will locke lay dying. one would have thought, from his tranquillity, confidence, and love of work, even along with spare diet, that he would have lived long. but dreamland cannot be a healthy region for a man in the body to inhabit. will was going where his visions would be as nought to the realities. he was still one of the most peaceful, the happiest of fellows, as he had been all his life. he babbled of the pictures he would paint in another region, as if he were conscious that he had painted in a former state. it seemed, too, that the poor fellow's spiritual life, apart from his artist career, took sounder, cheerier substance and form, as the other life grew dimmer and wilder. dulcie was almost reconciled to let will go; for he would be more at home in the spirit-world than here, and she had seen sore trouble, which taught her to acquiesce, when there were a father and a friend seen glimmeringly but hopefully beyond the gulf. dulcie moved about, with her child holding by her skirts, resigned and helpful in her sorrow.
the most clouded faces in the old room in st. martin's lane—with its old litter, so grievous to-day, of brushes, and colours, and graving tools, and wild pictures which the painter would never touch more—were those of sam winnington and clary. will had bidden sam and clary be sent for to his deathbed; and, offended as they had been, and widely severed as they were now, they rose and came trembling to obey the summons. clary gave one [page 162]look, put her handkerchief quickly to her eyes, and then turned and softly covered the tools, lifted the boiling pot to the side of the grate, and took dulcie's fretful, wondering child in her lap. she was not a fine lady now, but a woman in distress. sam stood immoveable and uncertain, with a man's awkwardness, but a face working with suppressed emotion.
will felt no restraint; he sat up in his faded coat with his cravat open to give him air, and turning his wan face with its dark shadow towards sam winnington in his velvet coat, with a diamond ring sparkling on his splashed hand, and his colour, which had grown rosy of late years, heightened with emotion, addressed his old friend.
"i wanted to see you, sam; i had something on my mind, and i could not depart with full satisfaction without saying it to you; i have done you wrong."
sam raised his head, startled, and stared at the sick man: poor will locke; were his wits utterly gone? they had always been somewhat to seek: though he had been a wonderful fellow, too, in his own way—wonderful at flowers, and birds, and beasts, if he had but been content with them.
"i called you a mere portrait-painter, sam," continued the dying man; "i refused to acknowledge your inspiration, and i knew better: i saw that to you was granted the discernment to read the human face and the soul behind it, as to me it was given to hold converse with nature and the subtle essence of good and evil. most painters before you have painted masks; but yours are the clothings of immortals: and your flesh is wonderful, sam—how [page 163]you have perfected it! and it is not true what they tell you of your draperies: you are the only man alive who can render them picturesque and not absurd, refined and not stinted. you were a genteel fellow, too, from the beginning, and would no more do a dirty action when you had only silver coins to jingle in your pockets, than now when they are stuffed with gold moidores."
"oh, will, will!" cried sam, desperately bowing his head; "i have done little for you."
"man!" cried will, with a kingly incredulity, "what could you do for me? i wanted nothing. i was withdrawn somewhat from my proper field, to mould and colour for daily bread; but dulcie saved me many a wasted hour, and i could occupy the period of a mechanical job in conceiving—no, in marshalling my visions. mine was a different, an altogether higher line than yours, sam; you will forgive me if i have told you too abruptly," and the poverty-stricken painter, at his last gasp, looked deprecatingly at his old honoured associate.
but he was too far gone for ceremony; he was too near release for pain. he had even shaken hands with the few family cares he was capable of experiencing, and had commended dulcie to sam winnington without a single doubt. he felt, like gainsborough, that they were all going to heaven, and vandyke was in the company. where was the room for misunderstanding now! here was the end of strife, and the conclusion of the whole matter. some other sentences will spoke before his parting breath; and when his hearers heard him murmuring the word "garment," they fancied he still raved of his calling—on to the [page 164]end. but his mind had turned and taken refuge in another calling, and it was in reference to it that he quoted the fragment of a verse, "and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment; and as many as touched him were made whole." "sam, have you put forth your hand?"
thus will locke departed rejoicing. dulcie, a thin forlorn widow woman, talked with a lingering echo of his elevation, of her will's being beyond lamentation, and of herself and her boy's being well off with their faith in the future. dulcie had a proud, constant presentiment in the recesses of her woman's heart that the husband and father's good name and merited reputation would surely find his memory out in this world yet. she had no material possessions save a few of his gorgeous, gruesome, hieroglyphical pictures, and what she had borrowed or inherited of his lower cunning in tinting, a more marketable commodity in the present mind of society.
dulcie disposed of will's paintings, reluctantly, realizing an astonishing amount; astonishing, unless you take into account the fact that his companions and contemporaries were not sure that he was a mere madman now that he had gone from their ranks. they wished to atone for their dislike to his vagaries by preserving some relics of the curious handling, the grotesque imagination, the delicate taste, and the finely accurate knowledge of vegetable and animal forms which had passed away.
then dulcie went back in the waggon to her old friends at fairfax, and, by so doing, probably saved her sole remaining child. dulcie did not know whether to be glad [page 165]or sorry when she found that will's boy had no more of his father's genius than might have been derived from her own quick talents, and neat, nice fingers. and she was comforted: not in the sense of marrying again—oh dear, no! she cherished the memory of her will as a sacred thing, and through all her returning plumpness and rosiness—for she was still a young woman—never forgot the honour she had borne in being a great painter's wife and companion for half-a-dozen years. perhaps, good as she was, she grew rather to brandish this credit in the faces of the cloth-workers and their wives; to speak a little bigly of the galleries and the academy, of chiaroscuro and perspective, of which the poor ignoramuses knew nothing: to be obstinate on her dignity, and stand out on her gentility far before that of the attorneys' and the doctors' wives;—and all this though she had been, as you may remember, the least assuming of girls, the least exacting of wives. but women have many sides to their nature, and remain puzzles—puzzles in their virtues as in their vices; and if dulcie were ever guilty of ostentation, you have not to dive deep to discover that it was out of respect to her will—to her great, simple, single-hearted painter.
no, will locke's was not a life wrecked on the rocks of adversity, any more than sam winnington's was stranded on the sandbanks of prosperity. the one did a little to mellow the other before the scenes closed, and will locke was less obliged to sam winnington than sam to will in the end. will's nature and career were scarcely within the scope of sam's genial material philosophy; but the thought of them did grow to cross sam's mind during his [page 166]long work-hours; and good painters' hours are mostly stoutly, steadily, indefatigably long. he pondered them even when he was jesting playfully with the affable aristocrat under his pencil; he spoke of them often to clary when he was sketching at her work-table of an evening; and she, knitting beside him, would stop her work and respond freely. then sam would rise, and, with his hands behind his back, go and look at that lush, yet delicate picture of the redwater bower which he had got routed out, framed, and hung in clary's drawing-room. he would contemplate it for many minutes at a study, and he would repeat the study scores and scores of times with always the same result—the conviction of the ease and security resulting from spiritualizing matter, and the difficulty and hopelessness of materializing spirit. and after these long looks into the past, sam would be more forbearing in pronouncing verdicts on his brethren, worsted in the effort to express what was inherent in their minds; would not decide quite so dogmatically, that all a man had to do was to be sound and diligent, and keep himself far apart from high-flown rubbish, like a common-sense, sober-minded englishman. and sam came to be less feverishly anxious about his own monopoly of public esteem; less nettled at art-criticism; perhaps less vivacious in his talents and well-doing, but more manly and serene in his triumph, as will locke had been manly and serene in his failure.
will locke's life and death, so devoid of pomp and renown, might be beyond lamentation, after all.
