio he felt that he hardly feared what he would find there.
How could the ghost of what was dead in him have any chance, so to
speak, against the near, living reality of Margery and Margery's love?
Was not good more powerful than evil? But when he entered the studio
and had wheeled the portrait back into its place, the supremacy of one
side of his nature over the other was reversed instantaneously--almost
without consciousness of transition. The power which the thing his
hands had been working out for the last few days had acquired was
becoming overwhelming. When Margery was with him, actually with him,
she still held up his better part; but when he was alone with this,
all that was good sank like lead in an unplumbed sea. He was like some
heathen who makes with his own hands an idol of stone or wood, and then
bows down before that which he himself made, believing that it is lord
over him.
All morning Margery successfully fought against her inclination to go
to Frank, for she was clear in her own mind that he had to work out
his salvation alone. He was afraid of being alone, and the only way
to teach him not to be afraid was to let him learn in solitude that
there was nothing to be afraid of. So she yawned an hour away over a
two-volume novel by a popular author, wrote a letter to her mother,
ordered dinner, and tried to think she was very busy. But it was with
a certain sense of relief that she heard the clock strike one, and,
shutting up her book, she went to the studio.
Frank was standing with his back to the door, and did not look up from
his work when she entered. She came up behind him and saw what he had
wished her not to see the night before, and understood why. He always
worked rapidly though never hurriedly, and she knew at once what the
finished picture would be like. The "idea" was recorded.
She gave a sudden start and a little cry as sharp and involuntary as
the cry of physical pain, for the meaning of the first rough sketch
which had puzzled her was now worked out, and she saw before her the
face of a guilty man. She shrank and shuddered as she had shrunk when
her husband ran to meet her across the studio the night before, and
as she had shrunk from him when she saw his face, for the face that
looked out from that canvas was the same as her husband's face which
had so startled and repelled her. It was the face of a man who has
wilfully stifled certain nobler impulses for the sake of something
wicked, and who was stifling them still. It was the face of a man who
has fallen, and when she turned to look at Frank she saw that he had
in the portrait seized on something that stared from every line of his
features.
"Ah, Frank," she cried, "but what has happened? It is horrible, and
you--you are horrible, too!"
Frank did not seem to hear, for he went on painting; but she heard him
murmur below his breath:
"Yes, horrible, horrible!"
For the moment Margery lost her nerve completely. She was
incontrollably frightened.
"Frank, Frank!" she cried, hysterically.
Then she cursed her own folly. That was not the way to teach him. She
laid one hand on his arm, and with her voice again in control, "Leave
off painting," she said--"leave off painting at once and look at me!"
This time he heard. His right hand, holding a brush filled with paint,
dropped nervelessly to his side, and the brush slid from his fingers on
to the floor.
In that moment his face changed. The vicious, guilty lines softened and
faded, and his expression became that of a frightened child.
"Ah, Margery," he cried, "what has happened? Why were you not here?
What have I been doing?"
Margery had got between him and the picture, and before he had finished
speaking she had wheeled it round with its face to the wall.
"You've been working long enough," she said, "and you are coming out
for a bit."
"Yes, that will be nice," said Frank, picking up the brush he had
dropped and examining it. "Why, it is quite full of paint," he added,
as if this remarkable discovery was quite worth comment.
"You dear, how extraordinary!" said Margery. "You usually paint with
dry brushes, don't you?"
"Oh, I've been painting all morning, so I have!" said Frank, in the
same listless, tired voice, and his eye wandered to the easel which
Margery had turned round.
"No, you've got to let it alone," said she, guessing his intention.
"You are not going to work any more till this afternoon."
Frank passed his hands over his eyes.
"I'm rather tired," he said. "I think I won't go for a walk. I'll sit
down here if you will stop with me."
"Very good, for ten minutes; and then you must come out. It's a lovely
morning, and we'll only stroll."
Frank looked out of the window.
"My God! it is a lovely morning," he said--"it is insolently lovely.
I've been dreaming, I think. Those trees look as if they were dreaming,
too. I wonder if they have such horrible dreams as I? I think I must
have been asleep. I feel queer and only half awake, and I've had bad
dreams--horrid dreams."
"Did he have nasty dreams?" said she, sympathetically. "He said he was
going to work so hard, and he's dreamed instead."
Frank seemed hardly to hear her.
"It began by my wondering whether I ought to go on with that portrait
or not," he said. "I kept thinking--"
"You shall go on with it, Frank," broke in Margery, suddenly, afraid of
letting herself consent--"I tell you that you must go on with it."
Frank roused himself at the sound of her eager voice.
"You don't understand," he said. "I know that I am running a certain
risk if I do. I told you about one of those risks I was running, didn't
I? It was that, partly, I was drawing about all morning. I thought I
was in danger all the time. I was running the risk of losing myself,
or becoming something quite different to what I am. I ran the risk of
losing you, myself--all I care for, except my Art."
"And with a big 'A,' dear?" asked Margery.
"With the very biggest 'A,' and all scarlet."
"The _Scarlet Letter_," said Margery, triumphantly, "which you were
reading last week? That accounts for _that_ symptom. Go on and be more
explicit!"
"I know you think it is all absurd," said Frank, "but I am a better
judge than you. I know myself better than you know me--better, please
God, than you will ever know me. However, you won't understand that.
But with regard to what I told you: when I paint a picture, you think
the net result is I and a picture, instead of I alone. But you are
wrong. There is only I just as before; and inasmuch as there is a
picture, there is less of myself here in my clothes."
"A picture is oil-paint," said Margery, "and you buy that at shops."
"Yes, and brushes too," said Frank; "but a picture is not only
oil-paint and brushes."
"Go on," said Margery.
"Well, have I got any right to do it? In other pictures it has not
mattered because one recuperates by degrees, and one does not put all
one's self into them. But painting this I feel differently. I am
going into it, slowly but inevitably. I shall put all I am into it--at
least, all I know of while I am painting; and what will happen to
this thing here" (he pointed to himself) "I can't say. All the time I
was painting, that thought with others was with me, as if it had been
written in fire on my brain. Have I got any business to run risks which
I can't estimate? I know I have a certain duty to perform to you and
others, and is it right for me to risk all that for a painted thing?"
He stood up.
"Margery," he said, "that is not all. Shall I tell you the rest? There
is another risk I run much more important, and much more terrible. May
I tell you?"
"No, you may not," said Margery, decidedly. "It simply makes these
fantastic fears more real to you to speak of them. You shall not
tell me. And now we are going out. But I have one thing to tell you.
Listen to me, Frank," she said, standing up and facing him. "As you
said just now, you know nothing of the risk you run. All you do know
is that it is in your power, as you believe, and as I believe, to do
something really good if you go on with that picture. I don't say that
I shall like it, but it may be a splendid piece of work without that.
Are you an artist, or a silly child, frightened of ghosts? I want you
to finish it because I think it may teach you that you have a large
number of silly ideas in your head, and when you see that none of them
are fulfilled it may help you to get rid of them--in fact, I believe
I want you to finish it for the same reason for which you are afraid
to finish it. You say you will lose your personality, or some of your
personality. I say you will get rid of a great many silly ideas. If you
lose that part of your personality I shall be delighted--in fact, it
is the best thing that could happen to you. As for your other fears, I
don't know what they are, and I don't want to know. To speak of them
encourages you to believe in them. There! Now you've worked enough for
the present, and we'll go for a stroll till lunch; and after lunch
we'll go out again, and you can work for another hour or two before it
gets dark."
It required all Margery's resolution and self-control to get through
this speech. It was not a pretty thing that had looked out at her from
the easel, and the look she had seen twice on Frank's face, and felt
once, was not pretty either. That his work had a very definite and
startling effect on him she knew from personal experience, but that
anything could happen to him she entirely declined to believe. He was
cross, irritable, odious, as she often told him, when he was interested
in his work, but when it was over he became calm, unruffled, and
delightful again. She was fully determined he should do this portrait,
and to himself she allowed that it would be a relief when it was
finished.
Frank got up at once with unusual docility. As a rule, he scowled and
snarled when she fetched him away from his work, and made himself
generally disagreeable. This uncommon state of things gave Margery
great surprise.
"Well, why don't you say you'll be blessed if you come?" she asked,
moving towards the door.
"Ah, I'm quite willing to come," he said. "Why shouldn't I come? I
always would come anywhere with you."
He followed her towards the door, and in passing suddenly caught sight
of the easel. He looked round like a child afraid of being detected in
doing something it ought not, and before Margery could stop him he had
taken two quick steps towards it and turned it round. In a moment his
mood changed.
"Do you see that?" he said in a whisper, as if the thing would overhear
him. "That's what I was all the morning when you were not here, and I
knew I oughtn't to be painting. Wait a minute, Margy; I want to finish
a bit I was working at!"
His face grew suddenly pale, and the look of guilt descended on it like
a mist, blotting out the features.
"That's what you are making of me," he said. "Give me my palette.
Quick! I sha'n't be a minute."
But Margery caught up, as she had often done before, his palette and
brushes from the table where he had left them, and fled with them to
the door.
"Give them to me at once!" shouted Frank, holding out his hand for
them, but still looking at the picture.
Margery gave one long-drawn breath of pain and horror when she looked
at Frank's face, and then, a blessed sense of humor coming to her aid,
she broke out into a light laugh--half hysterical and half amused.
"Oh, Frank," she cried, "you look exactly like Irving in 'Macbeth' when
he says, 'This is a sorry sight! I never saw a sorrier.'"
At the sound of her voice, more particularly at the sound of her laugh,
he turned and looked at her, and the horror faded from his face.
"What have I been saying?" he asked.
"You said, 'Give me the daggers!'--oh no, Lady Macbeth says that. Well,
here they are. Come to me, Frank, and I'll give you them."
Frank walked obediently up to her, as she stood in the entrance to the
passage, and as soon as he was outside the studio she banged the door
and stood in front of it triumphantly.
"Here are the daggers," she said, "but you are not going to use them
now. You shall finish that picture, but not like a madman. And if you
look like Macbeth any more I shall simply die of it; or I shall behave
like Lady Macbeth, and then there will be a pair of us. I shall walk in
my sleep down to the sea, and wash my hands all day till it gets quite
red. Now you're coming out. March!"