_PAINTING THE DEER_
Ann did not have to watch alone for the lantern that might again be
seen flickering and swaying across the deck of the schooner. The band
mounted guard in turn and watched so industriously that Mr. and Mrs.
Seymour began to wonder what the children hoped to see out in the night.
Jo took upon himself the watch during the late hours, for he believed
that no one would be likely to venture aboard the wreck while lamps
still glowed from house windows so near. At least a man would not carry
a lantern there during the early hours of the night but would creep
about in the shadows or hang a covering over the portholes so that
whatever light was needed would be hidden.
“I think that the reason you saw it that first night, Ann, was because
pop and I go to bed so early. Whoever it was got careless. He thought
we always were asleep by that hour and he didn’t know that you folks
were coming.”
The evenings were long now; the sun did not set until after supper, and
it made the time of watching for a lantern very short.
Mr. Seymour had been interested in hearing about the buck deer that
Robin Hood had tracked to its lair and he joined with the band in
several early forays. They picked their way stealthily through
underbrush that dripped with dew and waited silently by the swamp pond,
counting discomfort nothing if only they could sometime see a deer
drink.
At last they were rewarded in the half-light of one clear dawn. A big
buck stepped gently out from the end of the narrow trail they had
followed that first day. He slowly approached the pond, cautious at
first. But Jo had chosen a hiding place where the breeze would not
betray their presence and the animal soon felt perfectly safe. First
he nosed about through the tender young marsh grass which grew close
to the water’s edge. He pulled a little of it, here and there, before
he raised his head. Whether he signaled that all was safe the human
beings could never know, although Jo said afterward that deer had ways
of warning their own kind, but when he had taken several mouthfuls of
grass he threw up his head and looked carefully about him, sniffing
into the light rustling breeze.
Down the same trail by which he had entered, his doe came with mincing
steps to take her place beside him. The legs that carried her slim body
so easily seemed no thicker than the twigs of the trees through which
she came so swiftly and quietly, and her big soft ears pricked forward
over her gentle brown eyes.
The children hardly dared to breathe and they spoke no louder than a
whisper even after the deer had vanished.
“Oh, father!” sighed Ben. “How lovely they are! You will show me how to
draw them, won’t you?”
So Allan-a-Dale resigned temporarily from Robin Hood’s band and became
the constant companion of his father. After his beans were hoed and his
potatoes hilled--for both corn and potatoes had sprouted rapidly and
gave promise of making an excellent crop--Ben took his canvas and easel
and went with his father to the swamp pond. Here they set up their
props and worked every day.
Mr. Seymour showed Ben how to plan his picture, so that his drawing
would be balanced and the deer stand straight on their own four legs.
“You will have to decide first of all, Ben, just how the deer balances
his weight on his feet while he is jumping, and then draw him so that
this point of balance comes as a straight right angle up from the line
where you are going to draw in your ground. That point of balance is
what makes people and animals stand upright, for otherwise they would
fall down. So when you draw pictures of them, you have to plan very
carefully to get an effect of stability in your drawing.”
In beginning his own picture Mr. Seymour planned to paint the swamp
first, and then place the deer in position some morning after he had
had an opportunity to sketch them rapidly from life. He hoped to see
them again, poised on the edge of the water before him. Consequently he
busied himself in transferring the pond with its green motionless water
surrounded by the dark pine woods to a canvas that was twice the size
of the one that Ben was working on.
Often the rest of the band gathered around the painters to watch the
growth of the two pictures, for they felt a personal interest and
responsibility because of their share in discovering the deer. Jo liked
to watch the brush in Mr. Seymour’s quick deft fingers and see how a
few strokes of color here and there made a splotch of green look like
a pine tree. Under his eyes Jo saw the swamp grow on the gray canvas.
It was the swamp, and yet it was not exactly like the swamp itself, for
Mr. Seymour had left out a great deal of underbrush and many of the
trees. When Jo asked him why, he explained:
“When you look at that pond out there with the trees for a background,
it fills the entire space so far as you are concerned while you are
looking at it. That is the first thing you notice. Now what is the
second thing?”
“Well, I guess,” Jo ventured, “that I notice next that the pine trees
are pointed up into the sky, all jagged, while down below the trees
come together and I can’t separate one from another. It is all a
darkness.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Seymour, “but doesn’t that mean something more to you
than just a lot of pine trees growing together?”
“I don’t exactly know what you mean,” Jo answered. “They are pine
trees, most of them, although I can see one or two foliage trees among
them--shouldn’t wonder but what they are swamp maples.”
“You’re too definite, Jo.” And Mr. Seymour laughed. “I didn’t mean to
ask you to look for the other trees, because you can see them only when
you look carefully.”
“I know what you mean, father, and you shouldn’t ask questions--it
takes too long. You should tell Jo right out.” Ann looked at her father
with her eyes twinkling. “You wanted Jo to say that the first thing he
saw in looking into a space filled with trees was the line they grew
in.”
“Of course,” Jo agreed. “Everything grows in a line or a clump.”
“That is just what I mean,” Mr. Seymour replied. “After you decide that
the space before you is filled with trees you next decide what the line
or pattern of the background of your picture is to be. After you decide
this, you can plan how to transfer the trees which fill the big space
into the much smaller space that is your canvas. You do it by following
the pattern which you see before you.”
“But you can’t get all that swamp on a little canvas,” Jo protested.
“Exactly,” said Mr. Seymour. “And that’s why I am leaving out so much.
By following the pattern of the pine trees for my background and the
twisting shore of the pond for my foreground, I can shrink the whole
swamp to the size of my canvas even though I leave out a great deal
that your eye sees growing there in the living wood. Now, while you are
looking and comparing so closely, watching picture and swamp at the
same time, the swamp, in contrast, seems magnificent. But next winter
when you see only the picture you will forget about these details that
mean so much to you now, and you will think the picture looks quite
like the swamp as you remember it.”
“Gee!” Jo said sadly. “You’ve forgotten that I won’t be seeing the
picture next winter.” He scraped the toe of his boot disconsolately
against the loose pebbles. “You aren’t thinking of going home too soon?”
“Not for ages!” exclaimed Ann. “And I’ll write to you every week after
we get back,” she promised.
“We’ll sign our names to the same letter,” said Ben.
“You won’t!” Ann assured him, in her most decided manner. “If I write a
letter I am going to be the only one to sign it. He will have to write
his own letters, won’t he, father?”
“It looks as if he would have to.” Mr. Seymour laughed. “I know that
Jo would like to get more than one a week through the winter. How about
it, Jo?”
“You bet I would,” answered Jo, his eyes shining.
Ben was almost entirely interested in painting the animals. He was
trying to draw them from his recollection of the leaping buck. He
got the action very well, Mr. Seymour told him, but he would have to
practice more on the outlines, so that the leaping figure would look
more like a deer.
“When I saw that deer,” Ben explained excitedly, “I felt as if I were
jumping in exactly the same way. That is why I am sure about how the
lines should go.”
“With a little patience, Ben,” his father promised, “I feel certain
that you will be able to draw.”
“And I shall be very famous?”
“I can’t promise that. The famous--but of course you don’t mean
‘famous’; you aren’t using the right word and I can’t have you saying
it. You are trying to ask me whether you can do work that will satisfy
yourself, and that no one can prophesy. You will have to work hard.
Don’t think that you can be anything you wish by merely wishing it. And
besides, some of the greatest painters have only made a bare living
after studying and working all their lives long.”
“I don’t care if I don’t make any money,” said Ben stoutly, “if I can
paint as much as I like.”
“Paint costs money,” said Mr. Seymour rather sadly. “And an artist has
to feed himself and his family.”
“Don’t you worry about that, Ben,” Ann protested. “When Jo and I get
our ranch started you can come and live with us--can’t he, Jo?”
“Sure he can,” Jo assented readily. “And he can paint all the time;
there will be lots of animals out there, steers and horses. And we can
live on potatoes and beans.”
Mr. Seymour seemed to think that this was very funny, for he laughed
heartily.
“I’ll come to visit you once in a while,” said Helen. “But I am going
to marry a millionaire and live on candy and nuts.”
“You’ll be glad to eat some of Jo’s beans, in that case,” said Ben
quite positively. He once had known what it was to eat too much candy.
“And if Jo lets me live there with him and with Ann, I’ll promise to do
my full share of hoeing.”
“Father will come, too,” said Ann eagerly, “even though he will be the
greatest painter in America by that time. When our ranch is paying,
neither father nor mother nor Mr. Bailey will need to do any more work
for money.”
“That’s a very kind promise,” said Mr. Seymour. “And I shall expect to
enjoy visiting you. Helen can bring some of her candy and nuts, for
they will make us a pleasant change from a steady diet of beans and
potatoes.”
In the evenings Ben was tracing his deer drawings on a piece of
shellacked cardboard which he planned to cut into stencils, so that he
could stencil some new curtains for the Boston apartment, curtains with
deer leaping all along the bottom.
[Illustration]