The eyes of the young soldier lit up. “Do I?... Someone told me he was your son. I went home from seeing that and began to paint. After the war, would you let me come and work with you? My things ... wait ... I’ll show you my things first.” He tried to raise himself. Mrs. Talkett slipped her arm under his shoulders, and resting against her he lifted his hand and pointed to the bare wall facing him.
“There—there; you see? Look for yourself. The brushwork ... not too bad, eh? I was ... getting it.... There, that head of my grandfather, eh? And my lame sister.... Oh, I’m young ...” he smiled ... “never had any models.... But after the war you’ll see....”
Mrs. Talkett let him down again, and feverishly, vehemently, he began to describe, one by one, and over and over again, the pictures he saw on the naked wall in front of him.
A nurse had slipped in, and Mrs. Talkett signed to Campton to follow her out. The boy seemed aware that the painter was going, and interrupted his enumeration to say: “As soon as the war’s over you’ll let me come?”
“Of course I will,” Campton promised.
In the passage he asked: “Can nothing save him? Has everything possible been done?”
“Everything. We’re all so fond of him—the biggest surgeons have seen him. It seems he has great talent—but he never could afford models, so he has painted his family over and over again.” Mrs. Talkett looked at Campton with a good deal of feeling in her changing eyes. “You see, it did help, your coming. I know you thought it tiresome of me to insist.” She led him downstairs and into the office, where a lame officer with the Croix de Guerre sat at the desk. The officer wrote out the young soldier’s name—René Davril—and his family’s address.
“They’re quite destitute, Monsieur. An old infirm grandfather, a lame sister who taught music, a widowed mother and several younger children....”
“I’ll come back, I’ll come back,” Campton again promised as he parted from Mrs. Talkett.
He had not thought it possible that he would ever feel so kindly toward her as at that moment. And then, a second later, she nearly spoiled it by saying: “Dear Master—you see the penalty of greatness!”