Puslapio vaizdai
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"Talk away," I replied, "if it makes you feel better.”

"That 's it; you 've exactly hit it. You always make me feel better. I can rely on you. It's awkward soundings, but you'll see me through it. We'll defeat him yet. I may be an utterly worthless devil, but I'm not a brawler. I told him so at breakfast. I said, 'Doctor, I detest brawling, but if ever you allow that girl to be insulted again as Clements insulted her, I will break your neck with my own hands.' You think I was right?"

"Absolutely," I agreed.

"Then we need n't discuss the matter any further. That man was a murderer in intention,-outside the law, you understand, as it was then-but he never deceived me. I told him so. I said to him at the time, 'I don't know what price you 're going to put on my head, but if ever you allow Clements to insult her again, you'll never live to claim it.''

"And what did he do?" I asked, to carry on the conversation, for Matchem entered with the bromide.

"Oh, crumpled up at once. Lead still going, Matchem?"

"I 'ave n't 'eard," said that faithful servant of the Union-Castle Company.

"Quite right. Never alarm the passengers. Ship the dead-light, will you?" Matchem shipped it, for we were rolling very heavily. There were tramplings and gull-like cries from on deck. Shend looked at me with a mariner's eye.

"That 's nothing," he said protectingly. "Oh, it's all right for you," I said, jumping at the idea. "I have n't an extra master's certificate. I'm only a passenger. I confess it funks me."

Instantly his whole bearing changed to answer the appeal.

"My dear fellow, it 's as simple as houses. We're hunting for sixty-five fathom water. Anything short of sixty, with a sou'west wind means-but I'll get my Channel Pilot out of my cabin and give you the general idea. I'm only too grateful to do anything to put your mind at ease." And so, perhaps, for another hour,he declined the drink,-Channel Pilot in hand, he navigated us round Ushant, and at my request up-channel to Southampton, light by light, with explanations and reminiscences. I professed myself soothed at last, and suggested bed.

"In a second," said he. "Now, you would n't think, would you-" he glanced off the book toward my wildly swaying dressing-gown on the door-"that I've been seeing things for the last half-hour? Fact is, I'm just on the edge of 'em, skating on thin ice round the cornernor'east as near as nothing-where that dog's looking at me."

"What's the dog like?" I asked.

"Ah, that is comforting of you. Most men walk through 'em, to show me that they are n't real. As if I did n't know! But you're different. Anybody could see that with half an eye." He stiffened and pointed. "Damn it all! The dog sees it, too, with half an- Why, he knows you. Knows you perfectly. D' you know him?” "How can I tell if he is n't real?" I insisted.

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"But you can! You 're all right. I saw that from the first. Don't go back on me now or I shall go to pieces like the Drummond Castle-I beg your pardon, old man; but, you see, you do know the dog. I'll prove it. What 's that dog doing? Come on! You know." A tremor shook him, and he put his hand on my knee, and whispered with great meaning: "I'll letter or halve it with you. There! You begin."

"S," said I, to humor him, for a dog would most likely be standing or sitting, or may be scratching or sniffing.

"Q," he went on, and I could feel the heat of his shaking hand.

"U," said I. There was no other letter possible; but I was shaking, too. "L." "N."

"T-i-n-g," he ran out. "There! That proves it. I knew you knew him. You don't know what a relief that is. Between ourselves, old man, he-he 's been turning up lately a-a damn sight more often than I cared for. And a squinting dog-a dog that squints! I mean that 's a bit too much. Eh? What?" He gulped and half rose, and I thought that the full tide of delirium would be on him in another sentence.

"Not a bit of it," I said as a last chance, with my hand over the bell-punch. "Why, you 've just proved that I know him; so there are two of us in the game, anyhow." "By Jove! that is an idea! Of course there are. I knew you'd see me through.

We'll defeat them yet. Hi, pup! He's gone! Absolutely disappeared!" He sighed with relief, and I caught the lucky

moment.

"Good business! I expect he only came to have a look at me," I said. "Now, get this drink down, and turn in to the lower bunk."

He obeyed, protesting that he could not inconvenience me, and in the midst of apologies sank into a dead sleep. I expected a wakeful night, having a certain amount to think over; but no sooner had I scrambled into the top bunk than sleep came on me like a wave from the other side of the world.

In the morning there were apologies, which we got over at breakfast before our party were about.

"I suppose-after this-well, I don't blame you. I'm rather a lonely chap, though." His eyes lifted dog-like across the table.

"Shend," I replied, "I 'm not running. a Sunday-school. You 're coming home with me in my car as soon as we land."

"That is kind of you-kinder than you think."

"That 's because you 're a little jumpy still. Now, I don't want to mix up in your private affairs-"

"But I'd like you to," he interrupted. "Then, would you mind telling me the Christian name of a girl who was insulted by a man called Clements?"

"Moira," he whispered; and just then Mrs. Godfrey and Milly came to table with their shore-going hats on.

We did not tie up till noon, but the faithful Leggatt had intrigued his way. down to the dock-edge, and beside him sat Malachi, wearing the collar of gold, or Leggatt makes it look so, as eloquent as Demosthenes. Shend flinched a little when he saw him. We packed Mrs. Godfrey and Milly into Attley's car,-they were going with him to Mittleham, of course, and drew clear across the railway lines to find England all lit and perfumed for spring. Shend sighed with happiness.

"D' you know," he said, "if-if you 'd chucked me-I should have gone down to my cabin after breakfast and cut my throat. And now-it's like a dream-a good dream, you know."

We lunched with the other three at

Romsey. Then I sat in front for a little while to talk to my Malachi. When I looked back, Shend was solidly asleep, and stayed so for the next two hours, while Leggatt chased Attley's fat limousine along the green-speckled hedges. He woke up when we said good-by at Mittleham, with promises to meet again very

soon.

"And I hope," said Mrs. Godfrey, "that everything pleasant will happen to you."

"Heaps and heaps-all at once," cried long, weak Milly, waving her wet handkerchief.

"I've just got to look in at a house near here for a minute to inquire about a dog," I said, "and then we will go home."

"I used to know this part of the world," he replied, and said no more till Leggatt shot past the lodge at the Sichliffes' gate. Then I heard him gasp.

She

Miss Sichliffe, in a green waterproof, an orange jersey, and a pinkish leather hat, was working at a bulb-border. straightened herself as the car stopped and breathed hard. Shend got out and walked toward her. They shook hands, turned round together, and went into the house. Then the dog Harvey pranced out corkily from under the lee of a bench. Malachi, with one joyous whoop, fell on him as an enemy and an equal. Harvey, for his part, freed from all burden whatsoever except the obvious duty of a man dog on his own ground, met Malachi without reserve or remorse, and with six months' additional growth to come and go on.

"Don't check 'em!" cried Leggatt, dancing round the flurry. "They 've both been saving up for each other all this time. It 'll do 'em worlds of good."

"Leggatt," I said, "will you take Mr. Shend's bag and suitcase up to the house and put them down just inside the door? Then we will go on."

So I enjoyed the finish alone. It was a red, dead heat, and they licked each other's jaws in amity till Harvey, one imploring eye on me, leaped into the front seat, and Malachi backed his appeal. It was theft, but I took him, and we talked all the way home of r-rats and r-rabbits and bones and baths and the other basic facts of life. That evening after dinner they slept before the fire, with their warm

chins across the hollows of my ankles-to each chin an ankle-till I kicked them up-stairs to bed.

I WAS not at Mittleham when she came over to announce her engagement, but I heard of it when Attley and Mrs. Godfrey came, forty miles an hour, over to me, and Mrs. Godfrey called me names of the worst for suppression of information.

was n't born in lies, he was baptized in 'em. D' you know why she called him Harvey? It only occurred to me in those dreadful days when I was ill, and one can't keep from thinking, and thinks everything. D' you know your Boswell? What did Dr. Johnson say about Hervey with an e!"

"Oh, that's it, is it?" I cried incautiously. "That was why I ought to have verified my quotations. The spelling de

"As long as it was n't me, I don't feated me. Wait a moment, and it will care," said Attley. Dr. Johnson said: 'He was a "I began.

"I believe you knew it all along," Mrs. Godfrey repeated. "Else what made you drive that man literally into her arms?" "To ask after the dog Harvey," I replied.

"Then, what's the beast doing here?" Attley demanded, for Malachi and the dog Harvey were deep in a council of the family with Bettina, who was being outargued.

"Oh, Harvey seemed to think himself de trop where he was," I said. "And she has n't sent after him. You 'd better save Bettina before they kill her."

"There's been enough lying about that dog," said Mrs. Godfrey to me. "If he

come back.
vicious man,'

"'But very kind to me,' Mrs. Godfrey prompted. Then, both together: "If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him.'

"So you were mixed up in it. At any rate, you had your suspicions from the first? Tell me," she said.

"Ella," I said, "I don't know anything rational or reasonable about any of it. It was all woman work, and it scared me horribly."

"Why?" she asked.

That was six years ago. I have written this tale to let her know, wherever she may be.

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O department of human activity shows more definitely than artistic expression the working of those great changes which characterize this age, and no art form has yielded to new tendencies so much as painting. One of those revolutions against settled standards, the history of which is the history of art, is now in full career; and it is time that we study signs, seek to define directions, and somewhat forecast the convention that is to come. It is the purpose of these papers to make plain what so far may be determined from the visible portents.

Of these signs of change, the most conspicuous, of course, are the revolutionary extremes known as Post-Impressionism and Cubism, as, indeed, the violent or fantastic manifestations of every forward

movement are bound to be its most conspicuous features. Partaking of the nature of these extremes, but compromising with the tradition which they seek to break, are discernible many less radical revolutionary phases, approaching and, in many cases, overlapping the eventual line. of progress.

To consider dispassionately all of these phases, from the conservative to the radical, is the purpose of this series of articles and its accompanying illustrations. If the attention devoted to the extreme manifestations of the change seems disproportionate, let it be remembered that it is in these extremes that the nature of the revolution is most elementally, although most fantastically, exposed to our view. THE EDITOR.

I

IS OUR ART DISTINCTIVELY

AMERICAN?

BY JOHN W. ALEXANDER

President of the National Academy of Design

T is the purpose of the writer not to isting mass of purposeless and superfluous criticism, but merely to review briefly the different phases through which our art has passed under his personal observation, mentioning names and individual work as rarely as is consistent with making himself fairly intelligible to his read

ers.

In short, he will limit his task to summing up what, in his opinion, has so far been accomplished toward producing in this country an art that can lay claim to being distinctly American.

That we have really made progress, and substantially advanced toward producing a characteristically national art, will, he believes, have to be acknowledged by any one who is willing to take the trouble to go back with him over the record art has made for itself in this country in the last fifty years.

For a long time there was very little in the United States that could be dignified by the name of art; yet even during our most arid periods we have never seemed to be totally devoid of a desire to cultivate and create it.

THE SPORADIC EFFORTS OF EARLY ART IN AMERICA

OUR early and very sporadic efforts to produce it were founded upon a miserably weak and impersonal admiration of what was then accepted as classical perfection. To realize just how far our taste has advanced, and to measure the width of the gulf which lies between the vapid ideals of the devoted pioneers of the past and the virile and personal outlook of a younger and more wisely cultivated generation, it is only necessary for us to compare the trivial work of our earlier painters and sculptors who sought inspiration in Rome during the first half of the nine

teenth century with the work that is now being produced under the same inspiring surroundings by the young fellows of the American Academy in Rome.

We find in the work of this earlier group of Americans no really intelligent appreciation of what constitutes the dignity and beauty of classical art; nothing, in fact, but a sentimental relish for its perfection of detail, which they vainly strove to imitate.

Not having mastered the great, enduring first principles upon which the ancients founded their perfection of finish, they wore out themselves and their art in futile efforts to make superficial prettiness play the part of trained knowledge, while their more highly equipped successors have succeeded in coming directly under the influence of its nobler and more vital teachings, and without resorting to slavish imitation, are translating these greater qualities into digestible food for our more modern appetites.

But if time has not indorsed either the methods or the ideals of our pioneers, we must not allow ourselves to overlook the fact that it was they who laid the corner-stone of art in the United States. Through their devoted efforts the National Academy of Design was founded and established upon an enduring footing.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE NATIONAL
ACADEMY OF DESIGN

IT is popular for the moment among a certain set to cry down and minimize its influence. Its necessarily conservative policy does not appeal to the man who asserts that the only qualification that may legitimately be demanded of an artist is sincerity, and forthwith proceeds to dub as insincere everything but the most eccentric processes.

The use of the word "conservative" in

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