The Queer Picture
By Bernard CapesFirst published in The Fabulists in 1915
"Round by the bend of the road, far away, there occurred a minute stirring, and something came into the picture that was not there before..."
It was standing with its face to the wall in a dark corner of the dingy old shop in Beak Street, whose miscellaneous litter had peered at me through a window so dirty as to make its owner appear rather to wish to baffle custom than to court it. Nor in that respect was its owner's manner reassuring. His eyes peered dimly out of an unwashed face, like the pale blue oriental saucers through the window. He seemed to regard me with indifference and a little weariness, as if the profit of chaffering were hardly worth its trouble. " O, yes ! " he said, in a weak, hoarse voice, to my appreciations of this or that, as I edged my way through the labyrinth of Chippendale chairs, bureau, coffin stools, and gate-legged tables piled with Staffordshire figures, brass door-knockers, candlesticks, and "genuine antiques " of every sort, description and plausibility.
A little nettled by the creature's apathy, I stooped, somewhat truculently, and turned the picture round for myself. It showed a landscape, pretty dark and mellow in tone, of, I fancied, the Crome or Nasmyth period. A woodland road, receding from the middle foreground of the canvas, presently took a curve round some palings to the left, and disappeared into greenery. Prominent over the near palings towered a huge oak ; on the other side was a close medley of foliage gradually dimming into blue distances. The whole was feelingly painted and composed, the large oak tree, quite superbly rendered, forming its predominant feature. It all only suffered slightly to my mind as a composition from the white emptiness of the road and the absence of figures. I said so to the dealer. " O yes ! " he answered, with a dry cough, and I shrugged my shoulders.
I have had one or two "finds" in my time — enough to stimulate my adventurous nerve. This thing seemed to me good : there was power in it, and knowledge. The time was evidently near twilight, still and darkling — a lonely, solemn place. The atmosphere was unmistakably suggested. Its canvas measurement was some 34 by 28 inches, and it possessed a frame, a little dingy and battered, but of the right sort.
" Whom is it by ? "I said.
The dealer made as if to bend, cleared his thin old throat and stood up again. "It's unsigned," he said.
"But don't you know ?"
" If you were to ask me," he answered, " I should say — no more than that, mind you — that it was Urquhart's work." Then, in response to my mute inquiry, " He was a follower of John Constable, you know."
I didn't know ; I knew nothing about the man ; but, whoever he was, his capacity was plain. I decided to risk it. " Well, how much ? " I said.
" Twenty pounds," said the dealer.
As a matter of principle I protested — " Unsigned ; of disputable origin ; preposterous I " " O yes I " he said, in his indifferent way. " Twenty pounds is the price. It's a greatly admired piece. If you change your mind, I will take it back any time within a week, less ten per cent."
That seemed a fair offer, and I ended by carrying the picture home with me in a cab. Alone, I cleared the mantelpiece of my sitting-room, and stood the treasure up on it. I thought it distinctly an admirable piece of work, and so far rejoiced in my bargain. It seemed to reflect the very spirit of the twilight which was even now creeping over my room, to assimilate and conform to it. As I gazed I grew penetrated, possessed, by what I gazed on. I was on the wide, white road, standing or crouching somewhere down here out of the picture, and staring into its diminishing distances. The great oak was motionlessly alive ; there seemed " a listening fear in its regard." An expectation, an indescribable awe, held me amazedly entranced. And then my breath caught in a quick gasp. Round by the bend of the road, far away, there occurred a minute stirring, and something came into the picture that was not there before. The thing came on, increasing in regular progression as it advanced — and it was the figure of a young man, in a bygone costume, swinging airily towards me. I sat petrified, dumb-stricken ; and all in an instant there arose between me and the illusion, blotting it out, a vague, shadowy shape. That receded quickly, shrinking as it withdrew, until it also was the figure of a man going away from me along the road to meet the other. The two encountered, and had passed, when the second wheeled suddenly in his tracks, and struck the first on the neck, so that the young man fell into the road. I saw something — a running stain of red, and simultaneously broke, with a cry, from my stupefaction and, leaping to the mantelpiece, turned the horror with its face to the wall. As I did so I saw that the canvas was empty of figures.
The old dealer made no demur whatever about my returning the picture. " It always comes back," he said impassively, as he paid me in cash eighteen pounds out of the twenty I had given for it. "It stands me in well, you see, as an investment. It's a fine work. I dare say you'll be the dozenth or more who's been struck by it, and carried it away with the same result. Twilight's the time, they say."
" Don't you know it is ? " I responded warmly. " Haven't you seen it yourself ? "
" No," he said, with a thin cough, "no." (He had returned the picture to its former place and position.) " I don't bother to look. It wouldn't be policy, and it wouldn't be fair, you know, for me to sell it if I had. I'm not bound to go upon hearsay ; and it doesn't trouble me where it stands."
" But " — I turned on my heel indignantly, and came back — " you said it was an Urquhart."
" On its intrinsic evidences," he responded ; " not in the least because it happens that Urquhart was hanged for the murder of his wife's paramour on a country road he was engaged in painting at the time. He stuck him in the neck with a palette knife. That may have been the very picture — or it may not — before the figures were filled in. Urquhart generally used sheep and countrymen. But all that's no concern of mine. I say it's an Urquhart because of the style. No one but him, in my opinion, could have painted that oak."