The Pest

by W. Teignmouth Shore

Though the days were lengthening out toward the spring, there were many hours during each when the light was not clean and clear enough for painting; these Maddison found unspeakably dreary. He was greatly tempted often either to call Marian back to him or to run up to town to see her, but he did not give way to the impulse, for he had determined to test this plan of hers to the bitter end. He did not much believe that she was right and that separation would enable him to do better with his work. Rather to the opposite opinion he inclined, that constant companionship would make them become one, all in all to each other, so that no longer would her presence disturb him, but on the contrary would inspire and spur him on to greater things than he had ever achieved before.

The new picture, a view of the downs and the gray sea beyond, progressed apace, but he was not satisfied with it. There was no defect in it that he could name or which he felt he could amend, but there was something lacking. The outward semblance was right; it was the inward spiritual grace that was lacking. Probably no other than himself would notice it, yet it hurt him. He felt as if some power had gone out of him, and that he painted no longer with gusto or firm, imperative inspiration. His skill had not deserted him, the coloring and the drawing satisfied his exacting taste and his intimate knowledge of nature. But it was only the outside of nature that he had caught and fixed; the heart of her was not there, as it had been in the pictures that had brought him name and fame. This was a dead thing—there was no life in it.

He could not understand why his love for Marian should have affected him in this way or to so great an extent. Why should the absorption in her of all his hopes in any degree depreciate his insight into and love of nature? Surely a man might serve a woman and nature too? But though he could not trace its working or even fix in what it lay, he knew that some change had come over him, and that since he and Marian had been together he was a different man. This love that he had fully counted on to elevate and ennoble him, seemed to restrain him from reaching to that which had before been easily within his grasp.

Perhaps, he sometimes thought, it was that he was not altogether free from anxiety concerning her. To her this separation had not appeared to be so miserable a thing as it was to him. She had suggested it, had argued for it, had not admitted any of the drawbacks which he had seen in it, and had absolutely refused to be shaken from her determination. On the other hand, she might have felt it as deeply and as keenly as he had done, while for his sake and to make it bearable for him, she had just put on a brave face, smiling when tears would easily have come. If this were so, how brave she had been and how cowardly he.

This thought had come to him one morning when he had found work difficult, and was about to leave it for the day. It invigorated him; he would not be outdone by her, or he would ever have to reproach himself for not having faithfully abided by his word to work with all his might. Work! Yes, not for himself, but for her. If that did not drive him on, if that failed to inspire him, he was weak indeed.

Again and again, however, fears and doubts assailed him. He would wake suddenly in the night, aroused by no apparent cause, and would start thinking about her, wondering if she were well and happy. At first he had written to her almost daily, until she had forbidden him to do so any longer, urging that it was nearly, if not quite as harmful for him to do this as to have her chattering and laughing by his side. Her letters to him had grown more and more infrequent, shorter and shorter; mere little messages now, that stimulated a hunger they did not do anything to satisfy.

A curious change had come over his imaginings. In the early days after her going away he had found no difficulty in conjuring up her face before his mind’s eye. Gradually the image had grown vaguer and more vague until at last, if he would think of her as she was, he had to look at “The Rebel.” What memories the picture called back to him! The meeting with her that foggy afternoon in Bond Street; years ago it seemed, but in reality only a few brief months; the afternoon he had first gone down to visit her at Kennington; the thought that he had then that she was deliciously beautiful, and that he would love to have her for his playmate; the birth of a better feeling, the growth of his deep love for her; the finding her alone and lonely in that stuffy Bloomsbury hotel; the long days and nights of delight that they had passed together since. Again and again he reproached himself for little attentions that he had failed to pay her, and for the few bitter words that he had spoken to her once in a moment of irritation. He was so utterly unworthy of her that in good truth he should have done for her all the little that was in his power. He had kept her apart from his friends selfishly, with the result that she must be very lonely now. He had written to Mortimer asking him to do anything he could to relieve the monotony of her existence. What a dear woman she was, he thought over and over again, to put up with all the troubles and worries he had brought upon her—all for love of him.

So whenever any slightest shadow of doubt of her entered his mind, he gave it no resting-place there, but chased it away as an insult and a deep wrong to the woman who had intrusted her life’s happiness to his poor keeping.

As the picture drew near completion he worked every minute that the sun gave to him, for when it was finished he would be free to go to her. It was his letter telling her that but a few more days, a week at most, kept them apart, which she had tossed aside unopened and had afterward thrown upon the fire unread.

He had been painting patiently all one morning, almost angrily sometimes because he could not exactly translate his thought to the canvas, when he was surprised by a knock at the door of the cottage. Mrs. Witchout had not yet returned from her morning’s marketing, so he went to the door himself, expecting to find some casual visitor from Brighton who had heard of his being down here. He was astonished to see Mortimer.