I
Walking along the river wall at Botzen, Edmund Dawney said to Alois
Harz: “Would you care to know the family at that pink house, Villa
Rubein?”
Harz answered with a smile:
“Perhaps.”
“Come with me then this afternoon.”
They had stopped before an old house with a blind, deserted look, that
stood by itself on the wall; Harz pushed the door open.
“Come in, you don't want breakfast yet. I'm going to paint the river
to-day.”
He ran up the bare broad stairs, and Dawney followed leisurely, his
thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his head thrown
back.
In the attic which filled the whole top story, Harz had pulled a canvas
to the window. He was a young man of middle height, square shouldered,
active, with an angular face, high cheek-bones, and a strong, sharp
chin. His eyes were piercing and steel-blue, his eyebrows very flexible,
nose long and thin with a high bridge; and his dark, unparted hair
fitted him like a cap. His clothes looked as if he never gave them a
second thought.
This room, which served for studio, bedroom, and sitting-room, was bare
and dusty. Below the window the river in spring flood rushed down the
valley, a stream, of molten bronze. Harz dodged before the canvas like a
fencer finding his distance; Dawney took his seat on a packingcase.
“The snows have gone with a rush this year,” he drawled. “The Talfer
comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the Etsch
and make it green; a parable of the Spring for you, my painter.”
Harz mixed his colours.
“I've no time for parables,” he said, “no time for anything. If I could
be guaranteed to live to ninety-nine, like Titian—he had a chance. Look
at that poor fellow who was killed the other day! All that struggle, and
then—just at the turn!”
He spoke English with a foreign accent; his voice was rather harsh, but
his smile very kindly.
Dawney lit a cigarette.
“You painters,” he said, “are better off than most of us. You can strike
out your own line. Now if I choose to treat a case out of the ordinary
way and the patient dies, I'm ruined.”
“My dear Doctor—if I don't paint what the public likes, I starve; all
the same I'm going to paint in my own way; in the end I shall come out
on top.”
“It pays to work in the groove, my friend, until you've made your name;
after that—do what you like, they'll lick your boots all the same.”
“Ah, you don't love your work.”
Dawney answered slowly: “Never so happy as when my hands are full. But I
want to make money, to get known, to have a good time, good cigars, good
wine. I hate discomfort. No, my boy, I must work it on the usual lines;
I don't like it, but I must lump it. One starts in life with some notion
of the ideal—it's gone by the board with me. I've got to shove along
until I've made my name, and then, my little man—then—”
“Then you'll be soft!”
“You pay dearly for that first period!”
“Take my chance of that; there's no other way.”
“Make one!”
“Humph!”
Harz poised his brush, as though it were a spear:
“A man must do the best in him. If he has to suffer—let him!”
Dawney stretched his large soft body; a calculating look had come into
his eyes.
“You're a tough little man!” he said.
“I've had to be tough.”
Dawney rose; tobacco smoke was wreathed round his unruffled hair.
“Touching Villa Rubein,” he said, “shall I call for you? It's a mixed
household, English mostly—very decent people.”
“No, thank you. I shall be painting all day. Haven't time to know the
sort of people who expect one to change one's clothes.”
“As you like; ta-to!” And, puffing out his chest, Dawney vanished
through a blanket looped across the doorway.
Harz set a pot of coffee on a spirit-lamp, and cut himself some bread.
Through the window the freshness of the morning came; the scent of sap
and blossom and young leaves; the scent of earth, and the mountains
freed from winter; the new flights and songs of birds; all the odorous,
enchanted, restless Spring.
There suddenly appeared through the doorway a white rough-haired terrier
dog, black-marked about the face, with shaggy tan eyebrows. He sniffed
at Harz, showed the whites round his eyes, and uttered a sharp bark. A
young voice called:
“Scruff! Thou naughty dog!” Light footsteps were heard on the stairs;
from the distance a thin, high voice called:
“Greta! You mustn't go up there!”
A little girl of twelve, with long fair hair under a wide-brimmed hat,
slipped in.
Her blue eyes opened wide, her face flushed up. That face was not
regular; its cheek-bones were rather prominent, the nose was flattish;
there was about it an air, innocent, reflecting, quizzical, shy.
“Oh!” she said.
Harz smiled: “Good-morning! This your dog?”
She did not answer, but looked at him with soft bewilderment; then
running to the dog seized him by the collar.
“Scr-ruff! Thou naughty dog—the baddest dog!” The ends of her hair fell
about him; she looked up at Harz, who said:
“Not at all! Let me give him some bread.”
“Oh no! You must not—I will beat him—and tell him he is bad; then he
shall not do such things again. Now he is sulky; he looks so always when
he is sulky. Is this your home?”
“For the present; I am a visitor.”
“But I think you are of this country, because you speak like it.”
“Certainly, I am a Tyroler.”
“I have to talk English this morning, but I do not like it very
much—because, also I am half Austrian, and I like it best; but my
sister, Christian, is all English. Here is Miss Naylor; she shall be
very angry with me.”
And pointing to the entrance with a rosy-tipped forefinger, she again
looked ruefully at Harz.
There came into the room with a walk like the hopping of a bird an
elderly, small lady, in a grey serge dress, with narrow bands of
claret-coloured velveteen; a large gold cross dangled from a steel chain
on her chest; she nervously twisted her hands, clad in black kid gloves,
rather white about the seams.
Her hair was prematurely grey; her quick eyes brown; her mouth twisted
at one corner; she held her face, kind-looking, but long and narrow,
rather to one side, and wore on it a look of apology. Her quick
sentences sounded as if she kept them on strings, and wanted to draw
them back as soon as she had let them forth.
“Greta, how can, you do such things? I don't know what your father would
say! I am sure I don't know how to—so extraordinary—”
“Please!” said Harz.
“You must come at once—so very sorry—so awkward!” They were standing
in a ring: Harz with his eyebrows working up and down; the little lady
fidgeting her parasol; Greta, flushed and pouting, her eyes all dewy,
twisting an end of fair hair round her finger.
“Oh, look!” The coffee had boiled over. Little brown streams trickled
spluttering from the pan; the dog, with ears laid back and tail tucked
in, went scurrying round the room. A feeling of fellowship fell on them
at once.
“Along the wall is our favourite walk, and Scruff—so awkward, so
unfortunate—we did not think any one lived here—the shutters are
cracked, the paint is peeling off so dreadfully. Have you been long in
Botzen? Two months? Fancy! You are not English? You are Tyrolese?
But you speak English so well—there for seven years? Really? So
fortunate!—It is Greta's day for English.”
Miss Naylor's eyes darted bewildered glances at the roof where the
crossing of the beams made such deep shadows; at the litter of brushes,
tools, knives, and colours on a table made out of packing-cases; at the
big window, innocent of glass, and flush with the floor, whence dangled
a bit of rusty chain—relic of the time when the place had been a
store-loft; her eyes were hastily averted from an unfinished figure of
the nude.
Greta, with feet crossed, sat on a coloured blanket, dabbling her finger
in a little pool of coffee, and gazing up at Harz. And he thought: 'I
should like to paint her like that. “A forget-me-not.”
He took out his chalks to make a sketch of her.
“Shall you show me?” cried out Greta, scrambling to her feet.
“'Will,' Greta—'will'. how often must I tell you? I think we should be
going—it is very late—your father—so very kind of you, but I think
we should be going. Scruff!” Miss Naylor gave the floor two taps. The
terrier backed into a plaster cast which came down on his tail, and sent
him flying through the doorway. Greta followed swiftly, crying:
“Ach! poor Scrufee!”
Miss Naylor crossed the room; bowing, she murmured an apology, and also
disappeared.
Harz was left alone, his guests were gone; the little girl with the
fair hair and the eyes like forget-me-nots, the little lady with kindly
gestures and bird-like walk, the terrier. He looked round him; the room
seemed very empty. Gnawing his moustache, he muttered at the fallen
cast.
Then taking up his brush, stood before his picture, smiling and
frowning. Soon he had forgotten it all in his work.