From Jest to Earnest Part 9

As she tripped down the broad stairs in a rich cloak trimmed with fur, she reminded Hemstead of some rare tropical bird, and De Forrest indulged in many notes of admiration. Lottie received these as a matter of course, but looked at the student with genuine interest.

His expression seemed to satisfy her, for she turned away to hide a smile that meant mischief.

It was quietly arranged that Hemstead should sit beside her, and he felicitated himself over their artifice as if it were rare good fortune.

Though the sun and the rising breeze had shaken off the cl.u.s.tering snow to a great extent, the evergreens still bent beneath their beautiful burdens, some straight cedars reminding one of vigorous age, where snowy hair and beard alone suggest the flight of years.

Though the face of nature was so white, it was not the face of death. There was a sense of movement and life which was in accord with their own spirits and rapid motion. Snow-birds fluttered and twittered in weedy thickets by the way-side, breakfasting on the seeds that fell like black specks upon the snow. The bright sunlight had lured the red squirrels from their moss-lined nests in hollow trees, and their barking was sometimes heard above the chime of the bells.

"There goes a parson crow," cried Addie Marchmont. "How black and solemn he looks against the snow!"

"Why are crows called parsons, Mr. Hemstead?" asked Lottie, as a child might.

"Indeed, I don't know. For as good a reason, I suppose, as that some girls are called witches."

She gave him a quick, keen look, and said, "I hope you mean nothing personal."

"I should never charge you with being a witch, Miss Marsden, but I might with witchery."

"A distinction without a difference," she said, seeking to lead him on.

"He means," explained De Forrest, "that you might be bewitching if you chose."

"Hush, Julian, you leave no room for the imagination," said Lottie, frowningly.

"Look at that farm-yard, Miss Marsden," said Hemstead. "The occupants seem as glad that the storm is over as we are. What pictures of placid content those ruminating cows are under that sunny shed. See the pranks of that colt which the boy is trying to lead to water.

I wish I were on his back, with the prairie before me."

"Indeed, are you so anxious to escape present company?"

"Now I didn't say that. But we have pa.s.sed by, and I fear you did not see the pretty rural picture to which I called your attention.

Were I an artist I would know where to make a sketch to-day."

"I think you will find that Miss Marsden's taste differs very widely from yours," said De Forrest; "that is, if you give us to understand that you would seek your themes in a barn-yard, and set your easel upon a muck-heap. Though your pictures might not rank high they would still be very rank."

Even Lottie joined slightly in the general and not complimentary laugh at Hemstead which followed this thrust, but he, with heightened color, said, "You cannot criticise my picture, Mr. De Forrest, for it does not exist. Therefore I must conclude that your satire is directed against my choice of place and subjects."

"Yes, as with the offence of Denmark's king, they 'smell to heaven.'"

"I appeal to you, Miss Marsden, was not the scent of hay and the breath of the cattle as we caught them pa.s.sing, sweet and wholesome?"

"I cannot deny that they were."

"You have judicial fairness and shall be umpire in this question.

And now, Mr. De Forrest, there is a celebrated and greatly admired picture in a certain gallery, representing a scene from the Roman Saturnalia. You do not object to that, with its cla.s.sic accessories, as a work of art?"

"Not at all."

"And yet it portrays a corruption that does in truth 'offend heaven.'

Your muck-heap, which did not enter my thought at all, and would not have been in my picture, could I paint one, would have been wholesome in comparison. Have I made a point, Judge Marsden?"

"I think you have."

"Finally, Mr. De Forrest, what are we to do with the fact that some of the greatest painters in the world have employed their brushes upon just such scenes as these, which perhaps offend your nose and taste more than they do heaven, and that pictures such as that farm-yard would suggest adorn the best galleries of Europe?"

"What artists of note have painted barn-yard scenes?" asked De Forrest, in some confusion.

"Well, there is Herring, the famous English artist, for one."

"'Herring' indeed. You are evidently telling a fish Story," said De Forrest, contemptuously.

"No, he is not," said Lottie. "Herring is a famous painter, I am told, and we have some engravings of his works."

"And I have read somewhere," continued Hemstead, "that his painting of an English farm-yard is the most celebrated of his works.

Moreover, Judge Marsden, I must ask of you another decision as to the evidence in this case. I affirm that I did not call your attention to the farm-yard itself, but to its occupants. Is not that true?"

"I cannot deny that it is."

"We all know that many eminent artists have made the painting of animals a specialty, and among them are such world-renowned names as Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. Moreover, in the numerous pictures of the Nativity we often find the homely details of the stable introduced. One of Rubens' paintings of this sacred and favorite subject, which hangs in the gallery of the Louvre, represents two oxen feeding at a rack."

"Come, Julian, hand over your sword. It won't do for you or any one to sit in judgment on such painters as Mr. Hemstead has named.

You are fairly beaten. I shall admire barn-yards in future, through thick and thin."

"That is hardly a fair conclusion from any testimony of mine,"

said Hemstead. "A barn-yard may be all that Mr. De Forrest says of it, but I am sure you will always find pleasure in seeing a fine frolicsome horse or a group of patient cattle. The homely accessories may, and sometimes may not, add to the picture."

"How do you come to know so much about pictures? Theology has nothing to do with art."

"I dissent from Judge Marsden's decision now, most emphatically,"

replied Hemstead. "Is not true art fidelity to nature?"

"Yes, so it is claimed."

"And where does nature come from? G.o.d is the Divine Artist, and is furnis.h.i.+ng themes for all other artists. G.o.d is the author of landscapes, mountains, rivers, of scenes like that we saw this morning, or of a fine face and a n.o.ble form, as truly as of a chapter in the Bible. He manifests Himself in these things. Now fine paintings, statuary, and music bring out the hidden meanings of nature, and therefore more clearly G.o.d's thought. Theology, or knowledge concerning our Creator, is a science to which everything can minister, and surely the appreciation of the beautiful should be learned in connection with the Author of all beauty."

"I never thought of G.o.d in that light before," said Lottie. "He has always seemed like one watching to catch me at something wrong.

Our solemn old Sunday-school teacher used to say to us children just before we went home, 'Now during the week whenever you are tempted to do anything wrong, remember the text, "Thou, G.o.d, seest me."' When wasn't I tempted to do wrong? and I had for a long time the uncomfortable feeling that two great eyes were always staring at me. But this isn't sleigh-riding chit-chat," and she broke into a merry little trill from a favorite opera.

Hemstead, with his strong love of the beautiful, could not help watching her with deepening interest. The rapid motion, the music of the bells, the novel scenery of the sun-lighted, glittering world around her, and, chief of all, her own abounding health and animal life, combined to quicken her excitable nature into the keenest enjoyment. From her red lips came ripples of laughter, trills from operas, sallies of fun, that kept the entire party from the thought of heaviness, and to honest-minded Hemstead were the evidences of a happy, innocent heart.

With secret exultation she saw how rapidly and unconsciously the unwary student was pa.s.sing under the spell of her beauty and witchery.

One must have been cursed with a sluggish, half-dead body and a torpid soul, had he not responded to the influences under which our gay party spent the next few hours. Innumerable snow-flakes had carried down from the air every particle of impurity, and left it sweet and wholesome enough to seem the elixir of immortal youth.

It was so tempered also, that it only braced and stimulated. The raw, pinching coldness of the previous day was gone. The sun, undimmed by a cloud, shone genially, and eaves facing the south were dripping, the drops falling like glittering gems.

Now and then a breeze would career down upon them, and, catching the light snow from the adjacent fence, would cast it into their faces as a mischievous school-boy might.

"Stop that!" cried Lottie to one of these sportive zephyrs. "De you call that a gust of wind? I declare it was a viewless sprite, or a party of snow elves, playing their mad pranks upon us."

"I prefer fairies less cold and ethereal," said De Forrest, with a meaning look at the speaker.