"It is one of your best pictures, Goliath," observed Malcolm, "but I suppose you do not intend to exhibit it next year?"
"Oh no," he returned, "it is already bespoken by a rich Australian. Rainsford brought him here to see if he would give me an order, and he fell in love with my organ-grinders at once. I had a sort of idea that I would keep it myself, for the sake of Verity and the kid; but with a family"—here Amias smoothed his yellow moustache proudly—"one is bound to keep the pot boiling."
"I did not want it to go," sighed Verity, who had just then sidled up to her husband—she looked a mere child beside him—"it is such a perfect likeness of Babs." And then she withdrew with the rebel, while the others made a turn round the studio; and Amias showed them sketches, and also a more important picture that was to be exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year. Verity was the model again—this time as a sick gipsy girl lying on a heap of straw in a barn, while the caravan and encampment were painted most realistically, even to the old horse and shaggy donkey hobbled to the trunk of a tree, with a thin yellow cur near them. When completed it would be a striking picture: the smoky sunset tints of a November afternoon were faithfully depicted; and a woodman's hut, just falling into decay, with golden lichen on the rotting roof, was marvellously painted. Malcolm stood before it in a rapt mood of ecstasy, then he struck himself dramatically on the breast.
"Goliath," he said sorrowfully, "I am the most miserable of men, a 'mute inglorious Milton' is nothing to me. Nature has created me a lover of the picturesque. In heart and soul I am an artist, I dabble in colours, I dream of lights and shades and glorious effects; but the power of working out my ideas is denied me. If I try to paint a tree my friends gibe at me. I am a poor literary hack; but I give you my word, my dear old Philistine, that I would willingly change places with you." Anna smiled, she was accustomed to this sort of talk; but to her surprise Verity, who had just rejoined them, looked grave.
"I am always so sorry for Mr. Herrick when he says this sort of thing," she observed in a low voice aside to Anna. "He means us to laugh, but he is quite serious. Amias and I just know how he feels. It must be so sad to love the beautiful with all one's heart and not have the power to create—to be just a thought and word painter and nothing else."
"Perhaps if Malcolm took lessons he might be able to paint in time," suggested Anna. She felt rather culpable, as though all these years she had not sympathised enough with him; but then it was so difficult for any one to know when he was serious.
It was evident that Verity understood him.
"Oh no, it is too late now," she remarked; "besides, the gift has been denied him. But he helps Amias so much by his clever suggestions. He would not tell you, of course, but this caravan scene is all his idea. He came upon a gipsy encampment in a Kentish lane one afternoon, and he made Amias go down the next day and see it. There was the woodman's hut, and the barn, and the hobbled horse and donkey. Amias was down there at the inn three days, making sketches for the picture, and getting some of the gipsies to sit to him. There was one woman ill in the tent, but Amias declared she looked more like a sick ape, she was so ugly—so I had to be the model."
"Isn't it rather tiring work, Mrs. Keston?"
"Oh dear, no," returned Verity smiling; "it never tires me to do things for Amias; and then he lets me talk to him all the time. I like to feel I am useful to him, and can help him a little with his work."