Round the Block Part 22

"I give you my word," said Marcus. He wondered where Tiffles raised the money to pay the artist, but did not like to ask him.

"Now I have caught you, you must come and see how we get along. The work is going on at my room in the Bartholomew Buildings, only a few steps from here." (According to Tiffles, the Bartholomew Buildings were only a few steps from anywhere, when he wanted to take anybody to them.) "Patching will object to bringing in a stranger; but I can pa.s.s you off as a capitalist, who thinks of taking an interest in the panorama. Good joke, that!"

Marcus drew back a little at the joke; but Wesley Tiffles had proved so great a relief to his low spirits, that he determined to keep on taking him, and expressed his ardent desire to see the panorama.

The couple, arm in arm, sauntered into Broadway, and down that thoroughfare. Tiffles nodded to a great many acquaintances, and Wilkeson to a very few. People whom Tiffles did not know personally, he had short biographies of, and he entertained Marcus with an incessant string of anecdotes and memoranda of pa.s.sers by. The walk was leisurely and uninterrupted, with two exceptions, when Wesley Tiffles broke suddenly from his companion, rushed into the entry of a photographic establishment, and examined numerous square feet of show portraits with profound interest. Marcus explained these impulsive movements on the supposition that Tiffles sought to escape from approaching duns. He noticed that that individual, while observing people who streamed by him on either side, kept one eye, as it were, about a block and a half ahead. In some parts of the world, Marcus might have objected to walking publicly with a man of such an eccentric demeanor. But he was well aware that, in New York, a citizen's reputation is not in the least degree affected by the company that he keeps.

They soon arrived at the Bartholomew Buildings--a rickety five-story edifice, which had been altered from a hotel to a nest of private offices. The bas.e.m.e.nt was a restaurant, the first floor a dry goods store, and thence to the roof there was a small Babel of trades and professions known and unknown. No census taker had ever booked all the businesses and all the names under that comprehensive roof.

In the upper story of this building, at the end of a long, hall, the floor of which was hollowed in places by the feet of half a century, was the room, or office, as he called it, of Mr. Wesley Tiffles. There was no number, or sign, on the door, but only a card bearing the inscription, in a bold hand, "Back in five minutes." Mr. Tiffles always put out this standing announcement whenever he had occasion to absent himself from his office for an indefinite period. At the top of the door there was a swinging window, which was ever close fastened, and covered with four thicknesses of newspapers. Though door and window were shut, there came from this room, as if through pores of the wood and the gla.s.s, a strong odor of tobacco smoke. A voice within could be heard softly humming an operatic air.

Wesley Tiffles opened the door with a latch key, saying, "All right!" in a loud voice, as he did so. Marcus entered with him into a blue cloud of smoke heated to a sickly degree by a small coal stove with a prodigious quant.i.ty of pipe. Even Marcus's hardened lungs found it difficult to breathe.

The room was about twenty feet square. It had been a part of the laundry when the building was a hotel. The walls, from the floor to the low ceiling, appeared to be hung with a strange, dim tapestry. A second glance convinced Marcus Wilkeson that this seeming tapestry was the panorama, which was fastened on stretchers along three sides of the room, and rolled up in a corner as fast as completed. At the farther end of the room, barely visible through the smoke, was the figure of a man in a torn and dirty dressing gown, and an enormous black felt hat with a huge turn-up brim, of the kind supposed to be worn by the bandits of the Pyrenees. The back of the man was turned to Marcus Wilkeson, and he was making rapid dabs on the canvas with a long brush, frequently dipping into one of a series of pails or pans which stood on the floor by his side. He was smoking and humming the operatic air at the same time; and he pulled his great slouched hat farther over his eyes, as a signal for impertinent curiosity to keep its distance.

Wesley Tiffles whispered something about the eccentricities of genius, and then said:

"Mr. Patching. Allow me. Mr. Wilkeson. A capitalist, who thinks of taking a small interest in the panorama. Confidential, of course."

The artist turned round during these remarks, and presented the original of a portrait which Marcus remembered to have seen--dressing gown, hat, and all--in a small print-shop window in the Sixth Avenue. Touching the face he might have had doubt, but there was no mistaking the pattern of the dressing gown and the amazing hat. He also had a faint recollection of the thin face, the Vand.y.k.e beard, and the long, tangled hair at Mrs.

Slapman's, on New Year's, but was not positive as to their ident.i.ty. Mr.

Patching's individuality lay chiefly in his hat.

The artist placed a moist hand, with one long finger nail like a claw, at the disposal of Marcus Wilkeson. The latter gentleman shook the member feebly, and distinctly felt the sharp edge of the long finger nail in his palm. It was an unpleasant sensation.

"Happy to meet a _confidential_ friend of Tiffles's," said Patching.

"Painting panoramas is not exactly what I have been used to. An artist's reputation is his capital in trade, you know." He spoke slowly and languidly, as if hope and happiness were quite dead within him, and he had consented to live on only for the good of high Art.

"I understand," said Marcus. "The secret shall be inviolate."

"Nothing but my old friendship for Tiffles here could possibly have induced me to undertake the job. My enemies--and I have them, ha! ha!"

(he said this bitterly)--"would like nothing better to say of Patching, than that he had got down to the panorama line of business. It would be a pretty piece of scandal."

"My lips are sealed, sir. But it strikes me, as a casual observer, that there is nothing to be ashamed of in this beautiful work of art." Marcus Wilkeson had the amiable vice of flattery.

Patching shrugged his shoulders, and made a contemptuous gesture toward the canvas with his outstretched brush. "A mere daub," said he. "One step higher than painting a barn or a board fence--that's all."

"Yet the true artist adorns what he touches," said Marcus.

Patching accepted the homage calmly, as one who knew that he deserved it. "A very just and discriminating remark, sir. I have no doubt that a person thoroughly familiar with my style would say, looking at this panorama, 'It has the severe simplicity of a Patching.' I consented to paint it, as Tiffles well remembers, only on condition that I should not wholly abase myself by abandoning the style upon which I have built up my reputation."

Tiffles, thus appealed to, corroborated the statement with a solemn bow.

The artist continued: "Fortunately, the subject is one peculiarly adapted to my genius. For instance: the desert of Sahara is a dead level of sand. It is a perfect type of severe simplicity in the highest sense.

It exhibits no common display of gorgeous colors, such as poor artists and the ignorant crowd rejoice in. As far as the eye can see, there is a serene stretch of yellow sand, without even a blade of gra.s.s to break its awful immensity." (The artist, being on his favorite theme, took his pipe out of his mouth for the first time, and spoke with warmth.) "Look at that bit of desert, now. Does it not convey a perfect idea of solitude and desolation?"

Marcus Wilkeson glanced at about ten feet of straight yellow paint (which was all of the desert of Sahara not rolled up in the canvas), and said that it did--which was perfectly true.

"There are one hundred feet more, which you don't see, just like it.

Another artist would have put in an oasis, or a stray hyena, or the bleached bones of an unfortunate traveller. _I_ did not. Why? Another would have worked up a sunset, or a moonrise, or a thunder storm, to give variety to the sky. _I_ did not. Why? The sky over my desert is an uninterrupted blue. There is not even a bird in it. There is nothing, in short, either on the ground or in the air, to take away the mind of the spectator, for one moment, from the sublime idea of a desert--an object which, considered aesthetically, is one of the grandest in the universe.

This is severe simplicity. It is the highest school of Art."

"And the cheapest," observed Tiffles; "which is an important consideration when you have an acre or two of canvas to paint. It would cost a deal more to put in the sun and moon, travelling caravans, and other objects of interest, here and there."

"Incidentally it may be the cheapest," said Patching. "But that is a question for capitalists, and not for artists to determine. True Art never thinks of the expense."

"It always seemed to me to be the easiest school of Art," said Marcus Wilkeson. "I suppose, now, that you can dash off twenty or thirty rods of this a day."

Patching smiled with a lofty pity. "So I can. Not because it is the easiest, though--far from it; but because I happen to have a genius for quick and sure touches. You, not being a professional artist, think the execution of that sc.r.a.p of desert and sky an easy matter. Perhaps you fancy that you could do it." There was the least infusion of satire in the artist's tone.

"Oh, no!" replied Marcus Wilkeson, who ever shrank from wounding the self-love of a fellow creature. "I am not rash enough to suppose that I could do it. I merely observed that it seemed--to my inexperienced eyes--an easy matter. A few strokes of yellow paint here, for sand, and a few strokes of blue paint there, for sky. But I am not even an amateur, and so my opinion goes for nothing."

"I admire your frankness," said Patching. "Now let me convince you practically. Be good enough to stand near this window with me."

Marcus moved to the spot indicated by the artist.

"Here," said Patching, "you are at about the same distance from the desert as the front row of spectators will be. Now look at it critically."

Marcus shaded his eyes with his left hand, c.o.c.ked his head over his right shoulder, in the true critical style, and gazed on the scene.

"Do you see the harmony--the TONE, I may say--in the desert?" asked Patching, after a short pause.

"I think I do," responded Marcus, willing to oblige the artist.

"And the spiritual, or INNER meaning of the sky?"

"Ye-yes. It is quite perceptible."

"These are the effects of severe simplicity. But you must understand that a single mis-stroke of the brush would have spoiled all the harmony in the desert, or reduced the sky to a mere inexpressive field of blue vapor. Why? Genius alone can achieve such grand results by such apparently simple means. You comprehend?"

"Perfectly," said Marcus Wilkeson.

"Then I shall take a real pleasure in showing you more of the panorama which is already completed and rolled up. With this idea of severe simplicity in your mind, you will be prepared to appreciate the work,"

"I believe I have already remarked, that Mr. Wilkeson is a capitalist, and comes here expressly to look at the panorama," said Tiffles; with a wink at the artist.

"With every respect for him as a capitalist," returned Patching, "I see in him only the ingenuous student of Art, whom it is a happiness to teach."

The first instalment was a continuation of the desert with which Marcus had been already regaled. Patching begged him to observe the unfaltering harmony of the sand, and the protracted spirituality of the sky. Then came a jungle.

"You will note the severe simplicity here," observed Patching, "No meretricious effects. Nothing but strokes of green paint, up and down, representing the density of an African jungle. Yet how admirably these seemingly careless strokes, laid on by the hand of genius, convey the idea of DEPTH! You do not fail to notice the DEPTH, I presume?"

"I see it," said Marcus.

"_That_ is severe simplicity," replied the artist.

At this point, Marcus noticed a brown something bearing a strong resemblance to the swamp stalk, known among boys as the cattail. "Excuse my ignorance of African plants," said he; "but what is that?"

The artist smiled. "Another happy ill.u.s.tration of my theory," said he.