Young Carstairs and his wife had a studio at Fifty-seventh Street and
Sixth Avenue, where Carstairs painted pictures and Mrs. Carstairs
mended stockings and wrote letters home to her people in Vermont.
Young Carstairs had had a picture in the Salon, and was getting one
ready for the Academy, which he hoped to have accepted if he lived
long enough to finish it. They were very poor. Not so poor that there
was any thought of Carstairs starving to death, but there was at least
a possibility that he would not be able to finish his picture in the
studio, for which he could not pay the rent. He was very young and had
no business to marry; but she was willing, and her people had an idea
it would come out all right. They had only three hundred dollars left,
and it was mid-winter.
Carstairs went out to sketch Broadway at One Hundred and Fifty-ninth
Street, where it is more of a country road than anything else, and his
hands almost froze while he was getting down the black lines of the
bare trees, and the deep, irregular ruts in the road, where the mud
showed through the snow. He intended to put a yellow sky behind this,
and a house with smoke coming out of the chimney, and with red light
shining through the window, and call it _Winter_.
A horse and buggy stopped just back of him, and he was conscious from
the shadows on the snow that the driver was looking down from his
perch.
Carstairs paid no attention to his spectator. He was used to working
with Park policemen and nursery-maids looking over his shoulder and
making audible criticisms or giggling hysterically. So he sketched on
and became unconscious of the shadow falling on the snow in front of
him; and when he looked up about a quarter of an hour later and
noticed that the shadow was still there, he smiled at the tribute such
mute attention paid his work. When the sketch was finished he leaned
back and closed one eye, and moved his head from side to side and
surveyed it critically. Then he heard a voice over his shoulder say,
in sympathetic tones, "Purty good, isn't it?" He turned and smiled at
his critic, and found him to be a fat, red-faced old gentleman,
wrapped in a great fur coat with fur driving-gloves and fur cap.
"You didn't mind my watching you, did you?" asked the old gentleman.
Carstairs said no, he did not mind. The other said that it must be
rather cold drawing in such weather, and Carstairs said yes, it was;
but that you couldn't get winter and snow in June.
"Exactly," said the driver; "you've got to take it as it comes. How
are you going back?"
Carstairs said he would walk to One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street and
take the elevated.
"You'd better get in here," said the older man. "Do you know anything
about trotting?" Carstairs got in, and showed that he did know
something about trotting by his comments on the mare in front of him.
This seemed to please the old gentleman, and he beamed on Carstairs
approvingly. He asked him a great many questions about his work, and
told him that he owned several good pictures himself, but admitted
that it was at his wife's and daughter's suggestion that he had
purchased them. "They made me get 'em when we were in Paris," he said,
"and they cost a lot of money, and a heap more before I got 'em
through the Custom-house." He mentioned the names of the artists who
had painted them, and asked Carstairs if he had ever heard of them,
and Carstairs said yes, that he knew of them all, and had studied
under some of them.
"They're purty high up, I guess," suggested the driver, tentatively.
"Oh, yes," Carstairs answered, lending himself to the other's point of
view, "you needn't be afraid of ever losing on your investment. Those
pictures will be worth more every year."
This seemed to strike the older man as a very sensible way to take his
gallery, and he said, when they had reached the studio, that he would
like to see more of Mr. Carstairs and to look at his pictures. His
name, he said, was Cole. Carstairs smilingly asked him if he was any
relation to the railroad king, of whom the papers spoke as King Cole,
and was somewhat embarrassed when the old gentleman replied, gravely,
that he was that King Cole himself. Carstairs had a humorous desire to
imprison him in his studio and keep him for ransom. Some one held the
horse, and the two men went up to the sixth floor and into Carstairs's
studio, where they discovered pretty Mrs. Carstairs in the act of
sewing a new collar-band on one of her husband's old shirts. She went
on at this while the railroad king, who seemed a very simple, kindly
old gentleman, wandered around the studio and turned over the
pictures, but made no comment. It had been a very cold drive, and
Carstairs felt chilled, so he took the hot water his wife had for her
tea and some Scotch whiskey and a bit of lemon, and filled a glass
with it for his guest and for himself. Mrs. Carstairs rose and put
some sugar in King Cole's glass and stirred it for him, and tasted it
out of the spoon and coughed, which made the old gentleman laugh. Then
he lighted a cigar, and sat back in a big arm-chair and asked many
questions, until, before they knew it, the young people had told him a
great deal about themselves--almost everything except that they were
poor. He could never guess that, they thought, because the studio was
so handsomely furnished and in such a proper neighborhood. It was
late in the afternoon, and quite dark, when their guest departed,
without having made any comment on the paintings he had seen, and
certainly without expressing any desire to purchase one.
Mrs. Carstairs said, when her husband told her who their guest had
been, that they ought to have held a pistol to his head and made him
make out a few checks for them while they had him about. "Billionaires
don't drop in like that every day," said she. "I really don't think we
appreciated our opportunity."
They were very much surprised a few days later when the railroad king
rang at the door, and begged to be allowed to come in and get warm,
and to have another glass of hot Scotch. He did this very often, and
they got to like him very much. He said he did not care for his club,
and his room at home was too strongly suggestive of the shop, on
account of the big things he had thought over there, but that their
studio was so bright and warm; and they reminded him, he said, of the
days when he was first married, before he was rich. They tried to
imagine what he was like when he was first married, and failed
utterly. Mrs. Carstairs was quite sure he was not at all like her
husband.
* * * * *
There was a youth who came to call on the Misses Cole, who had a great
deal of money, and who was a dilettante in art. He had had a studio
in Paris, where he had spent the last two years, and he wanted one,
so he said at dinner one day, in New York.
Old Mr. Cole was seated but one place away from him, and was wondering
when the courses would stop and he could get upstairs. He did not care
for the dinners his wife gave, but she always made him come to them.
He never could remember whether the roast came before or after the
bird, and he was trying to guess how much longer it would be before he
would be allowed to go, when he overheard the young man at his
daughter's side speaking.
"The only studio in the building that I would care to have," said the
young man, "is occupied at present. A young fellow named Carstairs has
it, but he is going to give it up next week, when I will move in. He
has not been successful in getting rid of his pictures, and he and his
wife are going back to Vermont to live. I feel rather sorry for the
chap, for he is really very clever and only needs a start. It is
almost impossible for a young artist to get on here, I imagine, unless
he knows people, or unless some one who is known buys his work."
"Yes," said Miss Cole, politely. "Didn't you say you met the Whelen
girls before you left Paris? Were they really such a success at
Homburg?"
Mr. Cole did not eat any more dinner, but sat thoughtfully until he
was allowed to go. Then he went out into the hall, and put on his
overcoat and hat.
The Carstairses were dismantling the studio. They had been at it all
day, and they were very tired. It seemed so much harder work to take
the things down and pack them away than it did to unpack them and put
them up in appropriate corners and where they would show to the best
advantage.
The studio looked very bare indeed, for the rugs and altar cloths and
old curtains had been stripped from the walls, and the pictures and
arms and plaques lay scattered all over the floor. It was only a week
before Christmas, and it seemed a most inappropriate time to evict
one's self. "And it's hardest," said Carstairs, as he rolled up a
great Daghestan rug and sat on it, "to go back and own up that you're
a failure."
"A what!" cried young Mrs. Carstairs, indignantly. "Aren't you ashamed
of yourself? You're not a failure. It's the New Yorkers who don't know
what's good when it's shown them. They'll buy all those nasty French
pictures because they're expensive and showy, and they can't
understand what's true and good. They're not educated up to it, and
they won't be for fifty years yet."
"Fifty years is a long time to wait," said her husband, resignedly,
"but if necessary we can give them that much time. And we were to have
gone abroad, and taken dinner at Bignon's, and had a studio in
Montmartre."
"Well, you needn't talk about that just now," said Mrs. Carstairs, as
she shook out an old shawl. "It's not cheerful."
There came a knock at the door, and the railroad king walked in,
covered with snow. "Goodness me!" exclaimed King Cole, "what are you
doing?"
They told him they were going back to Vermont to spend Christmas and
the rest of the winter.
"You might have let me know you were going," said the king. "I had
something most important to say to you, and you almost gave me the
slip."
He seated himself very comfortably and lighted a fat, black cigar,
which he chewed as he smoked. "You know," he said, "that I was brought
up in Connecticut. I own the old homestead there still, and a tenant
of mine lives in it. I've got a place in London, or, I mean, my wife
has, and one in Scotland, and one in Brittany, a château, and one
in--well, I've a good many here and there. I keep 'em closed till I
want 'em. I've never been to the shooting-place in Scotland--my sons
go there--nor to the London house, but I have to the French place, and
I like it next best to only one other place on earth. Because it's
among big trees and on a cliff, where you can see the ships all day,
and the girls in colored petticoats catching those little fish you eat
with brown bread. I go there in the summer and sit on the cliff, and
smoke and feel just as good as though I owned the whole coast and all
the sea in sight. I bought a number of pictures of Brittany, and the
girls had the place photographed by a fellow from Paris, with the
traps in the front yard, and themselves and their friends on the front
terrace in groups. But it never seemed to me to be just what I
remembered of the place. And so what I want to ask is, if you'll go up
to my old place in Connecticut and paint me a picture of it as I used
to know it when I was a boy, so that I can have it by me in my room. A
picture with the cow-path leading up from the pool at the foot of the
hill, and the stone walls, and the corn piled on the fields, and the
pumpkins lying around, and the sun setting behind the house. Paint it
on one of these cold, snappy afternoons, when your blood tingles and
you feel good that you're alive. And when you get through with that,
I'd like you to paint me a picture to match it of the château, and as
many little sketches of the fishermen, and the girls with the big
white hats and bare legs and red petticoats, as you choose. You can
live in the homestead till that picture's done, and then you can cross
over and live in the château.
"I don't see that there is anything wrong in painting a picture to
order, is there? You paint a portrait to order, why shouldn't you
paint an old house, or a beautiful castle on a cliff, with the sea
beyond it? If you wish, I'll close with you now and call it a
bargain."
Mrs. Carstairs had been standing all this time with an unframed
picture in one hand, and a dust brush in the other, and her husband
had been sitting on the rolled-up Turkish rug and trying not to look
at her.
"I'd like to do it very well," he said, simply.
"Well, that's good," replied the railroad king, heartily. "You'll need
a retaining fee, I suppose, like lawyers do; and you put your best
work on the two pictures and remember what they mean to _me_, and put
the spirit of home into them. It's my home you're painting, do you
understand? I think you do. That's why I asked you instead of asking
any of the others. Now, you know how I feel about it, and you put the
feeling into the picture; and as to the price, you ask whatever you
please, and you live at my houses and at my expense until the work is
done. If I don't see you again," he said, as he laid a check down on
the table among the brushes and paint tubes and cigars, "I will wish
you a merry Christmas." Then he hurried out and banged the door behind
him and escaped their thanks, and left them alone together.
The pictures of Breton life and landscape were exhibited a year later
in Paris, and in the winter in New York, and, as they bore the
significant numerals of the Salon on the frame, they were immediately
appreciated, and many people asked the price. But the attendant said
they were already sold to Mr. Cole, the railroad king, who had
purchased also the great artistic success of the exhibition--an old
farm-house with a wintry landscape, and the word "Home" printed
beneath it.