In Luck's Way
Ever since the Easter holidays at Tunbury, and her apprenticeship to Art
in Mr. Stockton's studio, Lesbia had been hankering for an oil
paint-box. She wanted it desperately, as any craftsman, with creative
instinct, longs for the tools of his trade. She thought about it in bed
at nights, when she lay awake, and in imagination squeezed the
delightful tubes on to her palette and mixed subtle combinations of soft
shades. There seemed, to her particular bent, so many more possibilities
in oils than in water-colour. To be sure, her cheap little student's box
had never given the latter medium a fair trial, but she considered the
possession of even Winsor and Newton's best equipment of half-pans and
sables could not compete with the satisfaction of dabbing solid masses
of paint on a canvas with stiff hog-hair brushes.
"I don't like finicking work," she decided. "Give me something strong
and broad, that I can dash away at and go ahead with. I'd rather be an
Impressionist than a Pre-Raphaelite any day. Scene-painting's more in
my line than miniatures. Oh dear! I wish all the powers in earth and air
would show me how to get a decent paint-box."
She had approached Marion with a view to an exchange, but her friend
shook a regretful head.
"I'm fearfully sorry, Lesbia," she apologized. "I'd have let you have my
box with pleasure, only you see Dad gave it to me as a Christmas
present, and I don't think he'd like me to swop it. He wants me to take
some lessons in flower-painting. And I have a camera already. I don't
mean my own--that was broken six months ago--but Uncle Fred has lent me
his, and it's a perfect beauty. I've got his developing-machine too."
"Nothing doing then, I suppose," said Lesbia, turning ruefully away, and
wishing she had never asked the favour.
The Patterson household was well stocked with books, but had no art
effects. A glue brush and a pot of white enamel were the utmost they
could muster in the matter of painting paraphernalia. Even a Raphael's
genius would have been hampered by such elementary stock-in-trade.
Lesbia came to the sorrowful conclusion that life for the present must
be lived without an oil paint-box. But the lack of this means of
"self-expression" did not curtail the strong artistic instincts that
were stirring in her. She found herself always looking for the pictorial
aspect of things, and thinking how she could transfer them to canvas.
When she was teaching the juniors she would watch Maisie Martin's head
bent over her dictation book, and think how beautifully the outline of
that pink cheek and the ruddy hair might be rendered against a
silver-grey background. She would sometimes surreptitiously sketch the
children's attitudes in her notebook, rejoicing over the graceful turn
of an arm, or the subtle curve of a white neck, while its owner,
conscious of her gaze, wondered what black score was being entered on
the time-sheet. Even in the midst of scolding her tiresome flock the
artistic side would crop out, and she would register mental impressions
of the dancing light in naughty Esmee's dark eyes, the beautiful shape
of Sylvia's little hand that was holding the pen all wrong, and the
silky sheen on Gwennie's flaxen hair, as that irrepressible damsel
fidgeted at her desk. If her small pupils could only have been artist's
models, the hours spent with them would have been a pleasure instead of
a daily dread.
In her own form, too, Lesbia was allowing herself to drift into a dreamy
habit of art observation instead of mental concentration. She sketched
on the borders of her textbooks and on her blotting-paper, and was even
guilty of purloining bits of coloured chalk from the blackboard box, and
smudging impressionistic portraits of her comrades on spare pages of
essay paper. Worse than this, her imagination was apt to absolutely run
away with her. Miss Pratt one day, lecturing on English Literature, gave
a critical survey of Keats's poems. "Isabella and the Pot of Basil"
fascinated Lesbia instantly, and her brain danced off to create a
picture of the scene. She visualized the exact drooping pose of
Isabella, the hang of her dark hair, the drapery of her rich dress, the
reflection of sunlight on the brass pot, the peep of mediaeval landscape
seen between curtains in the background, the tear that must glitter on
Isabella's long lashes, her look of hopeless despair, and the rich
scheme of colour that must run through the whole picture.
"Quote the terms in which the _Edinburgh Review_ summed up its criticism
of 'Endymion'?" asked Miss Pratt.
Lesbia started. She had been so busy fixing details of her proposed
picture of Isabella that all further particulars of the lecture had
passed unheard. She had not the ghost of a notion what the _Edinburgh
Review_ had said about "Endymion", except a shadowy impression that they
had slated it.
"They--they--didn't like it," she stammered lamely.
The form giggled faintly. Miss Pratt cleared her throat in the ominous
manner that always preluded trouble.
"I never thought you conspicuously bright, Lesbia Ferrars," she remarked
scathingly; "but you're really outdoing yourself to-day. The criticism
of the _Edinburgh Review_ on Keats's poem would equally well describe
your attitude of mind. Yes, Carrie, you may give it," nodding to another
quarter of the room.
"Calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy," quoted Carrie.
At which the faint giggle swelled again, but subsided at a glance from
the teacher.
Lesbia sat up straight, banishing Isabella and all possible shapes of
basil pots from her brain, and pinched her finger to try and keep
concentration on the lesson, though the portrait of Keats himself, with
his poetic blue eyes and ruddy chestnut curls, danced sometimes before
her like an aesthetic will o' the wisp to lead her astray.
"I'm an artistic peg in a scholastic hole," she said to herself, rather
pleased with her own simile.
Miss Pratt, however, took no notice of the shapes of pegs or of holes.
She was there for the purpose of giving a literature lesson, out of
which she meant her girls to get the utmost possible profit. She had no
patience with what she considered "slacking", and she kept a keen eye on
Lesbia for the rest of the hour, asking her questions whenever she
perceived any signs of straying attention.
Lesbia sketched her picture during geometry on the back page of her
exercise book, but it was a scratchy performance and quite unworthy of
her high ideals. She covered it hastily lest the mistress should see
it.
"If they'd only let us choose our own work at the High School I'd vote
for a life-class," she sighed, taking up her compasses and trying to
focus her wandering mind on circles and angles and letters of the
alphabet, instead of the outlines of the human form divine.
It was on the very next Saturday that Kitty, craving for the country,
and finding for once she had no particularly pressing engagement in
town, suggested a cycling excursion. She wanted her sister to go with
her, but Kingfield held superior attractions for Joan, who suggested
Lesbia as a substitute and promised to lend her her bicycle. It was all
arranged at the breakfast-table, and the two girls then and there cut
sandwiches, fetched the machines, oiled them, pumped tyres, strapped on
cycle-baskets, and started forth before ten o'clock. They rode first
through the suburbs, where foliage was yet unspoilt with dust from
motors, and the gardens were making a brave show of lilac, laburnum, and
pink hawthorn. Then by degrees the houses grew fewer, the kerbstones
disappeared, and the footpaths gave way to grassy borders; there were
unclipped hedges instead of ornamental railings, and fields, and woods,
and streams on the other side of them. Bird-life was at its zenith;
larks, so high as to be almost invisible, poured out torrents of
rapture; every apple tree seemed to have a blackbird soloist on a
topmost bough; wrens, linnets, and hedge-warblers fluttered and
twittered among low bushes, and flocks of jackdaws and rooks rose from
the fields in whirling flights. With one accord the girls rode fast.
There was an exaltation in free-wheeling down the hills, flying through
the air like birds. It almost gave them the sensation of wings. The
spell of spring was upon them, that curious thrill that comes to us as
we escape out of the circles of civilization and visit Mother Nature at
her busiest season, when every inch of her domain is a-throb with life.
It was pretty country in the neighbourhood of Kingfield, an undulating
landscape with large trees and lush meadows, and a slow river with banks
of reeds and iris. The villages had timbered cottages with thatched
roofs and flowery gardens, old grey church towers showed among groups of
leafy elms, and picturesque farm buildings and straw-stacks stood back
from the road at the ends of by-lanes.
Kitty and Lesbia ate their sandwiches very early, sitting in a wood blue
with hyacinths, more than doubtful indeed that they were trespassing,
but hoping no indignant farmer would spy them and turn them out. They
rested here for half an hour, dozing in a patch of sunshine and
blissfully happy, till a colony of ants discovered them and began to
employ forcible measures of ejectment.
"Wow! The ants are stinging my ankles," wailed Kitty.
"Ants and ankles or aunts and uncles did you say?" twittered Lesbia,
trying to slay a mosquito, which was making a ferocious onslaught at her
hatless forehead. "This place is rather too much alive for my taste. I
vote we get a move on."
"Right-o! I'm ready if you are. I never saw such a bloodthirsty crew of
insects. I wonder what they live on when there are no human beings to
bite?"
"I don't know. But I don't see the fun of acting dinner for them at any
rate. Here are our bikes. How hot they are! We oughtn't to have left
them in the sun. What's the name of the next village? Let me look at the
map. Why, we must be just here, close to Rawsthorne. We can join the
Glenbridge Road and go home by Hanburnham."
On the outskirts of the village our cyclists were obliged to dismount
sharply, owing to a sudden block in the road. A car turning out of a
carriage drive very nearly collided with an old-fashioned gig, and
brought a phaeton behind it to a standstill. To add to the difficulty,
there were several conveyances drawn up under the hedge, two empty cars,
a landau, and a pony trap. Looking for some explanation of this unwonted
traffic in a country village, Kitty noticed an auctioneer's bill pasted
on a board beside the open gate, setting forth particulars of a sale of
household furniture and other effects, which was apparently taking
place on that identical day. Gazing up the drive she could see a crowd
of people assembled upon the lawn.
"A sale! Oh, what sport to go to it!" she exclaimed eagerly. "I wonder
how they let you in? May anybody just walk up to the house?"
"People all seem to have catalogues," ventured Lesbia, peeping wistfully
round the gate-post into the attractive grounds.
She made this remark at a most opportune moment, for a lady, who was
about to enter, paused, looked at the girls, and said gently:
"I can take you in with me if you want to go. My catalogue will admit
three."
Kitty and Lesbia accepted with alacrity. Neither had witnessed a sale
before, so it would be a novel experience to both. Their unknown friend
piloted them to the front door, where they were duly passed by the
policeman in charge, then, meeting some friends, she nodded good-bye and
went away. There was still a quarter of an hour before the auctioneer
was due to begin, and people were walking about the house viewing the
various articles which would presently be put up. In great curiosity the
girls joined the throng, and wandered round the rooms. It was the third
day of the sale, so most of the important pieces of furniture had
already been removed. What was left was that vast accumulation of
household rubbish which--like the traditional lost pocket-book--is
often of little value to anybody except its owner. The dismantled house
had a forlorn look, the sun glared through curtainless windows on to
bedsteads piled up with bedding, stacks of well-used books, antiquated
hats in round band-boxes, tasteless ornaments, faded cushions, tarnished
gilt frames, and a medley of miscellaneous objects. There was something
infinitely sad about it all. The old nursery, where surely children had
not played for forty years, held old-fashioned pictures of Red Riding
Hood, Cherry Ripe, and other Victorian supplements; there was a high
chair and a swinging cot, and even a dolls' house, with dusty furniture
and broken dolls. Various articles were spread forth upon a large deal
table. Lesbia, a little oppressed with the mental atmosphere of the
place, looked over them lightly, then gave a sudden gasp and clutched
Kitty's arm. In the very middle there was an oil paint-box, palette, and
bundle of brushes.
"Look! The very things I want!" whispered Lesbia excitedly. "Oh, do you
think they'll go cheap? Could I possibly bid for them? What do you think
they'll fetch?"
"I've no idea," replied Kitty. "Sometimes you get these things for an
old song, I believe, and sometimes people run them up. What money have
you brought with you?"
"I've only four shillings in the world, but it's here in my purse, thank
goodness!"
"I have five shillings with me, but we shall want to get some tea. I
might lend you half a crown, but not more."
"Oh, _do_ let us see what we can do!"
Lesbia was as thrilled as if she were trying a gamble upon the Stock
Exchange. She asked the auctioneer's man when the contents of the
nursery would be put up, and he told her it was second on the list for
that day's sale.
"Better go and get a place outside if you want to bid," he advised.
So Lesbia dragged Kitty, who wanted to look at a hundred things by the
way, downstairs and on to the lawn, where a long table and the
auctioneer's desk were arranged. The girls waited eagerly for the fun to
begin. They were much entertained at the company in which they found
themselves, farmers and villagers from the neighbourhood, dealers from
local towns, and an odd assortment of queer-looking people such as are
never seen except at sales, some obviously out for amusement, and others
bent on bargain-hunting. There were one or two keen faces of
professional buyers which strangely repelled them, but on the whole the
crowd was jovial and good-humoured.
At two o'clock the auctioneer took his place, and his men began to carry
out the first "lots" and place them upon the table. He rapidly
described their merits and knocked down bundles of curtains or blankets
to the highest bidders. Bedroom 4, which was being sold, contained a
variety of articles. When the linen was disposed of, a number of books
were next plumped upon the table.
"Lot 205," announced a stentorian voice.
Now the bidding was an utterly unintelligible process to the
unaccustomed girls. It seemed to them as if the auctioneer glanced round
the crowd and repeated glibly "Two shillings--two and six--three
shillings--three and six", and so on until he suddenly rapped his hammer
and consigned the "lot" to somebody who wanted it. He was a talkative
red-faced man, who grew very warm with his efforts, and waved his arms
dramatically like an actor declaiming a part. Lesbia stared at him quite
fascinated. By the merest accident, in the midst of running up "lot
205", he chanced to glance her way, and, meeting her eye, promptly
knocked it down to her. Before she knew what had happened she found
herself the possessor of a pile of second-hand books for which a rusty
individual, armed with pencil and memorandum list, was writing down her
name and the sum of five and six.
"But I don't _want_ these books. I want a _paint-box_!" she protested in
agonized tones.
"You bid for this lot, miss. Sorry, but it can't be helped now if you
made a mistake. The paint-box comes later on."
"And I've no money left to get it with," whispered Lesbia to Kitty.
"Isn't this the limit? Why did he knock the books down to _me_ of all
people?"
"I don't know. I suppose you looked at him and he thought you were
bidding for it. Watch the people now. They all catch his eye when they
want to bid."
"That man over there winks. I certainly never winked."
"Well, it's done now and there's no getting out of it. How much must I
lend you. Eighteen pence? Here you are. We can put the books in our
bicycle baskets. Do you care to stay any longer or shall we go?"
"We'd better scoot before I buy any more things by mistake. I don't want
to be saddled with a five-guinea mirror or a hanging-lamp. I never felt
so cross in all my life before. It's too disgusting for words. I grudge
this five and six." And Lesbia pulled out her cherished pocket-money,
paid the auctioneer's clerk, clutched her pile of books, and went to
reclaim her bicycle. The specimens of literature which they stowed away
in their baskets did not look of a very exhilarating character. They
were faded, old-fashioned volumes with illustrations of people in
antiquated costumes. Lesbia, in her disgust at missing the paint-box,
was ready to leave them behind in the garden, but Kitty's common sense
prevailed.
"They're better than nothing. You don't want to throw your money
absolutely away, you silly girl!" she counselled. "If _you_ won't take
them _I_ shall. We'll each carry half. They're not very heavy after all.
Cheerio! You look as if you'd lost a fortune."
"I've lost a paint-box, and that's worse," snapped Lesbia, refusing all
comfort.
She rode back in very mournful spirits, mentally cataloguing the various
useful or pleasurable articles she might have bought with the wasted
five and sixpence, ignoring the obvious fact that she could not possibly
have purchased them all. When the girls arrived home, Kitty told the
story of the bargain as a supreme joke to the family circle. The
Pattersons, though not artistic, were fond of books. They demanded to
see lot 205. Nine shabby volumes were produced from the bicycle baskets
and handed round for inspection. Mr. Patterson, rather a bibliographer
in his way, rejected eight of them, but looked at the last with
interest. He took a lens from his pocket and inspected the little wood
cuts with which it was illustrated.
"If I'm not mistaken these are by Bewick," he chuckled. "Lesbia, I
believe you've got a bargain after all. I'm going up to London on
Tuesday, and I'll take the book with me, and ask Petteridges about it.
They're sure to know. Don't look too excited. It won't realize a
fortune I assure you, and it may be worth nothing at all."
"Oh, thanks! It's worth trying," gasped Lesbia gratefully.
So on Tuesday Mr. Patterson slipped the small calf-bound volume into his
coat pocket, and made a special call at a famous second-hand
bookseller's in the Strand. He returned with good news for Lesbia.
"Petteridge agreed that the illustrations are genuine Bewicks, rather
rare ones too, in his earlier period. He said the book was worth L2,
10_s._, and offered me that much for it. I thought you'd want to sell
it, so I said 'Done', and brought you home the notes. Here they are; lot
205 has been a profitable little 'deal' on your part."
"O-o-o-h! And I _very_ nearly left it behind in the garden," exclaimed
Lesbia, hardly able to believe her luck.
With such a noble sum of money at her disposal she was able to set
herself up with an oil paint-box, palette, brushes, some canvases, and a
small sketching-easel and camp-stool, an artistic outfit such as she had
coveted long, and hardly expected ever to acquire.
"A _new_ box is ever so much nicer than the one I saw at the sale," she
exulted. "I dare say half the tubes would have been hard as bricks, and
the palette was cracked too. That auctioneer did me a good turn if he
only knew it."
"I wonder no wily dealer snapped up the lot," said Kitty. "How savage
they'd be if they knew what they'd missed."
"I expect they never saw it amongst all that rubbish, or perhaps old
books were not in their line. It takes special knowledge to collect
them. I flatter myself it isn't everyone who recognizes an illustration
by Bewick," commented Mr. Patterson, who was as pleased as anybody over
the matter.
"Well, it was a simply gorgeous find, and I think I'm an out-and-out
lucker," rejoiced Lesbia, folding up her precious parcel of art
materials, and carrying them away to gloat over them in the private
sanctuary of her own bedroom.