The Seaboard Parish, Complete

But Ethelwyn’s face gave so little response, that I felt at once how dreadful a thing it was not to have had a good father or mother. I do not know what would have become of me but for a good father. I wonder how anybody ever can be good that has not had a good father. How dreadful not to be a good father or good mother! Every father who is not good, every mother who is not good, just makes it as impossible to believe in God as it can be made. But he is our one good Father, and does not leave us, even should our fathers and mothers have thus forsaken us, and left him without a witness.

Here the evil odour of brick-burning invaded my nostrils, and I knew that London was about us. A few moments after, we reached the station, where a carriage was waiting to take us to our hotel.

Dreary was the change from the stillness and sunshine of Kilkhaven to the fog and noise of London; but Connie slept better that night than she had slept for a good many nights before.

After breakfast the next morning, I said to Wynnie,

“I am going to see Mr. Percivale’s studio, my dear: have you any objection to going with me?”

“No, papa,” she answered, blushing. “I have never seen an artist’s studio in my life.”

“Come along, then. Get your bonnet at once. It rains, but we shall take a cab, and it won’t matter.”

She ran off, and was ready in a few minutes. We gave the driver directions, and set off. It was a long drive. At length he stopped at the door of a very common-looking house, in a very dreary-looking street, in which no man could possibly identify his own door except by the number. I knocked. A woman who looked at once dirty and cross, the former probably the cause of the latter, opened the door, gave a bare assent to my question whether Mr. Percivale was at home, withdrew to her den with the words “second-floor,” and left us to find our own way up the two flights of stairs. This, however, involved no great difficulty. We knocked at the door of the front room. A well-known voice cried, “Come in,” and we entered.

Percivale, in a short velvet coat, with his palette on his thumb, advanced to meet us cordially. His face wore a slight flush, which I attributed solely to pleasure, and nothing to any awkwardness in receiving us in such a poor place as he occupied. I cast my eyes round the room. Any romantic notions Wynnie might have indulged concerning the marvels of a studio, must have paled considerably at the first glance around Percivale’s room—plainly the abode if not of poverty, then of self-denial, although I suspected both. A common room, with no carpet save a square in front of the fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which stood a half-finished oil-painting—these constituted almost the whole furniture of the room. With his pocket-handkerchief Percivale dusted one chair for Wynnie and another for me. Then standing before us, he said:

“This is a very shabby place to receive you in, Miss Walton, but it is all I have got.”

“A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesses,” I ventured to say.

“Thank you,” said Percivale. “I hope not. It is well for me it should not.”

“It is well for the richest man in England that it should not,” I returned. “If it were not so, the man who could eat most would be the most blessed.”

“There are people, even of my acquaintance, however, who seem to think it does.”

“No doubt; but happily their thinking so will not make it so even for themselves.”

“Have you been very busy since you left us, Mr. Percivale?” asked Wynnie.

“Tolerably,” he answered. “But I have not much to show for it. That on the easel is all. I hardly like to let you look at it, though.”

“Why?” asked Wynnie.

“First, because the subject is painful. Next, because it is so unfinished that none but a painter could do it justice.”

“But why should you paint subjects you would not like people to look at?”

“I very much want people to look at them.”

“Why not us, then?” said Wynnie.

“Because you do not need to be pained.”

“Are you sure it is good for you to pain anybody?” I said.

“Good is done by pain—is it not?” he asked.

“Undoubtedly. But whether we are wise enough to know when and where and how much, is the question.”

“Of course I do not make the pain my object.”

“If it comes only as a necessary accompaniment, that may alter the matter greatly,” I said. “But still I am not sure that anything in which the pain predominates can be useful in the best way.”

“Perhaps not,” he returned.—“Will you look at the daub?”

“With much pleasure,” I replied, and we rose and stood before the easel. Percivale made no remark, but left us to find out what the picture meant. Nor had I long to look before I understood it—in a measure at least.

It represented a garret-room in a wretchedly ruinous condition. The plaster had come away in several places, and through between the laths in one spot hung the tail of a great rat. In a dark corner lay a man dying. A woman sat by his side, with her eyes fixed, not on his face, though she held his hand in hers, but on the open door, where in the gloom you could just see the struggles of two undertaker’s men to get the coffin past the turn of the landing towards the door. Through the window there was one peep of the blue sky, whence a ray of sunlight fell on the one scarlet blossom of a geranium in a broken pot on the window-sill outside.

“I do not wonder you did not like to show it,” I said. “How can you bear to paint such a dreadful picture?”

“It is a true one. It only represents a fact.”

“All facts have not a right to be represented.”

“Surely you would not get rid of painful things by huddling them out of sight?”

“No; nor yet by gloating upon them.”

“You will believe me that it gives me anything but pleasure to paint such pictures—as far as the subject goes,” he said with some discomposure.

“Of course. I know you well enough by this time to know that. But no one could hang it on his wall who would not either gloat on suffering or grow callous to it. Whence, then, would come the good I cannot doubt you propose to yourself as your object in painting the picture? If it had come into my possession, I would—”

“Put it in the fire,” suggested Percivale with a strange smile.

“No. Still less would I sell it. I would hang it up with a curtain before it, and only look at it now and then, when I thought my heart was in danger of growing hardened to the sufferings of my fellow-men, and forgetting that they need the Saviour.”

“I could not wish it a better fate. That would answer my end.”

“Would it, now? Is it not rather those who care little or nothing about such matters that you would like to influence? Would you be content with one solitary person like me? And, remember, I wouldn’t buy it. I would rather not have it. I could hardly bear to know it was in my house. I am certain you cannot do people good by showing them only the painful. Make it as painful as you will, but put some hope into it—something to show that action is worth taking in the affair. From mere suffering people will turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it, without hinting at some door of escape, only urges them to forget it all. Why should they be pained if it can do no good?”

“For the sake of sympathy, I should say,” answered Percivale.

“They would rejoin, ‘It is only a picture. Come along.’ No; give people hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything.”

“I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You see there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet in the window.”

He looked at me curiously as he spoke.

“I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and make the other look more terrible.”

“Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have failed otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the picture, I almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read your own meaning into it.”

Wynnie had not said a word. As I turned away from the picture, I saw that she was looking quite distressed, but whether by the picture or the freedom with which I had remarked upon it, I do not know. My eyes falling on a little sketch in sepia, I began to examine it, in the hope of finding something more pleasant to say. I perceived in a moment, however, that it was nearly the same thought, only treated in a gentler and more poetic mode. A girl lay dying on her bed. A youth held her hand. A torrent of summer sunshine fell through the window, and made a lake of glory upon the floor. I turned away.

“You like that better, don’t you, papa?” said Wynnie tremulously.