"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.