CHAPTER IV
IT was a day of dust and blaze. Dust lay thick on the ground, it
filled the air, it silvered the lower branches of the wayside trees,
it turned the old brown horse into a dappled grey, it powdered the
black hair of Barney Bill and of Paul until they looked like
vagabond millers. They sat side by side on the footboard while the
old horse jogged on, whisking flies away with a scanty but
persistent tail.
Paul, barefoot and barelegged, hatless, coatless, absorbed blaze and
dust with the animal content of a young lizard. A month's summer
wandering had baked him to gipsy brown. A month's sufficient food
and happiness had filled gaunt hollows in his face and covered all
too visible ribs with flesh. Since his flight from Bludston his life
had been one sensuous trance. His hungry young soul had been gorged
with beauty--the beauty of fields and trees and rolling country,
of still, quivering moons and starlit nights, of exultant freedom,
of never-failing human sympathy. He had a confused memory of
everything. They had passed through many towns as similar to
Bludston as one factory chimney to another, and had plied their
trade in many a mean street, so much the counterpart of Budge Street
that he had watched a certain window or door with involuntary
trepidation, until he realized that it was not Budge Street, that he
was a happy alien to its squalor, that he was a butterfly, a thing
of woods and hedgerows fluttering for an inconsequent moment in the
gloom. He came among them, none knew whence he was going, none knew
whither. He was conscious of being a creature of mystery. He pitied
the fettered youth of these begrimed and joyless towns--slaves,
Men with Muckrakes (he had fished up ail old "Pilgrim's Progress"
from the lower depths of the van), who obstinately refused to raise
their eyes to the glorious sun in heaven. In his childish arrogance
he would ask Barney Bill, "Why don't they go away and leave it, like
me?" And the wizened little man would reply, with the flicker of an
eyelid unperceived by Paul, "Because they haven't no 'igh-born
parents waiting for 'em. They're born to their low estate, and they
knows it." Which to Paul was a solution of peculiar comfort.
Even the blackened lands between the towns had their charm for Paul,
in that he had a gleeful sense of being excluded from the wrath of
God, which fell continuously upon them and the inhabitants thereof.
And here and there a belt of leafy country gave promise, or
confirmed Barney Bill's promise, of the Paradise that would come.
Besides, what mattered the perpetuations of Bludston brickfields
when the Land of Beulah shimmered ahead in the blue distance, when
"Martin Chuzzlewit" lay open on his knees, when the smell of the bit
of steak sizzling on the cooking stove stung his young blood? And
now they were in Warwickshire, county of verdant undulations and
deep woods and embowered villages. Every promise that Barney Bill
had made to him of beauty was in process of fulfilment. There were
no more blighted towns, no more factories, no more chimneys belching
forth smoke. This was the Earth, the real broad-bosomed Mother
Earth. What he had left was the Hell upon Earth. What he was going
to might be Paradise, but Paul's imagination rightly boggled at the
conception of a Paradise more perfect. And, as Paul's prescient wit
had conjectured, he was learning many things; the names of trees and
wild flowers, the cries of birds, the habits of wayside beasts; what
was good for a horse to eat and what was bad; which was the Waggon,
and Orion's Belt and the Bunch of Keys in the heavens; how to fry
bacon and sew up rents in his clothing; how to deal with his
fellow-man, or, rather, with his fellow-woman, in a persuasive
manner; how to snare a rabbit or a pheasant and convert it into
food, and how, at the same time, to evade the terrors of the law;
the differences between wheat and oats and barley; the main lines of
cleavage between political parties, hitherto a puzzle to Paul, for
Barney Bill was a politician (on the Conservative side) and read his
newspaper and argued craftily in taverns; and the styles and titles
of great landowners by whose estates they passed; and how to avoid
the nets that were perpetually spread by a predatory sex before the
feet of the incautious male. On the last point Barney Bill was
eloquent; but Paul, with delicious memories sanctifying his young
soul, turned a deaf ear to his misogyny. Barney Bill was very old
and crooked and dried up; what beautiful lady would waste her
blandishments on him? Even the low-born lasses with whom they at
times consorted had scarce an eye for Barney Bill. The grapes were
sour. Paul smiled indulgently on the little foible of his friend.
They jogged along the highroad on this blazing and dusty day. Their
bower of wicker chairs crackled in the heat. It was too hot for
sustained conversation. Once Barney Bill said: "If Bob"-Bob was the
old horse's unimaginative name--"if Bob doesn't have a drink soon
his darned old hide'll crack."
Ten minutes later: "Nothing under a quart'll wash down this dust."
"Have a drink of water," suggested Paul, who had already adopted
this care for drouth, with satisfactory results.
"A grown man's thirst and a boy's thirst is two entirely different
things," said Barney Bill sententiously. "To spoil this grown-up
thirst of mine with water would be a crime."
A mile or so farther on the road he stretched out a lean brown arm
and pointed. "See that there clump of trees? Behind that is the
Little Bear Inn. They gives you cool china pots with blue round the
edge. You can only have 'em if you asks for 'em, Jim Blake, the
landlord, being pertickler-like. And if yer breaks em--"
"What would happen?" asked Paul, who was always very much impressed
by Barney Bill's detailed knowledge of the roads and the inns of
England.
Barney Bill shook his head. "It would break 'is 'eart. Them pots was
being used when William the Conqueror was a boy."
"Ten-sixty-six to ten-eighty-seven," said Paul the scholar. "They
mun be nine hundred years old."
"Not quite," said Barney Bill, with an air of scrupulous desire for
veracity. "But nearly. Lor' lumme!" he exclaimed, after a pause, "it
makes one think, doesn't it? One of them there quart mugs--suppose
it has been filled, say, ten times a day, every day for nine hundred
years--my Gosh! what a Pacific Ocean of beer must have been poured
from it! It makes one come over all of religious-like when one puts
it to one's head."
Paul did not reply, and reverential emotion kept Barney Bill silent
until they reached the clump of trees and the Little Bear Inn.
It was set back from the road, in a kind of dusty courtyard masked
off on one side by a gigantic elm and on the other by the fringe of
an orchard with ruddy apples hanging patiently beneath the foliage.
Close by the orchard stood the post bearing the signboard on which
the Little Bear, an engaging beast, was pictured, and presiding in a
ceremonious way over the horse-trough below. In the shade of the elm
stretched a trestle table and two wooden benches. The old inn,
gabled, half-timbered, its upper story overhanging the doorway, bent
and crippled, though serene, with age, mellow in yellow and russet,
spectacled, as befitted its years, with leaded diamond panes,
crowned deep in secular thatch, smiled with the calm and homely
peace of everlasting things. Its old dignity even covered the perky
gilt inscription over the doorway, telling how James Blake was
licensed to sell a variety of alcoholic beverages. One human figure
alone was visible, as the chairs and mat-laden van slowly turned
from the road toward the horse-trough--that of a young man in
straw hat and grey flannels making a water-colour sketch of the inn.
Barney Bill slid off the footboard, and, looking neither to right
nor left, bolted like a belated crab into the cool recesses of the
bar in search of ambrosia from the blue-and-white china mug. Paul,
also afoot, led Bob to the trough. Bob drank with the lusty
moderation of beasts. When he had assuaged his thirst Paul backed
him into the road and, slinging over his head a comforting nosebag,
left him to his meal.
The young man, sitting on an upturned wooden case, at the extreme
edge of the elm tree's shade, a slender easel before him, a litter
of paraphernalia on the ground by his side, painted assiduously.
Paul idly crept behind him and watched in amazement the smears of
wet colour, after a second or two of apparent irrelevance, take
their place in the essential structure of the drawing. He stood
absorbed. He knew that there were such things as pictures. He knew,
too, that they were made by hands. But he had never seen one in the
making. After a while the artist threw back his head, looked at the
inn and looked at his sketch. There was a hot bit of thatch at the
corner near the orchard, and, below the eaves, bold shadow. The
shadow had not come right. He put in a touch of burnt umber and
again considered the effect.
"Confound it! that's all wrong," he muttered.
"It's blue," said Paul.
The artist started, twisted his head, and for the first time became
conscious of the ragamuffin's presence. "Oh, you see it blue, do
you?" He smiled ironically.
"Ay," said Paul, with pointing finger. "Look at it. It's not brown,
anyhow. Yon's black inside and blue outside."
The young man shaded his brow and gazed intently. Brilliant sunshine
plays the deuce with tones. "My hat!" cried he, "you're right. It
was this confounded yellow of the side of the house." He put in a
few hasty strokes. "That better?"
"Ay," said Paul.
The artist laid down his brush, and swung round on his box, clasping
knees. "How the devil did you manage to see that when I didn't?"
"Dun-no!" said Paul.
The young man stretched himself and lit a cigarette.
"What are yo' doing that for, mister?" Paul asked seriously.
"That?"
"Ay," said Paul. "You mun have a reason."
"You're a queer infant," laughed the artist. "Do you really want to
know?"
"I've asked yo'," said Paul.
"Well, if you're anxious to know, I'm an architect on a holiday, and
I'm sketching any old thing I come across. I don't pretend to be a
painter, my youthful virtuoso, and that's why I go wrong sometimes
on colour. Do you know what an architect is?"
"No," said Paul, eagerly. "What is it?"
He had been baffled by the meaning of the word, which he had seen
all his life, inscribed on a brass plate in the Bludston High
Street: "E. Thomson, Architect & Surveyor." It had seemed to him
odd, cryptically fascinating.
The young man laughed and explained; Paul listened seriously.
Another mystery was solved. He had often wondered how the
bricklayers knew where to lay the bricks. He grasped the idea that
they were but instruments carrying out the conception of the
architect's brain. "I'd like to be an architect," he said.
"Would you?" After a pause the young man continued: "Anyhow, you can
earn a shilling. just sit down there and let me make a sketch of
you."
"What for?" asked Paul.
"Because you're a picturesque person. Now, I suppose you'll be
asking me what's the meaning of picturesque?"
"Nay," said Paul. "I know. Yo' see it in books. 'Th' owd grey tower
stood out picturesque against the crimson sky.'"
"Hullo! you're a literary gent," said the young man.
"Ay," replied Paul proudly. He was greatly attracted towards this
new acquaintance, whom, by his speech and dress and ease of manner,
he judged to belong to the same caste as his lost but
ever-remembered goddess.
The young man picked up pencil and sketch-book and posed Paul at the
end of the seat by the trestle table. "Now, then," said he, setting
to work. "Head a little more that way. Capital. Don't move. If
you're very quiet I'll give you a shilling." Presently he asked,
"What are you? If you hadn't been a literary gent I'd have thought
you might be a gipsy."
Paul flushed and started. "I'm not a gipsy."
"Steady, steady," exclaimed the artist. "I've just said you couldn't
be one. Italian? You don't look English."
For the first time the idea of exotic parentage entered Paul's head.
He dallied for a moment or two with the thought. "I dunno what I
am," he said romantically.
"Oh? What's your father?" The young man motioned with his head
toward the inn.
"Yon's not my father," said Paul. "It's only Barney Bill."
"Only Barney Bill?" echoed the other, amused. "Well, who is your
father?"
"Dunno," said Paul.
"And your mother?"
"Dunno, either," said Paul, in a mysterious tone. "I dunno if my
parents are living or dead. I think they're living."
"That's interesting. What are you doing with what's-his-name Bill?"
"I'm just travelling wi' him to London."
"And what are you going to do in London?"
"I'll see when I get there," said Paul.
"So you're out for adventure?"
"Ay," said the boy, a gleam of the Vision dancing before his eyes.
"That's it. I'm going on an adventure."
"There, keep like that," cried the artist. "Don't stir. I do believe
I'm getting you. Holy Moses, it will be great! If only I could catch
the expression! There's nothing like adventure, is there? The
glorious uncertainty of it! To wake up in the morning and know that
the unexpected is bound to happen during the day. Exciting, isn't
it?"
"Ay," said Paul, his face aglow.
The young man worked tense and quick at the luminous eyes. He broke
a long silence by asking, "What's your name?"
"Paul Kegworthy."
"Paul? That's odd." In the sphere of life to which the ragged urchin
belonged Toms and Bills and Jims were as thick as blackberries, but
Pauls were rare.
"What's odd?" said Paul.
"Your name. How did you get it? It's uncommon."
"I suppose it is," said Paul. "I never thowt of it. I never knew
anybody of that name afore."
Here was another sign and token of romantic origin suddenly
revealed. Paul felt the thrill of it. He resisted a temptation to
ask his new friend whether it was an appellation generally reserved
for princes.
"Look here, joking apart," said the artist, putting in the waves of
the thick black hair, "are you really going to be dumped down in
London to seek your fortune? Don't you know anybody there?"
"No," said Paul.
"How are you going to live?"
Paul dived a hand into his breeches pocket and jingled coins. "I've
got th' brass," said he.
"How much?"
"Three shillings and sevenpence-ha'penny," said Paul, with an
opulent air. "And yo'r shilling will make it four and sevenpence-
ha'penny."
"Good God!" said-the young man. He went on drawing for some time in
silence. Then he said: "My brother is a painter--rather a swell--
a Royal Academician. He would love to paint you. So would other
fellows. You could easily earn your living as a model--doing as a
business, you know, what you're doing now for fun, more or less."
"How much could I earn?"
"It all depends. Say a pound to thirty shillings a week."
Paul gasped and sat paralyzed. Artist, dusty road, gaudy van,
distant cornfields and uplands were blotted from his senses. The
cool waves of Pactolus lapped his feet.
"Come and look me up when you get to London," continued the friendly
voice. "My name is Rowlatt-W. W. Rowlatt, 4, Gray's Inn Square. Can
you remember it?"
"Ay," said Paul.
"Shall I write it down?"
"Nay. 'W. W. Rowlatt, 4, Gray's Inn Square.' I'm noan likely to
forget it. I never forget nowt," said Paul, life returning through a
vein of boastfulness.
"Tell me all you remember," said Mr. Rowlatt, with a laugh.
"I can say all the Kings of England, with their dates, and the
counties and chief towns of Great Britain and Ireland, and all the
weights and measures, and 'The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the
fold--'"
"Holy Moses!" cried Rowlatt. "Anything else?"
"Ay. Lots more," said Paul, anxious to stamp vividly the impression
he saw that he was making. "I know the Plagues of Egypt."
"I bet you don't."
"Rivers of Blood, Frogs, Lice, Flies, Murrain, Boils, Hails,
Locusts, Darkness and Death of Firstborn," said Paul, in a breath.
"Jehosaphat!" cried Rowlatt. "I suppose now you'd have no
difficulty in reciting the Thirty-nine Articles."
Paul puckered his forehead in thought. "D'yo' mean," he asked after
a pause, "the Thirty-nine Articles o' Religion, as is in th'
Prayerbuk? I ha' tried to read 'em, but couldno' understand 'em
reet."
Rowlatt, who had not expected his facetious query to be so answered,
stopped his drawing for a moment. "What in the name of goodness
attracted you to the Thirty-nine Articles?"
"I wanted to learn about things," said Paul.
The young man looked at him and smiled. "Self-education is a jolly
good thing," said he. "Learn all you can, and you'll be a famous
fellow one of these days. But you must cultivate a sense of humour."
Paul was about to seek enlightenment as to this counsel when Barney
Bill appeared, cool and refreshed, from the inn door, and lifted a
cheery voice. "Let's be getting along, sonny."
Rowlatt held up a detaining hand. "Just a couple of minutes, if you
can spare them. I've nearly finished."
"All right, sir," said Barney Bill, limping across the yard. "Taking
a picture of him?"
The artist nodded. Barney Bill looked over his shoulder. "By Gosh!"
he cried in admiration. "By Gosh!"
"It has come out rather well, hasn't it?" said the artist,
complacently.
"It's the living image of 'im," said Barney Bill.
"He tells me he's going up to London to seek his fortune," said
Rowlatt, putting in the finishing touches.
"And his 'igh-born parents," said Barney Bill, winking at Paul.
Paul flushed and wriggled uncomfortably. Instinct deprecated crude
revelation of the mystery of his birth to the man of refinement. He
felt that Barney Bill was betraying confidence. Gutter-bred though
he was, he accused his vagrant protector of a lack of good taste. Of
such a breach he himself, son of princes, could not have been
guilty. Luckily, and, as Paul thought, with admirable tact, Mr.
Rowlatt did not demand explanation.
"A young Japhet in search of a father. Well, I hope he'll find him.
There's nothing like romance. Without it life is flat and dead. It's
what atmosphere is to a picture."
"And onions to a stew," said Barney Bill.
"Quite right," said Rowlatt. "Paul, my boy, I think after all you'd
better stick to Mr.--?"
"Barney Bill, sir, at your service. And, if you want a comfortable
chair, or an elegant mat, or a hearth brush at a ridiculous cheap
price"--he waved toward the van. Rowlatt turned his head and,
laughing, looked into the twinkling black eyes. "I don't for a
moment expect you to buy, sir, but I was only a-satisfying of my
artistic conscience."
Rowlatt shut his sketch-book with a snap, and rose. "Let us have a
drink," said he. "Artists should be better acquainted."
He whispered a message to Paul, who sped to the inn and presently
returned with a couple of the famous blue and white mugs frothing
deliciously at the brims. The men, their lips to the bubbles, nodded
to each other. The still beat of the August noon enveloped their
bodies, but a streak of heavenly coolness trickled through their
souls. Paul, looking at them enviously, longed to be grown up.
Then followed a pleasant half-hour of desultory talk. Although the
men did not make him, save for here and there a casual reference,
the subject of their conversation, Paul, with the Vision shimmering
before his eyes, was sensitive enough to perceive in a dim and
elusive way that he was at the back of each man's thoughts and that,
for his sake, each was trying to obtain the measure of the other. At
last Barney Bill, cocking at the sun the skilled eye of the dweller
in the wilderness, called the time for departure.
"Could I see th' picture?" asked Paul.
Rowlatt passed him the sketch-book. The sudden sight of oneself as
one appears in another's eyes is always a shock, even to the most
sophisticated sitter. To Paul it was uncanny. He had often seen his
own reflection and was familiar with his own appearance, but this
was the first time that he had looked at himself impersonally. The
sketch was vivid, the likeness excellent; the motive, the
picturesque and romantic.
A proud lift of the chin, an eager glance in the eye, a sensitive
curve of the lip attracted his boyish egotism. The portrait was an
ideal, something to live up to. Involuntarily he composed his
features.
Barney Bill again called time. Paul surrendered the sketch-book
reluctantly. Rowlatt, with a cheery word, handed him the shilling
fee. Paul, than whom none better knew the magic quality of money,
hesitated for a second. The boy in the sketch would have refused.
Paul drew himself up. "Nay, I'll take noan. I liked doing it."
Rowlatt laughed and pocketed the coin. "All right," said he, with a
playful bow. "I'm exceedingly indebted to your courtesy."
Barney Bill gave Paul an approving glance. "Good for you, boy. Never
take money you've not earned. Good day to you, sir"--he touched
his cap. "And"--with a motion toward the empty mugs--"thank you
kindly."
Rowlatt strolled with them to the van, Barney Bill limping a pace or
two ahead. "Remember what I told you, my young friend," said he in a
low voice. "I don't go back upon my word. I'll help you. But if
you're a wise boy and know what's good for you, you'll stick to Mr.
Barney Bill and the freedom of the high-road and the light heart of
the vagabond. You'll have a devilish sight more happiness in the
end."
But Paul, who already looked upon his gipsy self as dead as his
Bludston self, and these dead selves as stepping-stones to higher
things, turned a deaf ear to his new friend's paradoxical
philosophy. "I'll remember," said he. "Mr. W. W. Rowlatt, 4, Gray's
Inn Square."
The young architect watched the van with its swinging, creaking
excrescences lumber away down the hot and dusty road, and turned
with a puzzled expression to his easel. Joy in the Little Bear Inn
had for the moment departed. Presently he found himself scribbling a
letter in pencil to his brother, the Royal Academician.
"So you see, my dear fellow," he wrote toward the end of the
epistle, "I am in a quandary. That the little beggar is of startling
beauty is undeniable. That he has got his bill agape, like a young
bird, for whatever food of beauty and emotion and knowledge comes
his way is obvious to any fool. But whether, in what I propose, I'm
giving a helping hand to a kind of wild genius, or whether I'm
starting a vain boy along the primrose path in the direction of
everlasting bonfire, I'm damned if I know."
But Paul jogged along by the side of Barney Bill in no such state of
dubiety. God was in His Heaven, arranging everything for his
especial benefit. All was well with the world where dazzling
destinies like his were bound to be fulfilled.
"I've heard of such things," said Barney Bill with a reflective
twist of his head, when Paul had told him of Mr. Rowlatt's
suggestion. "A cousin of mine married a man who knew a gal who used
to stand in her birthday suit in front of a lot of young painter
chaps-and I'm bound to say he used to declare she was as good a gal
as his own wife, especially seeing as how she supported an old
father what had got a stroke, and a houseful of young brothers and
sisters. So I'm not saying there's any harm in it. And I wouldn't
stand in your way, sonny, seeing as how you want to get to your
'igh-born parents. You might find 'em. on the road, and then again
you mightn't. And thirty bob a week at fourteen-no-it would be
flying in the face of Providence to say 'don't do it! But what licks
me is: what the blazes do they want with a little varmint like you?
Why shouldn't they pay thirty bob a week to paint me?"
Paul did not reply, being instinctively averse from wounding
susceptibilities. But in his heart rose a high pity for the common
though kindly clay that was Barney Bill.
