After that, for ten years or more, I watched the strange spectacle of a
life of hopeful and productive effort based on the structure of a dream.
There could be no doubt to those who saw Grancy during this period that
he drew his strength and courage from the sense of his wife’s mystic
participation in his task. When I went back to see him a few months later I
found the portrait had been removed from the library and placed in a small
study up-stairs, to which he had transferred his desk and a few books. He
told me he always sat there when he was alone, keeping the library for his
Sunday visitors. Those who missed the portrait of course made no comment on
its absence, and the few who were in his secret respected it. Gradually all
his old friends had gathered about him and our Sunday afternoons regained
something of their former character; but Claydon never reappeared among us.
As I look back now I see that Grancy must have been failing from the time
of his return home. His invincible spirit belied and disguised the signs of
weakness that afterward asserted themselves in my remembrance of him. He
seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of life to draw on, and more than one
of us was a pensioner on his superfluity.
Nevertheless, when I came back one summer from my European holiday and
heard that he had been at the point of death, I understood at once that we
had believed him well only because he wished us to.
I hastened down to the country and found him midway in a slow
convalescence. I felt then that he was lost to us and he read my thought at
a glance.
“Ah,” he said, “I’m an old man now and no mistake. I suppose we shall have
to go half-speed after this; but we shan’t need towing just yet!”
The plural pronoun struck me, and involuntarily I looked up at Mrs.
Grancy’s portrait. Line by line I saw my fear reflected in it. It was the
face of a woman who knows that her husband is dying. My heart stood still
at the thought of what Claydon had done.
Grancy had followed my glance. “Yes, it’s changed her,” he said quietly.
“For months, you know, it was touch and go with me--we had a long fight of
it, and it was worse for her than for me.” After a pause he added: “Claydon
has been very kind; he’s so busy nowadays that I seldom see him, but when I
sent for him the other day he came down at once.”
I was silent and we spoke no more of Grancy’s illness; but when I took
leave it seemed like shutting him in alone with his death-warrant.
The next time I went down to see him he looked much better. It was a Sunday
and he received me in the library, so that I did not see the portrait
again. He continued to improve and toward spring we began to feel that, as
he had said, he might yet travel a long way without being towed.
One evening, on returning to town after a visit which had confirmed my
sense of reassurance, I found Claydon dining alone at the club. He asked me
to join him and over the coffee our talk turned to his work.
“If you’re not too busy,” I said at length, “you ought to make time to go
down to Grancy’s again.”
He looked up quickly. “Why?” he asked.
“Because he’s quite well again,” I returned with a touch of cruelty. “His
wife’s prognostications were mistaken.”
Claydon stared at me a moment. “Oh, _she_ knows,” he affirmed with a
smile that chilled me.
“You mean to leave the portrait as it is then?” I persisted.
He shrugged his shoulders. “He hasn’t sent for me yet!”
A waiter came up with the cigars and Claydon rose and joined another group.
It was just a fortnight later that Grancy’s housekeeper telegraphed for me.
She met me at the station with the news that he had been “taken bad” and
that the doctors were with him. I had to wait for some time in the deserted
library before the medical men appeared. They had the baffled manner of
empirics who have been superseded by the great Healer; and I lingered only
long enough to hear that Grancy was not suffering and that my presence
could do him no harm.
I found him seated in his arm-chair in the little study. He held out his
hand with a smile.
“You see she was right after all,” he said.
“She?” I repeated, perplexed for the moment.
“My wife.” He indicated the picture. “Of course I knew she had no hope from
the first. I saw that”--he lowered his voice--“after Claydon had been here.
But I wouldn’t believe it at first!”
I caught his hands in mine. “For God’s sake don’t believe it now!” I
adjured him.
He shook his head gently. “It’s too late,” he said. “I might have known
that she knew.”
“But, Grancy, listen to me,” I began; and then I stopped. What could I say
that would convince him? There was no common ground of argument on which we
could meet; and after all it would be easier for him to die feeling that
she _had_ known. Strangely enough, I saw that Claydon had missed his
mark....
V
Grancy’s will named me as one of his executors; and my associate, having
other duties on his hands, begged me to assume the task of carrying out our
friend’s wishes. This placed me under the necessity of informing Claydon
that the portrait of Mrs. Grancy had been bequeathed to him; and he replied
by the next post that he would send for the picture at once. I was staying
in the deserted house when the portrait was taken away; and as the door
closed on it I felt that Grancy’s presence had vanished too. Was it his
turn to follow her now, and could one ghost haunt another?
After that, for a year or two, I heard nothing more of the picture, and
though I met Claydon from time to time we had little to say to each other.
I had no definable grievance against the man and I tried to remember that
he had done a fine thing in sacrificing his best picture to a friend; but
my resentment had all the tenacity of unreason.
One day, however, a lady whose portrait he had just finished begged me
to go with her to see it. To refuse was impossible, and I went with the
less reluctance that I knew I was not the only friend she had invited.
The others were all grouped around the easel when I entered, and after
contributing my share to the chorus of approval I turned away and began
to stroll about the studio. Claydon was something of a collector and his
things were generally worth looking at. The studio was a long tapestried
room with a curtained archway at one end. The curtains were looped back,
showing a smaller apartment, with books and flowers and a few fine bits of
bronze and porcelain. The tea-table standing in this inner room proclaimed
that it was open to inspection, and I wandered in. A _bleu poudré_
vase first attracted me; then I turned to examine a slender bronze
Ganymede, and in so doing found myself face to face with Mrs. Grancy’s
portrait. I stared up at her blankly and she smiled back at me in all
the recovered radiance of youth. The artist had effaced every trace of
his later touches and the original picture had reappeared. It throned
alone on the panelled wall, asserting a brilliant supremacy over its
carefully-chosen surroundings. I felt in an instant that the whole room was
tributary to it: that Claydon had heaped his treasures at the feet of the
woman he loved. Yes--it was the woman he had loved and not the picture; and
my instinctive resentment was explained.
Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Ah, how could you?” I cried, turning on him.
“How could I?” he retorted. “How could I _not_? Doesn’t she belong to
me now?”