THE TRICK OF COLOR
The men of the Rookery toiled, in the season of toil, with that blithe
singleness of purpose they brought to their play. Ewing learned this the
following morning when, after an hour in his own place, correcting some
of those hasty first arrangements, he began an idling tour of the other
studios. These occupied the two upper floors of the building, those
beneath flaunting signs of trade on the ground-glass doors one passed in
the long climb from the street.
From Baldwin's studio--Baldwin was sketching in from the model a
kneeling Filipino prisoner with head thrown back and hands bound behind
him--Ewing descended to Chalmers's place to find its owner finishing,
with many swift pen strokes, the filmy gown of a debutante who underwent
with downcast eyes the appraisal of an elderly beau. This absorbed and
serious Chalmers was so unlike the frivolous night bird who reviled his
art editor that Ewing forbore to distract him.
Griggs, in the studio back of Chalmers, was soberly work-bent over the
wash-drawing of a sword fight, an illustration for what he confided to
Ewing was the latest "high boots and hardware novel."
"One lovely thing," explained the artist, "they all take the same
pictures--the plighted troth in the chateau garden; the lone hero
spitting eight low-browed mercenaries of the scoundrelly duke at the
end of the blind passage; 'nother fight on the main stairway of the
palace, girl in view back of the hero, who's still acting the village
cut-up with his little rapier; and the last picture, reward of hero in
front parlor of the chateau, my Lord the Cardinal standing by to bless
the happy pair, and the wicked Duke Bazazas being dragged out by loyal
serving men to be finished off in the woodshed. The caption for that one
always is, 'At Last, My Darling!' I just glance along the proofs until I
light on those scenes. It saves a lot of reading, and I think of getting
a set of rubber stamps to do the pictures with."
"You seem to be all black-and-white men here," remarked Ewing. "Aren't
any of you painters? I've thought I'd like to work in color--to learn
the trick of it."
Griggs glanced up at him, then smiled largely.
"The trick of color, eh? Sure! There's a boy upstairs next door to
you--old Pop Sydenham. I'll take you up now, but don't let him hear you
call it 'the trick of color.' Pop has been at that trick for over a
century now--I believe he's a hundred and nineteen years old to-morrow.
He's got a darned refined sense of color, too. I guess he's seen every
color in the world, except some of those he puts on his own canvases.
Some of those I don't believe he ever saw anywhere else. But Pop's worth
knowing if you're keen to paint. He's a whole Art Students' League in
himself. Come on, he'll be proud to have you notice him."
Wiping his hands neatly on his jacket--plainly a long-established custom
with him--Griggs led the way to a room across the hall from Ewing's. He
opened the door in answer to a call and pushed Ewing in before him.
Sydenham leaned back on his stool to peer at them around the corner of
his easel.
He was an old man, as Griggs had said. White hair fell in sparse locks
over his ears, and his short, roughly pointed beard was scant enough to
reveal sunken cheeks. But the face was tanned to a wholesome brown, and
the eyes that glanced over his gold-rimmed spectacles were full of fresh
good-humor. He nodded to Griggs and clambered down from his stool to
greet Ewing.
"He's a line man now," announced Griggs after the introduction, "but
some busybody has gone and told him that there's such a thing as real
color. Of course I don't pretend to know myself, but I told him you did.
He's your neighbor on this floor. Run in often and make yourselves at
home with each other," he concluded cordially. "I must hurry back and
finish a fight."
"May I look?" asked Ewing, his eyes running about the room to the many
canvases.
"My summer's work is there--Look? yes; but I can't promise what you'll
see. You bring your own eyes. I can't make eyes, too. If I only could--"
He spoke with a slow, soft gentleness, his blue eyes half shut and
dreamily distant. As Ewing turned to study a landscape leaning against
the wall on a table near by, the painter climbed to his stool and twined
his thin legs confusingly among its supports. Then facing his canvas and
working a brush into the color on his palette he continued:
"Line is a fact. Color is only a sensation. Anyone can prove line, but
to know color you must have imagination. If you lack that and do have a
gift for humorous abuse you can be an art critic and make quite a bit
of money, I'm told." He had begun to paint as he talked. He spoke with
the same slow gentleness, even when a hint of seasoned bitterness
betrayed itself.
One close look at the sketches about him had made Ewing rejoice that his
own paintings were safe with Ben Crider. He studied the canvases before
him with pleasure and dismay: wooded hills, grassy meadows, a park slope
with a single birch; mist rising over a marsh; a country road narrowing
into a blaze of sumach. They showed plainly enough, he thought, that
color must be conveyed rather by implication than by blunt directness,
and there, he felt, had been his own great blunder. He had been brutally
direct.
Some of the pictures before him left him wanting a sharper definition of
line, a more explicit modeling of surface, a treatment less timid, and
the color itself, though it never failed to interest him, often puzzled
or even irritated. He sought for words to disclose what he felt, his
admiration for some of the sketches, his doubt or his rank disbelief as
to others. But the old man suddenly swept the half-formed sentences from
his mind.
A crash of falling furniture had resounded from the room of Dallas,
forward on their own floor. From the studios below came other crashes,
the noise of falling bodies, and a ringing, metallic clangor. Sydenham
had paused at the first crash, then skipped nimbly from his stool,
shouting gleefully, "There goes Griggs's suit of armor!" Then, to
Ewing's amazement, he twitched the end of a cord that led to a high
mahogany sideboard, causing a cigar box, a copper kettle, and a heavy
volume of prints to fall with resoundings that must have carried to the
farthest studio. The old man faced him with the ecstatically deafened
look of a child amid exploding firecrackers. Then, as he discerned
Ewing's startled look, he explained:
"It's only a way the boys have every day at one o'clock. That Baldwin
boy started it by upsetting a musket and a brace of cavalry sabers. Then
Griggs followed with his armor. Then they all got to joining in. The
Chalmers boy pulls over his easel, and I understand there's been a
complaint from the people below; but it leaves us feeling rather
friendly, you know, and we're sure it's time to eat." He looked at Ewing
as if seeking to justify his complicity in so childish a performance.
And Ewing, reading the look, helped him to reload his sideboard for the
next day's disturbance. The copper kettle, book and cigar box--the
latter containing half a dozen lumps of coal--were replaced on a thin
board to which the string was attached.
Sydenham had meantime taken food from a curtained cabinet and was
munching before his easel. He waved the freedom of his larder to Ewing.
"There's bread and half a chicken, and pickles. There used to be ham,
but I forget if it's there yet. Anyway, it wasn't the most expensive
ham. I can't lose daylight by running out. The light changes while I
eat. I'm no Joshua. What did Griggs say of you--crazy boy, that Griggs.
Doing black and white, eh? Show me."
Ewing had helped himself to the bread and meat, and the two, eating
casually, crossed the hall to his own room. His drawings were at hand
and Sydenham looked at them as he munched, pausing critically now and
then, a bit of bread midway to his mouth.
"Not bad, not bad! If you can do that well you ought to do better. But
too many of you boys quit when you've learned to do something you can
sell. It's respectable, of course, but shoemakers do as much, and you've
no right to call yourselves artists for it. I'm afraid there isn't
anything made in the world that some one won't buy. And people _know_ if
their boots fit them, or if their bread is good, but they buy pictures
in the dark. There wouldn't be so many men calling themselves painters
if the public wasn't a better judge of sawed lumber or iron castings
than it is of pictures. Where did you study?"
"My father taught me drawing. He warned me to learn that first."
"Father, eh? Well--" His eyes rose from the drawings, ranged along the
top of the couch, to the portrait of Ewing's mother, hung between the
two windows, and the speech died on his lips. He stepped back, bit into
a reserve slice of bread and waved an inquiring chicken bone toward the
picture.
"My mother," explained Ewing. "My father painted it."
Sydenham's jaw fell, and looking again at the portrait he muttered some
low, swift phrase of bewilderment. Ewing waited for him to speak, but
the old man only stared.
"It has good color, don't you think?" he ventured at last, but even the
mention of color could not move Sydenham to speech. He absently consumed
the remainder of his food and flicked crumbs from his frayed jacket.
"You look like her," he said at last, with so much the air of speaking
to himself that Ewing made no answer. He moved toward the door with
bowed head. At the threshold he looked back at Ewing a brief moment,
then went out, closing the door softly behind him.
Ewing decided that his neighbor was a curious old man. Recalling other
curious people he had met in this strange new world, he was reminded of
the lady who had urged him to call on her. He was still ready to believe
that anyone might wish to talk to him, or to hear him talk. But in spite
of this, the old lady had been queer. From the table he picked up the
card she had given him, studying the name and wondering what they might
talk about.
He was still feeling this mild wonder when he rang the lady's bell at
five o'clock.