I
Shortly after this I met my mother at our solicitor's office
according to appointment. As she was on the eve of departing for the
Continent, it was necessary that various family matters should be
arranged. On the day following, as I was about to leave my hotel to
call at Cyril's studio, rather doubtful, after the frivolity I had
lately witnessed, as to whether or not I should unburden my heart to
such a man, he entered my room in company with Wilderspin, the latter
carrying a parcel of books.
'I have brought your father's works,' Wilderspin said.
'Thank you very much,' I replied, taking the books. 'And when am I to
call and see your picture? Have you yet got it back from the owner?'
'"Faith and Love" is now in my studio,' he replied; 'but I will ask
you not to call upon me yet for a few days. I hope to be too busily
engaged upon another picture to afford a moment to any one save the
model--that is,' he added with a sigh, 'should she make her
appearance.'
'A picture of his called "Ruth and Boaz,"' interposed Cyril.
'Wilderspin is repainting the face from that favourite model of his
of whom you heard so much in Wales. But the fact is the model is
rather out of sorts at this moment, and Wilderspin is fearful that
she may not turn up to-day. Hence the melancholy you see on his face.
I try to console him, however, by assuring him that the daughter of a
mamma with such a sharp appreciation of half-crowns as the lady you
saw at my studio the other day is sure to turn up in due time as
sound as a roach.'
Wilderspin shook his head gravely.
'Good heavens!' I muttered, 'when am I to hear the last of painters'
models?' Then turning to Wilderspin, I said,
'This is the model to whom you feel so deeply indebted?'
'Deeply indebted, indeed!' exclaimed he in a fervid tone, taking a
chair and playing with his hat between his knees, in his previous
fashion when beginning one of his monologues. 'When I began "Faith
and Love" I worked for weeks and months and years, having but one
thought, how to give artistic rendering to the great idea of the
Renascence of Wonder in Art symbolised in the vignette in your
father's third edition. I was very poor then; but to live upon bread
and water and paint a great picture, and know that you are being
watched by loving eyes above,--there is no joy like that. I found a
model--a fine and beautiful woman, the same magnificent blonde who
sat for so many of the Master's greatest pictures. For a long time my
work delighted me; but after awhile a suspicion, and then a sickening
dread, came upon me that all was not well with the picture. And then
the withering truth broke in upon me, the scales fell from my
eyes--the model's face was beautiful, but it was not right; the
expression I wanted was as far off as ever; there was but one right
expression in the world, and that I could not find. Ah! is there any
pain like that of discovering that all the toil of years has been in
vain, that the best you can do--the best that the spiritual world
permits you to do--is as far off the goal as when you began?'
'And so you failed after all, Mr. Wilderspin?' I said, anxious to get
him away so that I might talk to Cyril alone upon the one subject at
my heart.
'I told the model I should want her no more,' said Wilderspin, 'and
for two days and nights I sat in the studio in a dream, and could get
nothing to pass my lips but bread and water. Then it was that Mary
Wilderspin, my mother, remembered me, blessed me--sent me a
spiritual body--'
'For God's sake!' I whispered to Cyril, 'take the good madman away;
you don't know how his prattle harrows me just now.'
'Ah! never,' said Wilderspin, 'shall I forget that sunny morning when
was first revealed to me--'
'My dear fellow,' said Cyril, 'to tell the adventures of that sunny
morning would, as I know from experience, keep us here for the next
three hours. So, as I must not miss my train, and as you cannot spare
a second from "Ruth and Boaz," come along.'
While I was accompanying them through the corridors of the hotel,
Cyril said: 'You say he is not in love with his model? Don't you see
the sulky looks he gives me? I was the innocent cause of an unlucky
catastrophe with her. I'll tell you about that, however, another
time. Good-bye; I'm off to Paris.'
'When you return to London,' I said to Cyril, 'I wish to consult you
upon, a matter that concerns me deeply.'