Part 5 (2/2)

A mile or so farther on the road he stretched out a lean brown arm and pointed. ”See that there clump of trees? Behind that is the Little Bear Inn. They gives you cool china pots with blue round the edge. You can only have 'em if you asks for 'em, Jim Blake, the landlord, being pertickler-like. And if yer breaks em--”

”What would happen?” asked Paul, who was always very much impressed by Barney Bill's detailed knowledge of the roads and the inns of England.

Barney Bill shook his head. ”It would break 'is 'eart. Them pots was being used when William the Conqueror was a boy.”

”Ten-sixty-six to ten-eighty-seven,” said Paul the scholar. ”They mun be nine hundred years old.”

”Not quite,” said Barney Bill, with an air of scrupulous desire for veracity. ”But nearly. Lor' lumme!” he exclaimed, after a pause, ”it makes one think, doesn't it? One of them there quart mugs--suppose it has been filled, say, ten times a day, every day for nine hundred years--my Gos.h.!.+ what a Pacific Ocean of beer must have been poured from it! It makes one come over all of religious-like when one puts it to one's head.”

Paul did not reply, and reverential emotion kept Barney Bill silent until they reached the clump of trees and the Little Bear Inn.

It was set back from the road, in a kind of dusty courtyard masked off on one side by a gigantic elm and on the other by the fringe of an orchard with ruddy apples hanging patiently beneath the foliage. Close by the orchard stood the post bearing the signboard on which the Little Bear, an engaging beast, was pictured, and presiding in a ceremonious way over the horse-trough below. In the shade of the elm stretched a trestle table and two wooden benches. The old inn, gabled, half-timbered, its upper story overhanging the doorway, bent and crippled, though serene, with age, mellow in yellow and russet, spectacled, as befitted its years, with leaded diamond panes, crowned deep in secular thatch, smiled with the calm and homely peace of everlasting things. Its old dignity even covered the perky gilt inscription over the doorway, telling how James Blake was licensed to sell a variety of alcoholic beverages. One human figure alone was visible, as the chairs and mat-laden van slowly turned from the road toward the horse-trough--that of a young man in straw hat and grey flannels making a water-colour sketch of the inn.

Barney Bill slid off the footboard, and, looking neither to right nor left, bolted like a belated crab into the cool recesses of the bar in search of ambrosia from the blue-and-white china mug. Paul, also afoot, led Bob to the trough. Bob drank with the l.u.s.ty moderation of beasts.

When he had a.s.suaged his thirst Paul backed him into the road and, slinging over his head a comforting nosebag, left him to his meal.

The young man, sitting on an upturned wooden case, at the extreme edge of the elm tree's shade, a slender easel before him, a litter of paraphernalia on the ground by his side, painted a.s.siduously. Paul idly crept behind him and watched in amazement the smears of wet colour, after a second or two of apparent irrelevance, take their place in the essential structure of the drawing. He stood absorbed. He knew that there were such things as pictures. He knew, too, that they were made by hands. But he had never seen one in the making. After a while the artist threw back his head, looked at the inn and looked at his sketch.

There was a hot bit of thatch at the corner near the orchard, and, below the eaves, bold shadow. The shadow had not come right. He put in a touch of burnt umber and again considered the effect.

”Confound it! that's all wrong,” he muttered.

”It's blue,” said Paul.

The artist started, twisted his head, and for the first time became conscious of the ragam.u.f.fin's presence. ”Oh, you see it blue, do you?”

He smiled ironically.

”Ay,” said Paul, with pointing finger. ”Look at it. It's not brown, anyhow. Yon's black inside and blue outside.”

The young man shaded his brow and gazed intently. Brilliant suns.h.i.+ne plays the deuce with tones. ”My hat!” cried he, ”you're right. It was this confounded yellow of the side of the house.” He put in a few hasty strokes. ”That better?”

”Ay,” said Paul.

The artist laid down his brush, and swung round on his box, clasping knees. ”How the devil did you manage to see that when I didn't?”

”Dun-no!” said Paul.

The young man stretched himself and lit a cigarette.

”What are yo' doing that for, mister?” Paul asked seriously.

”That?”

”Ay,” said Paul. ”You mun have a reason.”

”You're a queer infant,” laughed the artist. ”Do you really want to know?”

”I've asked yo',” said Paul.

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