THE PICTURES
Austin had been gone a fortnight when Jacinta and Muriel Gascoyne sat
under the lee of the _Estremedura_'s deck-house one morning, on their
way to Las Palmas. Above them the mastheads swung languidly athwart a
cloudless sweep of blue, and the sea frothed in white incandescence
about the lurching hull below as the little yacht-like steamer reeled
eastwards with a rainbow in the spray that whirled about her bows.
Astern of her the Peak's white cone gleamed above its wrappings of
fleecy mist, and ahead on the far horizon Grand Canary swam a purple
cloud.
Jacinta was dressed ornately in the latest English mode, and it seemed
to Muriel that she had put on conventional frivolity along with her
attire. Indeed, Muriel had noticed a change in her companion during the
last few days, one that was marked by outbreaks of flippancy and
somewhat ironical humour. An English naval officer leaned upon the back
of her chair, and a tourist of the same nationality stood balancing
himself against the rolling with his hand on the rail that ran along the
deck-house. The latter was looking down at Macallister, who sat upon the
deck with a little box in front of him.
"I brought up the two or three sketches ye were asking for, Mr.
Coulstin," he said. "The saloon's full of jabbering Spaniards, and the
messroom's over hot."
The tourist screwed the glass he wore more tightly into his eye. "If
they're equal to the one I saw in the N.A W.A A. store I may be open to
make a purchase," he said. "I think you told me you were acquainted with
the artist, Miss Brown?"
"I believe I did," said Jacinta, who was conscious that Macallister was
watching her languidly. "You will, however, no doubt be able to judge
his pictures for yourself."
Coulston made a little humourous gesture. "I am not a painter, and I
could scarcely venture to call myself a connoisseur. Still, I buy a
picture or two occasionally, and the one I mentioned rather took my
fancy. A sketch or two of that kind would make a pleasant memento."
"One would fancy that a good photograph would be more reliable, as well
as cheaper," said the naval officer.
Coulston reproachfully shook his head. "I'm afraid we differ there," he
said. "Leaving out the question of colour, a photograph is necessarily
an artificial thing. It wants life and atmosphere, and you can never put
that into a picture by a mechanical process. Only a man can feel, and
transmute his impressions into material. Accuracy of detail is, after
all, by comparison, a secondary consideration, but perhaps I had better
pull up before my hobby makes a bolt of it."
"I have heard of people riding a hobby uncomfortably hard," said Jacinta
reflectively.
"That, I think, is, to be accurate, seldom what happens. If a man has a
genuine hobby, it never needs spurring. It is, in fact, unpleasantly apt
to run away with him on the smallest provocation. Are steamboat men
addicted to making sketches, Mr. Macallister?"
"No," said Macallister, grinning. "At least its not the usual thing, but
I once sailed with another of them who did. He was second engineer, and
would draw the chief one day. It was very like him, so like that it
cost the man his job, and a wife as well. Says he, 'How could ye expect
me to idealise a man with a mouth like yon?'"
"But how did that affect his wife?" asked the officer.
Macallister grinned more broadly, but it was Jacinta he looked at.
"Ye see," he said, "he had not got one then. He was second engineer, and
would have gone chief in a new boat if he'd stayed with that company.
The young woman was ambitious, and she told him she would not marry him
until he was promoted, on principle. He was a long while over it after
he lost that berth, and then--also on principle--he would not marry
her."
Jacinta laughed, though Muriel fancied she had seen a momentary
hardening of her face.
"She probably deserved it, though one can't help concluding that she
wouldn't feel it much," she said. "That is one of the advantages of
being a practical person; but hadn't you better get the drawings out?"
Macallister took out a sketch in water-colour and held it up. It showed
a strip of a steamer's deck, with the softened sunlight beating down
through an awning upon a man in skipper's uniform who lay, cigar in
hand, in a hammock that swung beneath the spars. He was, to judge from
his expression, languidly contented with everything, and there was a big
glass of amber-coloured liquid on the little table beside him, and a
tier of bottles laid out upon the deck. Beneath it ran the legend, "For
men must work."
"That," said Jacinta, "is, at least, what they tell their wives."
The tourist gazed at the drawing, and then turned to her. He was, as she
had discovered already, a painfully didactic person.
"The conceit," he said, "is a somewhat happy one, though the sketch is,
it seems to me, a little weak in technique. As we admitted, one
difference between a photograph and a painting is that the artist
records his own sensations in the latter, and stamps it with, at least,
a trace of his individuality. In that respect the sketch is, I fancy,
characteristic. The artist, one could imagine, was in full sympathy with
his subject--the far niente--but I am, no doubt, getting prosy."
For no very apparent reason a little flush of colour crept into
Jacinta's face, and Macallister, who saw it, chuckled as he took out
another sketch.
"Well," he said, reflectively, "I never met a man who could do nothing
more gracefully than Mr. Austin, but I'll let ye see the rest of them,
since they're in my charge to sell. Mr. Austin, who wants the money,
took a sudden notion he'd go to Africa, and, if they've had a quick run,
he's now humping palm oil puncheons in a stranded steamer's hold. I'm
thinking it will be a big change for him."
The naval officer laughed softly. "From what I know of the tropics I
fancy you are right. In fact, it's rather difficult to imagine the man I
met at the bull fight doing that kind of thing at all. Salvage work is
necessarily hard under any circumstances, and anywhere, but the last
place I would care to attempt it in is Western Africa. What
sent--him--there?"
"Ye must not ask me," and a little twinkle, for which Jacinta longed to
shake him, crept into Macallister's eyes. "Now, there are clever folks
who will look at a man, or maybe talk to him awhile, and then label him,
thinking they know just what to expect of him. It does him no great
harm, and it pleases them, until one day he does something that
astonishes them in spite of his label. Then they're apt to get angry
with him. A man, ye see, is, after all, not that unlike an engine. Ye
cannot tell what may be going on in the inside of him, and when the
result's distressing it's most often the fault of injudicious handling."
Jacinta, to whom he apparently directed his observations, contrived to
regard him with a little smile, and he proceeded to extricate another
sketch, a canvas this time.
"This one is different," he said.
Coulston, who apparently concurred with him, gazed at the picture with a
trace of astonishment. It showed a big cargo lancha lurching out,
deep-loaded, through a fringe of tumbling surf with four men straining
at the ponderous oars. The wet rags they wore clung about their limbs,
and there was weariness in their grim, brown faces. Bent backs and set
lips had their significance, and the sketch was stamped with the
suggestion of endurance and endeavour. Yet, as those who saw it felt,
there was triumph in it, too, for while the rollers came seething in to
hurl her back the lancha was clawing off the shore.
"It's good!" said the navy man. "It's unusually good. Those fellows are
played out, and they know if they slacken down for a moment she'll roll
over with them or go up on the beach. The sea's running in against
her--one finds out by trying it how hard it is to pull off against a
surf--but they're driving her out. Presumably, that's what you call the
motive of the thing."
The tourist nodded appreciatively. "Yes," he said. "In spite of certain
faults in drawing, it's well worked out. What puzzles me is how the man
who did the other one came to feel it as he evidently did. One could
fancy he had had a revelation, and that in some respects he was a
different man when he painted this. I'll offer you five guineas for it,
Mr. Macallister."
"Then," said Macallister, promptly, "ye can have it. Eight guineas for
the two, if ye would like the other one. There are two or three more of
them here ye might care to look at." He stopped a moment, and added, as
if in explanation: "I'm anxious to do what I can for Mr. Austin. Many's
the time I've stole his wine and sold his clothes."
He undid a package, and, first of all, took out a photograph of a young
girl with a comely English face, which Jacinta glanced at somewhat
sharply. Then she became intent when there followed several rudimentary
pencil and pastel sketches of herself, until Macallister handed Coulston
a picture. He turned from it to Jacinta, and looked at her with a
steadiness a young woman less accustomed to masculine criticism would
probably have found disconcerting.
She lay smiling at him in the canvas lounge, very pretty and very
dainty, with conventional indifference expressed even in her pose. She
was, he fancied, a woman who knew her world thoroughly, and had the
greater influence therein because she seldom asked too much from it.
Then he glanced again at her portrait almost incredulously, for it
showed the little shapely head held well erect, the red lips
straightened and firmly closed, and the glow of a strenuous purpose in
the eyes. Stooping, he laid the picture on her knees with a little
smile.
Jacinta laughed softly. "Yes," she said, "of course, I know what you
mean. I am essentially modern and frivolous, and not in the least like
that. Still, you see, all of us have our serious moments now and then,
although it is probably fortunate they don't last long."
"Ah," said Coulston, wilfully neglecting his opportunity, "I almost
fancy a light breaks in on me. One could entitle this inspiration, and
it is, you know, possible to transmit it occasionally. I wonder whether
it would make the idea clearer if we placed the three pictures
together. Mr. Macallister will permit me?"
He set up the first sketch of the steamboat skipper against the lifeboat
skids, and gazed at it critically. "Assuming that a picture contains
something of its painter's ego, you will observe how the idea of petty
indulgence and his appreciation of sensual comfort is impressed on one,"
he said. "Now we will set up the other sketch of the sailormen. There
you see restraint, tense effort, abnegation--and victory--in one sense a
spiritual triumph over the body. It is an interesting question how the
man who painted both could have been brought to grasp what Lieutenant
Onslow calls the motive of the last one; but if we might venture to
place another picture between."
Jacinta raised her head sharply, and there was an ominous sparkle in her
eyes. "No," she said, with quiet incisiveness, "I would sooner you
didn't. There are certainly men whose hobby, now and then, runs away
with them. Macallister, will you put that portrait back again?"
She handed it him face downwards, for the others had not seen it, and
Lieutenant Onslow turned to the tourist.
"I don't quite understand, but I fancy Miss Brown doesn't approve of
vivisection any more than I do," he said. "It really isn't decent to
turn anybody inside out."
"I wonder," said Coulston, ignoring him, "if you would mind my offering
to buy the three?"
He was looking steadily at her, but Jacinta contrived for a moment to
catch Macallister's eye. So swift was the flashed glance that the
tourist did not notice it, but Jacinta could convey a good deal with a
look, and the engineer was a man of considerable intelligence.
"That one is not for sale," he said.
"No," said Onslow, who held up a strip of pasteboard and a sheet of
brown paper, "I scarcely think it is. In fact, you don't appear to have
noticed that there's a seal on this part of it, and instructions that
this particular packet is not to be opened."
It seemed to Muriel that a trace of colour once more crept into
Jacinta's face, but Macallister surveyed the wrappings the officer
handed him with a grin.
"It is not that difficult to slice a seal off and stick it back again,"
he said. "It's also a thing Mr. Austin should have remembered. Many a
garafon of wine has he seen opened."
"So you know that trick!" Onslow laughed. "I'm inclined to think it's
one that has now and then been practised upon our mess."
Just then Mrs. Hatherly appeared on deck, and the group broke up. Muriel
joined her aunt, Macallister, accompanied by the tourist, went down the
ladder with the box of sketches under his arm, while Jacinta and
Lieutenant Onslow were left alone. The latter stood with his hand on the
lifeboat skids, looking down on her gravely. He was a well-favoured
young man, with an honest, sun-bronzed face.
"I am," he said, "as you know, going out to take over command of a
West-coast gunboat in a day or two, and it is more than probable that I
shall not have an opportunity like this again. You see, Nasmyth and I
have had a very good time in these islands, and we feel that we owe it
largely to you. In fact, it's perfectly clear to us that things would
have been very different if you hadn't taken us under your gracious
protection. I just want to say that we recognise it, and feel grateful."
"Well," said Jacinta, reflectively, "I am rather glad you do. Gratitude
that is worth anything carries a certain sense of obligation with it."
"Of course!" and Onslow smiled. "Only give me the chance of doing
anything I can for you."
"Do you know whereabouts on the West-coast the Delgado Island lies?"
"I can readily find out."
Jacinta glanced at him sharply, and had no doubt concerning the
eagerness in his face. If there was anything he could do to please her
it would certainly be done.
"There is a stranded steamer somewhere up a creek behind that island,
and I think the men who are trying to salve her have a good many
difficulties to contend with. Among other things, I fancy the niggers
are worrying them."
"Ah!" said Onslow. "Our ships are not, as a rule, permitted to take any
part in commercial ventures, but there are, of course, exceptions to
everything. According to my instructions, I am also to avoid all
unpleasantness with the seaboard niggers unless they have been provoking
the authorities. Still, I would like to ask if any of the men on board
that steamer is a friend of yours?"
"One of them is Miss Gascoyne's affianced lover, and she is a very old
friend indeed. However, since you are apparently unable----"
Onslow checked her with a little smile. "I'm not sure you are really
willing to let me off, and if you were, I shouldn't be pleased, while I
scarcely think you have answered my question very frankly, either. That,
however, doesn't matter. It is permissible for the commander of a coast
patrol gunboat to send a pinnace in to survey a little known creek or
channel, and her crew would, of course, be guided by circumstances if
they came upon a stranded steamer."
"I presume you would not care to earn Muriel's undying gratitude by
being a trifle more definite?"
"No," said Onslow, with twinkling eyes. "I esteem Miss Gascoyne's good
opinion, but I really couldn't go any further to win yours. As I pointed
out, one would be guided by circumstances; but men on board stranded
steamers have been supplied with drugs and provisions, as well as lent
naval artificers to advise them as to repairs. I have even heard of a
gunboat's launch carrying out their hawsers and anchors."
Jacinta rose with a little smile. "I think one could leave it with
confidence to your discretion, and since it seems very likely that you
will come across that steamer, I should be pleased to have your views as
to the selection of a few comforts and provisions."
Onslow favoured her with them, and, as it happened, met Macallister when
at last he went down the ladder.
"Ye are going out to Africa, too?" said the latter, with a grin. "She
has been giving ye sailing instructions?"
Onslow looked at him grimly. "Well," he said, "what the devil has that
to do with you?"
"Oh, nothing. Just nothing at all. Still, because I see ye are willing,
I would have ye know that there are--two--men from Grand Canary on board
yon steamer already."
Onslow smiled a trifle drily. "My dear man, I'm not altogether an ass,"
he said.
In the meanwhile Muriel strolled back towards Jacinta, and glanced at
her with a suggestion of astonishment in her face as she sat down.
"You are different from what you were a little while ago," she said.
Jacinta laughed. "I daresay I am. I had, as a matter of fact, sunk into
a state of pessimistic apathy, which naturally found expression in
ill-humoured pleasantries lately, but I have been getting to work again.
It has rather a bracing effect, you see. In the meanwhile, it might be
advisable for you to make yourself as nice as possible to Lieutenant
Onslow, who is now coming up on deck again. Go and ask him to show you a
flying fish, or something."
Muriel went, for she had discovered that there was usually a sufficient
reason for most of what Jacinta did, and the latter lay still in her
chair.
"There is," she said, "still a fly in the amber. I wonder what he wanted
with that photograph, though, after all, he didn't think it worth while
carrying to Africa."