Unfortunately the young man was not by any means the genius he looked,
with his pale, keen face and hungry eyes: or fortunately, as some may
say: since there is now no occasion to grieve for him on national
grounds. For the rest, he had none so near to him as to provoke your
sympathy with the living, being either unable or else unwilling to
claim any sort of kinship with others of his name. In fine he was
without a friend in the world, save one only, who swore to wait for
him, if need be, till she became an old, old woman.
We will call him Saumerez, and his friend Sapphira.
They had met in a crowded studio where women of all ages, and a few
young men, may either work or play at drawing the figure, under the
tutelage of one of the clever failures of his profession. The girl had
come to play, having tired suddenly of life in the country, and felt
the aching need of a new sensation; the man to work his hardest, in the
intervals of other work which by itself was quite hard enough for any
one man not accurst with a soul above black-and-white work for a minor
illustrated paper. But though the aims of these two were as the poles
asunder, the time of their coming coincided; and the very first day,
their eyes joined through the rustling, tittering forest of easels; his
being black as night, and hers so soft, that it was not till he came to
paint them that he gave a thought to their colour.
Sapphira had also brought with her from the country such a complexion
as one might look for, but would seldom see; and it bloomed in the
London studio like a fresh rose in a faded wreath. Nor was it only her
good looks that fascinated the most truly artistic eye of all those
around her; she was at least as remarkable, in that place, for the
self-possession and good-breeding which enabled her to take her own
time in making the acquaintance of her fellow-students, without seeming
either lonely or self-conscious, nor yet particularly proud, meanwhile.
As she afterwards confessed, however, Saumerez could not have been
more interested in her--nor earlier--than she in Saumerez, who had
always his own air of distinction, which, if it misled, was at any rate
wholly unintentional in a young fellow wearing his dark hair as short
as another's, and his pale face as scrupulously shaven. And, for that
matter, Saumerez was easily the best workman in the studio, having
talent and a professional touch, with hitherto a clean heart for his
work, and a pure yearning to do more than it was in him ever to do,
soon to be exchanged for the godless ambition to make money and a name.
The change, however, was quite gradual. In a mixed school of art the
more austere conventions are out of place; even Sapphira learned to
lay them aside with her gloves and umbrella during working hours; but
she took care to make neither herself nor her friend conspicuous, as
seemed to be studio fashion. Nor is it absolutely necessary to confine
to the academic precincts any friendship struck up within them. Yet
though it was at the first blush of the New Year that Sapphira had come
up to town with an old governess (now her timid slave), springtime
was well advanced before Saumerez was admitted to her little flat in
Kensington. And it was only in April that his own ill-favoured studio
in a grimy street off Fitzroy Square, became the scene of some sittings
which produced the one good thing he ever did; and in the fatal month
following that he and Sapphira spent a long delirious day in Richmond
Park, and from the deer and bracken and the greening trees, came back
to town engaged.
At her wish, laughingly assented to by one who for his part had
nobody to tell, the engagement was kept secret for the time being.
Special care was taken that it should not be guessed at the school,
where engagements were painfully common, and of a brazen character
invariably. On the other hand, Sapphira's duenna (and she alone) was
told outright, being tame enough to trust, and for reasons of obvious
expediency besides. Her sleep it spoilt for many a summer's night; and
a frightened, sorrowful look which would shadow her plain old face
under the young man's eyes, now aglow with a fearful fervour, worried
him also in the end; until, little as it mattered to him personally,
the clandestine element began to interfere with his happiness by
galling his self-respect.
So one day as they sat together in Kensington Gardens, which were
conveniently close to the flat, and talked over her approaching
holiday (Sapphira was going home for August at least), Saumerez said
impulsively, though with the exceeding tenderness which he could not
separate from his lightest word to his mistress:
"Dearest heart, if only your people knew!"
"If only your picture were painted!" answered Sapphira. After which you
can hardly need telling that he had already conceived a masterpiece,
and talked it over with Sapphira, who had latterly become hotly
impatient for its production.
"Ah," he said, "don't hurry me over that! I didn't intend to touch it
for years and years. Heaven knows I mean no reproach to you, dearest;
yet if it wasn't for my love I wouldn't think of it even now. Oh, don't
look like that! I am grateful to you--I am, indeed, for hurrying me up;
I was just as likely to go to the other extreme. But you must give me
till next spring, sweetheart, and then----"
His eyes strayed far away into the cool, dark shadows beneath the
trees, but in a flash came back to burn themselves into hers.
"My picture's painted already," he said with a smile and a meaning
stare of love and worship--"the best I shall ever do. I could never
love anything I did as I love my poor libel on you! Oh, but if you knew
how you watch over me all the time I am at work! If you knew how one
good look at you gives me fresh heart, fresh hope, fresh energy when my
own stock runs out! For it is you sometimes, though I made it. And yet,
now I am with you, I see it is no more you than a smear of blue paint
is the sky--my darling heart!"
His passion pleased Sapphira, and put out of her head for the moment
the thought of her people, which haunted her unpleasantly at times;
but as decidedly such a time was the present, when she was about to go
back into their midst, she reverted to the subject of her own accord,
dwelling chiefly on the obsolete character of her people's ideas on
certain points, of which the instance was the fuss they had made about
her coming up to town at all. That move had obtained their sanction at
last, but never their approval. They were still on the pounce for the
slightest pretext to insist upon her giving it all up, like a dutiful
child, which (said Sapphira) was by no means their opinion of her in
the meantime. If, therefore, they were to suspect for one moment--but
imperatively they must suspect nothing until such time as they might
be told all with confidence born of a picture in the Academy at the
very least. Such were the girl's people on her own showing. As a fact,
they were also exceedingly prosperous and well-to-do; but of that
she made as little as possible. And a few days later she was back
among them; taking nothing seriously from morning till night; joining
heartily in the general laugh against herself and her artistic exploits
in town; and cheerfully supporting, from day to day, the renewed
attentions of a young neighbouring squire, whom she had banished from
the country (without intending that) a twelve-month before--the honest
gentleman, in fact, who is now her husband.
Meanwhile in glaring London, the ill-starred Saumerez was wearing
out brain and hand and eye for his Sapphira. As a moving surprise
for her when she returned, and to show his great love, he had begun
incontinently upon his great attempt; and daily the dream of months
was crumbling beneath his hand, for the simple reason that the
conception was entirely beyond his present power of execution, besides
being as yet most imperfectly matured in his mind. Hour after hour,
and day after day, his hand hovered over the great canvas, as often
with palette-knife as with brush; and only the presence of his model
kept him from tears and execrations. And night after night, under a
great blinding light, the same fool sat drawing viciously for the
semi-insolvent illustrated paper from which he was earning his
precarious livelihood all this time. Night and day, day and night; it
was enough to wreck the strongest, and Saumerez was never strong. But
he was greatly fortified by the thought of his mistress, and still more
by the ever-present sight of her on the one canvas he had covered to
something like his own satisfaction. Sapphira's portrait was a distinct
success, which left him some lingering belief in his own powers, to
pit against daily and hourly failure; and he had often told her how it
encouraged him in another way. By a clever trick accidently caught he
had painted her eyes so that they watched him incessantly, whether at
night over his drawing-board or at his easel during the day; he had
only to look up to meet the soft eyes he loved; and sometimes, when
long hours had tangled his nerves, to surprise a kind smile on the red
lips and to fancy the sweet sunburnt throat swelling with warm breath.
At such moments he would go and stand, until he ached again, before
the portrait that was making him work desperately but not well--and
think--and think--and even pray to Sapphira for pluck and power, as to
a painted Virgin.
But he had made to himself a kinder face than he was ever to see any
more in the flesh. For when Sapphira came back in September it was to
get rid of her flat at the end of the quarter; and when he went to say
good-bye to her she informed him--with considerable agitation, it is
true, but yet with a firmness and decision about which there could be
no mistake--that she must give him up too. In the condition to which
Saumerez had reduced himself by overwork and worry, a scene was to be
expected, and he made one that frightened dreadfully the author of all
this misery; yet she bore it with such a disarming humility and so
many and bitter self-reproaches that the wronged man's heart softened
hopelessly before he left her. Thus they parted with tears on both
sides, and on his the most passionate vows he had ever made her: just
because she had told him how she honoured and admired him above all
men, among whom, simply, she found there was none she could "really
love."
Now mark the mischief of this assurance. To Saumerez it was food and
drink and sleep for many days. From an only consolation it grew into a
last hope. Then the hope began to importune for expression, and that
crescendo, until Saumerez sat down at last and made a full and final
outpouring of his soul to Sapphira, and charging her not to answer
until her heart was changed, turned to his tools with relief, and began
excellently by destroying the abortive "masterpiece." However, an
answer came with startling promptitude. And Saumerez would have done
well to open it without first pondering the superscription in the dear
familiar hand, that danced through his starting tears, and without
wasting time in fond and fatuous speculations; for the answer was,
what Sapphira had hoped to spare him "for a long, long time"--namely,
that she was already engaged to someone else--meaning the excellent man
she married before the year was out.
But it was still early in October when the affair took its final turn,
so far as Saumerez was concerned. In the raw afternoon of that same day
he was seen in Piccadilly, walking west. His dark eyes were sunken and
lack-lustre; an inky stubble covered the lower part of his face without
hiding the hollows of his cheeks; and he was for passing a moderately
close acquaintance with no more than a nod, but this the other would
not allow.
"I say, Saumerez," cried he, "in God's name, what have you been doing?"
"Working," Saumerez answered mechanically. "I have been working rather
hard. Rather too hard. I don't think I have been asleep this year. Now
I am trying a little exercise."
The man he had met recommended him to try more particular remedies than
that, and named a specialist for insomnia. But he found himself giving
advice to strangers; for yards of greasy pavement, with its shifting
freight of damp humanity, already separated him from Saumerez, whom he
watched out of sight with a shrug, and put out of mind in five minutes.
In Kensington Gardens a ground fog clung to the dingy grass, shrouding
the trunks of trees whose tops were sharp enough against a merely
colourless sky. It was the first afternoon that autumn when your breath
smoked in the air. The use of the place on such a day was as a route,
not a retreat, and Saumerez had no fellow loiterers. But ever through
the fog the leaves floated softly to the ground--a meagre, unnoticeable
shower, of no conceivable interest to anybody; yet Saumerez watched it
attentively till the light failed, sitting the whole time on a seat
that would have chilled to the bone any person in his proper senses.
It was a seat, however, on which he remembered sitting with Sapphira
once in the summer before she went away. He sat on now until a keeper
in a cape stopped to tell him it was half-past five and he must go. He
got up at once, and walked home; but God knows by what roundabout way;
for when he reached his studio the moon was teeming into it through the
top-light, and shining with all its weight on Sapphira as Saumerez had
painted her.
The eyes were on him from the moment he crossed the threshold; and
still they seemed to smile; but he shut the door, and went up close, as
he had gone a hundred times before, and gave them back a ghastly grin.
"You devil!" he said quietly. "You little, lying devil!" And he said
worse, but all so quietly. And as he swore and grinned he took out his
pen-knife, and without looking at it ran his thumb over the blade and
threw the knife away. It was too blunt for him. So he flung through the
studio, upsetting with a crash a table laden with brushes and pipes and
a soup-plateful of ashes, and clattered down the step into the bedroom
which adjoined. The eyes were waiting for him when he came back with a
lighted candle in his left hand and in his right an open razor, which
he plunged with a curse into the brown slender throat. But still the
eyes met his gaily, and for that, and because the canvas would not
bleed, he slit and hacked at it until the wooden frame was empty, and
the moon shining through showed the painted shreds of canvas on the
floor.
Then Saumerez laughed stupidly, and repeated the laugh at intervals
until the moon flashed in his eyes from the open razor still between
his fingers. After that he stood as still as of old when worshipping
his picture. But at length he changed the razor to the hand which held
the candle-stick, for a moment, while he poised a shilling on his
thumb-nail.
"Heads for hell!" he called aloud. The coin spun upward into the
skylight, and came spinning down through the moonbeams; it rang on the
floor and rolled away.
On his knees Saumerez hunted for it, the open razor grasped once
more in his right hand, the candle dripping from his left; while he
repeated, as though their aptness pleased him, the words "sudden
death." But the shilling was not to be discovered instantly; it had
rolled among the débris of the fallen table; and when found it was so
coated with tobacco-ash that which side was uppermost it was impossible
to tell. Saumerez would not touch the tossed coin; but he craned his
neck downward, blew away the ashes, and grinned again as he tightened
his grip.