The Streets of Ascalon Part 86

At first he did not recognise the figure standing on the steps in the glare of the sun; then, surprised, he held out his rather grimy hand with that instinct of kindness toward anything that seemed to need it; and the thin pallid hand of Ledwith fell limply into his, contracting nervously the next second.

"Come in," said Quarren, pleasantly. "It's very nice of you to think of me, Ledwith."

The man's hollow eyes avoided his and roamed restlessly about the gallery, looking at picture after picture and scarcely seeing them.

Inside his loose summer clothing his thin, nervous frame was s.h.i.+fting continually even while he stood gazing almost vacantly at the walls of the gallery.

For a little while Quarren endeavoured to interest him in the canvases, meaning only charity to a man who had clearly lost his grip on things; then, afraid of bewildering and distressing a mind so nearly extinct, the young fellow remained silent, merely accompanying Ledwith as he moved purposelessly hither and thither or halted capriciously, staring into s.p.a.ce and twitching his scarred fingers.

"You're busy, I suppose," he said.

"Yes, I am," said Quarren, frankly. "But that needn't make any difference if you'd care to come to the bas.e.m.e.nt and talk to me while I'm at work."

Ledwith made no reply for a moment, then, abruptly:

"You're _always_ kind to me, Quarren."

"Get over that idea," laughed the younger man. "Strange as it may seem my natural inclination is to like people. Come on downstairs."

In the littered disorder of the bas.e.m.e.nt he found a chair for his visitor, then, without further excuse, went smilingly about his work, explaining it as it progressed:

"Here's an old picture by some Italian gink--impossible to tell by whom it was painted, but not difficult to a.s.sign it to a certain date and school.... See what I'm doing, Ledwith?

"That's what we call 'rabbit glue' because it's made out of rabbits'

bones--or that's the belief, anyway. It's gilder's glue.

"Now I dissolve this much of it in hot water--then I glue over the face of the picture three layers of tissue-paper, one on top of the other--so!

"Now here is a new cha.s.sis or stretcher over which I have stretched a new linen canvas. Yesterday I sponged it as a tailor sponges cloth; and now it's dry and tight.

"Now I'm going to reline this battered old Italian canvas. It's already been relined--perhaps a hundred years ago. So first I take off the old relining canvas--with hot water--this way--cleaning off all the old paste or glue from it with alcohol....

"Now here's a pot of paste in which there is also glue and whitening; and I spread it over the back of this old painting, and then, very gingerly, glue it over the new linen canvas on the stretcher.

"Now I smooth it with this polished wooden block, and then--just watch me do laundry work!"

He picked up a flat-iron which was moderately warm, reversed the relined picture on a marble slab, and began to iron it out with the skill and precaution of an expert laundress doing frills.

Ledwith looked on with a sort of tremulously fixed interest.

"In three days," said Quarren, laying the plastered picture away, "I'll soak off that tissue paper with warm water. I have to keep it on, you see, so that no flakes of paint shall escape from the painting and no air get in to blister the surface."

He picked up another picture and displayed it:

"Here's a picture that I believe to be a study by Greuze. You see I have already relined it and it's fixed on its new canvas and stretcher and is thoroughly dry and ready for cleaning. And this is how I begin."

He took a fine sponge, soaked it in a weak solution of alcohol, and very gingerly washed the blackened and dirty canvas. Then he dried it.

Then he gave it a coat of varnish.

"Looks foolish to varnish over a filthy and discoloured picture like this, doesn't it, Ledwith? But I'll tell you why. When that varnish dries hard I shall place my hand on the face of that canvas and begin very cautiously but steadily to rub the varnished surface with my fingers and thumb. And do you know what will happen? The new varnish has partly united with the old yellow and opaque coating of varnish and dust, and it all will turn to a fine gray powder under the friction and will come away leaving the old paint underneath almost as fresh--very often quite as fresh and delicate as when the picture was first painted.

"Sometimes I have to use three or more coats of new varnish before I can remove the old without endangering the delicate glaze underneath. But sooner or later I get it clean.

"Then I dig out any old patches or restorations and fill in with a composition of putty, white lead, and a drier, and smooth this with a cork. Then when it is sunned for an hour a day for three weeks or more--or less, sometimes--I'm ready to grind my pure colours, mix them, set my palette, and do as honest a piece of restoring as a study of that particular master's methods permits. And that, Ledwith, is only a little part of my fascinating profession.

"Sometimes I lift the entire skin of paint from a canvas--picking out the ancient threads from the rotten texture--and transfer it to a new canvas or panel. Sometimes I cross-saw a panel, then chisel to the plaster that lies beneath the painting, and so transfer it to a new and sound support. Sometimes--" he laughed--"but there are a hundred delicate and interesting surgical operations which I attempt--a thousand exciting problems to solve--experiments without end that tempt me, innovations that allure me----"

He laughed again:

"_You_ ought to take up some fad and make a business and even an art out of it!"

"I?" said Ledwith, dully.

"Why not? Man, you're young yet, if--if----"

"Yes, I know, Quarren.... But my mind is too old--very old and very infirm--dying in me of age--the age that comes through those centuries of pain that men sometimes live through in a few months."

Quarren looked at him hopelessly.

"Yet," he said, "if only a man wills it, the world is new again."

"But--if the will fails?"

"I don't know, Ledwith."

"I do." He drew up his cuff a little way, his dead eyes resting on Quarren, then, in silence, he drew the sleeve over the scars.

"Even that can be cured," said the younger man.

"If there is a will to cure it, perhaps."

"Even a desire is enough."

"I have not that desire. Why cure it?"

"Because, Ledwith, you haven't gone your limit yet. There's more of life; and you're cheating yourself out of it."

"Yes, perhaps. But what kind of life?" he asked, staring vaguely out into the suns.h.i.+ne of the backyard. "Life in h.e.l.l has no attractions for me."

"We make our own h.e.l.ls."

"I didn't make mine. They dug the pit and I fell into it--h.e.l.l's own pit, Quarren----"

"You are wrong! You fell into a pit which hurt so much that you supposed it was the pit of h.e.l.l. And, taking it for granted, you burrowed deeper in blind fury, until it became a real h.e.l.l. But _you_ dug it. There _is_ no h.e.l.l that a man does not dig for himself!"

In Ledwith's dull eyes a smouldering spark seemed to flash, go out, then glimmer palely.

"Quarren," he said, "I am not going to live in h.e.l.l alone. I'm going there, shortly, but not alone."