“It’s all right, Rosina,” he called out, coming into the passage. “It’s only me.”
“Gracious!” ejaculated Mrs. Matthew Strang, angrily, putting her hand to her heart. “What a turn you gave me! So you’re the Mr. Matthews! I really do wish you wouldn’t come sneaking in and prying and ferreting and frightening a body out of her wits.”
She stood there—no more pleasing than the vases—the features, that had once threatened to be pretty, sharpened shrewishly, though the figure had grown plumper except where the breasts had fallen. She did not look her youth. The face was weary, the pale blue eyes had lost their softness. She had hastily donned a cheap black cashmere dress trimmed with jet. The painter was glad the usual effusion of affection was wanting. Notwithstanding the pitch of reaction to which he was wrought up, all his being shrank from the desecrating embrace of the woman he did not love. Nevertheless he was conscious of an undercurrent of astonishment. Longer intervals than this last had parted them, yet she had never failed to exhibit amorous emotion, even though it took the shape of jealous reproach. This afternoon there was a suggestion of resentment in her greeting—for the first time he felt unwelcome. He was puzzled, albeit relieved. But the secret of her mood did not leak out yet; and in the meantime there was Billy, sulkily awaiting his famous brother’s recognition. The young man looked whiter and thinner than on Matthew’s last visit to the house.
“How glad he’ll be to come for a holiday with me,” thought the painter, with a pang of joyful repentance. “He oughtn’t to live in London at all. We’ll all go down to some pretty little village where I can paint if necessary, and we’ll stay till the winter.” The cripple churlishly took the hand which his brother extended. His palm burned.
“All right, Billy?” questioned Matthew, cheerfully.
“It doesn’t matter how I am,” snapped the younger man. “It’s months since you’ve been nigh us.”
Rosina turned upon Billy. “Don’t you take my part—I can speak for myself. You can’t expect to see your brother in the summer when all the fashionable folks come up to London to be painted.”
Billy murmured something inarticulate, and looked doggedly at Matthew, leaning on his crutch.
“I suppose I must ask you to walk in and take a chair, since you are such a stranger,” said Mrs. Matthew Strang.
Her husband meekly retreated into the drawing-room, and sat down with his back to the vases that adorned the mantel-piece. But now a new horror caught his eye—nothing less than a framed oleograph of “Motherhood,” which had found its way into the house in the days when its wide popularity still gave him a certain interest in it not far removed from pride. On his soul, tensely strung by Eleanor’s hand for the high notes of imagination, this cheap domesticity now jarred abominably. The picture glared at him, it loomed suddenly symbolic. It was representative of Rosina and her influence. This was her height of poetry, the top measure of her soul—the mother carrying the little girl who carried the doll. The work he wanted to do—nay, the work he had always wanted to do—that was what Eleanor stood for—the rare, the fine, the ethereal. Years of insincere work had blunted and torpified him—Eleanor had recreated his soul, had given him freshness of feeling, and something of the early ardor of aspiration.