True Tilda Part 31

For a few seconds the children observed him in silence. But some sound must have warned him; for by and by he turned a quick, eager face, and caught sight of them.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, scanning them rapidly up and down. "The very thing!--that is to say"--after a second and more prolonged scrutiny-- "the boy. He just fills the bill. 'Youthful Shakespeare Mews his Mighty Youth. The scene: Binton Bridges, beside Avon.'"

"Binton Bridges?" echoed Tilda, and walked forward to scan the sign-board.

"I must put that down," said the artist, drawing out a notebook and pencil. "Ignorance of Juvenile Population in respect of Immediate Surroundings. Implied Reproach against Britain's Primary Schools."

But by this time the girl was standing under the sign-board and staring up at it. Four figures were depicted thereon in gay colours--a king, a priest, a soldier, and a John Bull farmer. Around them ran this legend--

"RULE ALL, PRAY ALL, FIGHT ALL, PAY ALL."

"Do you 'appen to know, sir," she asked, coming back, "if there's a young woman employed 'ere?"

"There is," answered the artist. "I happen to know, because she won't let me paint her, although I offered ten dollars."

"That's a good sign," said Tilda.

"Oh, is it now?" he queried, staring after her as she marched boldly towards the house and was lost to sight between the willow-stems.

CHAPTER XVI.

ADVENTURES OF THE "FOUR ALLS" AND OF THE CELESTIAL CHEMIST

"'_Friend Sancho,' said Don Quixote, 'this Island that I promised you can neither stir nor fly._'"--CERVANTES.

"Now what precisely did your sister mean by that?" asked the artist, withdrawing his gaze and fixing it on Arthur Miles.

"She is not my sister," said the boy.

The artist--he was an extraordinarily tall young man, with a keen hatchet face, restless brown eyes, and straight auburn hair parted accurately in the middle--considered for a moment, then nodded.

"That's so. It comes out, soon as you talk . . . Well, see here now, we'll start right away. That's how Art hits me--once I take hold of a notion, I must sling in and get going. It's my temperament; and what's Art--right _there_, please--what's Art, after all, but expressed temperament? You catch the idea? You're the Infant Shakespeare, the youth to fortune and to fame unknown--"

'His listless length at noontide would he stretch'--

"Stretch what you have of it--"

'And pore upon the brook that babbles by.'

"But I don't want you to paint me," rebelled the boy.

"Goodness! Why not?"

For a moment or two Arthur Miles faced the question almost sullenly.

"I don't want my likeness taken," he explained at length.

"My young friend," the artist cheerfully a.s.sured him, "if that's your trouble, dismiss it. I can't paint a likeness for nuts."

"You are sure?"

"Well, I should say I have a grounded expectation, seeing that I claim a bigger circle of friends than any other fellow that ever studied with Carolus; and apart from their liking for me, their conviction that never under any circ.u.mstances could I catch a likeness is about the only thing they have in common. I don't say it's the cement of their friendship; but, anyway, it's an added tie."

"If Tilda doesn't mind--"

The boy hesitated, with a glance over his shoulder.

"We'll consult the lady when the portrait's finished. If she recognises you, I'll destroy the canvas; and I can't say fairer than that . . . No, I shan't regret it. We'll call it an offering to the G.o.ds . . . And now," pursued the young man, flinging in a charcoal outline in fiery haste, "we'll consider the brakes open."

It took him perhaps thirty seconds to block in the figure, and at once he fell to mixing his palette, his fingers moving with a nervous, delicate haste. He held a brush between his teeth during the operation; but no sooner was it over, and the gag removed, than his speech began to gush in quick, impetuous jerks, each jerk marking an interval as, after flinging a fresh splash of paint upon the canvas, he stepped back half a pace to eye its effect.

"That's my theory--what's Art but temperament? expressed temperament?

Now I'm a fellow that could never stick long to a thing--never in my life. I've not told you that I'm American, by the way. My name's Jessup--George Pulteney Jessup, of Boise City, Idaho. My father--he's about the most prominent citizen in the State of Idaho. You don't get any ways far west of the Rockies before you b.u.mp against Nahum P.

Jessup--and you'll be apt to hurt yourself by b.u.mping too hard. . . . My father began by setting it down to fickleness. He said it came of having too much money to play with. Mind you, he didn't complain.

He sent for me into his office, and 'George,' he said, 'there's some fathers, finding you so vola_tile_, would take the line of cutting down your allowance; but that's no line for me. To begin with,' he said, 'it would set up a constraint between us, and constraint in my family relations is what, G.o.d helping me, I'll never allow. And next, whatever I saved on you I'd just have to re-invest, and I'm over-capitalised as it is--you 'd never guess the straits I'm put to daily in keeping fair abreast of fifteen per cent., which is my notion of making two ends meet. And, lastly, it ain't natural. If a man's born vola_tile_, vola_tile_ he is; and the sensible plan, I take it, is to lean your ear to Nature, the Mighty Mother, and find a career that has some use for that kind of temperament. Now,' said my father, 'I know a little about most legitimate careers, from ticket-punching up to lobbying, and there's not one in which a man would hand in testimonials that he was vola_tile_. But,' says my father, 'what about Art? I've never taken stock of that occupation, myself: I never had time. But I remember once in New York going to a theatre and seeing Booth act William Shakespeare's _Macbeth_; and not twenty minutes later, after all the ghosts and murderings, I happened into a restaurant, and saw the same man drinking c.o.c.ktails and eating Blue Point oysters--with twice my appet.i.te too. And Booth was at the very top of his profession.'"

"Yes," said Arthur Miles, by this time greatly interested. "That's like Mr. Mortimer, too."

"Mortimer?" Mr. Jessup queried; and then, getting no answer, "Is he an actor?"

The boy nodded.

"A prominent one?"

"I--I believe so. I mean, he says he _ought_ to be."

"I'd like to make his acquaintance. It's queer, too, a child like you knowing about actors. What's your name?"

"I don't know," said Arthur Miles, with another glance in the direction of the inn, "that Tilda would like me to tell."

The young artist eyed him.

"Well, never mind; we were talking about my father. That's how he came to send me to Paris to study Art. And since then I've done some thinking. It works out like this," he pursued, stepping back and studying his daub between half-closed eyes, "the old man had struck ore as usual. I never knew a mind fuller of common sense--just homely common sense--but he hadn't the time to work it. Yet it works easy enough if you keep hold of the argument. The Old Masters--we're always having it dinned into us--didn't hustle; they mugged away at a Saint, or a Virgin and Child, and never minded if it took 'em half a lifetime.

Well, putting aside their being paid by time and not by the job--because comparisons on a monetary basis ain't fair, one way or another--for better or worse, Carpaccio hadn't a dad in the Oil Trust--I say, putting this aside, the credit goes to their temperament, or, if you like, part to that and part to their environment. It wasn't _in_ them to hustle: they felt no call for it, but just sat and painted and took their meals regular. Now that s.p.a.cious holy sauntering don't figure in my bill.

When I get hold of a notion--same as this Infant Shakespeare, f'r instance--it's apt to take hold on me as a mighty fine proposition; and then, before I can slap it on canvas, the thing's gone, faded, extinct, like a sunset." He paused and snapped his fingers expressively.

"I paint like Hades, but it beats me by a head every time."

--"And what's the reason? I'm fickle, you say. But that's my temperament, and before a man kicks against _that_ he ought to be clear whether it's original sin or the outcome of his environment. See what I mean?"

Arthur Miles was too truthful to say that he did. Indeed, he understood next to nothing of this harangue. But the young American's manner, so eager, so boyishly confidential, set him at his ease; while beneath this voluble flow of talk there moved a deeper current for which, all unconsciously, the child's spirit thirsted. He did not realise this at all, but his eyes shone while he listened.

"I'll put it this way: We're in the twentieth century. Between the old masters and us something has happened. What? Why Speed, sir--modern civilisation has discovered Speed. Railways--telegraphs--'phones-- elevators--automobiles--Atlantic records. These inventions, sir"--here as will happen to Americans when they philosophise, Mr. Jessup slipped into an oratorical style--"have altered man's whole environment.

Velasquez, sir, was a great artist, and Velasquez could paint, in his day, to beat the band. But I argue that, if you resurrected Velasquez to-day, he'd have to alter his outlook, and everything along with it, right away down to his brush-work. And I go on to argue that if I can't paint like Velasquez--which is a cold fact--it's equally a fact that, if I could, I oughtn't. Speed, sir: that's the great proposition--the principles of Speed as applied to the Fine Arts--"

Here he glanced towards the clearing between the willows, where at this moment Tilda reappeared in a hurry, followed--at a sedater pace--by a young woman in a pale blue sunbonnet.