The Judgment Books

"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."

"The Scarlet Letter," said Margery, triumphantly, "which you were reading last week? That accounts for that symptom. 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.