"One hundred pounds for Arthur," I said, "and five pounds for the
goldfish."
Blanche started violently and looked incredulously at me.
Arthur's jaw dropped. Then he said patronizingly, "Well done, Blanche,"
and leaned back pallid and exhausted on the satin couch.
"I must see him," he said over and over again as his mother laid a warm
rug over his knees, and his wife put a cushion behind his head. "He
could tell me things, tricks of the trade. Art is all a trick."
"He found no fault with your work," I said, "but--don't be discouraged,
Blanche--he did criticise yours. He said you could not put down all you
saw."
"What have I always told you, Blanche?" said Arthur solemnly. "You put
down what you _don't_ see. Look at that shadow where I had not put one."
"He is really too ill to see anyone, but he will speak to Blanche for a
few minutes." I turned to her. "You must not mind if he is severe. He
is a drastic critic. Would you like to put on your hat and come with me?
I am going on to him now."
I had some difficulty in getting her out of the house. Mrs. Robinson
wanted to come too. Arthur was determined that she should wait till he
was better, and they could go together. But I had long since established
my authority in that household. I had my way.
Blanche asked no questions as we drove along. She did not seem the least
surprised that the greatest painter of his day had bought her husband's
pictures. Was she lacking in intelligence? Was there some tiny screw
loose in her mind?
M. had not made a toilet as I half expected he would. When we came in he
was standing with his back to us, leaning against the mantelpiece, his
unshaved chin on his hands. His horrible old dressing gown, stained with
paint, and showing numerous large patches of hostile colours, clung to
him more tightly than ever. His decrepitness struck me afresh. He
looked what, indeed, he was, an old and depraved man, repulsive,
formidable--unwashed--a complex wreck, dying indomitably on his feet.
"And so you can do things like that," he said, turning towards Blanche a
face contracted with pain, and pointing a lean finger at the goldfish,
and the chrysanthemum shadow, propped side by side on the mantel piece.
"Yes."
"Where were you taught?"
She mentioned the school where she had studied.
"Why did you leave it?"
"Because Mother died, and I had not any money to go on with my
education."
"And so you married for a home I suppose," he snarled, showing his black
teeth, "for silken gowns and delicate fare and costly furs such as you
are wearing now."
She did not answer.
"You had better have gone on the streets and stuck to your painting."
Blanche's dark eyes met the painter's horrible leer without flinching.
"I wish I had," she said.
They had both forgotten me. They were intent upon each other.
And she who never spoke about herself said to this stranger:
"I married because I did not want to go into a sisterhood, and because
Arthur said he understood what I felt about painting, and that he felt
the same, and that when we were married we would both study under S.,
and I was grateful to him, and I thought I loved him. But S. would not
take him and wanted to take me. And Arthur was dreadfully angry, and
would not let me go without him. And the years passed, hundreds and
hundreds of years, and Arthur changed to me. And he has to be humoured.
And now--I copy his pictures. I enlarge them. Sometimes I decrease them,
but not often. He likes to watch me doing them. He does not care for me
to be doing anything else."
There was a long silence.
They stood looking at each other, and it seemed as if the sword that had
pierced her soul pierced his also.
"Leave all and follow me," said the painter at last. "That is the voice
of art, as well as of Jesus of Nazareth. That is the law. There is no
middle course. You have not left all, you have not followed. You have
dallied and faltered and betrayed your gift. You have denied your Lord.
And your sin has found you out. You are miserable; you deserve to be
miserable."
She made no answer.
"But you are at the end of your tether. I know what I know. You can't go
on. You are nineteen and your life is unendurable to you. You are
touching the fringe of despair. Break away from your life before it
breaks you. Shake its dust from off your feet. Forsake all and find
peace in following your art."
"You might as well say to the goldfish, jump out," said Blanche, white
to the lips, pointing to the picture.
"I do say to him, 'Jump out.' Leap in the dark, and risk dying on a
vulgar Axminster carpet, and being trodden into it, rather than pine in
prison on sponge cake."
"Yes," said Blanche fiercely, "but there is the wire netting. It's not
in the picture, but _you know it's there_. He jumps and jumps. Haven't I
said so in the picture! And it throws him back. You know that. I was
like him once. I used to jump, but I always fell back. I don't jump any
more now."
And then, without any warning, she burst into a paroxysm of tears.
For a moment I stared at her stupified, and then slipped out of the room
to fetch a glass of water.
When I came back M. was sunk down in his armchair, and she was crouching
on the ground before him almost beside herself, holding him by the feet.
"Let me live with you," she gasped half distraught. "Arthur hates me,
and I'm frightened of him. He's mad, mad, mad, only Dr. Giles pretends
he isn't, and Mrs. Robinson pretends; everything in that dreadful house
is pretence, nothing real anywhere. Let me live with you. Then he'll
divorce me, and you needn't marry me. I don't want to be married. I
won't be any trouble to you. No pretty clothes, no amusements, no
expense. I don't want anything except a little time to myself, to
paint."
"You poor soul," said the painter faintly, and in his harsh voice was an
infinite compassion.
"Help me to jump out," she shrieked, clinging to him.
"My child," he said. "I cannot help you. I am dying. I could not live
long enough even to blacken your name. I have failed others in the past
whom I might have succoured. Now I fail you as I failed them. There is
no help in me."
He closed his eyes, but nevertheless two very small tears crept from
beneath the wrinkled lids, and stood in the furrows of his cheeks.
She trembled and then rose slowly to her feet, and obediently took the
glass of water which I proffered to her. She drank a little, and then
placed the glass carefully on the table and drew on her gloves. I saw
that she had withdrawn once more after a terrible bid for freedom into
her fortress of reserve. She was once more the impassive, colourless
creature whom I had seen almost daily for a year without knowing in the
least until to-day what she really was.
"I ought to be going back now," she said to me.
"I will take you home," I said.
She went slowly up to M. and stood before him. I had never seen her look
so beautiful.
The old man looked at her fixedly.
"I made up my mind," she said, "after I spoke to Dr. Giles that I would
never try to jump out any more, but you see I did."
"Forgive me," he said brokenly, holding out a shaking hand.
"It's not your fault," she said, clasping his hand in both of hers. "You
are good, and you understand. You are the only person I have ever met
who would help me if you could. But no one can help me. No one."
And very reverently, very tenderly, she kissed his leaden hand and laid
it down upon his knee.
As I took Blanche home I said to her:
"And when did you appeal to me, and when did I repulse you?"
"When I spoke to you about Goldy and you weren't sorry, you did not mind
a bit. You only said he was a lucky goldfish."
"And what in Heaven's name had that to do with you?"
She looked scornfully at me as if she were not going to be entrapped
into speaking again.
I saw that she had--so to speak--ruled me out of her life. Perhaps when
I first came to that unhappy house nearly a year ago she had looked to
me as a possible helper, had weighed me in the balance, and had found me
wanting.
I was cut to the heart, for deep down, at the bottom of my mind I saw at
last, that I _had_ failed her.
She might be, she probably was, slightly deranged, but, nevertheless,
she had timidly, obscurely sought my aid, and had found no help in me.
M. died the following evening, after trying to die throughout the whole
day. I never left him until, at last, late at night, he laid down his
courage, having no further need of it, and reached the end of his
ordeal.
Next morning after breakfast I went as usual to the Robinson's house,
and, according to custom, was shown into the drawing-room. Now that M.
was out of his agony my mind reverted to Blanche. My wife and children
were going to the seaside, and my wife had eagerly agreed to take
Blanche with her, if she could be spared.
"But they won't let her go," said the little woman.
"They must if I say it's necessary," I said with professional dignity. I
wondered as I waited in the immense Robinson drawing-room how best I
could introduce the subject. Half involuntarily I approached the
aquarium. As I drew near my foot caught on something slippery and stiff.
I looked down, and saw it was the dead body of the goldfish on the
carpet. I picked it up, and was staring at it when Mrs. Robinson came
in. She gave a cry when she saw it, and wrung her hands.
"Put him back in the water," she shrieked. "He may be still alive."
I put him back into his cell, but it had no longer any power over that
poor captive. "Goldy" floated grotesque and upside down on the surface
of the water. His release had come.
"He must have jumped out to get to me when I was not there," sobbed Mrs.
Robinson, the easy tears coursing down her fat cheeks. "My poor faithful
loving little pet. But someone has taken the wire off the aquarium. Who
could have been so wicked? Downright cruel I call it."
The wire, true enough, had been unhooked, and was laid among the
hyacinths on the water's edge.
"Where is Blanche?" I asked. "I want to talk to you about her. I do not
think she is well, and I should advise--"
"That was just what I was going to tell you when I came in and saw that
poor little darling dead in your hand. I am dreadfully worried about
Blanche. She has been out all night. She hasn't come in yet."
"Out all night?" A vague trouble seized me.
"Yes," said Mrs. Robinson, "all night. Would you have thought it
possible? But between you and me it's not the first time. Once long ago,
just before you came to us, she did just the same. She--actually--ran
away: ran away from her husband and me, and her beautiful home, though
we had done everything in the world to make her happy. She went to her
uncle at Liverpool, who never liked her. He telegraphed to us at once,
and he brought her back next day. He spoke to her most beautifully, and
left her with us. She seemed quite dazed at first, but she got round it
and became as usual, always very silent and dull. Not the companion for
Arthur. No brightness or gaiety. Blanche has been a great disappointment
to me, tho' I've never shown it, and I'm not one to bear malice, I've
always made a pet of her. But between you and me, Dr. Giles, Arthur is
convinced that she is not quite right in her head, and that she ought to
be shut up."
"But she is shut up now," I said involuntarily.
She stared at me amazed.
A servant brought in a telegram.
"I telegraphed to her uncle first thing this morning," said Mrs.
Robinson, "to ask if she was with him. Now we shall hear what he says."
She opened the envelope and spread out the contents.
"She's _not_ with him," she said. "Then Dr. Giles, where _is_ she? Where
can she be?"
Later in the day we knew that Blanche had taken refuge in the
Serpentine.
The two pets had fled together. She had made the way of escape easy for
her weaker brother.
* * * * *
It was early in May. There was the usual crush at the Academy. I elbowed
my way through the crowd to look at Serjeant's majestic portrait of M.
Near it on the line hung the picture of the goldfish.
A long-haired student and a little boy were staring at it.
"Mummy," said the child, running to a beautifully dressed slender woman
looking at the Serjeant, "I want a goldfish, too."
"Well, darling, you shall have one," she said, and, turning to the young
man who accompanied her, she added, "You never saw a child so fond of
animals as Cedric."