“And now,” I said, “I shall say a few words of reprimand to Mrs. Robinson. You need not fear that I shall be too severe with her.”
Arthur made no movement, and I left him, and after taking the torn picture to my car I climbed to the top of the house where I suspected I should find Blanche.
Her mother-in-law had reluctantly given her leave to use an attic lumber room, and, amid a litter of old trunks and derelict furniture and cardboard boxes, she had made a little clearing near the window, where she worked feverishly at her painting in her rare leisure.
I had seen the room once when I had helped the nurse to carry down a screen put away there, and suddenly needed in one of Arthur’s many illnesses. I had been touched by the evident attempt to make some sort of refuge in that large house, where there were several empty rooms on the lower floors, but—perhaps—no privacy.
I quickly found that Mrs. Robinson tacitly disapproved of Blanche working in the attic. Her kind face became almost hard when she spoke of the hours her daughter-in-law spent there, when her sick husband wanted her downstairs.
I tapped at the door, but there was no answer, and I went in. Blanche was sitting near the window on a leather trunk.
I expected to find her distressed, but her eyes, as they were raised to meet mine, were untroubled. An uncomprehending calm dwelt in them. I saw that she had already forgotten her husband’s anger in her complete absorption in something else.
For the first time it struck me that her mental condition was not quite normal. Had she then no memory; or did she continually revert, as soon as she was left to herself to some world of her own imagination, where her harassed, bewildered soul was refreshed? I remembered the look I had often seen in her face, the piteous expression of one anxiously endeavouring and failing to fix her attention.
She was giving the whole of it now to a picture on a low easel before her. I drew near and looked at it also.
It was a portrait of the goldfish. It was really exactly like him with his eye turned up on the look out for crumbs. He was outlined against a charming assortment of foreign shells, strewn artistically on a zinc floor. The aquarium was encircled by a pretty little grove of cowslips and primroses, which gave the picture a cheerful and pleasing aspect.