'Damn him--damn him--damn him!' the Colonel repeated.
'It's all there--it's all there!' Mrs. Capadose went on.
'Hang it, what's all there?'
'Everything there oughtn't to be--everything he has seen--it's too
dreadful!'
'Everything he has seen? Why, ain't I a good-looking fellow? He has made
me rather handsome.'
Mrs. Capadose had sprung up again; she had darted another glance at the
painted betrayal. 'Handsome? Hideous, hideous! Not that--never, never!'
'Not _what_, in heaven's name?' the Colonel almost shouted. Lyon could
see his flushed, bewildered face.
'What he has made of you--what you know! _He_ knows--he has seen. Every
one will know--every one will see. Fancy that thing in the Academy!'
'You're going wild, darling; but if you hate it so it needn't go.'
'Oh, he'll send it--it's so good! Come away--come away!' Mrs. Capadose
wailed, seizing her husband.
'It's so good?' the poor man cried.
'Come away--come away,' she only repeated; and she turned toward the
staircase that ascended to the gallery.
'Not that way--not through the house, in the state you're in,' Lyon
heard the Colonel object. 'This way--we can pass,' he added; and he drew
his wife to the small door that opened into the garden. It was bolted,
but he pushed the bolt and opened the door. She passed out quickly, but
he stood there looking back into the room. 'Wait for me a moment!' he
cried out to her; and with an excited stride he re-entered the studio.
He came up to the picture again, and again he stood looking at it. 'Damn
him--damn him--damn him!' he broke out once more. It was not clear to
Lyon whether this malediction had for its object the original or the
painter of the portrait. The Colonel turned away and moved rapidly about
the room, as if he were looking for something; Lyon was unable for the
instant to guess his intention. Then the artist said to himself, below
his breath, 'He's going to do it a harm!' His first impulse was to rush
down and stop him; but he paused, with the sound of Everina Brant's sobs
still in his ears. The Colonel found what he was looking for--found it
among some odds and ends on a small table and rushed back with it to the
easel. At one and the same moment Lyon perceived that the object he had
seized was a small Eastern dagger and that he had plunged it into the
canvas. He seemed animated by a sudden fury, for with extreme vigour of
hand he dragged the instrument down (Lyon knew it to have no very fine
edge) making a long, abominable gash. Then he plucked it out and dashed
it again several times into the face of the likeness, exactly as if he
were stabbing a human victim: it had the oddest effect--that of a sort
of figurative suicide. In a few seconds more the Colonel had tossed the
dagger away--he looked at it as he did so, as if he expected it to reek
with blood--and hurried out of the place, closing the door after him.
The strangest part of all was--as will doubtless appear--that Oliver
Lyon made no movement to save his picture. But he did not feel as if he
were losing it or cared not if he were, so much more did he feel that he
was gaining a certitude. His old friend _was_ ashamed of her husband,
and he had made her so, and he had scored a great success, even though
the picture had been reduced to rags. The revelation excited him so--as
indeed the whole scene did--that when he came down the steps after the
Colonel had gone he trembled with his happy agitation; he was dizzy and
had to sit down a moment. The portrait had a dozen jagged wounds--the
Colonel literally had hacked it to death. Lyon left it where it was,
never touched it, scarcely looked at it; he only walked up and down his
studio, still excited, for an hour. At the end of this time his good
woman came to recommend that he should have some luncheon; there was a
passage under the staircase from the offices.
'Ah, the lady and gentleman have gone, sir? I didn't hear them.'
'Yes; they went by the garden.'
But she had stopped, staring at the picture on the easel. 'Gracious, how
you _'ave_ served it, sir!'