Part 23

"You imagined it," muttered Uniacke.

He spoke without conviction.

"I did not. I saw it. For now I knew that I was no longer thinking of my picture. I looked around me and saw the small clouds and the night, the moon in the pale sky, the black church, this house, the graves like creatures lying side by side asleep. I saw them all. I heard the dull wash of the sea. And then I looked again at that grave, and on it stood Jack, the dead thing I sent to death, bloated and silent, staring upon me. Silent--and yet I seemed to feel that it said, 'This is what I am. Paint me like this. Look at what the sea has done to me! Look--look at what the sea has done!'--Uniacke! Uniacke!"

He sank down into a chair and stared before him with terrible eyes. A shudder ran over the clergyman, but he said, in a voice that he tried to make calm and consolatory,

"Of course it was your fancy, Sir Graham. You had conjured up the figures in your picture. There was nothing unnatural in your seeing one--the one you had known in life--more distinctly than the others."

"I had not known it like that. I had never imagined anything so distorted, so horrible, tragic and yet almost grotesque, a thing for the foolish to--to laugh at, ugh! Besides, it stood there. It was actually there on that grave, as if it had risen out of that grave, Uniacke."

"Your fancy."

Uniacke spoke with no conviction, and his lips were pale.

"I say it is not. The thing--Jack, come to that!--was there. Had you been with me, you must have seen it as I did."

Uniacke shook his head.

"Believe me, Sir Graham," he exclaimed, "you ought to go from here. The everlasting sound of the sea--the presence of the Skipper--your idea for this terrible picture--"

"Terrible! Yes, I see it must be terrible. My conception--how wrong it was! I meant to make death romantic, almost beautiful. And it is like that. To-morrow--to-morrow--ah, Jack! I can paint you now!"

He sprang up and hurried from the room. Uniacke heard him pacing up and down above stairs till far into the night.

The clergyman was deeply and sincerely religious, but he was in nowise a superstitious man. Association with Sir Graham, however, and the circumstances attendant upon that association, had gradually unnerved him. He was now a prey to fear, almost to horror. Was it possible, he thought, as he sat listening to that eternal footfall overhead, that Providence permitted a spirit to rise from the very grave to proclaim his lie, and to show the truth in a most hideous form? He could almost believe so. It seemed that the dead boy resented the defacement of his tomb, resented the deliberate untruth which concealed from the painter his dreary destiny, and came up out of the other world to proclaim the clergyman's deception. It seemed as if God himself fought with a miraculous means the battle of truth and tore aside the veil in which Uniacke had sought to shroud the actuality of death. Uniacke could not bring himself to speak to the painter, to acknowledge the trickery resorted to for a sick man's sake. But this vision of the night paralysed his power to make any further effort in deception. He felt benumbed and impotent. A Power invisible to him fought against him. He could only lay down his weapons,--despicable, unworthy, as they were,--and let things take their course, while he looked on as one in a sad dream, apprehensive of the ending of that dream.

Sir Graham began his picture on the morrow. His first excitement in the conception of it, which had been almost joyous, was now become feverish and terrible. He was seized by the dreary passion of the gifted man who means to use his gifts to add new and vital horrors to the horrors of life. He no longer felt the pathos, the almost exquisite romance, of his subject. He felt only its tragic, its disgusting terror. While he painted feverishly the mad Skipper hovered about him, with eyes still vacant but a manner of increasing unrest. It seemed as if something whispered to him that this work of a stranger had some connection with his life, some deep, though as yet undiscovered, meaning for him. The first figure in the picture was the Skipper himself. When it was painted the likeness was striking. But the poor mad seaman stared upon it with an ignorant vagueness. It was evident that he looked without seeing, that he observed without comprehending.

"Surely he will not know Jack," Uniacke thought, "since he does not know his own face."

And he felt a faint sense of relief. But this passed away, for the unrest of the Skipper seemed continually to grow more marked and seething. Uniacke noticed it with gathering anxiety. Sir Graham did not observe it. He thought of nothing but his work.

"I shall paint Jack last of all," he said grimly, to Uniacke. "I mean to make a crescendo of horror, and in Jack's figure the loathsomeness of death shall reach a climax. Yes, I will paint him last of all. Perhaps he will come again and pose for me upon that grave." And he laughed as he sat before his easel.

"What painter ever before had such a model?" he said to Uniacke.

And that night after supper, he got up from the table saying:

"I must go and see if Jack will give me a sitting to-night."

Uniacke rose also.

"Let me come with you," he said.

Sir Graham stopped with his hand on the door. There was a smile on his lips, but his eyes were full of foreboding.

"Do you want to see Jack, then?" he asked, with a dreadful feigning of jocularity. "But you are not a painter. You require no model, living or dead." He burst again into a laugh.

"Let me come with you," the clergyman repeated doggedly.

Sir Graham made no objection, and they went out together.

The moon was now growing towards the full, but it was yet low in the sky, and the night was but faintly lit, as a room is lit by a heavily shaded lamp. Sir Graham's manner lost its almost piteous bluster as he stood on the doorstep and felt the cold wind that blew from the wintry sea. He set his lips, and his face twitched with nervous agitation as he stole a furtive glance at the clergyman, whose soft hat was pulled down low over his eyes as if to conceal their expression.