"It's a great spectacle," he said. "It's got more flesh and blood in it
than people usually think. It's easy to make it too mechanical and
commonplace."
"Why don't you paint it?" I asked.
He turned on me as if he had been waiting for the suggestion.
"That's something I want to tell you," he said. "I am. I've sketched it
a half-dozen times already. I haven't got it yet. But I'm going to."
I heard more of these dreams, intensifying all the while, until the
Spanish-American war broke out. Then he was off in a great rush of war
work. I scarcely saw him for six weeks, owing to some travels of my own,
but I saw his name. One day in Broadway I stopped to see why a large
crowd was gathered about a window in the Hoffman House. It was one of
S----'s drawings of our harbor defenses, done as if the artist had been
sitting at the bottom of the sea. The fishes, the green water, the hull
of a massive war-ship--all were there--and about, the grim torpedoes.
This put it into my head to go and see him. He was as tense and
strenuous as ever. The glittering treasure at the end of the rainbow was
more than ever in his eye. His body was almost sore from traveling.
"I am in now," he said, referring to the war movement. "I am going to
Tampa."
"Be gone long?" I asked.
"Not this first time. I'll only be down there three weeks."
"I'll see you then."
"Supposing we make it certain," he said. "What do you say to dining
together this coming Sunday three weeks?"
I went away, wishing him a fine trip and feeling that his dreams must
now soon begin to come true. He was growing in reputation. Some war
pictures, such as he could do, would set people talking. Then he would
paint his prize pictures, finish his wreck scheme, become a baron, and
be a great man.
Three weeks later I knocked at his studio door. It was a fine springlike
day, though it was in February. I expected confidently to hear his quick
aggressive step inside. Not a sound in reply. I knocked harder, but
still received no answer. Then I went to the other doors about. He might
be with his friends, but they were not in. I went away thinking that his
war duties had interfered, that he had not returned.
Nevertheless there was something depressing about that portion of the
building in which his studio was located. I felt as if it should not be,
and decided to call again. Monday it was the same, and Tuesday.
That same evening I was sitting in the library of the Salmagundi Club,
when a well-known artist addressed me.
"You knew S----, didn't you?" he said.
"Yes; what of it?"
"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"
"What!" I said.
"Yes, he died of fever, this morning."