Pulse

on the third evening, against which he had failed – or felt unable – to protest. It had made him sleep uneasily. It had wounded him too, if the truth were known. He ought to have written the collector down for an oaf and a bully – he had painted enough in his years – and forgotten the matter. Perhaps he should indeed consider his retirement, let his mare grow fat, and live from what crops he could grow and what farmstock he could raise. He could always paint windows and doors for a trade instead of people; he would not judge this an indignity.
    Late on the first morning, Wadsworth had been obligedto introduce the collector of customs to the notebook. The fellow, like many another, had imagined that merely opening his mouth wider might be enough to effect communication. Wadsworth had watched the pen travel across the page, and then the forefinger tap impatiently. ‘If God is merciful,’ the man wrote, ‘perhaps in Heaven you will hear.’ In reply, he had half-smiled, and given a brief nod, from which surprise and gratitude might be inferred. He had read the thought many times before. Often it was a true expression of Christian feeling and sympathetic hope; occasionally, as now, it represented scarce-concealed dismay that the world contained those with such frustrating deformities. Mr Tuttle was among those masters who preferred their servants to be mute, deaf and blind – except when his convenience suited the matter otherwise. Of course, masters and servants had become citizens and hired help once the juster republic had declared itself. But masters and servants did not thereby die out; nor did the essential inclinations of man.
    Wadsworth did not think he was judging the collector in an un-Christian manner. His opinion had been forged on first contact, and confirmed on that third evening. The incident had been the crueller in that it involved a child, a garden boy who had scarcely entered the years of understanding. The limner always felt tenderly towards children: for themselves, for the grateful fact that they overlooked his deformity, and also because he had no issue himself. He had never known the company of a wife. Perhaps he might yet do so, though he would have to ensure that she was beyond childbearing years. He could not inflict his deformity on others. Some had tried explaining that his fears were unnecessary, since the affliction had arrived not at birth, but after an attack of the spotted fever when he was a boy of five. Further, they pressed, had he not made his way in the world, and might not a son of his, howsoever constructed, do likewise? Perhaps that would be the case, but what of a daughter? The notionof a girl living as an outcast was too much for him. True, she might stay at home, and there would be a shared sympathy between them. But what would happen to such a child after his death?
    No, he would go home and paint his mare. This had always been his intention, and perhaps now he would execute it. She had been his companion for twelve years, understood him easily, and took no heed of the noises that issued from his mouth when they were alone in the forest. His plan had been this: to paint her, on the same size of canvas used for Mr Tuttle, though turned to make an oblong; and afterwards, to cast a blanket over the picture and uncover it only on the mare’s death. It was presumptuous to compare the daily reality of God’s living creation with a human simulacrum by an inadequate hand – even if this was the very purpose for which his clients employed him.
    He did not expect it would be easy to paint the mare. She would lack the patience, and the vanity, to pose for him, with one hoof proudly advanced. But then, neither would his mare have the vanity to come round and examine the canvas even as he worked on it. The collector of customs was now doing so, leaning over his shoulder, peering and pointing. There was something he did not approve. Wadsworth glanced upwards, from the immobile face to the mobile one. Even though he had a distant memory of speaking and hearing, and had been taught his letters, he had never learnt the facility of reading words upon the tongue. Wadsworth raised the narrowest of his brushes from the waistcoat button’s boss, and transferred his eye to the notebook as the collector dipped his pen. ‘More dignity,’ the man wrote, and then underlined the words.
    Wadsworth felt that he had already given Mr Tuttle dignity enough. He had increased his height,