Part 8 (1/2)

For some days Katrine had been convinced that there was another artist in the neighbourhood. She had caught a glimpse of an easel fixed in a field, she had found a tube of paint lying in the road, and had noticed upon a paling the sc.r.a.pings of a palette. She had not yet, however, been vouchsafed a sight of the stranger, against whom she had conceived a violent prejudice. She had come to regard Heathwell as the private sketching property of herself and Miss Aubrey, and regarded the new-comer in the light of a poacher on their art preserves. He or she--she did not even know the s.e.x of the intruder--might very well have chosen some other village, in her opinion, instead of fixing upon this particular Paradise. All the same, she was inquisitive, and would have liked very much to see the unknown artist's work. One afternoon Miss Aubrey took the Marsdens to a little subject in a meadow on the road to the river. She watched them begin to draw in a picturesque railing and hawthorn stump, then went herself to another position in the field. Left alone, the girls worked for some time in silence, Katrine with whole-hearted absorption, and Gwethyn in a more dilettante fas.h.i.+on. The latter did not care to stick at things too long. She soon grew tired, and threw down her brush.

”Ugh! It makes me stiff to sit so still. I'm going to walk round the pasture. Do come, Katrine! Oh, how you swat! You might take two minutes'

rest. We're just above the road here, and I believe somebody's sitting down below. I can smell tobacco. I'm going to investigate.”

Gwethyn came back in a few moments with her eyes dancing.

”It's an artist!” she whispered. ”He's painting in the road exactly below us. I can see his picture through the hedge. Come and look!”

Such exciting information broke the spell of Katrine's work. She put down her palette at once, and followed Gwethyn. It was impossible to resist taking a peep at the interesting stranger's sketch.

”You must promise not even to breathe. I should be most annoyed if he happened to see us,” she declared.

”All right! I'll be mum as a mouse, and walk as softly as a p.u.s.s.y-cat.

I'll undertake it won't be my fault if he divines our existence.”

Very gently the two girls crept along the edge of the pasture, trying not to rustle the gra.s.s, and heroically refraining from conversation.

”Here we are!” signalled Gwethyn at last, pausing at a thin place in the hedge, which might have been made on purpose for a peep-hole. Through a frame of sycamore leaves they could peer into the road exactly at the spot where the rival easel was pitched. The artist's back was towards them; they could see nothing but his tweed suit, his grey hair under a brown hat, and the skilful right hand which kept dabbing subtle combinations of half-tones upon his canvas. He seemed utterly unconscious of their presence, and worked away in sublime ignorance that two pairs of eyes were following every stroke of his brush. He was no amateur, that was plain. The girls were sufficient judges of painting to recognize that though the sketch was still at an elementary stage he had made a masterly beginning. Katrine watched quite fascinated, trying to decide what colours he was using, and in what proportion he had mixed them. If she could only see his palette, she might perhaps discover the secret of that particularly warm shadow he was in the act of placing under the near tree. She craned her head a little forward through the hedge. Gwethyn, equally anxious to see everything possible, pressed closely behind her. Whether it was the heat of the sun, or whether a sycamore leaf tickled the end of her nose, I cannot tell. The cause is immaterial, but the awful and tangible result was that Katrine--Katrine, who prided herself upon prunes and prism--burst without warning into a violent and uncontrollable sneeze! Naturally the artist turned at the unwonted sound, to catch an astonis.h.i.+ng vision of two dismayed faces peeping like dryads from the greenery behind him.

Katrine dashed off like a thief detected red-handed, but she had hardly gone a yard when Gwethyn seized her by the arm.

”Katrine! Stop! There's no need to run in that silly way. Can't you see it's Mr. Freeman?”

”What's the matter, girls?” asked Miss Aubrey, who had walked up to correct their drawings.

Katrine felt caught on both sides, but there seemed nothing for it but to pa.s.s off the affair as well as she could.

”We've met an old friend of my father's,” she explained. ”I suppose we may say 'How do you do?' to him over the hedge?”

If the girls were surprised to see Mr. Freeman, he was equally astonished to find them at Heathwell.

”Didn't know you were at school here. It's a grand part of the world for sketching. Never saw so many paintable bits in my life. My diggings are in the village. Yes, come down and look at my picture, if you like.”

Mr. Freeman had often been a guest at the Marsdens'. The girls knew him well. He had criticized Katrine's earliest art efforts, and had painted a portrait of Gwethyn when she was about seven years old. He seemed to have grasped the humour of the present situation, for he gazed up the bank with twinkling eyes. Katrine hastily introduced Miss Aubrey over the top of the hedge, not a very dignified method of presenting a friend, but the only one available. Fortunately Miss Aubrey was not Mrs.

Franklin! An invitation to make a nearer acquaintance with the picture was irresistible. Katrine took her teacher by the arm, and pulled her gently in the direction of the gate. She offered no objection.

”I was most extremely glad for Mr. Freeman to meet Miss Aubrey,” Katrine confided to Gwethyn afterwards. ”Two such good artists positively ought to know each other. They've each got a picture in the Academy, and--isn't it funny?--in the very same room--numbers 402 and 437!”

”They seemed to find plenty to talk about,” returned Gwethyn. ”I hope Mr. Freeman really will look us up at school.”

Not only did their artist friend take an early opportunity of calling on them at Aireyholme, but he asked Miss Aubrey to bring them to see his sketches in the little studio he had rigged up in the village. It was a treat to be shown his charming interpretations of Heathwell and its inhabitants. He had already requisitioned some of the Gartley children as models, and was in ecstasies over their picturesque appearance. His study of the High Street at sunset was a poem on canvas.

”This beats every other place I've ever stayed at for painting,” he announced. ”Now I've found this studio, I shall stop here for the summer. There's any amount to be done.”

”You'll certainly find plenty of subjects round about,” agreed Miss Aubrey.

”I wonder if the painting is altogether the whole of the attraction,”

mused Gwethyn, who in some respects was wise beyond her years.