Part 41 (1/2)

Here Cyril gently took the magazine from Wilderspin's hand, but did not silence him. 'As I told you in Wales,' said he to me, 'I had an abundance of imagination, but I wanted some model in order to realise it. I could never meet a face that came anything nigh my own ideal of expression as the purely spiritual side of the beauty of woman; and until I did that I knew that I should achieve nothing whereby the world might recognise a new power in art. In vain did I try to idealise such faces as did not please me. And this was because nothing could satisfy me but the perfect type of expression which not even Leonardo nor any other painter in the world had found--the true Romantic type.'

'I understand you, Mr. Wilderspin,' I said. 'This I perfect type of expression you eventually found--'

'In the daughter,' said Cyril, 'of the G.o.ddess Gudgeon.'

'By the blessing of Mary Wilderspin in heaven,' said Wilderspin.

And then the talk between the two friends ran upon artistic matters, and I heard no more, for my mind was wandering up and down the London streets.

Wilderspin and I left the house together. As we walked along, side by side, I said to him: 'You spoke just now of your mother's blessing.

Am I really to understand that you in an age like this believe in the power of human blessings and human curses?'

'Do I believe in blessings and curses, Mr. Aylwin?' said Wilderspin solemnly. 'You are asking me whether I am with or without what your sublime father calls the ”most powerful of the primary instincts of man.” He tells us in _The Veiled Queen_ that ”Even in this material age of ours there is not a single soul that does not in its inner depths acknowledge the power of the unseen world. The most hardened materialist,” says he, ”believes in what he calls sometimes 'luck'

and sometimes 'fortune.'” Let me advise you, Mr. Aylwin, to study the voice of your inspired father. I will send a set of his writings to your hotel to-morrow. And, Mr. Aylwin, my duty compels me to speak very plainly to you upon a subject that has troubled me since I had the honour of meeting you in Wales. There is but one commandment in the decalogue to which a distinct promise of reward is attached; it is that which bids us honour our fathers and our mothers. Good-day, sir.'

IX

THE PALACE OF NIN-KI-GAL

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 a.s.suring 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 pa.s.s my lips but bread and water. Then it was that Mary Wilderspin, my mother, remembered me, blessed me--sent me a spiritual body--'

'For G.o.d'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--'