PART II.

THE GRAVE.

In the morning the storm was still fierce. Clouds streamed across a sky

that bent lower and lower towards the aspiring sea blanched with foam.

There was little light, and the Rectory parlour looked grim and wintry

when Sir Graham and Uniacke met there at breakfast time. The clergyman

was pale and seemed strangely discomforted and at first unable to be

natural. He greeted his guest with a forcible, and yet flickering, note

of cheerfulness, abrupt and unsympathetic, as he sat down behind the

steaming coffee-pot. The painter scarcely responded. He was still

attentive to the storm. He ate very little.

"You slept?" asked Uniacke presently.

"Only for a short time towards dawn. I sat at my window most of the

night."

"At your window?" Uniacke said uneasily.

"Yes. Somebody--a man--I suppose it must have been the Skipper--came out

from the shadow of this house soon after I went to my bedroom, and stole

to that grave by the churchyard wall."

"Really," said Uniacke. "Did he stay there?"

"For some time, bending down. It seemed to me as if he were at some

work, some task--or perhaps he was only praying in his mad way, poor

fellow!"

"Praying--yes, yes, very likely. A little more coffee?"

"No, thank you. The odd thing was that after a while he ceased and

returned to this house. One might have thought it was his home."

"You could not see if it was the Skipper?"

"No, the figure was too vague in the faint stormy light. But it must

have been he. Who else would be out at such a time in such a night?"

"He never heeds the weather," said Uniacke.

His pale face had suddenly flushed scarlet, and he felt a pricking as of

needles in his body. It seemed to him that he was transparent like a

thing of glass, and that his guest must be able to see not merely the

trouble of his soul, but the fact that was its cause. And the painter

did now begin to observe his host's unusual agitation.

"And you--your night?" he asked.

"I did not sleep at all," said Uniacke quickly, telling the truth with a

childish sense of relief, "I was excited."

"Excited!" said Sir Graham.

"The unwonted exercise of conversation. You forget that I am generally a

lonely man," said the clergyman, once more drawn into the sin of

subterfuge, and scorching in it almost like a soul in hell.

He got up from the breakfast-table, feeling strangely unhappy and

weighed down with guilt. Yet, as he looked at the painter's worn face

and hollow eyes, his heart murmured, perhaps deceitfully, "You are

justified."

"I must go out. I must go into the village," he said.

"In this weather?"

"We islanders think nothing of it. We pursue our business though the

heavens crack and the sea touches the clouds."

He went out hurriedly and with the air of a man painfully abashed. Once

beyond the churchyard, in the plough-land of the island road, he

continued his tormented reverie of the night. Never before had he done

evil that good might come. He had never supposed that good could come

out of evil, but had deemed the supposition a monstrous and a deadly

fallacy, to be combated, to be struck down to the dust. Even now he was

chiefly conscious of a mental weakness in himself which had caused him

to act as he had acted. He saw himself as one of those puny creatures

whose so-called kind hearts lead them into follies, into crimes. Like

many young men of virtuous life and ascetic habit, Uniacke was disposed

to worship that which was uncompromising in human nature, the slight

hardness which sometimes lurks, like a kernel, in the saint. But he was

emotional. He was full of pity. He desired to bandage the wounded world,

to hush its cries of pain, to rock it to rest, even though he believed

that suffering was its desert. And to the individual, more especially,

he was very tender. Like a foolish woman, perhaps, he told himself

to-day as he walked on heavily in the wild wind, debating his deed of

the night and its consequences.

He had erased the name of Pringle from the stone that covered little

Jack, the wonder-child. And he felt like a criminal. Yet he dreaded the

sequel of a discovery by the painter, that his fears were well founded,

that his sea urchin had indeed been claimed by the hunger of the sea.

Uniacke had worked in cities and had seen much of sad men. He had learnt

to read them truly for the most part, and to foresee clearly in many

instances the end of their journeys. And his ministrations had taught

him to comprehend the tragedies that arise from the terrible intimacy

which exists between the body and its occupant the soul. He could not

tell, as a doctor might have been able to tell, whether the morbid

condition into which Sir Graham had come was primarily due to ill-health

of the mind acting upon the body or the reverse. But he felt nearly sure

that if the painter's fears were proved suddenly to him to be well

founded, he might not improbably fall into a condition of permanent

melancholia, or even of active despair. Despite his apparent

hopelessness, he was at present sustained by ignorance of the fate of

little Jack. He did not actually know him dead. The knowledge would

knock a prop from under him. He would fall into some dreadful abyss. The

young clergyman's deceit alone held him back. But it might be discovered

at any moment. One of the islanders might chance to observe the

defacement of the tomb. A gossiping woman might mention to Sir Graham

the name that had vanished. Yet these chances were remote. A drowned

stranger boy is naught to such folk as these, bred up in familiarity

with violent death. Long ago they had ceased to talk of the schooner

"Flying Fish," despite the presence of the mad Skipper, despite the

sound of church bells in the night. Fresh joys, or tragedies, absorbed

them. For even the island world has its record. Time plants his

footsteps upon the loneliest land. And the dwellers note his onward

tour.

Uniacke reckoned the chances for and against the discovery of his

furtive act of mercy and its revelation to his guest. The latter

outnumbered the former. Yet Uniacke walked nervously as one on the verge

of disaster. In the Island cottages that morning he bore himself

uneasily in the presence of his simple-minded parishioners. Sitting

beside an invalid, whose transparent mind was dimly, but with ardent

faith, set on Heaven, he felt hideously unfitted to point the way to

that place into which no liar shall ever come. He was troubled, and

prayed at random for the dying--thinking of the dead. At the same time

he felt himself the chief of sinners and knew that there was a devil in

him capable of repeating his nocturnal act. Never before had he gathered

so vital a knowledge of the complexity of man. He saw the threads of him

all ravelled up. When he finished his prayers at the bedside, the

invalid watched him with the critical amazement of illness.

He went out trembling and conscience-stricken. When he reached the

churchyard on his way homewards, he saw Sir Graham moving among the

graves. He had apparently just come out from the Rectory and was making

his way to the low stone wall, over which shreds of foam were being

blown by the wind. Uniacke hastened his steps, and hailed Sir Graham in

a loud and harsh voice. He paused, and shading his eyes with his arched

hands, gazed towards the road.

Uniacke hurried through the narrow gate and joined his guest, who looked

like a man startled out of some heavy reverie.

"Oh, it is you," he said. "Well, I--"

"You were going to watch the sea, I know. It is worth watching to-day.

Come with me. I'll take you to the point--to the nigger."

"The nigger?"

"The fishermen call the great black rock at the north end of the Island

by that name. The sea must be breaking magnificently."

Uniacke took Sir Graham's arm and led him away, compelling him almost as

if he were a child. They left the churchyard behind them, and were soon

in solitary country alone with the roar of wind and sea. Branching

presently from the road they came into a narrow, scarcely perceptible,

track, winding downward over short grass drenched with moisture. The

dull sheep scattered slowly from them on either side of the way.

Presently the grass ceased at the edge of an immense blunt rock, like a

disfigured head, that contemplated fixedly the white turmoil of the sea.

"A place for shipwreck," said Sir Graham. "A place of death."

Uniacke nodded. The painter swept an arm towards the sea.

"What a graveyard! One would say the time had come for it to give up its

dead and it was passionately fighting against the immutable decree. Is

Jack somewhere out there?"

He turned and fixed his eyes upon Uniacke's face. Uniacke's eyes fell.

"Is he?" repeated Sir Graham.

"How can I tell?" exclaimed Uniacke, almost with a sudden anger. "Let us

go back."

Towards evening the storm suddenly abated. A pale yellow light broke

along the horizon, almost as the primroses break out along the horizon

of winter. The thin black spars of a hurrying vessel pointed to the

illumination and vanished, leaving the memory of a tortured gesture

from some sea-thing. And as the yellow deepened to gold, the Skipper set

the church bells ringing. Sir Graham opened the parlour window wide and

listened, leaning out towards the graves. Uniacke was behind him in the

room. Vapour streamed up from the buffeted earth, which seemed panting

for a repose it had no strength to gain. Ding dong! Ding dong! The wild

and far-away light grew to flame and faded to darkness. In the darkness

the bells seemed clearer, for light deafens the imagination. Uniacke

felt a strange irritability coming upon him. He moved uneasily in his

chair, watching the motionless, stretched figure of his guest. Presently

he said:

"Sir Graham!"

There was no reply.

"Sir Graham!"

He got up, crossed the little room and touched the shoulder of the

dreamer. Sir Graham started sharply and turned a frowning face.

"What is it?"

"The atmosphere is very cold and damp after the storm."

"You wish me to shut the window? I beg your pardon."

He drew in and shut it, then moved to the door.

"You are going out?" said Uniacke uneasily.

"Yes."

"I--I would not speak to the Skipper, if I were you. He is happier when

he is let quite alone."

"I want to see him. I want him to sit for me."

"To sit!" Uniacke repeated, with an accent almost of horror.

"Yes," said Sir Graham doggedly. "I have a great picture in my mind."

"But--"

"The Skipper's meeting with his drowned comrades, in that belfry tower.

He will stand with the ropes dropping from his hands, triumph in his

eyes. They will be seen coming up out of the darkness, grey men and

dripping from the sea, with dead eyes and hanging lips. And first among

them will be my wonder-child, on whom will fall a ray of light from a

wild moon, half seen through the narrow slit of the deep-set window."

"No, no!"

"What do you say?"

"Your wonder-child must not be there. Why should he? He is alive."

"You think so?"

Uniacke made no reply.

"I say, do you think so?"

"How can I know? It is impossible. But--yes, I think so."

The clergyman turned away. A sickness of the conscience overtook him

like physical pain. Sir Graham was by the door with his hand upon it.

"And yet," he said, "you do not believe in intuitions. Nothing tells

you whether that woman you loved is dead or living. You said that."

"Nothing."

"Then what should tell you whether Jack is dead or living?"

He turned and went out. Presently Uniacke saw his dark figure pass, like

a shadow, across the square of the window. The night grew more quiet by

slow degrees. The hush after the storm increased. And to the young

clergyman's unquiet nerves it seemed like a crescendo in music instead

of like a diminuendo, as sometimes seems the falling to sleep of a man

to a man who cannot sleep. The noise of the storm had been softer than

the sound of this increasing silence in which the church bells presently

died away. Uniacke was consumed by an apprehension that was almost like

the keen tooth of jealousy. For he knew that the Skipper had ceased from

his patient task and Sir Graham did not return. He imagined a colloquy.

But the Skipper's madness would preserve the secret which he no longer

knew, and, therefore, could not reveal. He made the bells call Jack

Pringle. He would never point to the defaced grave and say, "Jack

Pringle lies beneath this stone." And yet sanity might, perhaps, return,

a rush of knowledge of the past and recognition of its tragedy.

Uniacke took his hat and went to the door. He stood out on the step.

Sea-birds were crying. The sound of the sea withdrew moment by moment,

as if it were stealing furtively away. Behind, in the rectory passage,

the servant clattered as she brought in the supper.

"Sir Graham!" Uniacke called suddenly. "Sir Graham!"

"Yes."

The voice came from somewhere in the shadow of the church.

"Will you not come in? Supper is ready."

In a moment the painter came out of the gloom.

"That churchyard draws me," he said, mounting the step.

"You saw the Skipper?"

"Yes, leaving."

"Did he speak to you?"

"Not a word."

The clergyman breathed a sigh of relief.

In the evening Uniacke turned his pipe two or three times in his fingers

and said, looking down:

"That picture of yours--"

"Yes. What of it?"

"You will paint it in London, I suppose?"

"How can I do that? The imagination of it came to me here, is sustained

and quickened by these surroundings."

"You mean to paint it here?" the clergyman faltered.

Sir Graham was evidently struck by his host's air of painful

discomfiture.

"I beg your pardon," he said hastily. "Of course I do not mean to

inflict myself upon your kind hospitality while I am working. I shall

return to the inn."

Uniacke flushed red at being so misunderstood.

"I cannot let you do that. No, no! Honestly, my question was only

prompted by--by--a thought--"

"Yes?"

"Do not think me impertinent. But, really, a regard for you has grown up

in me since you have allowed me to know you--a great regard indeed."

"Thank you, thank you, Uniacke," said the painter, obviously moved.

"And it has struck me that in your present condition of health, and

seeing that your mind is pursued by these--these melancholy sea thoughts

and imaginings, it might be safer, better for you to be in a place less

desolate, less preyed upon by the sea. That is all. Believe me, that is

all."

He spoke the last words with the peculiar insistence and almost

declamatory fervour of the liar. But he was now embarked upon deceit and

must crowd all sail. And with the utterance of his lie he took an abrupt

resolution.

"Let us go away together somewhere," he exclaimed, with a brightening

face. "I need a holiday. I will get a brother clergyman to come over

from the mainland and take my services. You asked me some day to return

your visit. I accept your invitation here and now. Let me come with you

to London."

Sir Graham shook his head.

"You put me in the position of an inhospitable man," he said. "In the

future you must come to me. I look forward to that. I depend upon it.

But I cannot go to London at present. My house, my studio are become

loathsome to me. The very street in which I live echoes with childish

footsteps. I cannot be there."

"Sir Graham, you must learn to look upon your past act in a different

light. If you do not, your power of usefulness in the world will be

crushed."

The clergyman spoke with an intense earnestness. His sense of his own

increasing unworthiness, the fighting sense of the necessity laid upon

him to be unworthy for this sick man's sake, tormented him, set his

heart in a sea of trouble. He strove to escape out of it by mental

exertion. His eyes shone with unnatural fervour as he went on:

"When you first told me your story, I thought this thing weighed upon

you unnecessarily. Now I see more and more clearly that your unnatural

misery over a very natural act springs from ill-health. It is your body

which you confuse with your conscience. Your remorse is a disease

removable by medicine, by a particular kind of air or scene, by waters

even it may be, or by hard exercise, or by a voyage."

"A voyage!" cried Sir Graham bitterly.

"Well, well--by such means, I would say, as come to a doctor's mind. You

labour under the yoke of the body."

"Do you think that whenever your conscience says, 'You have done wrong'?

Tell me!"

Uniacke, who had got up in his excitement, recoiled at these words which

struck him hard.

"I--I!" he almost stammered. "What have I got to do with it?"

"I ask you to judge yourself, to put yourself in my place. That is all.

Do you tell me that all workings of conscience are due to obscure bodily

causes?"

"How could I? No, but yours--"

"Are not. They hurt my body. They do not come from my body's hurt. And

they increase upon me in this place, yes, they increase upon me."

"I knew it," cried Uniacke.

"Why is that?" said Sir Graham, with a melancholy accent. "I feel, I

begin to feel that there must be some powerful reason--yes, in this

island."

"There cannot be. Leave it! Leave it!"

"I am held here."

"By what?"

"Something intangible, invisible--"

"Nothing, then."

"All-powerful. I cannot go. If I would go, I cannot. Perhaps--perhaps

Jack is coming here."

The painter's eyes were blazing. Uniacke felt himself turn cold.

"Jack coming here!" he said harshly. "Nonsense, Sir Graham. Nobody ever

comes here."

"Dead bodies come on the breast of the sea."

The painter looked towards the window, putting himself into an attitude

of horrible expectation.

"Is it not so?" he asked, in a voice that quivered slightly as if with

an agitation he was trying to suppress.

Uniacke made no reply. He was seized with a horror he had not known

before. He recognised that the island influence mysteriously held his

guest. After an interval he said abruptly:

"What is your doctor's name, did you say?"

"Did I ever say whom I had consulted?" said Sir Graham, almost with an

invalid's ready suspicion, and peering at the clergyman under his thick

eyebrows.

"Surely. But I forget things so easily," said Uniacke calmly.

"Braybrooke is the man--Cavendish Square. An interesting fellow. You may

have heard of his book on the use of colour as a sort of physic in

certain forms of illness."

"I have. What sort of man is he?"

"Very small, very grey, very indecisive in manner."

"Indecisive?"

"In manner. In reality a man of infinite conviction."

"May I ask if you told him your story?"

"The story of my body--naturally. One goes to a doctor to do that."

"And did that narrative satisfy him?"

"Not at all. Not a bit."

"Well--and so?"

"I did not tell him my mental story. I explained to him that I suffered

greatly from melancholy. That was all. I called it unreasoning

melancholy. Why not? I knew he could do no more than put my body a

little straight. He did his best."

"I see," said Uniacke, slowly.

That night, after Sir Graham had gone to bed, Uniacke came to a

resolution. He decided to write to Doctor Braybrooke, betray, for his

guest's sake, his guest's confidence, and ask the great man's advice in

the matter, revealing to him the strange fact that fate had led the

painter of the sea urchin to the very edge of the grave in which he

slept so quietly. No longer did Uniacke hesitate, or pause to ask

himself why he permitted the sorrow of a stranger thus to control, to

upset, his life. And, indeed, is the man who tells us his sorrow a

stranger to us? Uniacke's creed taught him to be unselfish, taught him

to concern himself in the afflictions of others. Already he had sinned,

he had lied for this stricken man. He, a clergyman, had gone out in the

night and had defaced a grave. All this lay heavy on his heart. His

conscience smote him. And yet, when he saw before him in the night the

vision of this tortured man, he knew that he would repeat his sin if

necessary.

The next day was Sunday. He sat down and tried to think of the two

sermons he had to preach. The sea lay very still on the Sabbath morning,

still under a smooth and pathetic grey sky. The atmosphere seemed that

of a winter fairyland. All the sea-birds were in hiding. Small waves

licked the land like furtive tongues seeking some dainty food with sly

desire. Across the short sea-grass the island children wound from school

to church, and the island lads gathered in knots to say nothing. The

whistling of a naughty fisherman attending to his nets unsabbatically

pierced the still and magically cruel air with a painful sharpness.

People walked in silence without knowing why they did not care to speak.

And even the girls, discreet in ribbons and shining boots, thought less

of kisses than they generally did on Sunday. The older people, sober by

temperament, became sombre under the influence of sad, breathless sky,

and breathless waters. The coldness that lay in the bosom of nature soon

found its way to the responsive bosom of humanity. It chilled Uniacke in

the pulpit, Sir Graham in the pew below. The one preached without heart.

The other listened without emotion. All this was in the morning. But at

evening nature stirred in her repose and turned, with the abruptness of

a born coquette, to pageantry. A light wind got up. The waves were

curved and threw up thin showers of ivory spray playfully along the

rocks. The sense of fairyland, wrapped in ethereal silences, quivered

and broke like disturbed water. And the grey womb of the sky swelled in

the west to give up a sunset that became tragic in its crescendo of

glory. Bursting forth in flame--a narrow line of fire along the sea--it

pushed its way slowly up the sky. Against the tattered clouds a hidden

host thrust forth their spears of gold. And a wild-rose colour descended

upon the gentle sea and floated to the island, bathing the rocks, the

grim and weather-beaten houses, the stones of the churchyard, with a

radiance so delicate, and yet so elfish, that enchantment walked there

till the night came down, and in the darkness the islanders moved on

their way to church. The pageant was over. But it had stirred two

imaginations. It blazed yet in two hearts. The shock of its coming,

after long hours of storm, had stirred Uniacke and his guest strangely.

And the former, leaving in the rectory parlour the sermon he had

composed, preached extempore on the text, "In the evening there shall be

light."

He began radiantly and with fervour. But some spirit of contradiction

entered his soul as he spoke, impelling him to a more sombre mood that

was yet never cold, but rather impassioned full of imaginative despair.

He was driven on to discourse of the men who will not see light, of the

men who draw thick blinds to shut out light. And then he was led, by the

egoism that so subtly guides even the best among men, to speak of those

fools who, by fostering darkness, think to compel sunshine, as a man may

mix dangerous chemicals in a laboratory, seeking to advance some cause

of science and die in the poisonous fumes of his own devilish brew. Can

good, impulsive and radiant, come out of deliberate evil? Must not a

man care first for his own soul if he would heal the soul of even one

other? Uniacke spoke with a strange and powerful despair on this

subject. He ended in a profound sadness and with the words of one

scourged by doubts.

There was a pause, the shuffle of moving feet. Then the voice of the

clerk announced the closing hymn. It was "Lead, Kindly Light," chosen by

the harmonium player and submitted to Uniacke, who, however, had failed

to notice that it was included in the list of hymns for the day. The

clerk's voice struck on him like a blow. He stared down from the pulpit

and met the upward gaze of his guest. Then he laid his cold hands on the

wooden ledge of the pulpit and turned away his eyes. For he felt as if

Sir Graham must understand the secret that lay in them. The islanders

sang the hymn lustily, bending their heads over their books beneath the

dull oil lamps that filled the church with a dingy yellow twilight.

Alone, at the back of the building, the mad Skipper stood up by the

belfry door and stared straight before him as if he watched. And

Uniacke's trouble increased, seeming to walk in the familiar music which

had been whistled by Jack Pringle as he swarmed to the mast-head, or

turned into his bunk at night far out at sea. Sir Graham had spoken of

intuitions. Surely, the clergyman thought, to-night he will feel the

truth and my lie. To-night he will understand that it is useless to

wait, that the wonder-child can never come to this island, for he came

on the breast of the sea long ago. And if he does know, now, at this

moment, while the islanders are singing,

"And with the morn those angel faces smile--"

how will he regard me, who have lied to him and who have preached to

him, coward and hypocrite? For still the egoism was in Uniacke's heart.

There is no greater egoist than the good man who has sinned against his

nature. He sits down eternally to contemplate his own soul. When the

hymn was over Uniacke mechanically gave the blessing and knelt down. But

he did not pray. His mind stood quite still all the time he was on his

knees. He got up wearily, and as he made his way into the little vestry,

he fancied that he heard behind him a sound as of some one tramping in

sea-boots upon the rough church pavement. He looked round and saw the

bland face of the clerk, who wore perpetually a little smile, like that

of a successful public entertainer. That evening he wrote to Doctor

Braybrooke.

On the morrow Sir Graham began the first sketch for his picture, "_The

Procession of the Drowned to their faithful Captain_."

Three mornings later, when Uniacke came to the breakfast-table, Sir

Graham, who was down before him, handed to him a letter, the envelope of

which was half torn open.

"It was put among mine," he said in apology, "and as the handwriting

was perfectly familiar to me, I began to open it."

"Familiar?" said Uniacke, taking the letter.

"Yes. It bears an exact resemblance to Doctor Braybrooke's writing."

"Oh!" said Uniacke, laying the letter aside rather hastily.

They sat down on either side of the table.

"You don't read your letter," Sir Graham said, after two or three

minutes had passed.

"After breakfast. I don't suppose it is anything important," said the

clergyman hastily.

Sir Graham said nothing more, but drank his coffee and soon afterwards

went off to his work. Then Uniacke opened the letter.

"CAVENDISH SQUARE,

_London, Dec.--_

"DEAR SIR:

"I read your letter about my former patient, Sir Graham Hamilton,

with great interest. When he consulted me I was fully aware that he

was concealing from me some mental trouble, which reacted upon his

bodily condition and tended to retard his complete recovery of

health. However, a doctor cannot force the confidence of a patient

even in that patient's own interest, and I was, therefore, compelled

to work in the dark, and to work without satisfaction to myself and

lasting benefit to Sir Graham. You now let in a strange light upon

the case, and I have little doubt what course would be the best to

pursue in regard to the future. Sir Graham's nervous system has

broken down so completely that, as often happens in nervous cases,

his very nature seems to have changed. The energy, the remarkable

self-confidence, the hopefulness and power of looking forward, and

of working for the future, which have placed him where he is--these

have vanished. He is possessed by a fixed idea, and imagines that it

is this fixed idea which has preyed upon him and broken him down.

But my knowledge of nerve-complaints teaches me that the fixed idea

follows on the weakening of the nervous system, and seldom or never

precedes it. I find it is an effect and not a cause. But it is a

fact that the fixed idea which possesses a man under such

circumstances is often connected, and closely, with the actual cause

of his illness. Sir Graham Hamilton is suffering from long and

habitual overwork in connection with the sea; overwork of the

imagination, of the perceptive faculty, and in the mere mechanical

labour of putting on canvas what he imagines and what he perceives.

In consequence of this overstrain and subsequent breakdown, he has

become possessed by a fixed sea-idea, and traces all his

wretchedness to this episode of the boy and the picture. You will

say I did not succeed in curing him because I did not discover what

this fixed idea was. How can that be, if the idea comes from the

illness and not the illness from the idea. In reply I must inform

you that a tragic idea, once it is fixed in the mind of a man, can,

and often does, become in itself at last a more remote, but

effective, cause of the prolonged continuance of the ill-health

already started by some other agent. It keeps the wound, which it

has not made, open. It is most important, therefore, that it should,

if possible, be banished, in the case of Sir Graham as in other

cases. Your amiable deception has quite possibly averted a tragedy.

_Continue in it, I counsel you._ The knowledge that his fears are

well founded, that the boy--for whose fate he morbidly considers

himself entirely responsible--has in very truth been lost at sea,

and lies buried in the ground beneath his feet, might, in his

present condition of invalidism, be attended by most evil results.

Some day it is quite possible that he may be able to learn all the

facts with equanimity. But this can only be later when long rest and

change have accomplished their beneficent work. It cannot certainly

be now. Endeavour, therefore, to dissuade him from any sort of

creative labour. Endeavour to persuade him to leave the island.

Above all things, do not let him know the truth. It is a sad thing

that a strong man of genius should be brought so low that he has to

be treated with precautions almost suitable to a child. But to a

doctor there are many more children in the world than a statistician

might be able to number. I wish I could take a holiday and come to

your assistance. Unfortunately, my duties tie me closely to town at

the present. And, in any case, my presence might merely irritate

and alarm our friend.

"Believe me,

Faithfully yours,

JOHN BRAYBROOKE."

Uniacke read this letter, and laid it down with a strange mingled

feeling of relief and apprehension. The relief was a salve that touched

his wounded conscience gently. If he had sinned, at least this

physician's letter told him that by his sin he had accomplished

something beneficent. And for the moment self-condemnation ceased to

scourge him. The apprehension that quickly beset him rose from the

knowledge that Sir Graham was in danger so long as he was in the Island.

But how could he be persuaded to leave it? That was the problem.

Uniacke's reverie over the letter was interrupted by the appearance of

the painter. As he came into the room, the clergyman rather awkwardly

thrust the doctor's letter into his pocket and turned to his guest.

"In already, Sir Graham?" he said, with a strained attempt at ease of

manner. "Ah! work tires you. Indeed you should take a long holiday."

He spoke, thinking of the doctor's words.

"I have not started work," the painter said. "I've--I've been looking at

that grave by the church wall--the boy's grave."

"Oh!" said Uniacke, with sudden coldness.

"Do you know, Uniacke, it seems--it seems to me that the gravestone has

been defaced."

"Defaced! Why, what could make such an idea come to you?" exclaimed the

clergyman. "Defaced! But--"

"There is a gap in the inscription after the word 'Jack,'" the painter

said slowly, fixing a piercing and morose glance on his companion. "And

it seems to me that some blunt instrument has been at work there."

"Oh, there was always a gap there," said Uniacke hastily, touching the

letter that lay in his pocket, and feeling, strangely, as if the contact

fortified that staggering pilgrim on the path of lies--his conscience.

"There was always a gap. It was a whim of the Skipper's--a mad whim."

"But I understood he was sane when his shipmate was buried? You said

so."

"Sane? Yes, in comparison with what he is now. But one could not argue

with him. He was distraught with grief."

Sir Graham looked at Uniacke with the heavy suspicion of a sick man, but

he said nothing more on the subject. He turned as if to go out. Uniacke

stopped him.

"You are going to paint?"

"Yes."

Again Uniacke thought of the doctor's advice.

"Sir Graham," he said, speaking with obvious hesitation, "I--I would not

work."

"Why?"

"You are not fit to bear any fatigue at present. Creation will

inevitably retard your recovery."

"I am not ill in body, and work is the only panacea for a burdened mind.

If it cannot bring me happiness, at least--"

"Happiness!" Uniacke interrupted. "And what may not bring that! Why, Sir

Graham, even death--should that be regarded as a curse? May not death

bring the greatest happiness of all?"

The painter's forehead contracted, but the clergyman continued with

gathering eagerness and fervour:

"Often when I pray beside a little dead child, or--or a young lad, and

hear the mother weeping, I feel more keenly than at any other time the

fact that blessings descend upon the earth. The child is taken in

innocence. The lad is bereft of the power to sin. And their souls are

surely at peace."

"At peace," said the painter heavily. "Yes, that is something. But the

mother--the mother weeps, you say."

"Human love, the most beautiful thing in the world must still be

earth-bound, must still be selfish."

"But--"

"Sir Graham, I'll confess to you even this, that on Sunday evening,

when, after the service, we sang that hymn, 'Lead, Kindly Light,' I

thought would it not be a very beautiful thing if the body mouldering

beneath that stone in the churchyard yonder were indeed the body of--of

your wonder-child."

"Uniacke!"

"Yes, yes. Don't you remember how he looked up from his sordid misery to

the rainbow?"

"How can I ever forget it?"

"Does that teach you nothing?"

There was a silence. Then the painter said:

"Death may be beautiful, but only after life has been beautiful. For it

is beautiful to live as Jack would have lived."

"Is living--somewhere," interposed Uniacke quickly.

"Perhaps. I can't tell. But I hear the mother weeping. I hear the mother

weeping."

That night Uniacke lay long awake. He heard the sea faintly. Was it not

weeping too? It seemed to him in that dark hour as if one power alone

was common to all people and to all things--the power to mourn.

Next day, despite Uniacke's renewed protests, Sir Graham began to paint

steadily. The clergyman dared not object too strongly. He had no right.

And brain-sick men are bad to deal with. He could only watch over Sir

Graham craftily and be with him as much as possible, always hoping that

the painting frenzy would desert him, and that he would find out for

himself that his health was too poor to endure any strain of labour.

The moon was now past its second quarter, and the weather continued cold

and clear. Sir Graham and Uniacke went out several times by night to the

belfry of the church, and the painter observed the light effects through

the narrow window. In the daytime he made various studies from memory of

these effects. And presently Uniacke began to grow more reconciled to

this labour of which--prompted by the doctor's letter--he had at first

been so much afraid. For it really seemed that toil could be a tonic to

this man as to many other men. Sir Graham spoke less of little Jack. He

was devoured by the fever of creation. In the evenings he mused on his

picture, puffing at his pipe. He no longer continually displayed his

morbid sorrow, or sought to discuss at length the powers of despair.

Uniacke was beginning to feel happier about him, even to doubt the

doctor's wisdom in denouncing work as a danger, when something happened

which filled him with a vague apprehension.

The mad Skipper, whom nothing attracted, wandering vacantly, according

to his sad custom, about the graveyard and in the church, one day

ascended to the belfry, in which Sir Graham sat at work on a study for

the background of his picture. Uniacke was with his friend at the time,

and heard the Skipper's heavy and stumbling footsteps ascending the

narrow stone stairs.

"Who's that coming?" the painter asked.

"The Skipper," Uniacke answered, almost under his breath.

In another minute the huge seaman appeared, clad as usual in jersey and

peaked cap, his large blue eyes full of an animal expression of vacant

plaintiveness and staring lack of thought. He showed no astonishment at

finding intruders established in his domain, and for a moment Uniacke

thought he would quietly turn about and make his way down again. For,

after a short pause, he half swung round, still keeping his eyes vaguely

fixed on the artist, who continued to paint as if quite alone. But

apparently some chord of curiosity had been struck in this poor and

benumbed mind. For the big man wavered, then stole rather furtively

forward, and fixed his sea-blue eyes on the canvas, upon which appeared

the rough wall of the belfry, the narrow window, with a section of wild

sky in which a weary moon gleamed faintly, and the dark arch of the

stairway up which the drowned mariners would come to their faithful

captain. The Skipper stared at all this inexpressively, turned to move

away, paused, waited. Sir Graham went on painting; and the Skipper

stayed. He made no sound. Uniacke could scarcely hear him breathing. He

seemed wrapped in dull and wide-eyed contemplation. Only when at last

Sir Graham paused, did he move away slowly down the stairs with his

loose-limbed, shuffling gait, which expressed so plainly the illness of

his mind.

In the rectory parlour, a few minutes later, Uniacke and Sir Graham

discussed this apparently trifling incident. A feeling of unreasonable

alarm besieged Uniacke's soul, but he strove to fight against and to

expel it.

"How quietly he stood," said the painter. "He seemed strangely

interested."

"Yes, strangely. And yet his eyes were quite vague and dull. I noticed

that."

"For all that, Uniacke, his mind may be waking from its sleep."

"Waking from its sleep!" said Uniacke, with a sudden sharpness.

"No--impossible!"

"One would almost think you desired that it should not," rejoined Sir

Graham, with obvious surprise.

Uniacke saw that he had been foolishly unguarded.

"Oh, no," he said, more quietly, "I only fear that the poor fellow can

never recover."

"Why not? From what feeling, from what root of intelligence does his

interest in my work spring? May it not be that he vaguely feels as if my

picture were connected with his sorrow?"

Uniacke shook his head.

"I am not sure that it is impossible," continued Sir Graham. "To-morrow

I begin to make studies for the figures. If he comes to me again, I

shall sketch him in."

Uniacke's uneasiness increased. Something within him revolted from the

association of his guest and the Skipper. The hidden link between them

was a tragedy, a tragedy that had wrecked the reason of the one, the

peace of the other. They did not know of this link, yet there seemed

horror in such a companionship as theirs, and the clergyman was seized

with fear.

"You are going to draw your figures from models?" he said, slowly,

speaking to cover his anxiety, and speaking idly enough.

The painter's reply struck away his uncertainty, and set him face to

face with a most definite dread.

"I shall have models," said Sir Graham, "for all the figures except for

little Jack. I can draw him from memory. I can reproduce his face. It

never leaves me."

"What!" said Uniacke. "You will paint an exactly truthful portrait of

him then?"

"I shall; only idealised by death, dignified, weird, washed by the sad

sea."

"The Skipper watched you while you were painting. He saw all you were

doing."

"Yes. And I think he'll come again."

"But then--he'll--he'll see--"

The clergyman stopped short.

"See--see what?" Sir Graham asked.

"Himself," Uniacke replied, evasively. "When you paint him with the

ropes dropping from his hands. May it not agitate, upset him, to see

himself as he stands ringing those bells each night? Ah! there they

are!"

It was twilight now, cold, and yellow, and grim; twilight of winter. And

the pathetic, cheerless appeal of the two bells stole out over the

darkening sea.

"Perhaps it may agitate him," Sir Graham said. "What then? To strike a

sharp blow on the gates of his mind might be to do him a good service. A

shock expelled his reason. Might not a shock recall it?"

"I can't tell," Uniacke said. "Such an experiment might be dangerous, it

seems to me, very dangerous."

"Dangerous?"

Uniacke turned away rather abruptly. He could not tell the painter what

was in his mind, his fear that the mad Skipper might recognise the

painted face of the dead boy, for whom he waited, for whom, even at that

moment, the bells were ringing. And if the Skipper did recognise this

face that he knew so well--what then? What would be the sequel? Uniacke

thought of the doctor's letter. He felt as if a net were closing round

him, as if there could be no escape from some tragic finale. And he felt

too, painfully, as if a tragic finale were all that he--he, clergyman,

liar, trickster,--deserved. His conscience, in presence of a shadow,

woke again, and found a voice, and told him that evil could not prevail

for good, that a lie could not twist the course of things from paths of

sorrow to paths of joy. Did not each lie call aloud to danger, saying,

"Approach! approach!" Did not each subterfuge stretch out arms beckoning

on some nameless end? He seemed to hear soft footsteps. He was horribly

afraid and wished that, in the beginning of his acquaintance with Sir

Graham, he had dared consequence and spoken truth. Now he felt like a

man feebly fighting that conqueror, the Inevitable, and he went in fear.

Yet he struggled still.

"Sir Graham," he said, on the following day, "forgive me, but I feel it

my duty to urge you not to let that poor fellow watch you at work. It is

not safe. I do not think it is safe. I have a strong feeling that--that

the shock of seeing--"

"Himself?"

"Exactly!--might be dangerous."

"To him?"

"Or to you. That is my feeling. Possibly to you. He is not sane, and

though he seems harmless enough--"

"I'm fully prepared to take the risk," said Sir Graham abruptly, and

with a return of his old suspicious expression. "I'm not afraid of the

man."

He got up and went out. The mere thought of danger, in his condition,

warmed and excited him. He had resolved before actually starting upon

his picture to make some _plein air_ studies of the islanders. Therefore

he now made his way into the village, engaged a fisher-lad to stand to

him, returned to the rectory for his easel and set it up just beyond the

churchyard wall. He posed the shamefaced and giggling boy and set to

work. Uniacke was writing in the small bow-window, or pretending to

write. Often he looked out, watching the painter, waiting, with a keen

anxiety, to know whether the interest shown in his work by the Skipper

was only the passing whim of insanity, or whether it was something more

permanent, more threatening perhaps.

The painter worked. The sailor posed, distending his rough cheeks with

self-conscious laughter. Uniacke watched. It seemed that the Skipper was

not coming. Uniacke felt a sense of relief. He got up from his

writing-table at last, intending to go into the village. As he did so,

the tall form of the Skipper came into view in the distance. Dark,

bulky, as yet far off, it shambled forward slowly, hesitatingly, over

the short grass towards the painter. While Uniacke observed it, he

thought it looked definitely animal. It approached, making detours, like

a dog, furtive and intent, that desires to draw near to some object

without seeming to do so. Slowly it came, tacking this way and that,

pausing frequently as if uncertain or alarmed. And Uniacke, standing in

the shadow of the red curtain, watched its movements, fascinated. He did

not know why, but he had a sensation that Fate, loose-limbed, big-boned,

furtive, was shambling over the grass towards his guest. Sir Graham went

on quietly painting. The Skipper made a last detour, got behind the

painter, stole up and peered over his shoulder. Once there, he seemed

spellbound. For he stood perfectly still and never took his large blue

eyes from the canvas. Uniacke went into the little passage, got his hat

and hastened out, impelled yet without purpose. As he crossed the

churchyard he saw Sir Graham put something into the sailor's hand. The

sailor touched his cap awkwardly and rolled off. Uniacke hurried

forward.

"You've finished your work?" he said, coming up.

Sir Graham turned and made him a hasty sign to be silent.

"Don't alarm him," he whispered, with a slight gesture towards the

Skipper, who stood as if in a vacant reverie, looking at the painted

sailor boy.

"But--" Uniacke began.

"Hush!" the painter murmured, almost angrily. "Leave us alone together."

The clergyman moved away with a sinking heart. Indefinable dread seized

him. The association between these two men was fraught with unknown

peril. He felt that, and so strongly, that he was almost tempted to defy

convention and violently interfere to put an end to it. But he

restrained himself and returned to the rectory, watching the two

motionless figures beyond the churchyard wall from the parlour window as

from an ambush, with an intensity of expectation that gave him the

bodily sensation of a man clothed in mail.

In the late afternoon Sir Graham showed him an admirable study of the

Skipper, standing with upraised arms as if ringing the church bells, his

blue eyes fixed as if he scanned a distant horizon, or searched the

endless plains of the sea for his lost companions.

"Forgive my abruptness this morning," the painter said. "I was afraid

your presence would scare the Skipper."

Uniacke murmured a word in admiration of the painting.

"And to-morrow," he added.

"To-morrow I shall start on the picture," Sir Graham replied.

After supper he drew aside the blind and looked forth.

"The moon is rising," he said. "I shall go out for a little while. I

want to observe light effects, and to think over what I am going to do.

My mind is full of it, Uniacke; I think it should be a great picture."

His eyes were shining with excitement. He went out. He was away a long

time. The clock in the rectory parlour struck eleven, half-past eleven,

he did not return. Beginning to feel anxious, Uniacke went to the window

and looked out. The night was quiet and clear, bathed in the radiance of

the moon, which defined objects sharply. The dark figure of the painter

was approaching the house from the church. Uniacke, who did not wish to

be thought curious, drew hastily back from the window and dropped the

blind. In a moment Sir Graham entered. He was extremely pale and looked

scared. He shut the door very hastily, almost as if he wished to prevent

some one from entering after him. Then he came up to the fire without a

word.

"You are late," Uniacke said, unpleasantly affected, but trying to speak

indifferently.

"Late, am I? Why--what time is it?"

"Nearly midnight."

"Indeed. I forgot the hour. I was engrossed. I--" He looked up hastily

and looked down again. "A most strange, most unaccountable, thing has

happened."

"What?" said Uniacke. "Surely the Skipper hasn't--"

"No, no. It's nothing to do with him. I haven't seen him. No, no--but

the most unaccountable--how long have I been out there?"

"You went out at nine. It's a quarter to twelve now."

"Two hours and three-quarters! I should have said ten minutes. But

then--how long was I with it?"

"With it?" repeated Uniacke, turning cold.

"Yes, yes--how long? It seemed no time--and yet an eternity, too."

He got up and went to and fro uneasily about the room.

"Horrible!" he muttered, as if to himself. "Horrible!"

He stopped suddenly in front of Uniacke.

"Do you believe," he said, "that when we think very steadily and

intensely of a thing we may, perhaps, project--give life, as it were,

for the moment to our thought?"

"Why do you ask me?" said Uniacke. "It has never happened to me to do

such a thing."

"Why do I ask? Well, I'll--"

He hesitated, keeping his eyes fixed on Uniacke's face.

"Yes, I'll tell you what took place. I went out thinking of my picture,

of its composition, of the light effect, of the faces of the drowned

men, especially of the face of little Jack. I seemed to see him coming

into that belfry tower--yes, to greet the Skipper, all dripping from the

sea. But--but--no, Uniacke, I'll swear that, in my mind, I saw his face

as it used to be. That was natural, wasn't it? I imagined it white, with

wide, staring eyes, the skin wet and roughened with the salt water. But

that was all. So it couldn't have been my thought projected, because I

had never imagined.--"

He was evidently engrossed by his own reflections. His eyes had an

inward expression. His voice died in a murmur, almost like the murmur of

one who babbles in sleep.

"Never had imagined what?" said Uniacke, sharply.

"Oh, forgive me. I cannot understand it. As I paced in the churchyard,

thinking of my picture, and watching the moon and the shadows cast by

the church and by the stones of the tombs, I came to that grave by the

wall."

"The grave of the boy I told you about?" said Uniacke with an elaborate

indifference.

"Yes, the boy."

"Well?"

"I suppose I stood there for a few minutes, or it may have been longer.

I can't tell at all. I don't think I was even aware that I was no longer

walking. I was entirely wrapped up in my meditations, I believe. I saw

my picture before me, the Skipper, the dripping sailors--Jack first. I

saw them quite distinctly with my mental vision. And then, by degrees,

somehow those figures in the picture all faded into darkness, softly,

gradually, till only one was left--Jack. He was still there in the

picture. The moonlight through the narrow belfry window fell on him. It

seemed to make the salt drops sparkle, almost like jewels, in his hair,

on his clothes. I looked at him,--mentally, still. And, while I looked,

the moonlight, I thought, grew stronger. The belfry seemed to fade away.

The figure of Jack stood out in the light. It grew larger--larger. It

reached the size of life. And then, as I stared upon it, the face

altered before my eyes. It became older, less childish, more firm and

manly--but oh, Uniacke! a thousand times more horrible."

"How? How?"

"Why, it became puffy, bloated, dropsical. The eyes were glazed and

bloodshot. On the lips there was foam. The fingers of the hands were

twisted and distorted. The teeth grinned hideously. The romance of death

dropped away. The filthy reality of death stood before me, upon the

grave of that boy."

"You imagined it," muttered Uniacke.

He spoke without conviction.

"I did not. I saw it. For now I knew that I was no longer thinking of my

picture. I looked around me and saw the small clouds and the night, the

moon in the pale sky, the black church, this house, the graves like

creatures lying side by side asleep. I saw them all. I heard the dull

wash of the sea. And then I looked again at that grave, and on it stood

Jack, the dead thing I sent to death, bloated and silent, staring upon

me. Silent--and yet I seemed to feel that it said, 'This is what I am.

Paint me like this. Look at what the sea has done to me! Look--look at

what the sea has done!'--Uniacke! Uniacke!"

He sank down into a chair and stared before him with terrible eyes. A

shudder ran over the clergyman, but he said, in a voice that he tried to

make calm and consolatory,

"Of course it was your fancy, Sir Graham. You had conjured up the

figures in your picture. There was nothing unnatural in your seeing

one--the one you had known in life--more distinctly than the others."

"I had not known it like that. I had never imagined anything so

distorted, so horrible, tragic and yet almost grotesque, a thing for

the foolish to--to laugh at, ugh! Besides, it stood there. It was

actually there on that grave, as if it had risen out of that grave,

Uniacke."

"Your fancy."

Uniacke spoke with no conviction, and his lips were pale.

"I say it is not. The thing--Jack, come to that!--was there. Had you

been with me, you must have seen it as I did."

Uniacke shook his head.

"Believe me, Sir Graham," he exclaimed, "you ought to go from here. The

everlasting sound of the sea--the presence of the Skipper--your idea for

this terrible picture--"

"Terrible! Yes, I see it must be terrible. My conception--how wrong it

was! I meant to make death romantic, almost beautiful. And it is like

that. To-morrow--to-morrow--ah, Jack! I can paint you now!"

He sprang up and hurried from the room. Uniacke heard him pacing up and

down above stairs till far into the night.

The clergyman was deeply and sincerely religious, but he was in nowise a

superstitious man. Association with Sir Graham, however, and the

circumstances attendant upon that association, had gradually unnerved

him. He was now a prey to fear, almost to horror. Was it possible, he

thought, as he sat listening to that eternal footfall overhead, that

Providence permitted a spirit to rise from the very grave to proclaim

his lie, and to show the truth in a most hideous form? He could almost

believe so. It seemed that the dead boy resented the defacement of his

tomb, resented the deliberate untruth which concealed from the painter

his dreary destiny, and came up out of the other world to proclaim the

clergyman's deception. It seemed as if God himself fought with a

miraculous means the battle of truth and tore aside the veil in which

Uniacke had sought to shroud the actuality of death. Uniacke could not

bring himself to speak to the painter, to acknowledge the trickery

resorted to for a sick man's sake. But this vision of the night

paralysed his power to make any further effort in deception. He felt

benumbed and impotent. A Power invisible to him fought against him. He

could only lay down his weapons,--despicable, unworthy, as they

were,--and let things take their course, while he looked on as one in a

sad dream, apprehensive of the ending of that dream.

Sir Graham began his picture on the morrow. His first excitement in the

conception of it, which had been almost joyous, was now become feverish

and terrible. He was seized by the dreary passion of the gifted man who

means to use his gifts to add new and vital horrors to the horrors of

life. He no longer felt the pathos, the almost exquisite romance, of his

subject. He felt only its tragic, its disgusting terror. While he

painted feverishly the mad Skipper hovered about him, with eyes still

vacant but a manner of increasing unrest. It seemed as if something

whispered to him that this work of a stranger had some connection with

his life, some deep, though as yet undiscovered, meaning for him. The

first figure in the picture was the Skipper himself. When it was painted

the likeness was striking. But the poor mad seaman stared upon it with

an ignorant vagueness. It was evident that he looked without seeing,

that he observed without comprehending.

"Surely he will not know Jack," Uniacke thought, "since he does not know

his own face."

And he felt a faint sense of relief. But this passed away, for the

unrest of the Skipper seemed continually to grow more marked and

seething. Uniacke noticed it with gathering anxiety. Sir Graham did not

observe it. He thought of nothing but his work.

"I shall paint Jack last of all," he said grimly, to Uniacke. "I mean to

make a crescendo of horror, and in Jack's figure the loathsomeness of

death shall reach a climax. Yes, I will paint him last of all. Perhaps

he will come again and pose for me upon that grave." And he laughed as

he sat before his easel.

"What painter ever before had such a model?" he said to Uniacke.

And that night after supper, he got up from the table saying:

"I must go and see if Jack will give me a sitting to-night."

Uniacke rose also.

"Let me come with you," he said.

Sir Graham stopped with his hand on the door. There was a smile on his

lips, but his eyes were full of foreboding.

"Do you want to see Jack, then?" he asked, with a dreadful feigning of

jocularity. "But you are not a painter. You require no model, living or

dead." He burst again into a laugh.

"Let me come with you," the clergyman repeated doggedly.

Sir Graham made no objection, and they went out together.

The moon was now growing towards the full, but it was yet low in the

sky, and the night was but faintly lit, as a room is lit by a heavily

shaded lamp. Sir Graham's manner lost its almost piteous bluster as he

stood on the doorstep and felt the cold wind that blew from the wintry

sea. He set his lips, and his face twitched with nervous agitation as he

stole a furtive glance at the clergyman, whose soft hat was pulled down

low over his eyes as if to conceal their expression.

The two men walked forward slowly into the churchyard. Uniacke's heart

was beating with violence and his mind was full of acute anticipation.

Yet he would scarcely acknowledge even to himself the possibility of

such an appearance as that affirmed by Sir Graham. They drew near to the

grave of little Jack, round which the chill winds of night blew gently

and the dull voices of the waves sang hushed and murmurous nocturnes.

Uniacke was taken by an almost insurmountable inclination to pause, even

to turn back. Their progress to this grave seemed attended by some

hidden and ghastly danger. He laid his hand upon the painter's arm, as

if to withhold him from further advance.

"What is it?" Sir Graham asked, speaking almost in a whisper.

"Nothing," said Uniacke, dropping his hand.

Sir Graham's eyes were full of sombre questioning as they met his.

Moving slowly on, the two men stood at length by Jack's grave. The moon

rose languidly, and shed a curious and ethereal twilight upon the stone

at its head. The blurred place from which Uniacke had struck the name

was plainly visible. Instinctively the clergyman's eyes sought the spot

and stared upon it.

"Does it not bear all the appearance of having been defaced?" said Sir

Graham in his ear.

Uniacke shook his head.

"The Skipper would have it so," he murmured, full of a heavy sense of

useless contest against the determination of something hidden that all

should be known to his companion, perhaps even that very night.

They waited, as mourners wait beside a tomb. As the moon rose, the

churchyard grew more distinct. The surrounding graves came into view,

the crude bulk of the rectory, the outline of the church tower, and the

long wall of the churchyard. On the white faces of the two men the light

fell pitilessly, revealing the strained and anxious expression of

Uniacke, the staring watchfulness of the painter. The minutes ran by.

Uniacke shivered slightly in the wind. By degrees he began to lose the

expectation of seeing any apparition. Presently he even sneered silently

at himself for his folly in having ever entertained it. Nevertheless he

was strongly affected by the nearness of the wonder-child's grave, from

which seemed to emanate an influence definite and searching, and--so he

felt--increasingly hostile, either to himself or to the artist. It came

up like a thing that threatened. It crept near like a thing that would

destroy. Uniacke wondered whether Sir Graham was conscious of it. But

the painter said nothing, and the clergyman dared not ask him. At

length, however, his fanciful sense of this dead power, speaking as it

were from the ground under his feet, became so intolerable to him that

he was resolved to go; and he was about to tell Sir Graham of his

intention when the painter suddenly caught his arm in a tight grip.

"There it is," he whispered.

He was staring before him over the grave. Uniacke followed his eyes. He

saw the short grass stirring faintly in the night wind. He thought it

looked like hair bristling, and his hair moved on his head. He saw the

churchyard in a maze of moon-rays. And with the moonlight had come many

shadows. But not one of them was deceptive. Not one took the form of any

spectre. Nevertheless Uniacke recoiled from this little grave at his

feet, for it seemed to him as if the power that had been sleeping there

stirred, forsook its recumbent position, rose up warily, intent on

coming forth to confront him.

"You see it?" whispered Sir Graham, still keeping hold of his arm.

"No, no I see nothing; there is nothing. It's your fancy, your

imagination that plays tricks on you."

"No, it's Jack. Oh, Uniacke, see--see how he poses! He knows that I

shall paint him to-morrow. How horrible he is! Do the drowned always

look like that?"

"Come away, Sir Graham. This is a hideous hallucination. Come away."

"How he is altered. All his features are coarsened, bloated. My

wonder-child! He is tragic now, and he is disgusting. How loathsomely he

twists his fingers! Must I paint him like that--with that grinning,

ghastly mouth--little Jack? Ah! ah! He poses--he poses always. He would

have me paint him now,--here in the moonlight--here--here--standing on

this grave!"

"Sir Graham, come with me!" exclaimed Uniacke.

And this time he forcibly drew his companion with him from the grave.

The painter seemed inclined to resist for a moment. He turned his head

and looked long and eagerly behind him. Then suddenly he acquiesced.

"It has gone," he said. "You have driven it away."

Uniacke hurried forward to the Rectory. That night he implored the

painter for the last time to leave the island.

"Can't you feel," he said, almost passionately, "the danger you are

running here, the terrible danger to yourself? The sea preys upon your

mind. You ought not to be near it. Every murmur of the waves is

suggestive to your ears. The voices of those bells recall to your mind

the drowning of men. The sigh of that poor maniac depresses you

perpetually. Leave the sea. Try to forget it. I tell you, Sir Graham,

that your mind is becoming actually diseased from incessant brooding. It

begins even to trick your eyes in this abominable way."

"You swear you saw nothing?"

"I do. There was nothing. You have thought of that boy until you

actually see him before you."

"As he is?"

"As he is not, as he will never be."

The painter got up from his chair, came over to Uniacke, and looked

piercingly into his eyes.

"Then you declare--on your honour as a priest," he said slowly, "that

you do not know that my wonder-child is the boy who is buried beneath

that stone?"

"I buried that boy, and I declare on my honour as a priest that I do

not know it," Uniacke answered, desperately but unflinchingly.

It was his last throw for this man's salvation.

"I believe you," the painter said.

He returned to the fireplace, and leaned his face on his arm against the

mantelpiece.

"I believe you," he repeated presently. "I have been mistaken."

"Mistaken--how?"

"Sometimes I have thought that you have lied to me."

Uniacke's heart grew heavier at the words.

In the morning Sir Graham said to him, with a curious calmness:

"I think perhaps you are right, Uniacke. I have been considering your

words, your advice."

"And you will take it?" Uniacke said, with a sudden enormous sense of

gratefulness.

"I think I shall."

"Think--Sir Graham!"

"I'll decide to-night. I must have the day to consider. But--yes, you

are right. That--that horrible appearance. I suppose it must be evoked

by the trickery of my own brain."

"Undoubtedly."

"There can be no other reason for it?"

"None--none."

"Then--then, yes, I had better go from here. But you will come with me?"

"To London?"

"Anywhere--it does not matter."

He looked round him wistfully.

"If I am to leave the island," he said sorrowfully, "it does not matter

where I go."

"To London then," Uniacke said, almost joyously. "I will make my

arrangements."

"To-morrow?"

"To-morrow. Yes. Excuse me for the present. I must run over to the

mainland to settle about the Sunday services. I shall be back in a few

hours."

He went out, feeling as if a weight had been lifted from brain and

heart. So good could come out of evil. Had he not done right to lie? He

began to believe that he had. As he crossed to the mainland he wrapped

himself in warm and comfortable sophistries. The wickedness of

subterfuge vanished now that subterfuge was found to be successful in

attaining a desired end. For that which is successful seldom appears

wholly evil. To-day Uniacke glowed in the fires of his sinfulness.

He transacted his business on the mainland and set out on his return

home, driving through the shallow sea in a high cart. The day, which had

opened in sunshine, was now become grey, very still and depressing. An

intense and brooding silence reigned, broken by the splashing of the

horse's hoofs in the scarcely ruffled water, and by the occasional

peevish cackle of a gull hovering, on purposeless wings, between the

waters and the mists. The low island lay in the dull distance ahead, wan

and deprecatory of aspect, like a thing desiring to be left alone in

the morose embrace of solitude. Uniacke, gazing towards it out of the

midst of the sea, longed ardently for the morrow when Sir Graham would

be caught away from this pale land of terror. He no longer blamed

himself for what he had done. Conscience was asleep. He exulted, and had

a strange feeling that God smiled on him with approval of his sin.

As he reached the island, the grey pall slightly lifted and light broke

through the mist. He came up out of the sea, and, whipping the wet and

weary horse, drove along the narrow lanes towards the Rectory. But when

he came within hail of the churchyard all his abnormal exultation was

suddenly quenched, and the oppressive sense of threatening danger which

had for so long a time persecuted him, returned with painful force. He

saw ahead of him Sir Graham seated before his easel painting. Behind the

artist, bending down, his eyes fixed intently on the canvas, his huge

hands gripping one another across his chest, stood the mad Skipper. As

the wheels of the cart ground the rough road by the churchyard wall, Sir

Graham looked up and smiled.

"I'm doing a last day's work," he called.

Uniacke stopped the cart and jumped out. The Skipper never moved. His

eyes never left the canvas. He seemed utterly absorbed.

"You are not working on the picture?" said Uniacke hastily.

"No."

"Thank God."

"Why d'you say that?"

"I--the subject was so horrible."

"This is only a study. I shall leave the picture as I am leaving the

Island. Perhaps some day--" He paused. Then he said: "I call this 'Sea

Change.' Go indoors. In about half an hour I will come and fetch you to

see it. Where will you be?"

"In my little room at the back of the house. I have some letters to

write."

"I'll come there. Don't disturb me, till then. I think the picture will

be strange--and I hope beautiful."

And again he smiled. Reassured, Uniacke made his way into the Rectory.

He sat down at his writing-table, took up his pen and wrote a few words

of a letter. But his mind wandered. The pen dropped on the table and he

fell into thought. It was strangely still weather, and there was a

strange stillness in his heart and conscience, a calm that was sweet to

him. He felt the relief of coming to an end after a journey that had not

been without dangers. For, during his intercourse with Sir Graham, he

had often walked upon the edge of tragedy. Now he no longer looked down

from that precipice. He leaned his arm on the table, among the litter of

papers connected with parish affairs, and rested his head in his hand.

Almost unconsciously, at that moment he began to rejoice at his own

boldness in deviating from the strict path of uncompromising rectitude.

For he thought of it as boldness, and of his former unyielding adherence

to the principles he believed to be right, as timidity. After all, he

said to himself, it is easy to be too rigid, too strict. In all human

dealings we must consider not only ourselves, but also the individuals

with whom we have to do. Have we the right to injure them by our

determination to take care of the welfare of our own souls? It seemed to

him just then as if virtue was often merely selfishness and implied a

lack of sympathy with others. He might have refused to lie and destroyed

his friend. Would not that have been selfishness? Would not that have

been sheer cowardice? He told himself that it would.

Calm flowed upon him. He was lost in the day-dream of the complacent man

whose load of care has fallen away into the abyss from which he has

fortunately escaped. The silence of the Island was intense to-day. His

conscience slept with the winds. And the sea slept too with all its

sorrow. He sat there like a carven figure with his face in his hand.

And, by degrees, he ceased to feel, to think actively. Conscious, not

asleep, with open eyes he remained in a placid attitude, lulled in the

arms of a quiet happiness.

He was distracted at length by some sound at a distance. It broke

through his day-dream. At first he could not tell what it was, but

presently he became aware that a hoarse voice was ejaculating some word

outside, probably in the churchyard. He took his hand from his face, sat

up straight by the writing-table and began to listen, at first with some

slight irritation. For he had been happy in his day-dream. The voice

outside repeated the word. Uniacke thought of the street-cries of London

to which he was going, and that this cry was like one of them. He heard

it again. Now it was nearer. Short and sharp, it sounded both angry

and--something else--what? Dolorous, he fancied, keen with a horror of

wonder and of despair. He remembered where he was, and that he had never

before heard such a cry on the Island. But he still sat by the table. He

was listening intently, trying to hear what was the word the voice kept

perpetually calling.

"Jack! Jack!"

Uniacke sprang up, pushing back his chair violently. It caught in a rug

that lay on the bare wooden floor and fell with a crash to the ground.

"Jack! Jack!"

The word came to his ears now in a sort of strident howl that was hardly

human. He began to tremble. But still he did not recognise the voice.

"Jack!"

It was cried under the window of the parlour, fiercely, frantically.

Uniacke knew the voice for the mad Skipper's. He delayed no longer, but

hastened to the front room and stared out across the churchyard.

The Skipper, with his huge hands uplifted, his fingers working as if

they strove to strangle something invisible in the air, was stumbling

among the graves. His face was red and convulsed with excitement.

"Jack!" he shouted hoarsely, "Jack!"

And he went on desperately towards the sea, pursuing--nothing.

Uniacke looked away from him towards the place where Sir Graham had been

painting. The easel stood there with the canvas resting upon the wooden

pins. On the ground before it was huddled a dark thing.

Uniacke went out from his house. Although he did not know it he walked

very slowly as if he dragged a weight. His feet trod upon the graves. As

he walked he could hear the hoarse shout of the skipper dying away in

the distance towards the sea.

"Jack!"

The voice faded as he gained the churchyard wall.

The dark thing huddled at the foot of the easel was the painter's dead

body. On his discoloured throat there were the marks of fingers.

Mechanically Uniacke turned his eyes from those purple and red marks to

the picture the dead man had been painting. He saw the figure of a boy

in a seaman's jersey and long sea-boots dripping with water. The face of

the boy was pale and swollen. The mouth hung down hideously. The hair

was matted with moisture. Only the eyes were beautiful, for they looked

upward with a rapt and childlike expression.

"He sees the rainbow!" murmured the clergyman.

And he fell forward against the churchyard wall with his face buried in

his arms. The voice of the grey sea was very loud in his ears. Darkness

seemed to close in on him. He had done evil to do good, and the evil he

had done had been in vain. His heart beat hard, and seemed to be in his

throat choking him. And in the darkness he saw a vision of a dirty

child, dressed in rags and a tall paper cap, and pointing upwards.

And he heard a voice, that sounded far off and unearthly, say:

"Look at that there rainbow! Look at that there rainbow!"

He wondered, as a man wonders in a dream, whether the dead painter heard

the voice too, but more clearly--and elsewhere.

"WILLIAM FOSTER."

"WILLIAM FOSTER."

One sad cold day in London, city of sad cold days, a man in a Club had

nothing on earth to do. He had glanced through the morning papers and

found them full of adjectives and empty of news. He had smoked several

cigarettes. He had exchanged a word or two of gossip with two or three

acquaintances. And he had stared moodily out of a bow window, and had

been rewarded by a vision of wet paving stones, wet beggars and wet

sparrows. He felt depressed and inclined to wonder why he existed.

Turning from the window to the long room at his back he saw an elderly

Colonel yawning, with a sherry and bitters in one hand and a toothpick

in the other. He decided not to remain in the Club. So he took his hat

and went out into the street. It was raining in the street and he had no

umbrella. He hailed a hansom and got in.

"Where to, sir?" asked the cabby through the trap door.

"What?" said the man.

"Where to, sir?"

"Oh! go to--to----"

He tried to think of some place where he might contrive to pass an hour

or two agreeably.

"Sir?" said the cabby.

"Go to Madame Tussaud's," said the man.

It was the only place he could think of at the moment. He had lived in

London for years but he had never been there. He had never had the

smallest desire to go there. Wax and glass eyes did not attract him.

Dresses that hung from corpses, which had never been alive, did not

appeal to him. Nor did he care for buns. He had never been to Tussaud's.

He was only going there now because literally, at the moment, he knew

not where to go. He leaned back in the cab and looked at the wet

pedestrians, and at the puddles.

When the cab stopped he got out and entered a large building. He paid

money at a turnstile and drifted aimlessly into a waxen world. Some fat

men in strange costumes, with bulging eyes like black velvet, and

varying expressions of heavy lethargy, played Hungarian music on

violins. It was evident that they did not thrill themselves. Their

aspect was at the same time fierce and dull, they looked like volcanoes

that had been drenched with water. The man passed on, the music grew

softer and the waxen world pressed more closely round. Kings,

cricketers, actresses, and statesmen beset him in vistas. He trod a maze

of death that had not lived. There were very few school treats about,

for the fashionable school treat season had not yet fully set in. So

the man had the wax almost entirely to himself. He spread his wings to

it like a bird to the air. By degrees, as he wandered--pursued by the

distant music from the drenched volcanoes--a feeling of suffocation

overtook him. All these men and women about him stared and smiled, but

all were breathless. They wore their gaudy clothes with an air, no

doubt. The Kings struck regal attitudes. The cricketers had a set manner

of bringing off dreamy, difficult catches. The actresses were properly

made up to charm, and the statesmen must surely have brought plenty of

empires to ruin, if insipidity has power to cause such wreckage. But

they were all decisively breathless. They seemed caught by some ghastly

physical spell. And this spell was laid also upon the man who wandered

among them. The breath of life withdrew from him to a long, long

distance--he fancied. He felt as one who, taken by a trance, is bereft

of power though not of knowledge. The staring silence was as the silence

of a tomb, whose walls were full of eyes, intent and fatigued. He

started when a person in uniform, hitherto apparently waxen, said in a

cockney voice,

"See the Chamber of Horrors, sir?" But he recovered in time to

acquiesce.

He descended towards a subterranean vault: as if to a lower circle of

this inferno full of breathless demons. Here there were no rustic

strangers, no clergymen with their choirs, no elderly ladies in command

of "Bands of Hope." The silence was great, and the murderers stood

together in companies, looking this way and that as if in search of

victims. Some sat on chairs or stools. Some crouched in the dock. Some

prepared for a mock expiation in their best clothes. One was at work in

his house, digging in quicklime a hole the length of a human body. His

waxen visage gleamed pale in the dim light, and he appeared to pause in

his digging and to listen for sounds above his head. For he was in the

cellar of his house.

The man stood still and looked at him. He had a mean face. All the

features were squeezed and venomous, and expressive of criminal desires

and of extreme cruelty. And so it was with most of his comrades. They

varied in height, in age, in social status and in colouring. But upon

all their faces was the same frigid expression, a sort of thin

hatefulness touched with sarcasm. The man wandered on among them and saw

it everywhere, on the lips of a youth in rags, in the eyes of an old

woman in a bonnet, lurking in the wrinkles of a labourer, at rest upon

the narrow brow of a doctor, alive in the puffed-out wax of an

attorney's bloated features. Yes, it was easy to recognise the Devil's

hall-mark on them all, he thought. And he wondered a little how it came

about that they had been able, in so many cases, to gain the confidence

of their unhappy victims. Here, for instance, were the man and woman

who had lured servant girls into the depths of a forest and there

murdered them for the sake of their boxes. Even the silliest girl, one

would have supposed, must have fled in terror from the ape-like cunning

of those wicked faces. Here was the housekeeper who had made away with

her aged mistress. Surely any one with the smallest power of observation

would have refused to sit in the evening, to sleep at night, in company

with so horrible a countenance. Here was the man who killed his paramour

with a knife. How came he to have a paramour? The desire to kill lurked

in his bony cheeks, his small, intent eyes, his narrow slit of a mouth,

but no desire to love. God seemed to have set his warning to humanity

upon each of these creatures of the Devil. Yet they had deceived mankind

to mankind's undoing. They had won confidence, respect, even love.

The man was confused by this knowledge, as he moved among them in the

dimness and the silence, brushing the sleeve of one, the skirt of

another, looking into the curiously expressive eyes of all. But

presently his wondering recognition of the world's fatuous and frantic

gullibility ceased. For at the end of an alley of murderers he stood

before a woman. She was young, pretty and distinguished in appearance.

Her features were small and delicate. Her brow was noble. Her painted

mouth was tender and saintly; and, though her eyes were sightless,

truth and nobility surely gazed out of them. For a moment the man was

seized by a conviction that a mistake had been made by the proprietors

of the establishment, and that some being, famous for charitable deeds,

or intellect, or heroic accomplishment had been put in penance among

these tragic effigies. He glanced at her number, consulted his

catalogue, and found that this woman was named Catherine Sirrett, and

that she had been convicted of the murder of her husband by poison some

few years before. Then he looked at her again and, before this criminal,

he felt that she might, nay, must, have deceived any man, the most acute

and enlightened observer. No one could have looked into that face and

seen blackness in the heart of that woman. Everyone must have trusted

her. Many must have loved her. Her appearance inspired more than

confidence--reverence; there was something angelic in its purity. There

was something religious in its quiet gravity. His heart grew heavy as he

looked at her, heavy with a horror far more great than any that had

overcome him as he examined the bestial company around. And when he came

away, and long afterwards, Catherine Sirrett's face remained in his

memory as the most horrible face in all that silent, watchful crowd of

beings who had wrought violence upon the earth. For it was dressed in

deceit. The other faces were naked. So he thought. He did not know

Catherine Sirrett's story, though he remembered that a woman of her name

had been hanged in England some years before, when he was in India, and

that she had gained many sympathisers by her bearing and roused some

newspaper discussion by her fate.

This is her story, the inner story which the world never knew.

* * * * *

Catherine Sirrett's mother was an intensely, even a morbidly, religious

woman. Her father was an atheist and an aesthete. Yet her parents were

fond of each other at first and made common cause in spoiling their only

child. Sometimes the mother would whisper in the little girl's ear that

she must pray for poor father who was blind to the true light and deaf

to the beautiful voice. Sometimes the father would tell her that if she

would worship she must worship genius, the poet, the painter, the

musician; that if she would pray she must pray to Nature, the sea, the

sunset and the spring-time. But as a rule these two loving antagonists

thought it was enough for their baby, their treasure, to develop

quietly, steadily, in an atmosphere of adoration, in which arose no mist

of theories, no war of words. Till she was ten years old Catherine was

untroubled. At that age a parental contest began to rage--at first

furtively,--about her. With the years her mother's morbidity waxed, her

father's restraint waned. The one became more intensely and frantically

devout, the other more frankly pagan. And now, as the child grew, and

her mind and heart stood up to meet life and girlhood, each of her

parents began to feel towards her the desire of sole possession. She had

been brought up a Christian. The father had permitted that. So long as

she was an ignorant infant he had felt no anxiety to attach her to his

theories. But when he saw the intelligence growing in her eyes, the dawn

of her soul deepening, there stirred within him a strong desire that she

should face existence as he faced it, free from trammels of

superstition. The mother, with the quick intuition of woman, soon

understood his unexpressed feeling and thrilled with religious fear.

Although--or indeed because--she loved her husband so much she was

tortured by his lack of faith. And now she was alarmed at the thought of

the effect his influence might have upon Catherine. She was roused to an

intense activity of the soul. She said nothing to her husband of her

fear and horror. He said nothing to her of his secret determination that

his only child should grow up in his own faithless faith. But a silent

and determined battle began to rage between them for the possession of

Catherine's soul. And, at last, this battle turned the former love of

the parents into a sort of uneasy hatred. The child did not fully

comprehend what was going on around her, but she dimly felt it. And it

influenced her whole nature.