"Dear me, I did not know that Mrs. Greenock wrote poetry," said Frank.
"She is a sonneteer of considerable power," said the vicar.
Frank, who had always thought of Mrs. Greenock in the light of a Puritan rather than a sonneteer, gave a sudden choke of laughter. But Mr. Greenock was arranging his next sentence and did not hear it.
"Her verses are always distinguished by their thoughtfully chosen similes," he continued, "and their flow of harmonious language."
"You can hardly feel out of the world if you always have a poet by you."
"The career of a poet," said Mr. Greenock, "is always beset with snares and difficulties. On the one hand, there is the danger of a too easily gained popularity, and, on the other, the discouraging effect of the absence of an audience."
"I am sure I can guess to which danger Mrs. Greenock is most exposed," said Frank, rather wildly.
"You are pleased to say so," said the vicar, with an appreciative wave of his hand. "In point of fact, some verses of hers which have appeared from time to time in a local paper have attracted much not unmerited attention. She is preparing a small volume of verse-idyls for publication."
Mr. Greenock rose, as if further interchange of thought and experience could not but be bathos after this, and Frank and he joined the ladies.
Mrs. Greenock was seized with sensitiveness when she heard that Frank had learned about the forthcoming verse-idyls, but soon recovered sufficiently to make some very true though not very original remarks on the beauty of the moonlit sea, and pressed Frank to tell her whether any one had ever painted a moonlit scene. Frank cast a glance of concentrated hatred at the unoffending moon, and proceeded to answer.
"In this imperfect world," he said, "it would surely be too much to expect that we can convince any one else. It is sufficient if we can convince ourselves. What on earth does the opinion of the foolish crowd matter to an artist? Their praise is almost more distasteful than their censure. Have you ever seen a critic? I met one once at dinner, and—God forgive him, for I cannot—he admired my pictures. He admired them all, and he admired them for the wrong reasons. He admired just that which was intelligible to him. He added insult to injury by praising them in one of those penny-in-the-slot journals, as some one says. No man has a right to criticise a picture unless he knows more about Art than the man who painted it. Carry conviction to any one else? Wait till the day when your poems seem ugly to you, when all you write seems commonplace and trivial; you will not care about convincing other people then. You will say, 'It is enough if I can write a line which seems to me only not execrable.' Extremes meet, and contentment comes only to those who know nothing or who nearly know all."
Mrs. Greenock stared at him in amazement. This was not at all her idea of the cultured, refined artist, the man who would say pretty things in beautiful language, and ask to borrow thePenalva Gazettewhich contained her poem on "A Corner in a Country Church-yard." She drew on her gloves as if to shield herself from a blustering wind.
Frank, I am sorry to say, felt an evil pleasure in the shock he had given her. He had spoken without malice aforethought, but the malice certainly came in when he had finished speaking. What right had this verse-idyl woman to tell him what a portrait should be, to speak to him of that which he hardly dared think of himself, and drag his nightmare out on to the table-cloth?
His voice rose a tone as he went on.
"You call one thing pretty, another ugly," he said. "Believe me, Art knows no such terms. A thing is true or it is false, and the cruelty of it is that if we have as much as a grain of falsehood in our whole sense of truth, the thing is worthless. Therefore, in this picture I am doing I have tried to be absolutely truthful; as you said at dinner, I have tried to paint what I am without extenuation or concealment. Would you like to see it? You would probably call it a hideous caricature, because in this terribly cruel human life no man knows what is good in him, but only what is bad. It is those who love us only who know if there is any good in us—"
His voice sank again, and as his eye rested on Margery the hardness softened from his face and it was transformed.
"Dear me, I have been talking a lot of shop, I am afraid," he said; "but I have the privilege or the misfortune—I hardly know which—to be terribly in earnest, and I have committed the unpardonable breach of manners to make you the unwilling recipient of my earnestness. Ah, Margery is going to sing to us."
Poor Mrs. Greenock felt as if she had asked for a little bread and been pelted with quartern loaves. She felt almost too sore and knocked about to eat it herself, much less to put pieces in her pocket for Tom and Harry and Jane. But the fact that Margery was singing made it natural for her to be silent, and she finished putting on her gloves, and, so to speak, tidied herself up again. In fact, before they left she had recovered enough to be able to thank Frank for the extremely interesting conversation they had had, and to remind him of his promise to show her the picture.
"I will send you a note when it is done," said he. "Margery is going away to-morrow for the inside of two days, and I expect it will be finished in three or four days at the most."
Margery left early next morning, since, by the ingenious and tortuous route pursued by the Cornish lines, it was a day's journey from Penalva to the Lizard. Frank drove with her to the station, and promised to do as he was told, and not work more than seven hours a day and not less than four. He had quite recovered his equanimity, and spoke of the portrait without fear or despair. But when they got in sight of the station, and again when a puff of white steam and a thin, shrill whistle came to them as they stood on the platform, through the blue-white morning mist, a terror came and looked him in the face, and he clung to Margery like a frightened child.
"Margery, you will come back to-morrow, won't you?" he said. "Ah, need you go at all?"
Margery was disappointed. She had thought that Frank had got over his fantastic fears, he had been so like himself during the drive. But she was absolutely determined to go through with this. To yield once was to yield twice, and she would not yield. Frank must be cured of this sort of thing, and the only way to cure him was to make him do what he feared—to make him give himself absolute final evidence that personalities did not vanish away before portraits like ghosts at daybreak. But, as a matter of fact, Frank's fear was the fear he had not spoken to her of. The danger of losing her swallowed up the danger of losing himself.
"Oh, Frank, don't be a fool!" she said. "Here's the train. Have you had my bag labelled? Of course I shall be back to-morrow. Good-bye, old boy!"
And with another whistle and puff of steam the train was off.
Frank drove home again like a man possessed. Margery had gone, and there remained to him only one thing, and until he was with that time ran to waste. The horses, freshened by the cool, clean air, flew over the hard road, but Frank still urged them on. As soon as they drew up by the door Frank jumped down, leaving the reins on their backs, and went to his studio. There in the corner stood his worst self, and he set to work in earnest. To-day there was no waiting, no puzzling over an idea he could not realize. The evil face smiled as it looked at the yellow little programme, and the long-fingered hands smoothed out its creases with a lingering, loving touch. Desire and the fulfilment of desire were there, and into the soul had the leanness of it entered. And because, as he had said, no man knows the best of himself, but only the worst, there was but little trace in the face of the man who had loved Margery and whom Margery had loved; yet in the eyes was the trace of what had been lost, and if not regret, at least the longing to be able to regret. The better part was not wholly dead, though half smothered under the weight of evil. As he painted he began to realize that it would be so. Had Margery been there, he felt the better part would have been recorded too; but the devil is a highwayman who waits for men who are alone, and he is stronger than a solitary man, though he be St. Anthony himself. But Margery was away, and her absence was almost as the draught that transformed Jekyll into Hyde. So for those two days he worked alone, as he had never worked before, but as he has often worked since, utterly absorbed in his painting, and eating ravenously, but for a few moments only, when his food was brought to him. As the hours went on the conviction came over him that he was right both about the strange fear he had spoken of to Margery and about the other fear of which he had spoken to none. His conscious self seemed to be passing into the portrait, and one by one, like drops of bitter water, his past life flowed higher and higher round him. Far off he thought he could see Margery, but she gave no sign. She did not beckon to him to come, she was not alive to the danger of the rising waters. Soon it would be too late.
The first evening, after the daylight had fallen and he could no longer paint, he threw himself down on the sofa. The work of the last few days stood opposite him, and the red glow of the sunset, not yet quite faded from the sky, still made it clearly visible, though the value of the colors was lost. Frank felt like a man who, after a long, sleepless night of pain, feels that if only he could forget everything for a moment he might doze off into a slumber that would take an hour or two out of life. But the pain, as it were, stood before him, mastering him.
It may only have been that his nerves, abnormally excited after the strain of working, played him false; but it seemed to him that, in spite of the fading light, the portrait was as clear as ever; and as he was sitting wondering at this, half encouraging himself to believe it, he was suddenly aware that the figure he had painted cast a shadow on to the background which he had never put there. As he had painted it, the shadow fell on the left side of the face, but now it seemed that the shadow was on the right side of the face, exactly as it would naturally be cast by the light coming from the window. At that moment he knew what fear was—cold fear that clutches at the heart—and he sat there a moment unable to move, almost expecting to hear it speak to him. Then, with an effort of will so strong that it seemed like a straining of the body, he walked up to it, turned it round to the wall, and left the room.
That night he had an odd dream, the result again of the excitement of the day, but so strangely natural that he hardly knew next morning whether it had happened or not. He dreamed he went back to the studio, finding everything exactly as he had left it—the portrait turned with its face to the wall, and his brushes and palette where he had laid them down when it had become too dark to paint. The servants had brought in lights, and had laid the day's paper on the table. He was conscious of utter weariness of mind and body, and he longed for Margery, but knew that she was away. The yellow programme of the Café Chantant lay on a shelf of the bookcase, where he had put it in the leaves ofJekyll and Hyde, and he took the two down together, as he had done a few days before, and mechanically his mind again retraced the life it had before suggested to him. Suddenly an utter loathing of it all, more complete than he had ever felt, came over him, and he tried to tear the programme up. But it seemed to be made of a thin sheet of some hard substance, and it would not tear. Then he tried to crush it under his foot, but it would not even bend. The bitter, unimaginable agony of not being able to destroy it awoke him, and he found morning had come.
All that day he worked, and once again as evening fell he sat on the sofa, staring blankly at what he had done. Once again the shadow shifted on the painted face, and fell where the light from the window would naturally cast it, and once again cold fear clutched at his heart. At that moment he heard steps along the passage, steps which he knew, and Margery entered.
"Frank," she said, opening the door, "are you there?"
A long figure sprang off the sofa and ran across the room to her, half smothering her in caresses.
"Oh, Margery, I'm so glad you've come," he said—"so glad. You don't know what it has been without you. Margery, promise you won't go away again till it is finished. You won't go away again, will you?"
Margery shuddered and drew back a moment, she hardly knew why.
"Why, Frank, what's the matter?" she asked. "Have you seen a ghost—or what?"
"The place is full of ghosts," said he. "But they won't trouble me any more now you've come back. Let's go out, away from here."
"But I want to see the portrait first," said she.
"Ah, the portrait!"
Frank took two quick steps to where it was standing, and wheeled it round with its face to the wall.
"Not to-night," he said. "Please don't look at it to-night. You can't see it by this light."
"I know I can't," said she, "but I only wanted to peep at it to see if it had got on."
"It has got on," said Frank, "it has got on wonderfully. But don't look at it to-night. It is terrible after sunset."
Margery raised her eyebrows.
"Oh, don't be so silly," she said. "However, I don't mind waiting till to-morrow. Is it good?"
"Come out of this place, and I'll tell you about it."
Outside the west was still luminous with the sunken sun, and as they stepped out on to the terrace Margery turned to look at Frank. His face seemed terribly tired and anxious, and there were deep shades beneath his eyes. But again, as a few moments before in the shadow, she involuntarily shrank from him. There was something in his face more than what mere weariness and anxiety would produce—something she had seen in the face he had sketched two days ago, and the something she knew she had shrunk from before, though she had not seen it. But in a moment she pulled herself together; if she were going to go in for fantastic fears too, the allowance of sanity between them would not be enough for daily consumption. Frank, however, noticed it at once.
"Ah, you too," he said, bitterly—"even you desert me."
Margery took hold of his arm.
"Don't talk sheer, silly nonsense," she said. "I don't know what you mean. I know what's the matter with you. You've been working all day and not going out."
"Yes, I know I have. I couldn't help it. But never mind that now. I have got you back. Margery, you don't give me up really, do you?"
"Frank, what do you mean?" she asked.
"I—I mean—I mean nothing. I don't know what I am saying. I've been working too hard, and I have got dazed and stupid."
He turned to look at the blaze on the waters to the west.
"Ah, how beautiful it is!" he exclaimed. "I wish I were a landscape-painter. But you are more beautiful, Margery. But it is safer to be a landscape-painter, so much safer!"
Margery stopped and faced him.
"Now, Frank, tell me the truth. Have you been out since I left you yesterday morning?"
"No."
"How long have you been working each day?"
"I don't know. I didn't look at my watch. All day, I suppose; and the days are long—terribly long—and the nights too. The nights are even longer, but one can't work then."
Margery was frightened, and, being frightened, she got angry with herself and him.
"Oh, you really are too annoying," she said, with a stamp of her foot. "You get yourself into bad health by overworking and not taking any exercise—you've got the family liver, you know—and then you tell me the house is full of ghosts, and conjure up all sorts of absurd fancies about losing your personality, frightening yourself and me. Frank, it's too bad!"
Frank looked up suddenly at her.
"You too? Are you frightened too? God help me if you are frightened too!"
"No, I'm not frightened," said Margery, "but I'm angry and ashamed of you. You're no better than a silly child."
"Margery," said he, in his lowest audible tone, "I'll never touch the picture again if you wish. Tell me to destroy it and I will, and we'll go for a holiday together. I—I want a holiday; I've been working too hard. Or it would be better if you went in very quietly and cut it up. I don't want to go near it. It doesn't like me. Tell me to destroy it."
"No, no!" cried Margery, "that's the very thing I will not do. And fancy saying you want a holiday! You've just had two months' holiday. But that's no reason why you should work like a lunatic. Of course any one can go mad if they like—it's only a question of whether you think you are going to."
"Margery, tell me truthfully," said Frank, "do you think I am going mad?"
"Of course I don't. I only think you are very, very silly. But I've known that ever since I knew you at all. It's a great pity."
They strolled up and down for a few moments in silence. The magic of Margery's presence was beginning to work on Frank, and after a little space of silence he laughed to himself almost naturally.
"Margery, you are doing me good," he said. "I've been terribly lonely without you."
"And terribly silly, it appears."
"Perhaps I have. Anyhow, I like to hear you tell me so. I should like to think I had been silly, but I don't know."
"I'm afraid if you've been silly the portrait will be silly too," said she. "Is it silly, Frank?"
"It's wonderful," said he, suddenly stopping short. "It is not only like me, but it's me—at least, if you will stop with me while I work it will be all me. I shall feel safer if you are there."
"Then I won't be there," said Margery. "You are not a child any longer, and you must work alone. You always say you can't work if any one else is there."
"Well, I don't suppose it matters," said Frank, with returning confidence. "The fact that I know you are in the house will be enough. But the portrait—it's wonderful! I can't think why I loathe it so."
"You loathe it because you have been working at it in a ridiculous manner," said Margery. "To-morrow I regulate your day for you. I shall leave you your morning to yourself, and after lunch you shall come out with me for two hours at least. We will go up some of those little creeks where we went two years ago. Come in now. It's nearly dinner-time."
When they were alone and a portrait was in progress they often sat in the studio after dinner; but to-night, when Margery proposed it, Frank started up from where he was sitting.
"No, Margery," he said, "please let us sit here. I don't want to go to the studio at all."
"It's the scene of your crime," said Margery.
Frank turned pale.
"What crime?" he asked. "What do you know of my crimes?"
Margery put down the paper she was reading and burst out laughing.
"You really are too ridiculous," she said. "Are you and I going to play the second act of a melodrama? Your crime of working all day and taking no exercise."
"Oh, I see," said Frank. "Well, don't let us visit the scene of my crimes to-night."
Margery had determined that, whatever Frank did, she would behave quite naturally, and not allow herself to indulge even in disturbing thoughts. So she laughed again, and wiped off Frank's remark from her mind.
Otherwise his behavior that evening was quite reassuring. Often when he was painting he had an aversion to being left alone in the intervals, and though this perhaps was more marked than usual, Margery did not allow it to disquiet her. The painting of a portrait was always rather a trying time, though Frank's explanation of this did not seem to her in the least satisfactory.
"When one paints," he had said to her once, "one is much more exposed to other influences. One's soul, so to speak, is on the surface, and I want some one near me who will keep an eye on it, and I feel safe if I have your eye on me, Margery. You know, when religious people have been to church or to a revivalist meeting, they are much more susceptible to what they see, whether it is sin or sanctity; that is just because their souls have come to the surface. It is very unwise to go to see a lot of strange people when you are in that state. No one knows what influence they may have on you. But I know what influence you have on me."
"I wish my influence would make you a little less silly," she had replied.
Margery went to bed quite happy in her mind, except on one point. She had been gifted by nature with a superb serenity which it took much blustering wind to ruffle, and in the main Frank's behavior was different, not in kind, but only in degree, from what she had seen before when he was painting. He always got nervous and excited over a picture which he really gave himself up to; he always talked ridiculous nonsense about personalities and influences, and though his childlike desire to be with her when he was not working was more accentuated than usual, she drew the very natural conclusion that he was more absorbed than usual in his work.
But there was one point which troubled her: she had quite unaccountably shrunk from him when he ran to meet her across the studio, and she had shrunk from him again when she saw his face. She told herself that this was her own silliness, not his, and that it was ridiculous of her to try to cure Frank of his absurdities while she was so absurd herself. She had shrunk back involuntarily, as if from an evil thing.
"How absurd and ridiculous of me," she said to herself, as she settled herself in bed. "Frank is Frank, and it is his idea that he is ceasing or will cease to be Frank which I have thought all along is so supremely silly, and which I think supremely silly still. Yet I shrank from him as I would from a man who had committed a crime."
Then suddenly another thought came to join this one in her brain: "What crimes? What do you know of my crimes?"
The contact and the electric spark had been instantaneous, for she wrenched the two thoughts apart. But they had come together, and between them they had generated a spark of light.
And so, without knowing it, she knew for a moment what was Frank's secret which he dared not tell her.
Frank got up, as his custom was, very early next morning, and went straight to the studio; and Margery, keeping to the resolve of the night before, left him alone all morning. She had sent his breakfast in to him, but ate hers alone in her morning-room.
The knowledge that she was with him had had a quieting effect on Frank, and he had slept deep and dreamlessly. As he walked along the passage to his studio he felt that he hardly feared what he would find there. How could the ghost of what was dead in him have any chance, so to speak, against the near, living reality of Margery and Margery's love? Was not good more powerful than evil? But when he entered the studio and had wheeled the portrait back into its place, the supremacy of one side of his nature over the other was reversed instantaneously—almost without consciousness of transition. The power which the thing his hands had been working out for the last few days had acquired was becoming overwhelming. When Margery was with him, actually with him, she still held up his better part; but when he was alone with this, all that was good sank like lead in an unplumbed sea. He was like some heathen who makes with his own hands an idol of stone or wood, and then bows down before that which he himself made, believing that it is lord over him.
All morning Margery successfully fought against her inclination to go to Frank, for she was clear in her own mind that he had to work out his salvation alone. He was afraid of being alone, and the only way to teach him not to be afraid was to let him learn in solitude that there was nothing to be afraid of. So she yawned an hour away over a two-volume novel by a popular author, wrote a letter to her mother, ordered dinner, and tried to think she was very busy. But it was with a certain sense of relief that she heard the clock strike one, and, shutting up her book, she went to the studio.
Frank was standing with his back to the door, and did not look up from his work when she entered. She came up behind him and saw what he had wished her not to see the night before, and understood why. He always worked rapidly though never hurriedly, and she knew at once what the finished picture would be like. The "idea" was recorded.
She gave a sudden start and a little cry as sharp and involuntary as the cry of physical pain, for the meaning of the first rough sketch which had puzzled her was now worked out, and she saw before her the face of a guilty man. She shrank and shuddered as she had shrunk when her husband ran to meet her across the studio the night before, and as she had shrunk from him when she saw his face, for the face that looked out from that canvas was the same as her husband's face which had so startled and repelled her. It was the face of a man who has wilfully stifled certain nobler impulses for the sake of something wicked, and who was stifling them still. It was the face of a man who has fallen, and when she turned to look at Frank she saw that he had in the portrait seized on something that stared from every line of his features.
"Ah, Frank," she cried, "but what has happened? It is horrible, and you—you are horrible, too!"
Frank did not seem to hear, for he went on painting; but she heard him murmur below his breath:
"Yes, horrible, horrible!"
For the moment Margery lost her nerve completely. She was incontrollably frightened.
"Frank, Frank!" she cried, hysterically.
Then she cursed her own folly. That was not the way to teach him. She laid one hand on his arm, and with her voice again in control, "Leave off painting," she said—"leave off painting at once and look at me!"
This time he heard. His right hand, holding a brush filled with paint, dropped nervelessly to his side, and the brush slid from his fingers on to the floor.
In that moment his face changed. The vicious, guilty lines softened and faded, and his expression became that of a frightened child.
"Ah, Margery," he cried, "what has happened? Why were you not here? What have I been doing?"
Margery had got between him and the picture, and before he had finished speaking she had wheeled it round with its face to the wall.
"You've been working long enough," she said, "and you are coming out for a bit."
"Yes, that will be nice," said Frank, picking up the brush he had dropped and examining it. "Why, it is quite full of paint," he added, as if this remarkable discovery was quite worth comment.
"You dear, how extraordinary!" said Margery. "You usually paint with dry brushes, don't you?"
"Oh, I've been painting all morning, so I have!" said Frank, in the same listless, tired voice, and his eye wandered to the easel which Margery had turned round.
"No, you've got to let it alone," said she, guessing his intention. "You are not going to work any more till this afternoon."
Frank passed his hands over his eyes.
"I'm rather tired," he said. "I think I won't go for a walk. I'll sit down here if you will stop with me."
"Very good, for ten minutes; and then you must come out. It's a lovely morning, and we'll only stroll."
Frank looked out of the window.
"My God! it is a lovely morning," he said—"it is insolently lovely. I've been dreaming, I think. Those trees look as if they were dreaming, too. I wonder if they have such horrible dreams as I? I think I must have been asleep. I feel queer and only half awake, and I've had bad dreams—horrid dreams."
"Did he have nasty dreams?" said she, sympathetically. "He said he was going to work so hard, and he's dreamed instead."
Frank seemed hardly to hear her.
"It began by my wondering whether I ought to go on with that portrait or not," he said. "I kept thinking—"
"You shall go on with it, Frank," broke in Margery, suddenly, afraid of letting herself consent—"I tell you that you must go on with it."
Frank roused himself at the sound of her eager voice.
"You don't understand," he said. "I know that I am running a certain risk if I do. I told you about one of those risks I was running, didn't I? It was that, partly, I was drawing about all morning. I thought I was in danger all the time. I was running the risk of losing myself, or becoming something quite different to what I am. I ran the risk of losing you, myself—all I care for, except my Art."
"And with a big 'A,' dear?" asked Margery.
"With the very biggest 'A,' and all scarlet."
"TheScarlet Letter," said Margery, triumphantly, "which you were reading last week? That accounts forthatsymptom. Go on and be more explicit!"
"I know you think it is all absurd," said Frank, "but I am a better judge than you. I know myself better than you know me—better, please God, than you will ever know me. However, you won't understand that. But with regard to what I told you: when I paint a picture, you think the net result is I and a picture, instead of I alone. But you are wrong. There is only I just as before; and inasmuch as there is a picture, there is less of myself here in my clothes."
"A picture is oil-paint," said Margery, "and you buy that at shops."
"Yes, and brushes too," said Frank; "but a picture is not only oil-paint and brushes."
"Go on," said Margery.
"Well, have I got any right to do it? In other pictures it has not mattered because one recuperates by degrees, and one does not put all one's self into them. But painting this I feel differently. I am going into it, slowly but inevitably. I shall put all I am into it—at least, all I know of while I am painting; and what will happen to this thing here" (he pointed to himself) "I can't say. All the time I was painting, that thought with others was with me, as if it had been written in fire on my brain. Have I got any business to run risks which I can't estimate? I know I have a certain duty to perform to you and others, and is it right for me to risk all that for a painted thing?"
He stood up.
"Margery," he said, "that is not all. Shall I tell you the rest? There is another risk I run much more important, and much more terrible. May I tell you?"
"No, you may not," said Margery, decidedly. "It simply makes these fantastic fears more real to you to speak of them. You shall not tell me. And now we are going out. But I have one thing to tell you. Listen to me, Frank," she said, standing up and facing him. "As you said just now, you know nothing of the risk you run. All you do know is that it is in your power, as you believe, and as I believe, to do something really good if you go on with that picture. I don't say that I shall like it, but it may be a splendid piece of work without that. Are you an artist, or a silly child, frightened of ghosts? I want you to finish it because I think it may teach you that you have a large number of silly ideas in your head, and when you see that none of them are fulfilled it may help you to get rid of them—in fact, I believe I want you to finish it for the same reason for which you are afraid to finish it. You say you will lose your personality, or some of your personality. I say you will get rid of a great many silly ideas. If you lose that part of your personality I shall be delighted—in fact, it is the best thing that could happen to you. As for your other fears, I don't know what they are, and I don't want to know. To speak of them encourages you to believe in them. There! Now you've worked enough for the present, and we'll go for a stroll till lunch; and after lunch we'll go out again, and you can work for another hour or two before it gets dark."
It required all Margery's resolution and self-control to get through this speech. It was not a pretty thing that had looked out at her from the easel, and the look she had seen twice on Frank's face, and felt once, was not pretty either. That his work had a very definite and startling effect on him she knew from personal experience, but that anything could happen to him she entirely declined to believe. He was cross, irritable, odious, as she often told him, when he was interested in his work, but when it was over he became calm, unruffled, and delightful again. She was fully determined he should do this portrait, and to himself she allowed that it would be a relief when it was finished.
Frank got up at once with unusual docility. As a rule, he scowled and snarled when she fetched him away from his work, and made himself generally disagreeable. This uncommon state of things gave Margery great surprise.
"Well, why don't you say you'll be blessed if you come?" she asked, moving towards the door.
"Ah, I'm quite willing to come," he said. "Why shouldn't I come? I always would come anywhere with you."
He followed her towards the door, and in passing suddenly caught sight of the easel. He looked round like a child afraid of being detected in doing something it ought not, and before Margery could stop him he had taken two quick steps towards it and turned it round. In a moment his mood changed.
"Do you see that?" he said in a whisper, as if the thing would overhear him. "That's what I was all the morning when you were not here, and I knew I oughtn't to be painting. Wait a minute, Margy; I want to finish a bit I was working at!"
His face grew suddenly pale, and the look of guilt descended on it like a mist, blotting out the features.
"That's what you are making of me," he said. "Give me my palette. Quick! I sha'n't be a minute."
But Margery caught up, as she had often done before, his palette and brushes from the table where he had left them, and fled with them to the door.
"Give them to me at once!" shouted Frank, holding out his hand for them, but still looking at the picture.
Margery gave one long-drawn breath of pain and horror when she looked at Frank's face, and then, a blessed sense of humor coming to her aid, she broke out into a light laugh—half hysterical and half amused.
"Oh, Frank," she cried, "you look exactly like Irving in 'Macbeth' when he says, 'This is a sorry sight! I never saw a sorrier.'"
At the sound of her voice, more particularly at the sound of her laugh, he turned and looked at her, and the horror faded from his face.
"What have I been saying?" he asked.
"You said, 'Give me the daggers!'—oh no, Lady Macbeth says that. Well, here they are. Come to me, Frank, and I'll give you them."
Frank walked obediently up to her, as she stood in the entrance to the passage, and as soon as he was outside the studio she banged the door and stood in front of it triumphantly.
"Here are the daggers," she said, "but you are not going to use them now. You shall finish that picture, but not like a madman. And if you look like Macbeth any more I shall simply die of it; or I shall behave like Lady Macbeth, and then there will be a pair of us. I shall walk in my sleep down to the sea, and wash my hands all day till it gets quite red. Now you're coming out. March!"
After lunch Frank and Margery went down to the river and cruised about in a little boat, exploring, as they had explored a hundred times before, the unexpected but well-known little creeks which ran up between the hummocks of the broad-backed hills, shut in and shadowed by delicate-leaved beech-trees. When the tide was high it was possible to get some way up into these wooded retreats, and by remaining very still, or going quickly and silently round a corner, you might sometimes catch sight of a kingfisher flashing up from the shallows and darting along the lane of flecked sunlight like a jewel flung through the air. There had been a frost, the first of the year, the night before, and the broad-leaved docks and hemlocks lining the banks had still drops of moisture on their leaves like pearls or moon-stonesseméeson to green velvet. The woods had taken a deeper autumnal tint in the last two days, and already the five-ribbed chestnut leaves, the first of all to fall, were lying scattered on the ground. Every now and then a rabbit scuttled away to seek the protection of thicker undergrowth, or a young cock pheasant, as yet unmolested, stood and looked at the intruders.
Margery was surprised to find how great the relief of getting Frank away from his picture was. The horrible guilty look on the portrait's face, and, more than that, the knowledge that it was a terribly true realization of her husband's expression, disturbed her more than she liked to admit even to herself.
But nothing, she determined—not if all the ghosts out of theDecameronsat in her husband's eyes—should make her abandon her resolution of compelling Frank to finish it. She did not believe in occult phenomena of this description; no painting of any portrait could alter the painter's nature. To get tired and anxious was not the same as losing your personality; the first, if one was working well and hard, was inevitable; the second was impossible, it was nonsense. Decidedly she did not believe in the possibility of his losing his personality. But with all her resolutions to the contrary, she could not help wondering what the other fear, which she had forbidden him to tell her, was. Vaguely in her own mind she connected it with that strange shudder she had felt when she saw him the night before; and quite irrelevantly, as it seemed to her, the image came into her mind of something hidden rising to the surface—of the sea giving up its dead....
It was on this point alone she distrusted herself and all the resolutions she had made. She did not yet know clearly what she feared, but she realized dimly that there was a possibility of its becoming clearer to her, and that when it became clearer she would have to decide afresh. At present her one desire was that he should finish the portrait, and finish it as quickly as possible. But at any rate she had Frank with her now, as she had known him and loved him all their life together. That love she would not risk, but at present she did not see where the risk could come in. With her, and away from the portrait, he was again completely himself. He looked tired and was rather silent, and often when she turned from her place in the bow (where she was looking for concealed snags or roots in the water) to him, as he punted the boat quietly along with an oar, for the stream was narrow to row in, she saw him standing still, oar in hand, looking at her, and when their eyes met he smiled.
"It is like that first afternoon we were here, Margy, isn't it?" he said on one of these occasions. "Do you remember? We got here on a September morning, after travelling all night from London, and after lunch we came up this very creek."
"Yes, Frank, and I feel just as I did then."
"What did you feel?"
"Why—why, that I had got you all to myself at last, and that I did not care about anything else."
"Ah, my God!" cried Frank, suddenly.
"What is it?" asked she.
Frank ran the boat into a little hollow made in the side of the creek by a small stream, now nearly summer dry, and came and sat down on the bank just above her.
"Margy dear," he said, "I want to ask you something quite soberly. I am not excited nor overwrought in any way, am I? I am quite calm and sensible. It is not as if that horrible thing were with us. It is about that I want to talk to you—about the picture. All this morning, as I told you, I knew I ought not to go on with it, but I went on because it had a terrible evil fascination for me. And now, too, I know I ought not to go on with it. It is wicked. This morning I thought of that afternoon we spent here before, and I knew I was sacrificing that. Then I did not care, but now you are all the world to me, as you always have been except when I am with that thing. It was that first day we came here to this very spot that was fixed in my mind. And now we are here in the same place, and on just such another day, let us talk about it."
"Oh, Frank, don't be a coward," said Margery, appealingly. "You know exactly what I think about it. Of course all my inclination goes with you, but, but—"
She raised herself from the boat and put her hand on his knee.
"Frank, you don't doubt me, do you? There is nothing in the world I could weigh against you and your love, but we must be reasonable. If you had a very strong presentiment that you would be drowned as we sailed home I should very likely be dreadfully uncomfortable, but I wouldn't have you walk back instead for anything. There are many things of which we know nothing—presentiments, fears, all the horrors, in fact—and it would be like children to take them into our reckoning or let them direct us. It is for your sake, not mine, that I want you to go on with that portrait. If I followed my inclination I should say, 'Tear it up and let us sit here together for ever and ever.'"
Frank leaned forward and spoke entreatingly.
"Margy, tell me to tear it up—ah, do, dear, and you may do with me whatever you wish—only tell me to destroy it!"
Margery shook her head hopelessly.
"Don't disappoint me, Frank," she said. "I care for nothing in the world compared to you; but what reason could I give for doing this? I think you often get excited and upset over your work, but that is worth while, because you do good work and you are not permanently upset. You wouldn't give up being an artist for that. And if I saw any reason for telling you to stop this, I would do it. It is because I care for you and all your possibilities that I tell you to go on with it."
Margery thought for a moment of the portrait and the terrible likeness it bore to her husband, and she hesitated. But no; the whole thing was too fantastic, too vague. She did not even know what she was afraid of.
"It isn't the pleasant or the easy course I am taking," she continued. "That wasn't a pleasant look on your face when you shouted at me to give you your palette this morning?"
Frank looked puzzled.
"What did I do?" he asked. "When did I shout at you?"
"This morning, just before we came out. You shouted awfully loud, and you looked like Macbeth. It is just because I don't want you to look like Macbeth permanently that I insist on your going on with it. I want you to get Macbeth out of your system. That fantastic idea of yours, that you would run a risk, was the original cause of all this nonsense, and when you have finished the picture and seen that you have run no risk, you will know that I am right."
Frank stood up.
"To-morrow may be too late," he said. "Do you really tell me to go on with it?"
"Frank, dear, don't be melodramatic. You were just as nice as you could be all the way up here. Yes, I tell you to go on with it."
Frank's arms dropped by his side, and for a moment he stood quite still. The leaves whispered in the trees, and the rippling stream tapped against the boat. Then for a moment the breeze dropped, and the boat swung round with the current. The water made no sound against it as it moved slowly round, and there was silence—tense, absolute silence.
Then Margery lay back in the boat and laughed. Her laugh sounded strange in her own ears.
"I am sure this is one of the occasions on which we ought to hear only the beating of our own hearts; but, as a matter of fact, I don't. Come, Frank, don't stand there like a hop-pole."
Frank slowly let his eyes rest on her, but he did not answer her smile.
Margery paused a moment.
"Come," she said again, "let us go a little higher. There is plenty of water."
Frank pushed the boat out from the bank and jumped in.
"Then it is all over," he said. "I must go home at once. I must get on with the portrait immediately. I cannot last if I am not quick. There's no time to lose, Margy. Please let me get back at once."
He paused a moment.
"Margy, give me one kiss, will you?" he said. "Perhaps, perhaps— Ah, my darling, cannot you do what I ask?"
He had raised himself and clung round her neck, kissing her again and again. But she, afraid of yielding, afraid of sacrificing her reason even to that she loved best in the world, unwound his arms.
"No, Frank, I have said I cannot. Oh, my dear, don't you understand? Frank, Frank!"
But he shook his head and took up the oar.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" she asked, after a moment, seeing he did not look at her again. "What time is it?"
"I don't know," said Frank, quickly. "I only know that if I am to finish it I must finish it at once. It will take us nearly an hour to get home, and it is too dark to work after five."
The wind, since that sudden lull, had blown only fitfully by gusts, and by the time they had emerged into the estuary it had died out altogether.
"The wind has dropped," said he. "The winds and the stars fight against me. We sha'n't be able to sail."
He took up the sculls, and rowed as if he were rowing a race.
"What's the matter?" asked Margery. "Why are you in such a hurry? It is not late."
"You don't understand," he said. "There is a hurry. I must get back. Oh, why can't you understand? I must have you or it, and you—you have given me up."
"Frank, what do you mean?" asked Margery, bewilderedly.
"You have given me up for it—it, that painted horror you saw, that—that— Margery, do listen to me just once more. You don't understand, dear, but I don't mind that. Only trust me; only tell me to stop painting it—to destroy it!"
He leaned on his oars a moment, waiting for her answer.
"What is the matter with you?" she asked. "Why do you speak to me like that? What nonsense it all is! I can't advise you to give it up because I think it much better for you that you should go on with it."
He waited for her answer, and then bent to the oars again. The green water hissed by them as the light boat cut through the calm surface. Margery was sitting in the stern managing the rudder, and it required all her nerve to guide the boat among the rocks that stood out from the shallower water. Frank's terrible earnestness troubled her, but it did not shake her resolution. Look at it what way she might, her deliberate conclusion was that it was better he should go on with it. There was no reason—there really was no reason why he should not, and there was every reason why he should. She wondered if he had better see a doctor. That he was in good health two days ago she knew for certain, but the mind can react upon the body, and his mind was certainly out of sorts. However, she had decided that the best ultimate cure for his mind was to finish the picture, and she determined to let things be.
"When will it be done?" she asked, after a pause.
"To-morrow," said Frank, without stopping rowing, "and the part that is important will be done to-night. Don't come into the studio, please, till it is too dark to paint. I can't paint with you there."
Margery felt a little hurt in her mind. She had meant to sit with him, as he had asked her to that morning. However, it was best to let him have his way, and she said no more.
It was scarcely half an hour after they had left the creek that they came opposite the little iron staircase leading down to the rocks. The tide was out, and Frank beached the boat on the shingle at the bottom of the rocks, jumped out, and drew it in. His pale face was flushed and dripping with sweat.
"You'd better change before you begin work," said Margery, as he helped her out, "or you'll catch cold."
Frank burst out with a grating, unnatural laugh.
"Change! I should think I am going to change! I wonder if you'll like the change!"
He walked on in front of her, and when he reached the terrace broke into a run. Margery heard the door of the studio bang behind him.
Margery followed Frank more slowly up to the house. She had won her point; she had refused in the face of all her own inclinations and his feelings to tell him to leave the picture unfinished or to destroy it, and having succeeded in that for which she had been so intensely anxious, the reaction followed. Left to herself, she wondered if she had been right; whether she were wise to trust to reason rather than instinct; whether she had not perhaps in some dim, uncomprehended way put Frank in a position of terrible danger. But where or what, in the name of all that is rational, could the danger be? Yet there rose up before her, as if in answer to her question, the remembrance of Frank's face while he was painting. Could she account for that rationally? She was bound to confess she could not.
It was a great relief to know that it would soon be over. The important part Frank had told her would be done to-day, in an hour or two. In the whole range of human possibilities she could think of nothing which could happen in an hour or two which would justify Frank's fears. He was not well, she thought; but she regarded the finishing of this portrait as a sort of slight surgical operation which would remove the cause of his mental disease from which his bodily indisposition sprang.
For the present she had to get through an hour or two alone, and she busied herself with small, unnecessary duties, and read more of the small, unnecessary book, by a popular author, which we have referred to before. A little before five the post came in, and among other letters for her was a note from Jack Armitage.
"And how goes the portrait?" he concluded, "and am I to be summoned to see a descent into Bedlam or an ascent into Heaven? Oddly enough, there is an artist here of transcendental tendencies who holds exactly the same views as Frank. He believes in the danger of losing one's personality, but he also believes in the danger of raising ghosts from one's past life if one paints a portrait of one's self. Luckily, Frank feels only the danger of losing his personality, and does not think about the ghost-raising. I am glad for his peace of mind—and, perhaps, for you too—that this is so. To fight two sets of ghosts simultaneously might well be too much for one woman, even for you!"
Margery laid down the letter, and the voice of reason within her became gradually less insistent, and then died away. Frank had spoken of another danger more terrible than the one he had told her about, and she would not hear him. There had been a look on his face that frightened and horrified her, and she would not think of it. Once on the beach at New Quay he had wished to tell her something, and she would not hear him.
But the thing was impossible. True; but she was afraid. She felt suddenly unable to cope with his fears, now that she had begun to share them. Then Armitage's last words came back to her—"Beach Hotel, New Quay. I will come at once."
Margery felt ashamed of yielding, but she justified her yielding to herself. The presence of another person in the house would be a good thing. She knew the absolute necessity of keeping her nerves in perfect order, and there is nothing so infectious as disorders of the nerves.
She got her hat and walked straight off to the village in order to send the telegram. She felt as if she did not even wish her own servants to know she was doing it, and preferred to send it herself than giving it to one of them. The sun was already sinking to its setting, but there would be plenty of time to walk down and get back before it was dark. Frank had said that the portrait was terrible after sunset, and though she tried to laugh at the thought, the laugh would not come. Decidedly, Armitage's presence would be a good thing.
It took her a minute or two to send the telegram satisfactorily, but eventually she wrote: "Nothing is wrong, but please come. Frank is rather trying."
She left the office and walked back quickly up the village, only to run into Mrs. Greenock, at the corner by the vicarage. Though she was anxious to get back, it was impossible not to exchange a few words.
"And how does the portrait get on?" asked that estimable woman. "I had such a deeply interesting conversation with Mr. Trevor about it when we dined at your house. Is it wonderful? Is it a revelation? Does it show us what he is, not only what he looks like?"
"Frank's very much excited about it," said Margery, "which is always a good sign. I think he is satisfied."
"And when will it be finished?" asked Mrs. Greenock. "Your husband was so good as to tell me I might see it when it was done. I am looking forward to an intellectual as well as an artistic treat."
"It ought to be done to-morrow," said Margery. "He has been working very hard."
"A giant," murmured Mrs. Greenock—"a gigantic personality. Are you walking home? May I not accompany you a little way? I too have been hard at work to-day, and I have come out to get a breath of fresh air, and perhaps an idea or two."
Mrs. Greenock walked with Margery up to the lodge-gates, beguiling the tedium of the way with instructive discourse, and kept her several moments longer there, bidding her observe the exquisite glow in the western sky where the sun had already gone down.
Margery saw with annoyance that Mrs. Greenock had been quite right—the sun had already set, and the twilight was falling in darker and darker layers over the earth when she reached the house. She went quickly up the passage leading to the studio and opened the door.
Frank was standing on the other side of the room, with his face turned towards her, a piece of crumpled paper in his hands. The shadow cast from the window fell on the right side of his face, but in the dim light she could see that there was that expression of guilt and horror on it which she had seen there twice before.
"Why, Frank," she said, "you can't paint by this light!"
Something stirring at her elbow made her turn round quickly. Frank was sitting in a deep chair in the shadow, staring blankly before him.
She had mistaken the portrait for her husband.
For a moment neither of them spoke or moved. Then Frank got out of the chair where he was sitting and crossed the room to where the horrible fac-simile of himself stood against the wall, and putting himself unconsciously, Margery felt, into the same attitude, turned to her.
"I have worked quickly to-night," he said. "I have almost finished."
Margery looked suddenly back at the portrait, and noticed with a cold, growing horror that she had been the victim of some illusion. The light from the window cast no shadow at all on to it, and the shadow on the face was painted on the left side, not the right.
Frank paused, and Margery knew that her telegram would be useless. The matter was between herself and Frank. If help could reach him it must come from her. In a moment she understood all. The vague fear, the disconnected hints, the thing he had wished to tell her once at New Quay, and once again that morning, the guilty face, her own shrinking, formed links of a connected chain. She had shrunk from what was evil, as Frank had shrunk from it and loathed it when she was there; but the fascination of which, interpreted by his artistic passion, he had been unable to resist. His own skill had raised the thing that he had thought was dead into new life, and now it asserted its old supremacy.
In a few moments he spoke again.
"Do you see how like we are?" he said, speaking slowly, as if he had some difficulty in finding words. "No wonder you mistook it for me. You cannot see it properly in this light; in the daylight the likeness is even more extraordinary. Is it not clever of me to have painted such a picture? There is no picture like it in the world. It must go to the Academy next year, Margery, as a posthumous work. It is a creation. I have made a man!"
Frank paused, but Margery said nothing.
"There were some things about me you did not know before—things which were part of me, and had been vital to me," he went on. "Once or twice I wished to tell you of them, but you would not hear. Now you see them. I think you cannot help seeing them. You can see them in the portrait's face and in mine—clearest in mine; but to-morrow they will be quite as clear in the other. They say that hearing firing brings corpses to the surface. I dare say it is true—at any rate, I have brought corpses to the surface. They are not pretty; corpses seldom are."
Margery came a step nearer to him, though her flesh cried out against it.
"Frank! Frank!" she said.
"Wait a moment," said he. "I wish to tell you more. A critic has no right, as I said, to criticise unless he knows more about the picture than the artist, but the artist may criticise his own picture. This is my picture—all mine. And it is me. It is all true. Do you remember last Sunday, Margy, when Greenock read about the judgment books being opened, and every man being judged by what was written in them? By-the-way, Mrs. Greenock writes sonnets. He said she was an accomplished sonneteer. Well, do you know what those books are? They are nothing else than the faces, the real faces, of the men who are being judged. What chance do you think I shall have, for that is my book you see painted there—an illuminated manuscript. Why did you wish me to do it so much? Can you read it all? Can you see the Café Chantant in it? Can you see Paris, and the cruelty and the sweetness and bitterness of it? Can you see Claire in it, petite Claire, and the end, the whole of it, the pleasure, the weariness, the—the morgue? Yes, that was where I saw her last."
"No, Frank, no," said Margery; "don't tell me."
"It is not pleasant," said he. "It is not amusing to go to hell, as I have gone. This is not a nice book to read; I wish now I had never written it—'The Life and Adventures of Frank Trevor,' by himself."
The horror of great darkness had come on Margery. She felt the physical result, which is stronger than all things in the world except love. She loved Frank and Frank loved her. There was still a chance.
Frank had picked up from the table the little yellow programme which he had painted and held it in his hands, turning it over and over.
"It won't break," he said, "it won't bend. My God! what am I to do? But—but I have written my judgment book; yet there are some chapters which I have not written. I cannot remember them. They were some chapters you and I wrote together about— But you will have forgotten—you gave me up. Margy, cannot you remember what they were? There was one chapter we wrote down in that little creek where we went to-day."
Frank stopped, and looked about the room as if he were searching for something. In that pause love triumphed. Margery went to him quickly. The physical revolt was dead, for she loved him. She laid her hand on his shoulder.
"Frank," she said, "do you remember that you asked me whether I wished you to go on with that picture? I said I did, but I am here to tell you that I have changed my mind. I think you had better not go on with it. Tear it up, burn it. It is not good; it is devilish. And when you have done that we will go and find those chapters you spoke of, which we wrote together, you and I alone. Did you think they were lost? Could you not remember them? I remember them all. I have them quite safe. There are none of them lost."
For a moment a look of intense relief came over Frank's face. Even in the darkness Margery could see that it had changed utterly. She glanced with sick horror at the portrait which only five minutes before she had thought was actually her husband. But almost immediately he shook his head.
"No, I must finish it now," he said. "I do not believe in death-bed repentance. There is very little more to do, for I have worked quickly to-day. Just one thing wants doing—a shadow is to be deepened in the mouth. Do you see what I mean? No, it is too dark for you to see it, though I can see it quite clearly. I wish I could explain to you what I mean, but you will never understand. Don't you see it is I who stand there on that easel? This thing which you think is me is nearly dead. It is like Pygmalion, isn't it, only the other way round? He made his statue come to life, but I have put my life into that picture. If ever the story of Pygmalion is true, I could have done that; it is easier than what I have done."
"Yes, dear," said Margery, "I knew the picture would be a wonderful thing. But it is too dark to look at it now and too dark for you to paint. Let us come away, and we will find those chapters you spoke of. I have got them all, I tell you. They seem to me very good and very important—quite as important now, and much better, than the chapters you have written there."
She put her hand through Frank's arm, and all her soul went into that touch.
"Come," she said; "they are not here."
For one moment she felt Frank's arm tremble under the loving press of her fingers, but he said nothing and did not move.
"You asked me to kiss you this afternoon," she said; "and now, Frank, I ask you to kiss me. Kiss me on the lips, for we are husband and wife."
And standing by that painted horror he kissed her.
"And now come out for a few moments," said Margery, "for I cannot tell you here."
Frank obeyed, and together in silence they walked out on to the terrace.
"Let us sit down here," said she, "and I will tell you what you have forgotten."
"Those other chapters?" asked Frank. "I want them, for the picture is not complete."
"Yes, those other chapters. They are very short. Just this, Frank, that I loved you, and love you now. I see what your fear was: it was fear for me, not for yourself. You thought that if you painted this picture you would have to put something into it which I did not know—something you were afraid of my hearing. I know it, and I am not afraid. But the chapters we wrote together are still true; they are the truest part of all. Your picture is not complete. It wants the most essential part of all."
Once more she felt a tremor go through his arm, but still he said nothing.
"You told me I did not understand what you meant," she said, "but I understand now. And you too did not understand me if you thought that anything in the world could make any difference to my love for you. We have all of us in our natures something not nice to look at, but what we stand or fall by is our beautiful chapters. You cannot destroy them, Frank, though you thought you could, because they belong to me as well as you, and I will not have them destroyed. You thought you had lost them, but you have not. They are here. You may read them now with me."
Margery paused, and on the silence came the sudden, quick-drawn breath that opens the gates of tears. In a moment she felt Frank's arms round her, and his hands clasped about her neck.
"Margy! Margy!" he whispered, "have you got them now, even now? My God! how little I knew! You shrank from me, and I thought you had given me up; that there was nothing left to me but that—that horror. But what can I do? My judgment book is written. Is not that true too?"
"Do you remember what you said?" asked Margery. "Did you not tell me that you loathed what you were painting? Why did you loathe it?"
"Why did I loathe it? Why, because it was—something horrible, wretched!"
"Let us go to the studio," said Margery.
"No, no!" cried he; "anywhere but there."
"Come, Frank," she said, "you must come with me."
In the passage hung a trophy made of knives and swords which Frank had once bought in the Soudan. Margery took down one of these, a thick steel dagger, short and two-edged. On the table below stood a lamp, and this she took in her other hand.
"Open the door," she said to Frank.
Then she gave the dagger into his hand, and with the lamp, she stood opposite the picture.
"Now!" she said.
He stood for a moment feeling the edge of the dagger, looking at Margery. Then with a sudden movement he grasped the side of the easel with one hand, and with the other plunged the dagger through the face.
"You devil, you devil!" he said.
He cut and stabbed the picture in fifty places. The torn shreds he ripped off and threw on the ground, trampling on them or picking them up to tear them again, and in a few moments all that there was left was a few shreds hanging from the frame.
Jack Armitage arrived next day. He never knew why Margery had sent for him, but she thanked him so genuinely for coming that he was not sorry he came.