Part 9 (1/2)

”Yes, monsieur,” said Amedee complacently; ”it is an American lady who has married a French n.o.bleman.”

CHAPTER VIII

Like most painters, I have supposed the tools of my craft harder to manipulate than those of others. The use of words, particularly, seemed readier, handier for the contrivance of effects than pigments. I thought the language of words less elusive than that of colour, leaving smaller margin for unintended effects; and, believing in complacent good faith that words conveyed exact meanings exactly, it was my innocent conception that almost anything might be so described in words that all who read must inevitably perceive that thing precisely. If this were true, there would be little work for the lawyers, who produce such tortured pages in the struggle to be definite, who swing riches from one family to another, save men from violent death or send them to it, and earn fortunes for themselves through the dangerous inadequacies of words. I have learned how great was my mistake, and now I am wis.h.i.+ng I could s.h.i.+ft paper for canvas, that I might paint the young man who came to interest me so deeply. I wish I might present him here in colour instead of trusting to this unstable business of words, so wily and undependable, with their s.h.i.+mmering values, that you cannot turn your back upon them for two minutes but they will be shouting a hundred things which they were not meant to tell.

To make the best of necessity: what I have written of him--my first impressions--must be taken as the picture, although it be but a gossamer sketch in the air, instead of definite work with well-ground pigments to show forth a portrait, to make you see flesh and blood. It must take the place of something contrived with my own tools to reveal what the following days revealed him to me, and what it was about him (evasive of description) which made me so soon, as Keredec wished, his friend.

Life among our kin and kind is made pleasanter by our daily plat.i.tudes.

Who is more tedious than the man incessantly struggling to avoid the ba.n.a.l? Nature rules that such a one will produce nothing better than epigram and paradox, saying old, old things in a new way, or merely s.h.i.+fting object for subject--and his wife's face, when he s.h.i.+nes for a circle, is worth a glance. With no further apology, I declare that I am a person who has felt few positive likes or dislikes for people in this life, and I did deeply like my fellow-lodgers at Les Trois Pigeons.

Liking for both men increased with acquaintance, and for the younger I came to feel, in addition, a kind of champions.h.i.+p, doubtless in some measure due to what Keredec had told me of him, but more to that half-humourous sense of protectiveness that we always have for those young people whose untempered and innocent outlook makes us feel, as we say, ”a thousand years old.”

The afternoon following our first dinner together, the two, in returning from their walk, came into the pavilion with cheerful greetings, instead of going to their rooms as usual, and Keredec, declaring that the open air had ”dispersed” his rheumatism, asked if he might overhaul some of my little canvases and boards. I explained that they consisted mainly of ”notes” for future use, but consented willingly; whereupon he arranged a number of them as for exhibition and delivered himself impromptu of the most vehemently instructive lecture on art I had ever heard. Beginning with the family, the tribe, and the totem-pole, he was able to demonstrate a theory that art was not only useful to society but its primary necessity; a curious thought, probably more attributable to the fact that he was a Frenchman than to that of his being a scientist.

”And here,” he said in the course of his demonstration, pointing to a sketch which I had made one morning just after sunrise--”here you can see real suns.h.i.+ne. One certain day there came those few certain moment'

at the sunrise when the light was like this. Those few moment', where are they? They have disappeared, gone for eternally. They went”--he snapped his fingers--”like that. Yet here they are--ha!--forever!”

”But it doesn't look like suns.h.i.+ne,” said Oliver Saffren hesitatingly, stating a disconcerting but incontrovertible truth; ”it only seems to look like it because--isn't it because it's so much brighter than the rest of the picture? I doubt if paint CAN look like suns.h.i.+ne.” He turned from the sketch, caught Keredec's gathering frown, and his face flushed painfully. ”Ah!” he cried, ”I shouldn't have said it?”

I interposed to rea.s.sure him, exclaiming that it were a G.o.dsend indeed, did all our critics merely speak the plain truth as they see it for themselves. The professor would not have it so, and cut me off.

”No, no, no, my dear sir!” he shouted. ”You speak with kindness, but you put some wrong ideas in his head!”

Saffren's look of trouble deepened. ”I don't understand,” he murmured.

”I thought you said always to speak the truth just as I see it.” ”I have telled you,” Keredec declared vehemently, ”nothing of the kind!”

”But only yesterday--”

”Never!”

”I understood--”

”Then you understood only one-half! I say, 'Speak the truth as you see it, when you speak.' I did not tell you to speak! How much time have you give' to study suns.h.i.+ne and paint? What do you know about them?”

”Nothing,” answered the other humbly.

A profound rumbling was heard, and the frown disappeared from Professor Keredec's brow like the vanis.h.i.+ng of the shadow of a little cloud from the dome of some great benevolent and scientific inst.i.tute. He dropped a weighty hand on his young friend's shoulder, and, in high good-humour, thundered:

”Then you are a critic! Knowing nothing of suns.h.i.+ne except that it warms you, and never having touched paint, you are going to tell about them to a man who spends his life studying them! You look up in the night and the truth you see is that the moon and stars are crossing the ocean. You will tell that to the astronomer? Ha! The truth is what the masters see. When you know what they see, you may speak.”

At dinner the night before, it had struck me that Saffren was a rather silent young man by habit, and now I thought I began to understand the reason. I hinted as much, saying, ”That would make a quiet world of it.”

”All the better, my dear sir!” The professor turned beamingly upon me and continued, dropping into a Whistlerian mannerism that he had sometimes: ”You must not blame that great wind of a Keredec for preaching at other people to listen. It gives the poor man more room for himself to talk!”

I found his talk worth hearing.