“It is lovely,” I said.
“He is a lucky goldfish, isn’t he?” she said apathetically.
I pondered long that night over Blanche. I reproached myself that I had not perceived earlier that she was overwrought. When I came to think of it her life was deeply overshadowed by her husband’s illness. Was it possible that she was the more talented of the two, and that it was not congenial to her to spend so much of her time docilely copying Arthur’s pictures? I had never thought of that before. I knew nothing about art myself, but I could find out. I was becoming much more occupied by this time, and one of my patients was the celebrated artist, M., whose slow death I was trying to make as painless as possible.
A day or two later I laid before him the picture Arthur had torn in two.
I can still see M. sitting in his arm-chair in the ragged dressing gown which he wore day and night, unshaved, wrinkled, sixty.
He threw the larger half of the canvas on the floor, and held the piece containing the chrysanthemums and their shadow in his thin shaking talon of a hand, moving it now nearer now further away from his half blind blood-shot eyes.
I began to explain that only the chrysanthemums were by the wife of the painter of the picture, but he brushed me aside.
“She can see,” he said at last. “And she’s honest. I was honest once. She can’t always say all she sees—who can—but she sees everything. Bring me something more of hers.”
Reader, after immense cogitation I decided to take him two of Arthur’s compositions, the couple which after hours of agitated vacillation he considered to be his best. They were all spread out in his studio, and I had to assist in his decision. He had on several occasions—knowing I attended the great man—hinted to me that he should like M. to see his work and advise him upon it, but I had never taken the hint. Mrs. Robinson was only surprised that he had not pressed to see her son’s pictures earlier. She and Arthur evidently thought I had kept them from the famous painter’s notice until now, as, indeed, I had.
“And I must take something of yours too,” I said kindly to Blanche as she put the two selected works of art into a magnificent portfolio.