"One, two, three," he said.
She got up, and the seconds added themselves into minutes. There was no sound at all except the dry grating of the charcoal on the canvas. Otherwise the austere stillness of the actual creation of art filled the room. Once again, as on the morning of yesterday, Charles knew his hand was attuned to his eye, and his eye attuned to the vision that lay behind it. Rapidly and unerringly the bold strokes grated across the canvas. Then they ceased altogether.
"You beautiful woman," said Charles. "I've got you. You can't escape me now."
Then his face which had been grave and frowning lit into smiles.
"Mother darling," he said. "I'm going to make such a queen of you with your shabby old dress and your eyes of love. Now for a treat you may dust the skeleton for ten minutes, and then you must give me your face again. I see it: I see it all."
He rummaged behind the terrible curtain, and found a palette and a couple of brushes. He squirted onto it worm casts of colour, and filled his tin with turpentine.
It was a medium-sized canvas he had chosen, about three feet six by three feet, and with big brushfuls of colour very thinly laid on, he splashed in the dull neutrality of greys and browns to frame his figure, making notes rather than painting. A blot of black indicated the typewriter, and then with greater care he filled in the black of her dress, and smeared in the white of the apron she wore with body colour. This took but ten minutes for his bold brush, and then standing a little back from it, he half-closed his eyes and looked a long time at it to see whether the value of background to figure, and figure to background, were as he meant them to be. He did not want the figure to jump out from its place, for even as she rose to greet the incomer with that face of loving welcome, her left hand still hovered with fingers outstretched over her typewriter. It had to be felt that the greeting over, her work must occupy her again. She had not detached herself from it, for all the leaping-forth of her heart in shining eyes and smiling mouth. As yet the figure was a little too near the spectator, a little too far off from its background, and while he puzzled over this the solution struck him. A little more emphasis given to the chair, the arm of which she grasped gave him what he wanted: she belonged to the chair and it anchored her in her place.
Charles suddenly threw back his head and laughed.
"Oh, jolly good!" he exclaimed, "and I don't care if nobody else agrees with me. Mother, leave that silly skeleton, please, and get back to your place. You may sit down, but turn your face towards me, and remember that Reggie is just coming in, and you've thought he was ill and——"
Charles' voice suddenly ceased, and he stared at his mother as she obeyed these instructions with eyes as of some inspired seer. Very slowly his hand moved to his brush which he had laid down, very slowly and quietly as if afraid of startling away the vision which he saw, he mixed his paint, and laid on the first brushful in planes of colour bold and firm and defined. Between the strokes he paused a long while, but the actual application was but the work of a second. But it was in these pauses when he stood with drooping mouth, head thrust forward, and eyes that seemed as if they burned their way into that beloved face that his work was done. To record what he saw was far less an effort than to see. The insight was what demanded all the fire and effort and imagination which possessed him. He had set himself to divine and to show what motherhood meant.