Surely a pretty wife and graceful daughters would have detracted from the splendour of the tragedy. Israel stood there, surrounded by all that was mean, yet losing nothing of his regal dignity--indeed the Man of Sorrows.
Ere I left I suddenly remembered to ask after the three younger children. They were still with their kind benefactor, the father told me.
'I suppose you will resume possession of them when you make your fortune by the piece-sorting?' I said.
'God grant it,' he replied. 'My bowels yearn for that day.'
Against my intention I slipped into his hand the final seven pounds I was prepared to pay. 'If your partnership scheme fails, try again alone,' I said.
His blessings pursued me down the steep staircase. His womankind remained shy and dumb.
When I got home I found a telegram from the Parsonage. My father was dangerously ill. I left everything and hastened to help nurse him. My picture was not sent in to any Exhibition--I could not let it go without seeing it again, without a last touch or two. When, some months later, I returned to town, my first thought--inspired by the sight of my picture--was how Quarriar was faring. I left the studio and telephoned to Sir Asher Aaronsberg at the London office of his great Middleton business.
'That!' His contempt penetrated even through the wires. 'Smashed up long ago. Just as I expected.'
And the sneer of the professional philanthropist vibrated triumphantly. I was much upset, but ere I could recover my composure Sir Asher was cut off. In the evening I received a note saying Quarriar was a rogue, who had to flee from Russia for illicit sale of spirits. He had only two, at most three, elderly daughters; the three younger girls were a myth. For a moment I was staggered; then all my faith in Israel returned. Those three children a figment of the imagination! Impossible! Why, I remembered countless little anecdotes about these very children, told me with the most evident fatherly pride. He had even repeated the quaint remarks the youngest had made on her return home from her first morning at the English school. Impossible that these things could have been invented on the spur of the moment. No; I could not possibly doubt the genuineness of my model's spontaneous talk, especially as in those days he had had no reason for expecting anything from me, and he had most certainly not demanded anything. And then I remembered that tragic passage describing how these three little ones, sheltered and fed by a kindly soul, hid themselves when their father came to see them, fearing to be reclaimed by him to hunger and cold. If Quarriar could invent such things, he was indeed a poet, for in the whole literature of starvation I could recall no better touch.