In a moment all Christie"s nonchalance gave way to a fiery animation.
She darted to Flucker"s side.
"Ye hae na been sae daft as tell?" asked she.
Flucker shook his head contemptuously.
"Ony birds at the island, Flucker?"
"Sea-maws, plenty, and a bird I dinna ken; he moonted sae high, then doon like thunder intil the sea, and gart the water flee as high as Haman, and porpoises as big as my boat."
"Porr-poises, fulish laddy--ye hae seen the herrin whale at his wark, and the solant guse ye hae seen her at wark; and beneath the sea, Flucker, every coedflsh and doegfish, and fish that has teeth, is after them; and half Scotland wad be at Inch Keith Island if they kenned what ye hae tell"t me--dinna speak to me."
During this, Gatty, who did not comprehend this sudden excitement, or thought it childish, had tried in vain to win her attention.
At last he said, a little peevishly, "Will you not attend to me, and tell me at least when you will sit to me?"
"Set!" cried she. "When there"s nae wark to be done stanning."
And with this she was gone.
At the foot of the stairs, she said to her brother:
"Puir lad! I"ll sune draw auchty punds fra" the sea for him, with my feyther"s nets."
As she disappeared, Mrs. Gatty appeared. "And this is the woman whose mind was not in her dirty business," cried she. "Does not that open your eyes, Charles?"
"Ah! Charles," added she, tenderly, "there"s no friend like a mother."
And off she carried the prize--his vanity had been mortified.
And so that happened to Christie Johnstone which has befallen many a woman--the greatness of her love made that love appear small to her lover.
"Ah! mother," cried he, "I must live for you and my art; I am not so dear to her as I thought."
And so, with a sad heart, he turned away from her; while she, with a light heart, darted away to think and act for him.
CHAPTER XII.
IT was some two hours after this that a gentleman, plainly dressed, but whose clothes seemed a part of himself (whereas mine I have observed hang upon me; and the Rev. Josiah Splitall"s stick to him)--glided into the painter"s room, with an inquiry whether he had not a picture or two disposable.
"I have one finished picture, sir," said the poor boy; "but the price is high!"
He brought it, in a faint-hearted way; for he had shown it to five picture-dealers, and all five agreed it was hard.
He had painted a lime-tree, distant fifty yards, and so painted it that it looked something like a lime-tree fifty yards off.
"That was _mesquin,"_ said his judges; "the poetry of painting required abstract trees, at metaphysical distance, not the various trees of nature, as they appear under positive accidents."
On this Mr. Gatty had deluged them with words.
"When it is art, truth, or sense to fuse a cow, a horse, and a critic into one undistinguishable quadruped, with six legs, then it will be art to melt an ash, an elm, and a lime, things that differ more than quadrupeds, into what you call abstract trees, that any man who has seen a tree, as well as looked at one, would call drunken stinging-nettles.
You, who never look at nature, how can you judge the arts, which are all but copies of nature? At two hundred yards" distance, full-grown trees are more distinguishable than the animal tribe. Paint me an abstract human being, neither man nor a woman," said he, "and then I will agree to paint a tree that shall be no tree; and, if no man will buy it, perhaps the father of lies will take it off my hands, and hang it in the only place it would not disgrace."
In short, he never left off till he had crushed the non-buyers with eloquence and satire; but he could not crush them into buyers--they beat him at the pa.s.sive retort.
Poor Gatty, when the momentary excitement of argument had subsided, drank the bitter cup all must drink awhile, whose bark is alive and strong enough to stem the current down which the dead, weak things of the world are drifting, many of them into safe harbors.
And now he brought out his picture with a heavy heart.
"Now," said he to himself, "this gentleman will talk me dead, and leave me no richer in coin, and poorer in time and patience."
The picture was placed in a light, the visitor sat down before it.
A long pause ensued.
"Has he fainted?" thought Gatty, ironically; "he doesn"t gabble."
"If you do not mind painting before me," said the visitor, "I should be glad if you would continue while I look into this picture."
Gatty painted.
The visitor held his tongue.
At first the silence made the artist uneasy, but by degrees it began to give him pleasure; whoever this was, it was not one of the flies that had hitherto stung him, nor the jackdaws that had chattered him dead.
Glorious silence! he began to paint under its influence like one inspired.
Half an hour pa.s.sed thus.
"What is the price of this work of art?"
"Eighty pounds."
"I take it," said his visitor, quietly.
What, no more difficulty than that? He felt almost disappointed at gaining his object so easily.
"I am obliged to you, sir; much obliged to you," he added, for he reflected what eighty pounds were to him just then.
"It is my descendants who are obliged to you," replied the gentleman; "the picture is immortal!"
These words were an epoch in the painter"s life.
The grave, silent inspection that had preceded them, the cool, deliberate, masterly tone in which they were said, made them oracular to him.