A PAINTER’S EDUCATION.—MASTER CHUTER’S PORT.—A FAREWELL FEAST.—THE SLEEP
OF THE JUST.
“I HOPE, Jan,” said Master Swift, “that the gentleman will overlook my
want of respect towards himself, in consideration of what it was to me to
see your face again.”
“Don’t distress me by speaking of it, Mr. Swift,” said the painter,
taking his hand, and sitting down beside him in the porch.
As he returned the artist’s friendly grasp, the schoolmaster scanned his
face with some of the old sharpness. “Sir,” said he, “I beg you to
forgive my freedom. I’m a rough man with a rough tongue, which I could
never teach to speak the feelings of my heart; but I humbly thank you,
sir, for your goodness to this boy.”
“It’s a very selfish kind of goodness at present, Mr. Swift, and I fancy
some day the obligation of the acquaintance will be on my side.”
“Jan,” said the schoolmaster, “take Rufus wi’ ye, and run that errand I
telled ye. Rufus’ll carry your basket.” When they had gone, he turned
earnestly to the painter.
“Sir, I’m speaking to ye out of my ignorance and my anxiety. Ye want the
lad to be a painter. Will he be a great painter? I’m reminding you of
what ye’ll know better than me (though not by yourself, for Jan tells me
you’re a grand artist), that a man may have the ambition and the love,
and some talent for an art, and yet be just without that divine spark
which the gods withhold. Sir, GOD forbid that I should undervalue the
pure pleasure of even that little gift; but it’s ill for a lad when he
has just that much of an art to keep him from a thrifty trade—and _no
more_.”
The painter replied as earnestly as Master Swift had spoken,—
“Jan’s estimate of me is weaker than his judgment in art is wont to be.
I speak to understanding ears, and you will know that I have some true
feeling for my art, when I tell you that I know enough to know that I
shall never be a great painter; and it will help you to put confidence in
my assurance that, if he lives, _Jan will_.”
Deep emotion kept the old man silent. It was a mixed feeling,—first,
intense pride and pleasure, and then a pang of disappointment. Had he
not been the first to see genius in the child? Had he not built upon him
one more ambition for himself,—the ambition of training the future great
man? And now another had taken his office.
“You look disappointed,” said the artist.
“It is the vile selfishness in me, sir. I had hoped the boy’s gifts
would have been what I could have trained at my own hearth. It is only
one more wilful fancy, once more thwarted.”
“Selfish I am sure it is not!” said the painter, hotly; “and as to such
benevolence being thwarted as a sort of punishment for I don’t know what,
I believe nothing of the kind.”
“You don’t know, sir,” said the old man, firmly. “Not that I’m speaking
of the Lord’s general dealings. There are tender, gentle souls, I know
well, who seem only to grow the purer and better for having the desire of
their eyes granted to them; but there are others whom, for their own
good, the Father of all sees needful to chasten to the end.”
“My experience lies in another direction,” said the painter, impetuously.
“With what awe do you suppose indolent men, whose easy years of
self-indulgent life have been broken by no real calamity, look upon
others on whose heads blow falls after blow, though their existence is an
hourly struggle towards perfection? There are some stagnant pools whose
peace the Angel never disturbs. Does GOD, who takes pleasure in
perfecting the saint and pardoning the sinner, forget some of us because
we are not worth remembering?”
“He forgets none of us, my dear sir,” said the schoolmaster, “and He
draws us to Himself at different times, and by different roads. I wanted
to be the child’s teacher, but He has chosen you, and will bless ye in
the work.”
The painter drove his hands through his bushy hair, and spoke more
vehemently than before.
“_I_ his teacher, and not you? My good friend, I at least am the better
judge of what makes a painter’s education. Is the man who shows a Giotto
how to use this brush, or mix that paint, to be called his teacher? No,
not for teaching him, forsooth, what he would have learned of anybody,
everybody, nobody, somehow, anyhow, or done just as well without. But
the man who taught him to work as a matter of principle, and apart from
inclination (a lesson which not all geniuses learn); the man who fostered
the love of Nature in him, and the spirit of poetry,—qualities without
which draughtsmanship and painting had better not be; the man who by
example and precept led him to find satisfaction in duty done, and
happiness in simple pleasures and domestic affections; the man who so
fixed these high and pure lessons in his mind, at its most susceptible
age, that the foulest dens of London could not corrupt him; the man whose
beloved and reverenced face would rise up in judgment against him if he
could ever hereafter degrade his art to be a pander of vice, or a mere
trick of the workshop;—this man, Master Swift, has been the painter’s
schoolmaster!”
Master Swift was not accustomed to betray emotion, but his nerves were
less strong than they had been, and self-control was more difficult; and
with his horny hands he hid the cheeks down which tears of gratified
pride would force their way.
He had not found voice to speak, when Rufus appeared at the gate with one
basket, followed by Jan and the little innkeeper with another. Why
Master Chuter had come, and why Jan was looking so particularly well
satisfied, must be explained.
Whilst the painter was still gazing across the water-meadows, Master
Swift, who was the soul of hospitality, had told Jan where to find a few
shillings in a certain drawer, and had commissioned him to lay these out
in the wherewithal for an evening meal. Jan had had some anxiety in
connection with the duty intrusted to him. Firstly, he well knew that
the few shillings were what the schoolmaster must depend on for that
week’s living. Secondly, though it was his old friend’s all, it was a
sum very inadequate to provide such a meal as Jan would have liked to set
before the painter. At his age, children are very sensitive on behalf of
their grown-up friends, and like to maintain the credit of home. The
provoking point was that Jan had plenty of pocket-money, with which he
could have supplied deficiencies, had he dared; for the painter, besides
buying him an outfit for the journey, had liberally rewarded him for his
work at the pot boiler. But Jan knew the pride of Master Swift’s heart
too well to venture to add a half penny to his money, or to spend a half
penny less than all.
It was whilst he was going with an anxious countenance towards the
village shop that Master Chuter met him with open arms. The little
innkeeper was genuinely delighted to see him; and the news of his arrival
having spread, several old friends (including “Willum” Smith) were
waiting for him, about the yardway of the Heart of Oak. When the
innkeeper discovered Jan’s errand, he insisted on packing up a prime cut
of bacon, some new-laid eggs, and a bottle of “crusty” old port, such as
the squires drank at election dinners, to take to the schoolmaster. Jan
was far too glad of this seasonable addition to the feast to suggest
doubts of its acceptance; indeed, he ventured on a hint about a possible
lack of wine-glasses, which Master Chuter quickly took, and soon filled
up his basket with ancient glasses on bloated legs, a clean table-cloth,
and so forth.
“We needn’t say any thing about the glasses,” suggested Jan, as they drew
near the cottage.
Master Chuter winked the little eye buried in his fat left cheek.
“I knows the schoolmaster, Jan. He be mortal proud; and I wouldn’t
offend he, sartinly not, Jan. But Master Swift and me have seen a deal
of each other since you left, and he’ve tasted this port before, when he
were so bad, and he’ll not take it amiss from an old friend.”
Master Chuter was right. The schoolmaster only thanked him heartily, and
pressed him to remain. But the little innkeeper, bustling round the
table with professional solicitude, declined the invitation.
“I be obliged to ’ee all the same, Master Swift. But I hope I knows
better manners than to intrude on you and Jan just now, let alone a
gentleman on whom I shall have pleasure in waiting at the Heart of Oak.
There be beds, sir, at your service and Jan’s, and well aired they be.
And I’ll be proud to show you the sign, sir, painted by that boy when he
were an infant, as I may say. But I knowed what was in un. Master Swift
can bear me witness. ‘Mark my words,’ says I, ‘the boy Jan be ’most as
good as a sign-painter yet.’ And I do think a will. But you knows best,
sir.”
“I feel quite convinced that he will,” said the painter, gravely.
Whilst Master Chuter and the artist thus settled Jan’s career, he cooked
the eggs and bacon; and when Master Swift had propelled himself to the
table, and the others (including Rufus) had taken their seats, the
innkeeper drew cork, dusted the bottle-mouth, and filled the fat-legged
wine-glasses; then, throwing a parting glance over the arrangements of
the table, he withdrew.
Jan’s fears for the credit of his home, his anxieties as to the effect of
the frugal living of his old friends upon the more luxurious taste of his
new patron, were very needless. The artist was delighted with every
thing, and when he said that he had never tasted food so good as the eggs
and bacon, or relished any wine like that from the cellar of the Heart of
Oak, he quite believed what he said. In truth, none should be so easily
pleased as the artistic, when they wish to be so, since if “we receive
but what we give,” and our happiness in any thing is according to the
mind we bring to it, imaginative people must have an advantage in being
able to put so much rose color into their spectacles.
Warmed by the good cheer, Master Swift discoursed as vigorously as of
old. With a graphic power of narration, commoner in his class than in a
higher one, he entertained the artist with stories of Jan’s childhood,
and gave a vivid picture of his own first sight of him in the wood. He
did not fail to describe the long blue coat, the pig-switch, and the
slate, nor did he omit to quote the lines which so well described the
scene which the child-genius was painting in leaves.
“Well have I named him Giotto!” said the artist; “the shepherd boy
drawing on the sand.”
“If ye’d seen the swineherd painting with nature’s own tints,” said
Master Swift, with a pertinacious adherence to his own view of things,
which had always been characteristic of him, “I reckon you’d have thought
he beat the shepherd boy. Not that I could pretend to be a judge of the
painting myself, sir; what took _my_ mind was the inventive energy of the
child. For maybe fifty men in a hundred do a thing, if you find them the
tools, and show them the way, but not five can make their own materials
and find a way for themselves.”
“Necessity’s the mother of invention,” said the painter, smiling.
“So they say, sir,” said the schoolmaster, smartly; “though, from my own
experience of the shiftlessness of necessitous folk, I’ve been tempted to
doubt the truth of the proverb.”
The painter laughed, and thought of the widow, as Master Swift added,
“Necessity may be the _mother_ of invention, sir, but the father must
have had a good head on his shoulders.”
The sun had set, the moon had risen, and the dew mixed with kindred
rain-drops on the schoolmaster’s flowers, when Jan and the painter bade
him good-by. For half an hour past it had seemed to the painter that he
was exhausted, and spoke languidly.
“Don’t get up till I come in the morning, Master Swift,” said Jan; “I’ll
come early and dress you.”
Rufus walked with them to the gate, and waved his tail as Jan kissed his
soft nose and brow, but then he went back to Master Swift and lay down at
his feet. The old man had refused to have the door shut, and he
propelled his chair to the porch again, and lay looking at the stars.
The moon set, and the night grew cold, so that Rufus tucked his nose
deeper into his fur, but Master Swift did not close the door.
* * * * *
The sun was shining brightly when Jan came back in the morning. It was
very early. The convolvulus bells were open, but Rufus and the
schoolmaster still slept. Jan’s footsteps roused Rufus, who stretched
himself and yawned, but Master Swift did not move, nor answer to Jan’s
passionate call upon his name. And in the very peace and beauty of his
countenance Jan saw that he was dead.
But at what hour the silent messenger had come—whether at midnight, or at
cock-crow, or in the morning—there was none to tell.
[Picture: But at what hour . . .]