Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools | Page 7

then a breath of cool air starts out from some shaded
retreat, plays around your forehead, and passes on. All nature rests. It is
her noontime.
But you work on: an enthusiasm has taken possession of you; the paints
mix too slowly; you use your thumb, smearing and blending with a bit
of rag--anything for the effect. One moment you are glued to your seat,
your eye riveted on your canvas, the next, you are up and backing away,
taking it in as a whole, then pouncing down upon it quickly, belaboring
it with your brush. Soon the trees take shape; the sky forms become
definite; the meadow lies flat and loses itself in the fringe of willows.
When all of this begins to grow upon your once blank canvas, and
some lucky pat matches the exact tone of blue-gray haze or shimmer of
leaf, or some accidental blending of color delights you with its truth, a
tingling goes down your backbone, and a rush surges through your
veins that stirs you as nothing else in your whole life will ever do. The
reaction comes the next day when, in the cold light of your studio, you
see how far short you have come and how crude and false is your best
touch compared with the glory of the landscape in your mind and heart.
But the thrill that it gave you will linger forever.
But I hear a voice behind me calling out:--
"Monsieur, mamma says that dinner will be ready in half an hour.

Please do not be late."
It is Lucette. She and François have come down in the other boat--the
one with the little seat. They have moved so noiselessly that I have not
even heard them. The sketch is nearly finished; and so, remembering
the good madame, and the Roquefort, and the olives, and the many
times I have kept her waiting, I wash my brushes at once, throw my
traps into the boat, and pull back through the winding turn, François
taking the mill-race, and in the swiftest part springing to the bank and
towing Lucette, who sits in the stern, her white skirts tucked around her
dainty feet.
"_Sacré!_ He is here. C'est merveilleux! Why did you come?"
"Because you sent for me, madame, and I am hungry."
"Mon Dieu! He is hungry, and no chicken!"
It is true. The chicken was served that morning to another tramp for
breakfast, and madame had forgotten all about it, and had ransacked the
settlement for its mate. She was too honest a cook to chase another into
the frying-pan.
But there was a filet with mushrooms, and a most surprising salad of
chicory fresh from the garden, and the pease were certain, and the
Roquefort and the olives beyond question. All this she tells me as I
walk past the table covered with a snow-white cloth and spread under
the grape-vines overlooking the stream, with the trees standing against
the sky, their long shadows wrinkling down into the water.
I enter the summer kitchen built out into the garden, which also covers
the old well, let down the bucket, and then, taking the clean crash towel
from its hook, place the basin on the bench in the sunlight, and plunge
my head into the cool water. Madame regards me curiously, her arms
akimbo, re-hangs the towel, and asks:--
"Well, what about the wine? The same?"

"Yes; but I will get it myself."
The cellar is underneath the larger house. Outside is an old-fashioned,
sloping double door. These doors are always open, and a cool smell of
damp straw flavored with vinegar greets you from a leaky keg as you
descend into its recesses. On the hard earthen floor rest eight or ten
great casks. The walls are lined with bottles large and small, loaded on
shelves to which little white cards are tacked giving the vintage and
brand. In one corner, under the small window, you will find dozens of
boxes of French delicacies--truffles, pease, mushrooms, pâté de foie
gras, mustard, and the like, and behind them rows of olive oil and
olives. I carefully draw out a bottle from the row on the last shelf
nearest the corner, mount the steps, and place it on the table. Madame
examines the cork, and puts down the bottle, remarking sententiously:--
"Château Lamonte, '62! Monsieur has told you."
There may be ways of dining more delicious than out in the open air
under the vines in the cool of the afternoon, with Lucette, in her whitest
of aprons, flitting about, and madame garnishing the dishes each in turn,
and there may be better bottles of honest red wine to be found up and
down this world of care than "Château Lamonte, '62," but I have not yet
discovered them.