BURYING HILDA'S TALENT

Otago Witness, Issue 3168, 2 December 1914, Page 82

BURYING HILDA'S TALENT

By Mae CARET E. Murphy

Hilda Langdon and Robert Kingston bad just been arranging their joint and several futures. “You understand, Hilda,’’ Robert continued depreciatingly, “ your life as a country doctor’s wife in Waiwera will be very different from that to which you were accustomed in Reddford, or even here in Bainbridge.” “ But I like your Maoriland, Robert. John has been in charge of Bainbridge College for two years, and mother and I have enjoyed our colonial experiences immensely.” “ Still, Bainbridge is not Waiwera. Picture a little sleepy hollow of a place with houses that might have been tipped out of a sack and left lying where they fell. Fill in the empty spaces with green fields and gardens and clumps and lines of trees. Place a few. leisurely country folk upon the single straggling street, and then run a silver ribbon of a river through the centre of it, and you have Waiwera.” Hilda .laughed. “ One would think you were trying to discourage me, Robert; but you need not, and I intend to marry you and chance Waiwera.” “ There will be no social doings, no plays,” insisted Robert, intent upon making a clean breast of it. “ You will be alone a great deal when I’m away visiting patients in the back-blocka. I’ll even come home wet and cold and cross sometimes. You’ve no idea of the hardships a country doctor’s wife has to face.” “Let me face them, Robert. That’s what I want. I’ve no desire to creep through life or be wrapped in cotton wool.” “Plucky Hilda,” commended he; ‘but there’s another thing: you must take all your painting paraphernalia and go on with your studies.” - “Indeed!” returned Hilda demurely. “ I thought you believed that home was woman’s sphere and all that. I had already planned a picture of myself in robes of sacrificial red, burning my paints, and solemnly relinquishing my dreams of fame forever.” “ Rubbish, Hilda. You are not going to cease being a woman of talent because you are doing the sensible thing aticl marrying me. But seriously, dear, I do think a private and personal dream is a good thing for anyone, and particularly so for a clever woman with time to burn.” “ I think I shall be too happy to bother, Robert; but I can take my things along and be prepared for inspiration should it chance to visit me.” For many months Hilda Kingston spent little time in the workroom that her husband prepared for her. She dallied with sketch books, filling them with pretty bits of river scenery. She sketched her husband in a variety of poses in order to keep her hand in, ag she explained to the patient sitter. “Mr Frederick Lawrie, R.A., and no flatterer, used to say that figure-painting was my metier,” she volunteered for the information of her husband; “but I only half-agree with him. My people are too wooden. There’s no get-up and go to them. They are like painted lilies in a painted field—dead things. My pretty girlfaces are as dull and lifeless as uncut diamonds.” “ I don’t see much of the painted lily about that,” declared Robert, after a lengthy scrutiny of the study upon the easel. “ Oh, you are not the lily type exactly, Robert, but you are too handsome to make a good study. I like your chin' though, but I can’t just get it. Either it shows a remarkable resemblance to that of Bill Sykes, or else it is too jaunty and Micaw rberish. They are difficult you know—chins are.” “ H.’m-m —I daresay,” sympathised Robert; “but you’ll paint a great picture some day, Hilda.” “ Perhaps,” said Hilda, with her head on one side as she critically examined her work, “when that old lapidary time has polished up a few of my facets to let the light of inspiration shine through.” It was years before the compelling desire to paint something visited Hilda with an insistence that would not be denied. Her three eldest children were already at school, and baby Robin had reached the comparatively mature age of four years. When Dora, a serious and motherly young person, abandoned her dolls for the school-

room, Robin evinced an intense interest in his mother’s painting room. From tne first he showed a remarkable aptitude in handling brushes, and would become so entirely absorbed in the creation of a picture as to be quite oblivious of his mother’s presence, with the result that she spent more and more time at her easel. Not only did she regain her former skill, but she found herself in possession of a dexterity and mastery over her materials which she had never' had before. “ It’s come back, Hilda,” said Robert Kingston—“come back, and more. Why, you never painted like that in the old days.” “Can you see it, Robert,” she said with kindling interest. “ I can feel a mastery I never felt before. All my years and cares have tumbled from my shoulders. I feel sjdendidly young, splendidly capable, in spite of grey hairs.” “ You look it, too, in spite of the smudge of paint on your adorable nose.” “ Smudge 1 Who minds a smudgy nose when she can paint people that look live enough to talk, and has an infant who is going to be an E.A.” The budding genius was bent above a canvas that would have shamed a poppy field for gorgeoueness, or made an impressionist sunset look pale. In the baby’s eyes it was a glorious thing. “ Conceited woman,” chided her husband. But there was no disapproval in the eyes that rested, upon his son’s picture. “ It’s going to be such a refuge for me in my old age, Robert,” went on his wife subduedly. “ Already my children’s feet are beating paths their mother may not tread. What do you imagine that infant is thinking about?” “ Star dust and rainbows, I expect. I never sujrposed a son of mine would be a genius.” “He is my son, bless his curly head,” declared Robin’s mother, gathering him in her arms and bearing him firmly away to supper-. The following winter saw the triumphant resurrecting of a talent which refused to stay buried. Dora had mislaid a treasured doll, a spangled, tinselled thing, the gift of academic Uncle John. Believing him to be absent, Hilda opened the door of her husband’s consulting room, upon a scene which neither of them ever forgot. A wearied, workworn mother sat in the full light of the window with a beautiful child upon her knee. The faded shawl she had worn fell about her thin shoulders; Her lined and anxious face yearned above, the baby all dimnled and rosy from her sleep. Robert Kingston had apparently diagnosed the child’s trouble, but hesitated, uncertain how to prepare the mother’s mind for what he had to say. Hilda knew that expression well. Pitiful it was, and very tender, but inflexible as the man’s will. The child appeared so healthily beautiful. Her hair shone in the sun like spun gold, and Hilda lingered, watching, listening, herself unseen. Taking Columbine, the tinselled doll, from his desk, Robert Kingston held it before the baby. She continued gurgling happily to herself, and made no movement to grasp the glittering toy. Realisation reached Hilda and the mother in the same instant. “ Blind ! My baby is blind !” The mother’s face so thin and worn, the love, tenderness, agony, joy expressed therein haunted Hilda, sleeping and waking, till she began to paint it. The picture grew marvellously under her hands. It was while he was posing tor the figure of the doctor that Robert Kingston dis■covered the soul of a true artist in his wife. “ It’s not going to be a portrait, Robert. Your face is too smoothly good-looking for my purpose. I want something craggier, sterner, tenderer ” “Well, of all the women! And you always led me to believe that in your eyes I was perfection itself.” “ I’m talking about my jiicture, Robert, higher. I always did have trouble with not about you. Hold your chin a bit that chin,” she complained. “Still, this is going to be a picture, Robert, not one of those expressionless daubs I used to paint before my soul grew up.” “I think all your pictures are just beautiful,” ventured her husband pacifically. “Then you are no judge of art,” retorted his wife with spirit. However that may be, though Hilda Kingston’s picture, “Blind,” was exhibited many times, and brought the artist both recognition and commissions, her husband refused to allow it out of his possession. “ You can paint other pictures for your public, Hilda. This one belongs to your respectfully admiring family. Dora’s doll and Robin and your patient husband all helped to paint it, and it is ours.” “My husband’s patient also helped ; but if your wife had not been an artist there would have been no picture. Talent will out.” “So I have always said,” declared Robert Kingston with the pardonable triumph of the married man who finds himself in unassailable possession of truth and the last word.