the business man and the painter.—pictures and pot boilers.—cimabue and giotto.—the salmon-colored omnibus.
the business men were half way to their business when the shadow of the sooty church still fell upon one or two of the congregation who dispersed more slowly; a few aged poor who lingered from infirmity as well as leisure; and a man neither very old nor very poor, whose strong limbs did not bear him away at a much quicker pace. his enjoyment of the peculiar pleasures of an early walk was deliberate as well as full, and bustle formed no necessary part of his trade. he was a painter.
the business gentleman hurrying out of the boys’ home stumbled against the painter, whom he knew, but whom just now he would not have been sorry to avoid. the very next salmon-colored omnibus that passed the end of the street would only just enable him to be punctual if he could catch it, and the painter, in his opinion, had “no sense of the value of time.” the painter, on the other hand, held as strong a conviction that his friend’s sense of the monetary value of time was so exaggerated as to hinder his sense of many higher things in this beautiful world. but they were fast friends nevertheless, and with equal charity pitied each other respectively for a slovenly and a slavish way of life.
“my dear friend!” cried the artist, seizing the other by the elbow, “you are just coming from where i was thinking of going.”
“by all means, my dear fellow,” said jan’s friend, shaking hands to release his elbow, “the master will be delighted, and—my time is not my own, you know.”
“i know well,” said the artist, with a little humorous malice. “it belongs to others. that is your benevolence. so”—
“come, come!” laughed the other. “i’m not a man of leisure like you. i must catch the next salmon-colored omnibus.”
“i’ll walk with you to it, and talk as we go. you can’t propose to run at your time of life, and with your position in the city! now tell me, my good friend, the boys in your home are the offscouring of the streets, aren’t they?”
“they are mostly destitute lads, but they have never been convicted of crime any more than yourself. it is the fundamental distinction between our home and other industrial schools. our effort is to save boys whom destitution has all but made criminal. it is not a reformatory.”
“i beg your pardon, i know. but i was speaking of their bodily condition only. i want a model, and should be glad to get it without the nuisance of sketching in the slums. such a ragged, pinched, eager, and yet stupid child as might sit homeless between the black walls of newgate and the churchyard of st. sepulchre,—a waif of the richest and most benevolent society in christendom, for whom the alternative of the churchyard would be the better.”
“not the only one, i trust,” said the business gentleman, almost passionately. “i trust in god, not the only alternative. if i have a hope, it is that of greater and more effective efforts than hitherto to rescue the children of london from crime.”
in the warmth of this outburst, he had permitted a salmon-colored omnibus to escape him, but, being much too good a man of business to waste time in regrets, he placed himself at a convenient point for catching the next, and went on speaking.
“i am glad to hear you have another picture in hand.”
“not a picture—a pot boiler,” said the artist, testily. “low art—domestic sentiment—cheap pathos. my picture no one would look at, even if it were finished, and if i could bring myself to part with it.”
“mind, you give me the first refusal.”
“of my picture?”
“yes, that is, i mean your street boy. it is just in my line. i delight in your things. but don’t make it too pathetic, or my wife won’t be able to bear it in the drawing room. your things always make her cry.”
“that’s the pot boiler,” said the artist; “i really wish you’d look at my picture, unfinished as it is. i should like you to have it. anybody’ll take the pot boiler. i want a model for the picture too, and, oddly enough, a boy; but one you can’t provide me with.”
“no? the subject you say is”—said the man of business, dreamily, as he strove at the same time to make out if a distant omnibus were yellow or salmon-colored.
“cimabue finding the boy giotto drawing on the sand. ah! my friend, can one realize that meeting? can one picture the generous glow with which the mature and courtly artist recognized unconscious genius struggling under the form of a shepherd lad,—yearning out of his great italian eyes over that glowing landscape whose beauties could not be written in the sand? will the golden age of the arts ever return? we are hardly moving towards it, i fear. for i have found a model for my cimabue,—an artist too, and a true one; but no boy giotto! still i should like you to see it. i flatter myself the coloring”—
“salmon,” said the man of business, briskly. “i thought it was yellow. my dear fellow—hi!—take as many boys as you like—to the city!”
the conductor of the salmon-colored omnibus touched his bell, and the painter was left alone.
