THE next morning all trace of mist on the distant sea had vanished, but
though the sun shone splendidly, the air still bit shrewdly. West rose
with the spirit of discontent in him, breakfasted early and alone, then
set out to walk to Rottingdean. Maddison, palette in hand, answered the
knock at the door.
“Hullo! The early bird does the work,” said West. “May I come in and
talk while you paint?”
“Come along. You’re a fairly early bird too. There are cigars and
cigarettes over there, and an unopened bottle of whisky and a siphon in
the locker by the window.”
West took a cigar, and then wandered aimlessly about the room, while
Maddison worked at “The Rebel.”
“Ah! _My_ picture!” exclaimed West, looking over his shoulder. “It’s the
best thing you’ve ever done, Maddison. Won’t the critics fight over it.
You hit on a thundering good model for it.”
“Your picture! I didn’t promise to let you have it. I’m doubtful if I
shall sell it at all.”
“Oh!” said West, with a queer intonation, “I didn’t know you ever felt
that way about your work. I thought you laughed at art for art’s sake,
and all that damned nonsense, and preached that the laborer is worthy of
his hire—eh?”
“As a rule. But—somehow this has got hold of me.”
“Or—the pretty model—eh? Well, I envy you; you’re a lucky devil.
What’s the poor curate say? Or is he guilty of the ignorance which is
bliss?”
Maddison bit his lips; this raillery which before would have amused him,
now made him angry. He felt that the best way to put an end to it would
be to speak outright and to show that he did not like West’s tone.
“Her husband does know. The facts are just these, West. Mrs. Squire has
left her husband; it was a far from happy marriage. He’s High Church or
something and won’t give her a divorce. So—we have to make the best of
it. I think it right you should know exactly how matters stand, as she
may, in fact, will, be coming down here, and your wife may chance to
meet her with me.”
“Oh, Agatha isn’t a prig. Nor is Alice.”
“Alice?”
“Miss Lane.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot that was her Christian name. So now you understand
why I may not wish to part with this picture. If anyone has it it shall
be you, if you don’t change your mind.”
“Change my mind! It’s not a thing I used often to do, but I seem always
to be at it now. I meant to go up to town this morning, but didn’t. If
I’d intended to come here, ten to one I should have run up to town. I’m
too young to be growing old, but I feel deuced old all the same, at
times.”
He was again strolling vaguely about the room, now pausing to look at a
sketch, now glancing out of the window at the undulating stretch of
green down.
“You look just as young as the first day I met you,” he continued;
“haven’t changed a hair. I suppose it’s care that kills men as well as
cats. There’s more real care in a successful career than in a failure. A
small shopkeeper can’t lose much, and doesn’t run many risks. Now
I—why, good Lord! I may go bust—sky high—any day. Big business is all
a big gamble, the margin between a huge profit and a huge loss is so
small—a puff of wind, and over you go on the money side. Now
you—you’re above fate now; you’re known; competition can never touch
you; the speculation is entirely on the part of those who buy your
pictures. In a hundred years they may be worth thousands or nothing.
Yes, you’re a lucky devil.”
“Luck. Do you believe in luck?”
“Luck? It’s the only real thing in the world. It rules the world!
Believe in it? Of course I do. I shouldn’t ever have been anything more
than a small shopkeeper if I hadn’t been lucky. I inherited a tiny
corner shop in a back street; fate—or the Metropolitan Board of
Works—decided to drive a new thoroughfare past my place. Wasn’t that
luck? Isn’t marriage all a matter of luck? What man can know anything at
all about his wife, until she is his wife and free to show him her real
self? Luck! I never trust the man who sneers at luck and talks about the
reward of honest labor; he’s a liar or a fool, both equally bad to deal
with in business.”
“I don’t believe in luck. Which am I, knave or fool?”
“Oh, you’re an artist, and the artistic temperament covers a multitude
of eccentricities.”
The hooting of a motor-horn drew him to the window again, from which a
glimpse of the road could be seen.
“Hullo! Here’s Alice and Agatha, early birds too. But she’s come to
bully you into starting the portrait. Are you going to do it?”
“Yes. Why not?”
He put down his palette, took the picture off the easel and set it in a
corner with its face to the wall, and then went out to welcome his
guests, followed by West.
“Oh, Mr. Maddison, I do hope you don’t mind my having come,” said Mrs.
West, leaning from the car, and holding out her small, daintily gloved
hand. “May I come in? I want to talk business.”
“Delighted, Mrs. West. Good morning, Miss Lane.”
“I guessed you’d come here, Phil,” Mrs. West went on, as Maddison helped
her to alight, “but you’re not to stay. You take Alice for a spin and
then come back for us. Perhaps Mr. Maddison will come back to lunch with
us?”
Maddison accepted the invitation, and West climbed into the car.
Mrs. West and Maddison watched them till a turn in the road put them out
of sight.
“Now, Mr. Maddison, do take me into your studio. I want you to tell me,
seriously, will you paint my portrait? Phil tells me I should look on it
as a great compliment if you do. I like compliments, don’t you?”
“Of course I do, everyone does; even when I know they are undeserved;
it’s pleasant to be able to please people, and only people who are
pleased pay compliments worth having.”
“What a jolly room!” Mrs. West exclaimed, as she sat down and looked
round critically. “There doesn’t seem to be anything really unusual
about it, except the swords and daggery things on the wall, but it looks
quite different to other studios. Now, will you paint my portrait, Mr.
Maddison?”
“I will, with pleasure, if you’ll let me paint it my own way. I always
make that condition.”
“I want to be painted just as I am. I don’t want to be flattered: I
really mean that.”
“I’m glad you do, for—that’s my way. Please sit straight up in that
chair, and look at me, so—yes, that’s it. I shan’t keep you in that
pose long at a time, and I shan’t do much this morning, just rough in
the head and figure if I can—if I’m in the mood. I never know whether I
am or not till I begin to work.”
“May I talk?”
“Not for a few minutes—just look straight at me—so.”
For some ten minutes he worked rapidly and surely, pausing every now and
again to examine her face intently. Only in the eyes lay anything of
character, and from them looked out, so he thought, not only the
struggling soul he expected to see, but a rebellious discontent.
“Now you can do what you like for a time, Mrs. West, and talk to me if
you’ll be so good—but you mustn’t expect me to answer much—I’ll go on
working.”
She did not, however, leave the chair, but relaxing her upright
attitude, sank back, and watched him steadily.
“Have you known Phil long, Mr. Maddison?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes, off and on, for years.”
“Has he changed much since you first knew him?”
“No, I don’t think so. He was always much the same.”
“He seems to me to have changed a lot since—we were married. Or perhaps
I knew nothing of him then—and am only getting to know him now. I
suppose everybody knows all about me the minute they meet me. I know you
won’t want to answer—but isn’t that so?”
“It’s a common mistake to think that one can know much about anyone
until one has known them intimately a long time—and then the
much—isn’t much. I’ve sometimes thought—at least I used to do so—that
I had put all a sitter’s character upon my canvas, but now I know
better. The face tells everything, if only one can read all its lines.”
“I wonder what you read in my face?”
“What I think I see there, I shall try to paint—and then, why, then, no
one may be able to see in my painting what I have tried to put there.”
“Not even I?”
“Probably you least of all.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I do fancy I don’t know much about myself. I used
to think everybody liked me—” she hesitated and then turned toward the
window, keeping silent for a time.
“I suppose you look at people’s faces in quite a different way to what
other people do, Mr. Maddison?” she said after a while.
“At any rate I think I do. If a face seems to have a story to tell, I
like to read it. But most faces are masks to empty heads.”
She again kept silent, then stood up.
“May I come and see how you’re getting on?”
“Not yet, please—I’d rather you waited until I’ve finished; I can’t
work if I’m watched.”
She wandered aimlessly about the room, her thoughts evidently intent
upon something of which she desired but hesitated to speak.
“Is Alice Lane’s face a mask to an empty head?” she asked suddenly,
looking at him keenly.
The question startled him, and he hesitated how he should answer it,
making absorption in his work his excuse for not immediately replying.
“Miss Lane’s—eh? Oh—no, I should say she has a very decided
character.”
“A strong character, you mean?”
“Ye-es—you might put it that way.”
“She loves my husband.”
“Mrs. West!”
“Oh, of course that’s an extraordinary thing for me to say to anybody,
especially to you, who I don’t really know. But I must speak to someone,
and I’ve no relations and no real friend—unless you’ll be one.”
Maddison left the easel, and went across the room to where she was
standing by the window.
“Mrs. West, take my advice: don’t tell me any more, and don’t ask me
anything. I—don’t see how—I know that I can’t help you——”
“You won’t help me?” she asked, disappointment in her tone. “You won’t?
I—thought you would.”
“Not won’t—_can’t_.”
“How can you tell? I’ve not really told you anything yet.”
“You’ve told me enough for me to be able, more or less, to guess the
rest—and I’m sure that there is only one person in the world that can
really help you—you must help yourself.”
“That’s so easy to say. I don’t know how. I don’t know how.”
She sank down upon the window seat, burying her face in her hands, and
sobbing in a quiet, childish fashion. Intense pity for this helpless,
weak woman touched him, but he knew that her only real chance of
salvation in this world was for her to find herself through suffering,
and that if she continued to depend upon any other for support, she
would never be strong enough to stand alone. He did not speak until she
raised her face, and her sobbing had almost died away.
“Of course you will think me very hard-hearted and brutal, Mrs. West,”
he said, “but I must risk that. If things are going wrong, you must help
yourself. The only thing I can do is to tell you that from what I know
of your husband, he would love his wife to be as strong and
self-dependent as himself. Now, please go back to your chair, and sit as
you were at first.”
His heart was full of sympathy for the weak, little woman, so pretty, so
vain, so helpless. There was little chance, he felt sure, that she would
ever develop into strength, or that she would retain her husband’s
affection, if Alice Lane—quiet, determined, and very passionate as he
believed her to be—were bent on winning it. West’s restless manner and
talk had shown that something was amiss. The old story—the vessel of
porcelain and the vessel of iron. She a joy to him so long as she
continued to amuse and please, but thrown aside broken, when her charm
had gone. Maddison had foreseen some such event as this, but had not
thought that she would suffer greatly, or at any rate, for a length of
time, taking her to be one who would be content with luxuries and pretty
things. But he realized now that there was a depth of affection in her,
childish perhaps, but none the less deep, which might lead to tragedy,
if West turned her out of his life. But he knew that he was helpless to
assist: West was masterful and ruthless; the pity of it was that he had
been so blind as not to see that this simple child could not long
content him.
He scarcely dared look at the pitiable face that he must truly reproduce
upon his canvas. Could he allow anyone save herself to see this portrait
of an unhappy woman?
Then it occurred to him that perhaps he was unduly apprehensive; that
after all, his first surmise might be correct, and that when she had
ceased to cry for her lost toy, she would dry her eyes and be happy with
something more costly and less valuable than human love. At any rate,
there was no aid that he could render; the tragedy, or the comedy, must
play itself out, with himself among the spectators.
Before he had released her, the other two returned.
“Come along,” shouted West; “it’s getting late. We won’t come in.”
As they were leaving the studio, Mrs. West held out her hand to
Maddison, saying:
“Thank you. You said you couldn’t help me—but you have.”