The large room was empty and they sat down solemnly on the settee in front of this canvas, looking at it in silence, yet as they did so holding the hand of each other like a pair of children. Once before had they sat there, in the early days of their marriage, when he had talked to her of those ambitions that were never to materialize. And now, again, with the spirit of peace upon him and stirred by old memories, he sighed to himself and spoke for a moment or two of what might have been. One of these days he had hoped to do something. He had always intended to do something but the time had slipped away.
They were still sitting there looking at the picture when two people came into the room. One was a commonplace elderly woman, the other a young man in khaki. Although they were totally unlike in the superficialities of outward bearing it was easy to tell that they were mother and son. His trained movements and upright carriage, his poise and alertness, were not able to conceal an odd resemblance to the wholly different person at his side.
William and Melia were concealed by the high-backed, wide-armed settee on which they sat; and as these two people came up the room and took up a position behind it, they did not seem to realize that they could be overheard.
"I want you, mother," said the young man in an eager voice, "to look at what to my mind is the picture of this collection. Stand here and you'll get it just right."
The Corporal and his lady on the high-backed settee offered a silent prayer that the young man had as much wisdom and taste as the owner of such a clear, confident voice ought to have. "As the leaves of the tree are the lives of men." The Corporal breathed more freely; the young man's voice had not belied him. "Homer's words." He reeled off pat a large-sounding foreign language. "I want you to catch the ghost of the sun glancing through these wind-torn branches. You'll get the light if you stand just here. Wonderful composition ... wonderful vision ... wonderful harmony ... wonderful everything. The big artists feel with their eyes." It was charming to hear the voice in its enthusiasm. "They look behind the curtain of appearances as you might say. The life of man is but the shadow of a shadow ... you remember that bit of Lucretius I read you last night? Look at the figure in the foreground gathering the leaves. Modern critics say symbolism is not art, but it depends on how it's done, doesn't it? The eyes of the mind ... imagination ... and that's the only key we have to the Riddle of the Sphinx." He ran on and on, laughing like a child. "Look at his color. And how spacious!--imagination there!--the harmony, the drawing! A marvelous draughtsman. If he'd lived he'd have been a second Torrington, although you hear people say that Torrington couldn't draw." He laughed like a schoolboy and then his voice fell. "I like to think that Jim Stanning was one of us, that he was born among us, and it's good to think that our old one-horse Art Committee has had the luck to buy his magnum opus without knowing it. They paid twice as much for Corfield Weir in the other room, which is not in the same class. However ... posterity...."