FullReads

“He went out early, but I think he’s back now. Come in, come in, all of you. I’m glad to see you–so will he be.”

Marie was cook, housemaid, valet, mother, doctor, and any number of things beside to Knight; just as in the village across the stream where she lived–or rather slept o’ nights–she was billposter, bell-ringer, and town crier, to say nothing of her being the mother of eleven children, all her own–Knight being the adopted twelfth.

“The mill might as well be without water as without Marie,” said the Sculptor. “Wait until you taste her baked trout–the chef at the Voisin is a fool beside her.” We had all shaken the dear woman’s hand how and had preceded her into the square hall filled with easels, fresh canvases, paintings hung on hooks to dry, pots of brushes, rain coats, sample racks of hats, and the like.

All this time the beast outside was snorting like a race-horse catching its breath after a run, the demon walking in front of it, examining its teeth, or mouth, or eyes, or whatever you do examine when you go poking around in front of it.

Up the narrow stairs, now in single file, and into a bedroom–evidently Knight’s–full of canvases, sketching garb, fishing-rods and reels lining the walls; and then into another–evidently the guest’s room–all lace covers, cretonne, carved chests, Louis XVI furniture, rare old portraits, and easy-chairs, the Sculptor opening each closet in turn, grumbling, “Just like him to try and fool us,” but no trace of Knight.

Then the Sculptor threw up a window and thrust out his head, thus bringing clearer into view a stretch of meadow bordered with clumps of willows shading the rushing stream below.

“Louis! Louis! Where the devil are you, you brute of a painter?”

There came an halloo–faint–downstream.

“The beggar’s at work somewhere in those bushes, and you couldn’t get him out with dynamite until the light changed. Come along!”

There’s no telling what an outdoor painter will submit to when an uncontrollable enthusiasm sweeps him off his feet, so to speak. I myself barely held my own (and within the year, too) on the top step of a crowded bridge in Venice in the midst of a cheering mob at a regatta, where I used the back of my gondolier for an easel, and again, when years ago, I clung to the platform of an elevated station in an effort to get, between the legs and bodies of the hurrying mob, the outlines of the spider-web connecting the two cities. I have watched, too, other painters in equally uncomfortable positions (that is, out-of-door painters; not steam-heated, easy-chair fellows, with pencil memoranda or photos to copy from) but it was the first time in all my varied experiences that I had ever come upon a painter standing up to his armpits in a swift-flowing mill or any other kind of stream, the water breaking against his body as a rock breasts a torrent, and he working away like mad on a 3 x 4 lashed to a huge ladder high enough to scale the mill’s roof.

“Any fish?” yelled the Man from the Quarter.

“Yes, one squirming around my knees now–shipped him a minute ago–foot slipped. Awful glad to see you–stay where you are till I get this high light.”

“Stay where I am!” bellowed the Sculptor. “Do you think I’m St. Peter or some long-legged crane that–“

“All right–I’m coming.”

He had grabbed both sides of the ladder by this time, and with head in the crotch was sloshing ashore, the water squirting from the tops of his boots.

“Shake! Mighty good of you fellows to come all the way down to see me. Here, you stone-cutter–help me off with these boots. Marie’s getting luncheon. Don’t touch that canvas–all this morning’s work–got to work early.” (It looked to be a finished picture to me.)

He was flat on the grass now, his legs in the air like an acrobat about to balance a globe, the water pouring from his wading boots, soaking the rest of him, all three of us tugging away–I at his head, the Sculptor at his feet. How Marie ever helped him squirm out of this diving-suit was more than I could tell.