And with his mother's consent, too. Not that he had asked it in so many words and stood hesitating, fearing to take the divergent path until he could take her willing blessing with him. He had made his decision firmly and against her wishes. She had kept silent at first, and had watched his progress as she had watched his baby steps, tearfully--prayerfully at times--standing ready to catch him if he fell. But that was over now. The bigness of her vision covering margins wide enough for new impressions, impressions which her broad mind, great enough and honest enough to confess its mistakes, always welcomed and understood, had long since made clear to her what in her early anxiety she had ignored:
--that if her son had inherited the creative and imaginative gifts of his father (those gifts which she so little understood), he had also inherited from her a certain spirit of determination, together with that practical turn of mind which had given the men of her own family their eminence. In proof of this she could not but see that the instability which she had so dreaded in his earlier years had given way to a certain fixedness of purpose and firm self-reliance. The thought of this thrilled her as nothing else in his whole career had ever done. All these things helped reconcile her to his choice of a profession.
Oliver, now thoroughly warm and dry, busied himself getting his brushes and paints together and scraping off one of Fred's palettes. Bianchi's bald head and fat, red, smooth-shaven face with its double chin--time had not dealt leniently with the distinguished lithographer--had inspired our hero to attempt a "Franz Hals smear," as Waller called it, and the Pole, when he arrived, was to sit for him in the costume of an old Dutch burgomaster, the big white ruff furnishing the high lights in the canvas.
By the time Oliver had arranged his palette the club had settled itself for work, the smoke from the pipes floating in long lines toward the ceiling, befogging the big white albatross that hung from a wire in the skylight. Munson, who had rubbed in a background of bitumen over a square tile, sat next to Fred, who was picking out, with the end of a wooden match, the outlines of an army-wagon sketched on a plate smeared with color. Simmons was looking over a portfolio that Watson, a new member, had brought with him, filled with a lot of his summer sketches made on the Normandy coast.
One view of the fish-market at Dieppe caught Oliver's eye. The slant of light burnishing the roof of the church to silver and flooding the pavement of the open square, crowded with black figures, the white caps of the fish-women indicated by crisp pats of the brush, pleased our painter immensely.
"Charming, old man," said Oliver, turning to Watson. "How long did it take you?"
"About four hours."
"Looks like it," growled Waller, reaching over Oliver's shoulder and drawing the sketch toward him.
"That's the gospel of 'smear,' Horn," and he tossed it back. "Not a figure in the group has got any drawing in it."
Waller had set his face against the new out-door school, and never lost a chance to ridicule it.
"That's not what Watson is after," exclaimed Oliver.
"The figures are mere accessories. The dominating light is the thing; he's got that"--and he held the sketch close to the overhead gas-jets so that the members could see it the better.
"Dominating light be hanged! What's the use of slobbering puddles of paint over a canvas and calling it plein air, or impressionism, or out-of-doors, or some such rot? Get down to business and DRAW. When you have done that you can talk. It can't be done in four hours, and if some of you fellows keep on the way you're going, you'll never do it in four years."
"A four hours' sketch handled as Watson has this," said Oliver, thoughtfully, "is better than four years' work on one of your Hudson Rivery things.
The sun doesn't stand still long enough for a man to get more than an expression of what he sees--that is if he's after truth. The angle of shadow changes too quickly, and so do the reflected lights."
"What's the matter with the next day?" burst out Waller. "Can't you take up your sketch where you left off? You talk as if every great picture had to be painted before luncheon."
"But there is no 'next day,'" interrupted Watson.
"I entirely agree with Horn." He had been listening to the discussion with silent interest. "No next day like the one on which you began your canvas.
The sky is different--gray, blue, or full of fleecy, sunny clouds. Your shadows are more purple, or blue or gray, depending on your sky overhead, and so are your reflections. If you go on and try to piece out your sketch, you make an almanac of it--not a portrait of what you saw. I can pick out the Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays on that kind of a sketch as soon as I see it. Nature is like a bird--if you want to surprise her, you must let go both barrels when she rises; if you miss her at your first shot you will never have another chance--not at that particular bird."
"Well, but suppose you DO happen to have two days alike," insisted Waller. "I have seen thirty days on a stretch in Venice without a cloud. What then?" The bird simile had evidently not appealed to the great critic.
"Then ten chances to one you are not the same man you were the day before," replied Watson, calmly, laying down his pipe. "You have had bad news from home or your liver is out of order, or worse still, you have seen some new subject which has taken hold of you and your first enthusiasm has oozed away.
If you persist in going on you will either undo what you did yesterday or you will trust to your memory of what you THINK yesterday was, to finish your sketch by. The first fills it full of lies and the second full of yourself; neither have anything to do with nature.
Four hours, Waller, not a minute more. You'll come to it before you die."
"That depends on what you have got to paint with," snapped out Jack Bedford, who was trying to clean a dingy-looking palette with a knife.
