“WITHOUT CHARACTER?”—THE WIDOW.—THE BOW-LEGGED BOY TAKES SERVICE.—STUDIOS
AND PAINTERS.
“MANAGE it as you like,” the artist had said to the master of the Boys’
Home. “Lend him, sell him, apprentice him, give him to me,—whichever you
prefer. Say I want a boot-black—a clothes-brusher—a palette-setter—a
bound slave—or an adopted son, as you please. The boy I must have: in
what capacity I get him is nothing to me.”
“I am bound to remind you, sir,” said the master, “that he was picked up
in the streets, and has had no training, and earned no outfit from us.
He comes to you without clothes, without character”—
“Without character?” cried the artist. “Heavens and earth! Did you ever
study physiognomy? Do you know any thing of faces?”
“It is part of my duty to know something of them, sir,” began the master,
who was slightly nettled.
“Then don’t talk nonsense, my friend, but send me the boy, as soon as is
consistent with your rules and regulations.”
The boy was Jan. The man of business gave his consent, but he implored
his “impulsive friend,” as he termed the artist, not to ruin the lad by
indulgence, but to keep him in his proper place, and give him plenty to
do. In conformity with this sensible advice, Jan’s first duties in his
new home were to clean the painter’s boots when he could find them, shake
his velveteen coat when the pockets were empty, sweep the studio, clean
brushes, and go errands. The artist was an old bachelor, infamously
cheated by the rheumatic widow he had paid to perform the domestic work
of his rooms; and when this afflicted lady gave warning on being asked
for hot water at a later hour than usual, Jan persuaded the artist to
enforce her departure, and took her place. So heavy is the iron weight
of custom—when it takes the form of an elderly and widowed domestic to a
single gentleman—that even Jan’s growing influence would not have secured
her dismissal, had not the artist had a particular reason for wishing the
boy’s practical talents to be displayed. He suspected his business
friend of distrusting them because of Jan’s artistic genius, and he was
proud to boast that he had never known the comfort of clean rooms and
well-cooked food till “the boy Giotto” became his housekeeper.
The work was play to Jan after his slavery to the hunchback, and on his
happiness in living with a painter it is needless to dwell. For a week
or two, the artist was busy with his “pot boiler,” and did not pay much
attention to his new apprentice, and Jan watched without disturbing him;
so that when he offered to set the painter’s palette, his master regarded
his success as an inspiration of genius, rather than as a result of
habits of observation.
The painter, though clever and ambitious, and with a very pure and very
elegant taste, was no mighty genius himself. The average of public taste
in art is low enough, but in refusing his “high art” pictures, and buying
his domestic ones, the public was not far wrong. It must be confessed
that he had also a vein of indolence in his nature, and Jan soon painted
most of the pot boilers. Another of his duties was to sit as a model for
the picture. The painter sketched him again and again, and was never
quite satisfied. What the vision of the windmill had lit up in the depth
of his black eyes could not be recalled to order in the painter’s studio.
“I tell you what it is,” said the artist one day; “domestic servitude is
taking the poetry out of you. You’re getting fat, Giotto! Understand
that from henceforth I forbid you to black boots or grates, to brush,
dust, wash, cook, or whatever disturbs the peace or hinders the growth of
the soul. I must get the widow back!” and the painter heaved a deep
sigh.
But Jan was resolute against the widow. He effected a compromise. The
bandy-legged boy from the Home was taken into the painter’s service, and
Jan made himself responsible for his good conduct. He began by warning
his vivacious friend that no freemasonry of common street-boyhood could
hinder the duty he owed to his master of protecting his property and
insuring his comfort, and that he must sooner tell tales of his friend
than have the painter wronged. To this homily the bandy-legged boy
listened with his red cheeks artificially distended, and occasional
murmurs of “Crikey!” but he took service on these terms, and did Jan no
discredit. He was incorruptibly honest, and when from time to time the
street fever seized him, and he left his work to play at post-leaping
outside, Jan would quietly take his place, and did not betray him. This
kindness invariably drew tears of penitence from the soft-hearted young
vagrant, his freaks grew rarer and rarer, and he finally became as steady
as he was quick-witted.
Jan’s duties were now confined to the painting-room, and he soon became
familiar with the studios of other artists, where his intelligent
admiration of paintings which took his fancy, his modesty, his willing
good-nature, and his precocious talent made him a general favorite.
He went regularly with his master to the early service in the sooty
little church, in the choir of which he was finally enrolled. And the
man of business kept a friendly eye on him, and gave him many a piece of
sensible and very practical advice, to balance the evils of an artistic
career.
With the Bohemianism of artist-life Jan was soon as familiar as with the
Bohemianism of the streets. A certain old-fashioned gravity, which had
always been amongst his characteristics, helped him to preserve both his
dignity and modesty in a manner which gave the man of business great
satisfaction. He might easily have been spoiled, but he was not. He
answered respectfully to about a dozen names which the vagrant fancy of
the young painters bestowed upon him: Jan-of-all-work—Jan Steen—The
Flying Dutchman—Crimson Lake—Madder Lake—and Miller’s Thumb.
But his master called him GIOTTO.
He was very happy, but the old home haunted him, and he longed bitterly
for some news of his foster-father and the schoolmaster. Whilst the
terror of the Cheap Jack was still oppressing him, he had feared to open
any communication with the past, for fear the wretched couple who were
supposed to be his parents should discover and reclaim him. But as his
nerves recovered their tone, as the horrors of his life as a screever
faded into softer tints, as that boon of poor
humanity—forgetfulness—healed his wounds, and he began to go about the
streets without thinking of the hunchback at every corner, he felt more
and more inclined to risk any thing to know how his old friends fared.
There also grew upon him a conviction that the Cheap Jack’s story was
false. He knew enough of art now, and of the value of his own powers,
and of the struggle for livelihoods in London, to see that it had been a
very good speculation to kidnap him. He had serious doubts whether the
cart had been driven round by the mill, and whether Master Lake had
refused to let him be awakened from his sleep, and had said it was, “All
right, and he hoped the lad would do his duty to his good parents.” He
remembered, too, the hunchback’s words when he lay speechless from the
drugged liquor, and these raised a puzzling question: Why should “the
nobs” recognize him? He had learned what _nobs_ are. Spelt without a
“k,” they are grand people, and what had grand people to do with Sal’s
son?
One cannot live without sympathy, and Jan confided the complexities of
his history to the bow-legged boy, and the interest they awakened in this
young gentleman could not but be gratifying to his friend. He kept one
eye closed during the story, as if he saw the whole thing (_too_ clearly)
at a glance. He broke the thread of Jan’s narrative by comments which
had no obvious bearing on the facts, and, when it was ended, be gave it
as his opinion that certain penny romances which he named were a joke to
it.
“Oh, my! what a pity we can’t employ a detective!” he said. “Whoever
knowed a young projidy find his noble relations without a detective? But
never mind, Jan. I knows their ways. I’m up to their dodges. Fust of
all, you makes up your mind deep down in your inside, and then you says
nothing to nobody, but follows it up. Fol-lows it up!”
“I don’t know what to follow,” said Jan; “and how can I make up my mind,
when I know nothing?”
“That’s just where it is,” said his friend; “if you knowed every thing,
wot ’ud be the use of coming the detective tip, and making it up in your
inside?”
The bow-legged boy had made it up in his. He had decided that Jan was a
nobleman in disguise, and that his father was a duke, or a “jook,” as he
called him. Jan’s active imagination could not quite resist the
influence of this romance, and he lay awake at night patching together
the hunchback’s reference to the nobs, and the incredulous glance of the
dark-eyed gentleman who had given him the half pence, and who was
certainly a nob himself. And never did he leave the house on an errand
for the painter that the bow-legged boy did not burst forth, dish-cloth
or dirty boots in hand, from some unexpected quarter, and adjure him to
“look out for the jook.”
It was a lovely afternoon when, by his friend’s advice, Jan betook
himself to the Park, that the nobs might have that opportunity of
recognizing him which the wide-mouthed woman had feared. He had washed
his face very clean, and brushed his old jacket with trembling hands, and
the bow-legged boy had tied a spotted scarf, that had been given to
himself by a stableman in the mews opposite, round Jan’s neck in what he
called “a gent’s knot,” and the poor child went to seek his fate with a
beating heart.
There were nobs enough. Round and round they came, in all the monotony
of a not very exhilarating amusement. The crowd was so great that the
carriages crawled rather than drove, and Jan could see the people well.
Many a lovely face, set in a soft frame of delicate hue, caught his
artistic eye, and he watched for and recognized it again. But only a
passing glance of languid curiosity met his eager gaze in return. Not a
nob recognized him. But a policeman looked at him as if he did, and Jan
crept away.
When he got home, he found household matters at a standstill, for the
bow-legged boy had been tearfully employed in thinking how Jan would
despise his old friends when the “jook” had acknowledged him, and he had
become a nob. And as Jan set matters to rights, he resolved that he
would not go to the Park again to look for relatives.