"Thank you. But you're about the fiftieth person who's on the lookout," returned Jack Hardy ruefully.
When he finally took his departure, he walked slowly back to Kensington, a cloud of discontent upon his brow. His mind was full of his picture, the great work he was longing to commence, yet—morbidly conscious of his own limitations—he was resolutely determined not to start without having found a suitable model for the central figure.
"I must get on! I must make headway! All my youth is passing!"
He almost snarled these words aloud. Earnest, enthusiastic, patiently hard-working, Jack Hardy was devoid of one spark of divine inspiration, and knew it but too well for his peace of mind. He saw his own handiwork without gloss or glamour; viewed it as it was in stern reality, good in composition, in technique, but commonplace—oh! Phœbus Apollo and all ye Muses—how sadly commonplace! Not a man or woman, trained and practised as he was, but could have done equally well. In the ripest fruit of his hand and brain there was absolutely nothing individual; scarce a trace of originality; no magnetism, no grip. Never had Jack Hardy completed a work, and looking upon it said within himself: "None but I could have produced just this result. Only the combination of heart and brain and soul and knowledge that makes Me could have evolved this picture. I myself am in it."
As a student, a great future had been prophesied for him, and in those days he had believed in himself. But time had glided by, his thirtieth year was past, his powers had matured without enlarging their scope, and with bitter reluctance he commenced to realise that he now saw the full extent to which his capacity would ever attain. He might become more certain, more facile, but nothing else. No longer could he still look forward and upward, confident in what would be revealed when the summit of the hill he so laboriously climbed was reached. He was there, and lo! it was but the crowded tableland of mediocrity!
His thoughts were bitter as he walked through the streets that day. Why had Nature so utterly denied him that divine "something" that no industry can give, no study can acquire? "I can but despise my own men and women," he thought. "I am no creator! I make forms in paint, but I cannot give them the breath of life. I make them beautiful—strictly speaking—yet there is no beauty in them. I am a craftsman, a mechanic—not an artist."
But he had a stout heart and a dogged obstinacy that refused to yield. Surely this fervid ambition to abandon himself to imaginative work must be the outcome of some fire of inspiration, however small and smouldering. Let him only find that woman with the gleaming pale face and the sunlike hair, and he surely could and would produce his masterpiece.
He looked around as he walked. Even if he discovered his personified dream out of the ranks of professional models, he meant to leave no stone unturned to persuade her to sit for his great picture.
He shivered somewhat as the chill winter blasts rushed by. Money was far from plentiful in Jack's pockets. In true artistic style he inhabited a garret in Bohemia, and it was only by the strictest economy that he was enabled to exist on the work he sold, aided by the small sum of money he had inherited from his mother.
Yet the studio belonging to the top suite in the handsome block of flats that he entered, and in which he was obviously quite at home, bore every sign of ample wealth. A spacious and lofty apartment, it was obviously no makeshift, but had been destined by its architect to behold artistic labours. This was clearly shown by its top-lights, and its one very huge window, unusually wide and deep.