Six to Sixteen Part 23

Jack and I were talking rather sentimentally the other day about "old times," and I said:

"How jolly it was, that summer we used to sketch so much--all four of us together!"

And Jack, who was rubbing some new stuff of his own compounding into his fis.h.i.+ng-boots, replied:

"Awfully. I vote we take to it again when the weather's warmer."

But Jack is so sympathetic, he will agree with anything one says.

Indeed, I am sure that he feels what one feels--for the time, at any rate.

Clement is very different. He always disputes and often snubs what one says; partly, I am sure, from a love of truth--a genuine desire to keep himself and everybody else from talking in an unreal way, and from repeating common ideas without thinking them out at first hand; and partly, too, from what Keziah calls the "contradictiousness" of his temper. He was in the room when Jack and I were talking, but he was not talking with us. He was reading for his examination.

All the Arkwrights can work through noise and in company, having considerable powers of mental abstraction. I think they even sometimes combine attention to their own work with an occasional skimming of the topics current in the room as well.

Some outlying feeler of Clement's brain caught my remark and Jack's reply.

"My dear Margery," said he, "you are at heart one of the most unaffected people I know. Pray be equally genuine with your head, and do not encourage Jack in his slipshod habits of thought and conversation by----"

"Slipshod!" interrupted Jack, holding his left arm out at full length before him, the hand of which was shod with a fis.h.i.+ng-boot. "Slipshod!

They fit as close as your convictions, and would be as stiff and inexorable as logic if I didn't soften them with this newly-invented and about-to-be-patented ointment by the warmth of a cheerful fire and Margery's beaming countenance."

Clement had been reading during this sentence. Then he lifted his head, and said pointedly:

"What I was going to advise _you_, Margery, is never to get into the habit of adopting sentiments till you are quite sure you really mean them. It is by the painful experience of my own folly that I know what trouble it gives one afterwards. If ever the time comes when you want to know your real opinion on any subject, the process of getting rid of ideas you have adopted without meaning them will not be an easy one."

I am not as intellectual as the Arkwrights. I can always see through Jack's jokes, but I am sometimes left far behind when Eleanor or Clement "take flight," as Jack calls it, on serious subjects. I really did not follow Clement on this occasion.

With some hesitation I said:

"I don't know that I quite understand."

"I'm sure you don't," said Jack. "I have feared for some time that your hair was getting too thick for the finer ideas of this household to penetrate to your brain. Allow me to apply a little of this ointment to the parting, which in your case is more definite than with Eleanor; and as our lightest actions should proceed from principles, I may mention that the principle on which I propose to apply the Leather-softener to your scalp is that on which the blacksmith's wife gave your cholera medicine to the second girl, when she began with rheumatic fever--'it did such a deal of good to our William.' Now, this unguent has done 'a deal of good' to the leather of my boots. Why should it not successfully lubricate the skin of your skull?"

Only the dread of "a row" between Jack and Clem enabled me to keep anything like gravity.

"Don't talk nonsense, Jack!" said I, as severely as I could. (I fear that, like the rest of the world, I snubbed Jack rather than Clement, because his temper was sweeter, and less likely to resent it.) "Clement, I'm very stupid, but I don't quite see how what _you_ said applies to what _I_ said."

"You said, 'How happy we were, that summer we went sketching!' or words to that effect. It's just like a man's writing about the careless happiness of childhood, when he either forgets, or refuses to advert to, the toothache, the measles, learning his letters, the heat of the night-nursery, not being allowed to sit down in the yard whilst his knickerbockers were new, going to bed at eight o'clock, and having a lie on his conscience. I have striven for more accurate habits of thought, and I remember distinctly that you cried over more than one of your sketches."

"I got into the 'Household Alb.u.m' with mine, however," said Jack; "and I defy an A.R.A. to have had more difficulty in securing his position."

"I'm afraid your appearance in the _Phycological Quarterly_ was better deserved," said Mrs. Arkwright, without removing her eye from the microscope she was using at a table just opposite to Clem's.

But this demands explanation, and I must go back to the time of which Jack and I spoke--when we used to go sketching together.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE "HOUSEHOLD ALb.u.m"--SKETCHING UNDER DIFFICULTIES--A NEW SPECIES?--JACK'S BARGAIN--THEORIES.

Out of motherly affection, and also because their early attempts at drawing were very clever, Mrs. Arkwright had, years before, begun a sc.r.a.pbook, or "Household Alb.u.m," as it was called, into which she pasted such of her children's original drawings as were held good enough for the honour; the age of the artist being taken into account.

Jack's gift in this line was not as great as that of Clement or Eleanor, but this was not the only reason why no drawing of his appeared in the sc.r.a.pbook. Mrs. Arkwright demanded more evidence of pains and industry than Jack was wont to bestow on his sketches or designs. He resented his exclusion, and made many efforts to induce his mother to accept his hasty productions; but it was not till the summer to which I alluded that Jack took his place in the "Household Alb.u.m."

It was during a long drive, in which we were exhibiting the country to some friends, that Eleanor and I chose the place of that particular sketching expedition. The views it furnished had the first, and almost the only, quality demanded by young and tyro sketchers--they were very pretty.

There was some variety, too, to justify our choice. From the sandy road, where a heathery bank afforded the convenience of seats, we could look down into a valley with a winding stream, whose banks rose into hillsides which lost themselves in finely-coloured mountains of moorland.

Farther on, a scramble on foot over walls and gates had led us into a wooded gorge fringed with ferns, where a group of trees of particularly graceful form roused Eleanor's admiration.

"What a lovely view!" had burst from the lips of our friends at every quarter of a mile; for they were of that (to me) trying order of carriage companions who talk about the scenery as you go, as a point of politeness.

But the views _were_ beautiful--"Sketches everywhere!" we cried.

"There's nothing to make a sketch _of_ round the Vicarage," we added.

"We've done the church, with the Deadmanstone Hills behind it, and without the Deadmanstone Hills behind it, till we are sick of the subject."

So, the weather being fine, and even hot, we provided ourselves with luncheon and sketching materials, and made an expedition to the point we had selected.

We were tired by the time we reached it. This does not necessarily damp one's sketching ardour, but it is unfavourable to accuracy of outline, and especially so to purity of colouring. However, we did not hesitate.

Eleanor went down to her study of birch-trees in the gorge, Clement climbed up the bank to get the most extended view of the Ewden Valley; I contented myself with sitting by the roadside in front of the same view, and Jack stayed with me.

He had come with us. Not that he often went out sketching, but our descriptions of the beauty of the scenery had roused him to make another attempt for the "Household Alb.u.m." Seldom lastingly provided, for his own part, with apparatus of any kind, Jack had a genius for purveying all that he required in an emergency. On this occasion he had borrowed Mrs. Arkwright's paint-box (without leave), and was by no means ill supplied with pencils and brushes which certainly were not his own. He had hastily stripped a couple of sheets from my block whilst I was dressing, and with these materials he seated himself on that side of me which enabled him to dip into my water-pot, and began to paint.

Not half-way through my outline, I was just beginning to realize the complexities of a bird's-eye view with your middle distance in a valley, and your foreground sloping steeply upwards to your feet, when Jack, was.h.i.+ng out a large, dyed sable sky-brush in my pot, with an amount of splas.h.i.+ng that savoured of triumph, said:

"_That's_ done!"

I paused in a vigorous mental effort to put aside my _knowledge_ of the relative sizes of objects, and to _see_ that a top stone of my foreground wall covered three fields, the river, and half the river's bank beyond.

"_Done?_" I exclaimed. Jack put his brush into his mouth, in defiance of all rules, and deliberately sucked it dry. Then he waved his sketch before my eyes.

"The effect's rather good," I confessed, "but oh, Jack, it's out of all proportion! That gate really looks as big as the whole valley and the hills beyond. The top of the gate-post ought to be up in the sky."

"It would look beastly ugly if it was," replied he complacently.

"You've got a very good tint for those hills; but the foreground is mere scrambling. Oh, Jack, do finish it a little more! You would draw so nicely if you had any patience."

"How imperfectly you understand my character," said Jack, packing up his traps. "I would sit on a monument and smile at grief with any one, this very day, if the monument were in a grove, or even if I had an umbrella to smile under. To sit unsheltered under this roasting sun, and make myself giddy by gauging proportions with a pencil at the end of my nose, or smudging my mistakes with melting india-rubber, is quite another matter. I'm off to Eleanor. I've got another sheet of paper, and I think trees are rather in my line."

"I _thought_ my block looked smaller," said I, rapidly comparing Jack's paper and my own, with a feeling for size developed by my labours.

"Has she got a water-pot?" asked Jack.

"She is sure to have," said I pointedly. "She always takes her own materials with her."