— Free will. Wyatt commenced, but his father was not listening. In all these discussions there seemed to be decisions he had made privately, and in the effort of suppressing them could at last say nothing at all. But as the weeks passed, Wyatt pressed him more and more for encouragement in his own study for the church. Sometimes Gwyon rose to this as though it were his duty to do so. He might manage, for instance, to discourse on the intricacies of transubstantiation without dissent, or even departure from orthodoxy; but as his references mounted, and his enthusiasm grew, reaching the doctrine, which he called Aristotelian, of God retaining the 'accidents' of the bread and wine (in order not to shock His worshipers, he added), and embarked upon a discussion of the 'accidents' of reality, and the redemption of matter, he left the table abruptly to get a reference, a paper or a book from his study, and did not come back. It was all as though he had no wish to push Wyatt into the ministry, like a man whose forebears have served all their lives on wooden ships, and he the last of them to do so, who will not force his son to serve on one knowing that the last of them will go down with him. Full proof of his ministry had begun. It was beyond his hand to stop it now.
Something was wrong. The summer fell away to fall, and Wyatt packed to leave. In the increasing amount of time he had spent painting, a plan formed of its own accord, so spontaneous of generation that he went on unaware of it, and it might seem only by chance that he did not stray from the confines of its design. He had called less and less frequently upon his father for encouragement toward the ministry, and Gwyon appeared to appreciate that, to become more relaxed, leading their conversations off in the direction of the past, the monastery in Estremadura, and Fr. Manomuerta to whom he still wrote, and sent packages of food; or the town of San Zwingli, the barrel organs in the streets, and the still uncanonized patron saint; the only bullfight he had ever seen: —And you don't kill with the sword, but with the cape, the art of the cape., he said following his son up the stairs, to the sewing room where Wyatt was packing.
The room was littered with sketches, studies, diagrams and unfinished canvases. A large panel stood face to the wall, and Wyatt, who'd entered first, suddenly backed up against it and stood there staring at the floor as though overcome by an idea, something he had known all along, but only now dared bring to consciousness.
— What is it, what did you bring me up to show me? Gwyon asked, looking over the litter. — Some painting, is it, you've done? Finished? At that he took a step toward the large panel, and Wyatt threw out his arms as though to protect it. — Eh? Gwyon stopped. — What is it? What's the matter? Didn't you have something to show me?
— Yes, yes, but I… I did, but. here. Wyatt's eyes had been darting about the floor, then he stooped abruptly and snatched up a paper. — Yes, here, he said holding it out, — you see, this. this is what I've been. doing. He held the paper out, his face in a blank expression which fused into desperate appeal as he looked up at his father.
— This? All these lines? Gwyon said, taking it.
— Yes, it's studies in perspective.
— I see, all these lines, coming together here at one point.
— Yes, Wyatt mumbled, backing away toward the panel again. — The vanishing point. That's called the vanishing point. He was staring wide-eyed at his father, but he withdrew his eyes quickly when Gwyon looked up, and waited there, shaking throughout his frame, until his father left the room. Even then he did not move, but waited until the heavy footfalls sounded to the bottom of the stairs. Then he swung round to the panel, pulled it out from the wall, and looked at this finished copy of the Bosch painting with a new expression on his face.
At supper that evening, each of them tended his plate with more than the usual shy pretense to interest, nervously alert to one another, but silent until Gwyon called Janet in to open a bottle of wine. He seemed prepared to sit over that dark oloroso sherry all evening, starting sentences and leaving them unfinished, looking up at his son with the evasiveness of a conspirator, one, that is, involved in a conspiracy to which no one has confessed. For an instant their unblinking eyes locked with one another, then Gwyon turned away, and started to recount the brave deceit of the 'old Italian grandee, the Conte di Brescia, looking, as he spoke, at the table top of the Seven Deadly Sins under the far window, without a shadow on his features to suggest that he knew he was looking at an imposture, or hint at the memory of the meticulous and molding pictures he had found buried wrapped in newspapers behind the carriage barn, that evening of Midsummer Day years before.
When the bells struck noon next day, at about quarter past the hour, Janet followed Wyatt's departure as far as the front door, where her blessings engulfed him in a farewell bath of blood, the Precious Blood which seemed forever now upon her lips, — O Blood ineffable, burning burning blood which I have shed and bathed in with my Beloved. and that door closed.
The luggage had gone to the station, where Wyatt and his father arrived and stood in the dust without speaking. The sky was a deep gray-blue, banded with the colors of rust seen under water. Gwyon looked nervously about to speak several times, towering over his son, fingers twitching in the pocket of his black waistcoat. Finally he blurted out, — Do you have that painting? Wyatt looked overcome, guilt reddened his face until his father interrupted his choking attempt to speak. — The. her picture, the picture of your mother that you. that you won't finish.
— That, yes, yes I have it, in that crate, that flat crate there, Wyatt brought out breathless, trying to indicate the crate with casual innocence. — It's there, with. you know, a lot of other pictures.
— You must finish it, you must try to finish it, Gwyon told him, — finish it, or she will be with you, he paused, looking at his son's face where so few traces betrayed his own, come under self-dominance so long before. — Or she will be with you always, Gwyon said suddenly withdrawing his fingers from the waistcoat pocket, drawing out those two large studded Byzantine hoops of gold. — Here, he held them out. — These were hers, these. were hers.
Wyatt accepted them, hidden, large as they were, in his hand. He started to speak, but his father, looking away from him toward the east, made a sound, and they were both caught, as a swimmer on the surface is caught by that cold current whose suddenness snares him in cramps and sends him in dumb surprise to the bottom.
The sun showed their motionless shadows on the rough wood platform. Then the sun was obscured by a cloud, and the shadows disappeared. When the sun came out ag; in the shadows were gone.
Days passed, then weeks, and Gwyon, restlessly leaving his study to pace those dim passages, the mirrors in the cruz-con-espejos clenching at him as he emerged, to pause beyond and confront Olalla silently, or listen for the creaking from the sharp angles of woodwork around him, muttering, — And he took my razor! He took my razor!. And then, when he'd received the letter, — The final perseverance of… yes, perspective, the vanishing point., before he'd even opened it. He gazed at the unfamiliar postage stamps, made out the postmark, München, and finally took it out with him, to read on a walk in the clear air of that season. He walked out, toward the abandoned bridge works, seen by no one, this man born on the yellow day in Boston when the volcano Krakatao had erupted on the other side of the earth and night came everywhere with a red sunset, only now in age approaching maturity, waiting, like Manto, while time circled him, to make full proof of his ministry.
The New England evening had taken on the chill of finished day, the chill of reality which follows sunset. All Saints' approached, and All Souls', when in France there would be picnics in the cemeteries, and in Spain they would be out to place chrysanthemums on the graves, against beaded wreaths and the ornate names of the dead, where Camilla's name stood out in cold vigilance, waiting.