The Seaboard Parish Part 68

"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 suns.h.i.+ny 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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.

"It is beautiful, certainly," I answered. "And if it were only one, I should enjoy it--as a mood. But coming after the other, it seems but the same thing more weakly embodied."

I confess I was a little vexed; for I had got much interested in Percivale, for his own sake as well as for my daughter's, and I had expected better things from him. But I saw that I had gone too far.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Percivale," I said.

"I fear I have been too free in my remarks. I know, likewise, that I am a clergyman, and not a painter, and therefore incapable of giving the praise which I have little doubt your art at least deserves."

"I trust that honesty cannot offend me, however much and justly it may pain me."

"But now I have said my worst, I should much like to see what else you have at hand to show me."

"Unfortunately I have too much at hand. Let me see."

He strode to the other end of the room, where several pictures were leaning against the wall, with their faces turned towards it. From these he chose one, but, before showing it, fitted it into an empty frame that stood beside. He then brought it forward and set it on the easel. I will describe it, and then my reader will understand the admiration which broke from me after I had regarded it for a time.

A dark hill rose against the evening sky, which shone through a few thin pines on its top. Along a road on the hill-side four squires bore a dying knight--a man past the middle age. One behind carried his helm, and another led his horse, whose fine head only appeared in the picture.

The head and countenance of the knight were very n.o.ble, telling of many a battle, and ever for the right. The last had doubtless been gained, for one might read victory as well as peace in the dying look. The party had just reached the edge of a steep descent, from which you saw the valley beneath, with the last of the harvest just being reaped, while the shocks stood all about in the fields, under the place of the sunset.

The sun had been down for some little time. There was no gold left in the sky, only a little dull saffron, but plenty of that lovely liquid green of the autumn sky, divided with a few streaks of pale rose. The depth of the sky overhead, which you could not see for the arrangement of the picture, was mirrored lovelily in a piece of water that lay in the centre of the valley.

"My dear fellow," I cried, "why did you not show me this first, and save me from saying so many unkind things? Here is a picture to my own heart; it is glorious. Look here, Wynnie," I went on; "you see it is evening; the sun's work is done, and he has set in glory, leaving his good name behind him in a lovely harmony of colour. The old knight's work is done too; his day has set in the storm of battle, and he is lying lapt in the coming peace. They are bearing him home to his couch and his grave.

Look at their faces in the dusky light. They are all mourning for and honouring the life that is ebbing away. But he is gathered to his fathers like a shock of corn fully ripe; and so the harvest stands golden in the valley beneath. The picture would not be complete, however, if it did not tell us of the deep heaven overhead, the symbol of that heaven whither he who has done his work is bound. What a lovely idea to represent it by means of the water, the heaven embodying itself in the earth, as it were, that we may see it! And observe how that dusky hill-side, and those tall slender mournful-looking pines, with that sorrowful sky between, lead the eye and point the heart upward towards that heaven. It is indeed a grand picture, full of feeling--a picture and a parable."

[Footnote: This is a description, from memory only, of a picture painted by Arthur Hughes.]

I looked at the girl. Her eyes were full of tears, either called forth by the picture itself or by the pleasure of finding Percivale's work appreciated by me, who had spoken so hardly of the others.

"I cannot tell you how glad I am that you like it," she said.

"Like it!" I returned; "I am simply delighted with it, more than I can express--so much delighted that if I could have this alongside of it, I should not mind hanging that other--that hopeless garret--on the most public wall I have."

"Then," said Wynnie bravely, though in a tremulous voice, "you confess--don't you, papa?--that you were _too_ hard on Mr. Percivale at first?"

"Not too hard on his picture, my dear; and that was all he had yet given me to judge by. No man should paint a picture like that. You are not bound to disseminate hopelessness; for where there is no hope there can be no sense of duty."

"But surely, papa, Mr. Percivale has _some_ sense of duty," said Wynnie in an almost angry tone.

"a.s.suredly my love. Therefore I argue that he has some hope, and therefore, again, that he has no right to publish such a picture."

At the word _publish_ Percivale smiled. But Wynnie went on with her defence:

"But you see, papa, that Mr. Percivale does not paint such pictures only. Look at the other."

"Yes, my dear. But pictures are not like poems, lying side by side in the same book, so that the one can counteract the other. The one of these might go to the stormy Hebrides, and the other to the Vale of Avalon; but even then I should be strongly inclined to criticise the poem, whatever position it stood in, that had _nothing_--positively nothing--of the aurora in it."