The Judgment Books. Benson Edward Frederic
do you want a looking-glass for?" asked his wife, as the man left the room.
Frank got up, and walked restlessly up and down. "I begin to-morrow," he said; "I've got the idea ready. I can see it. Until then it is no use trying to paint; but when that comes, it is no use not trying."
"But what's the looking-glass for?" repeated Margery.
"Ah, yes, I haven't told you. I'm going to paint a portrait of myself."
"That's my advice," observed Margery. "I've often suggested that to you, haven't I, Frank?"
"You have. I wonder if you did wisely? This afternoon, however, other things suggested it to me."
"Have you been meditating?" asked Jack, sympathetically. "I've been meditating all afternoon. Why didn't you come out, as you said you would, and meditate with me?"
"I had a little private meditation of my own," said Frank. "It demanded solitude."
"Is it bills?" asked Margery. "You know, dear, I told you that you'd be sorry for paying a hundred guineas for that horse."
Frank laughed.
"No, it's not bills – at least, not bills that make demands of cash. Give me some tea, Margy."
The evening was warm and fine, but cloudless, and after dinner the three sat out on the terrace listening to the footfalls of night stealing on tiptoe in the woods round them. The full moon, shining through white skeins of drifting cloud, cast a strange, diffused light, and the air, alert with the coming rain, seemed full of those delicate scents which are imperceptible during the day. Once a hare ran out from the cover across the lawn, where it sat up for a few moments, with ears cocked forward, until it heard the rustle of Margery's dress, as she moved to look in the direction of Frank's finger pointing at it, and then scuttled noiselessly off.
They had been silent for some little time, but at last Frank spoke. He wanted to tell Margery of his fantastic fear, that fear which she might hear about; or, rather, to let her find it out, and pour cool common-sense on it.
"I feel just as I did on my last night at home, before I went to school for the first time," he said. "I feel as if I had never painted a portrait before. I have had a long holiday, I know; but still it is not as if I had never been to school before. I wonder why I feel like that?"
"Most of one's fears are for very harmless things," observed Jack. "One sees a bogie and runs away, but it is probably only a turnip and a candle. Naturally one is nervous about a new thing. One doesn't quite know what it may turn out to be. But, as a rule, if it isn't a turnip and a candle, it is a sheet and a mask. Equally inoffensive really, but unexpected."
"Ah, but I don't usually feel like that," said Frank. "In fact, I never have before. One is like a plant. When one has flowered once, it is fairly certain that the next flowers will be like the last, if one puts anything of one's self into it. Of course if one faces one's self one may put out a monstrosity, but I am not facing myself. Yet, somehow, I am as afraid as if I were going to produce something horrible and unnatural. But I can't face myself; I can't blossom under glass."
"That's such a nice theory for you, dear," said Margery, "especially if you are inclined to be lazy."
Frank made a little hopeless gesture of impatience.
"Lazy, industrious – industrious, lazy; what have those to do with it? You don't understand me a bit. When the time has come that I should paint, I do so inevitably; if the time has not come, it is impossible for me to paint. I know that you think artists are idle, desultory, Bohemian, irregular. That is part of their nature as artists. A man who grinds out so much a day is not and cannot be an artist. The sap flows, and we bud; the sap recedes, and for us it is winter-time. You do not call a tree lazy in winter because it does not put out leaves?"
"But a tree, at any rate, is regular," said Margery; "besides, evergreens."
"Yes, and everlasting flowers," said Frank, impatiently. "The tree is only a simile. But we are not dead when we don't produce any more than the tree is dead in December."
Margery frowned. This theory of Frank's was her pet aversion, but she could not get him to give it up.
"Then do you mean to say that all effort is valueless?"
"No, no!" cried Frank; "the whole process of production is frantic, passionate effort to realize what one sees. But no amount of effort will make one see anything. I could do you a picture, which you would probably think very pretty, every day, if you liked, of 'Love in a Cottage,' or some such inanity."
Jack crossed his legs, thoughtfully.
"The great objection of love in a cottage," he said, "is that it is so hard to find a really suitable cottage."
Frank laughed. "A courageous attempt to change the subject," he said. "But I'm not going to talk nonsense to-night."
"I think you're talking awful nonsense, dear," said Margery, candidly.
"You will see I am serious in a minute," said Frank. "I was saying I could paint that sort of thing at any time, but it would not be part of me. And the only pictures worth doing are those which are part of one's self. Every real picture tells you, of course, something about what it represents; but it tells you a great deal about the man who painted it, and that is the most important of the two. And I cannot – and, what is more, I don't choose to – paint anything into which I do not put part of myself."
"Mind you look about the woods after I've gone," said Jack, "and if you see a leg or an arm of mine lying about, send it to me, Beach Hotel, New Quay."
Frank threw himself back in his chair with a laugh.
"My dear Jack," he said, "for a clever man you are a confounded idiot. No one ever accused you of putting a nail-paring of your own into any of your pictures. Of course you are a landscape-painter – that makes a certain difference. A landscape-painter paints what he sees, and only some of that; a portrait-painter – a real portrait-painter – paints what he knows and feels, and when he paints the virtue goes out of him."
"And the more he knows, the more virtue goes out of him, I suppose," said Jack. "You know yourself pretty well – what will happen when you paint yourself?"
Frank grew suddenly grave.
"That's exactly what I want to know myself. That was what I meant when I said I felt like a little boy going to school for the first time – it will be something new. I have only painted four portraits in my life, and each of them definitely took something out of me – changed me; and from each – I am telling you sober truth – I absorbed something of the sitter. And when I paint myself – "
"I suppose you will go out like a candle," interrupted Jack. "Total disappearance of a rising English artist; and of the portrait, what? Shall we think it is you? Will it walk about and talk? Will it get your vitality?"
Frank got quickly out of his chair and stood before them. His thin, tall figure looked almost ghostly in the strange half-light, and he spoke rapidly and excitedly.
"That is exactly what I am afraid of," he said. "I am afraid – I confess it – I am afraid of many things about this portrait, and that is one of them. I began to paint myself once before – I have never told even Margery this – but I had to stop. But this afternoon several things made themselves irresistible, and I must try again. I was in bad health when I tried before, and one evening when I went into the studio and saw it – it was more than half finished – I had a sudden giddy feeling that I did not know which was me – the portrait or myself. I knew I was on the verge of something new and unknown, that if I went on with it I should go mad or go to heaven; and when I moved towards it I saw it – I did see it – take a step towards me."
"Looking-glass," said Margery. "Go on, dear."
"Then I was frightened. I ran away. Next day I came back and tore the picture into shreds. But now I am braver. Besides, brave or not, I must do it. I lost a great deal, I know, by not going on with it, but I could not. Oh yes, you may laugh if you like, but it is true. You may even say that what I lost was exactly what one always does lose when one is afraid of doing something. One loses self-command. One is less able to do the thing next time one tries. I lost all that, but