Читать книгу The Four-Masted Cat-Boat, and Other Truthful Tales - Charles Battell Loomis - Страница 12

VIII

“TO MEET MR. CAVENDISH”

The card read, “To meet Mr. Cavendish.” I had not been in Boston long, and I must confess to a poor head for names, so I had no idea who Mr. Cavendish was or what he had done, but as he was to be at Mrs. Emerson’s, I knew he had done something.

There were only five guests there, besides Mr. Cavendish, when I arrived, and after we were introduced it so happened that Cavendish and I found ourselves talking together.

He looked tired, so I said as a starter: “Don’t you find your work exhausting?” I thought I’d play “twenty questions” with him, and determine what he had done.

“Sometimes it is, very. The expenditure of force fairly makes my throat ache.”

It was easy. He was probably a Wagnerian singer.

“I suppose you have to be very careful about your throat.”

“Why, no,” he said; “I never think about my throat.”

He wasn’t a singer.

“Well, you’re in love with your art.”

He smiled. “Yes, I’m in love with it.”

I was in despair. What was he?

But now I would nail him. “What are your methods of work, Mr. Cavendish?”

“Oh, I don’t spend much time in over-elaboration. My brush-strokes are very broad.”

Ah, a painter! “Exactly,” I said. “You like a free hand.”

He said: “After all, the words are everything.”

Ah, a writer! “Yes,” said I; “your words are everything to the public.”

“I hope so. I try to make them so,” he said modestly.

Now I felt easier, and proceeded to praise him specifically.

“Which do you like best—to make your public laugh or cry? or do you aim to instruct it?”

“It is easy to make persons laugh, so I suppose I like rather to bring them to tears. As for instruction, there are those who say it is not our province to instruct.”

“But you do all three, Mr. Cavendish.”

He bowed as if he thought I had hit it.

I said: “To those who are familiar with your work there is something that makes you just the man to pick up for a quarter of an hour.”

His blank expression showed that I had made some mistake. He is a tall, portly man, and he seemed alarmed at the prospect of being picked up. A fall would be serious.

“I don’t quite get your meaning, but I suppose you refer to the men about town who stray in for a few minutes.”

It seemed a queer way to express it, but I replied: “Oh, yes; just to browse. You repay browsing, Mr. Cavendish.”

He smiled reminiscently. “Speaking of browsing, when I was told to go ahead on Richelieu, I browsed a long time in the British Museum getting up data.”

What, a painter, after all? I forgot all else he had said, and told him I thought he was as happy as Sargent or Whistler.

“Yes; I don’t let little things worry me much. Sometimes the paint gives out at a critical time in a small town.”

Good heaven! Why should the paint give out in a small town at a critical time? Was he a painter, after all? Could he be a traveling sign-painter?

“Does it bother you to work up in the air?”

“That’s an original way of putting it,” said he, with a genial laugh. “To play to the grand stand, as it were. Oh, no; a man must do more or less of that to succeed.”

I was shocked. “You surely don’t believe in desecrating nature! Sermons in stones, if you will, but not sermons on stones. You wouldn’t letter the Palisades if you had a chance, would you?”

He edged away from me, and said:

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t letter the Palisades, although I dare say my man of affairs would be glad to.”

Then I gave up. His man of affairs! He must be a gentleman of leisure to have a man of affairs.

And then up came Ticknor Fields, the dramatic critic, and said: “How do you do, Mr. Cavendish? Let me congratulate you upon your success as Richelieu. At last a successor to Booth has been found.”

I went and drank a glass of iced water. My throat was dry.