Under the Skylights | Page 9

said Eudoxia good-humouredly, and passed along.
Abner made a good deal of time for the Burrow, but it was long before
he brought himself to make any for Eudoxia Pence. He came to see a
great deal of the Bunnies; in a month or two he quite had the run of the
place. There were friendly fellows who heaved big lumps of clay upon
huge nail-studded scantlings, and nice little girls who designed

book-plates, and more mature ones who painted miniatures, and many
earnest, earnest persons of both sexes who were hurrying, hurrying
ahead on their wet canvases so that the next exhibition might not be
incomplete by reason of lacking a "Smith," a "Jones," a "Robinson."
Abner gave each and every one of these pleasant people his company
and imparted to them his views on the great principles that underlie all
the arts in common.
"So that's what you call it--a marquise," Abner observed on a certain
occasion to one of the miniature painters. "This creature with a fluffy
white wig and a low-necked dress is a marquise, is she? Do you like
that sort of thing?"
"Why, yes,--rather," said the artist.
"Well,I don't," declared Abner, returning the trifle to the girl's hands.
"I'll paint my next sitter as a milkmaid--if she'll let me."
"As a milkmaid? No; paint the milkmaid herself. Deal with the verities.
Like them before you paint them. Paint them because you like them."
"I don't know whether I should like milkmaids or not. I've never seen
one."
"They don't exist," chimed in Adrian Bond, who was dawdling in the
background. "The milkmaids are all men. And as for the dairy-farms
themselves----!" He sank back among his cushions. "I visited one in the
suburbs last month--the same time when I was going round among the
markets. I have been of half a mind, lately," he said, more directly to
Abner, "to do a large, serious thing based on local actualities; The
City's Maw--something like that. My things so far, I know (none better)
are slight, flimsy, exotic, factitious. The first-hand study of actuality,
thought I----But no, no, no! It was a place fit only for a reporter in
search of a--of a--I don't know what. I shall never drink coffee again;
while as for milk punch----"
"And what is the artist," asked Abner, "but the reporter sublimated?

Why must the artist go afield to dabble in far-fetched artificialities that
have nothing to do with his own proper time and place? Our people go
abroad for study, instead of staying at home and guarding their native
quality. They return affected, lackadaisical, self-conscious--they bring
the hothouse with them. Why, I have seen such a simple matter as the
pouring of a cup of tea turned into----"
"You can't mean Medora Giles," said the miniaturist quickly, pausing
amidst the laces of her bodice. "Don't make any mistake about Medora.
When she goes in for all that sort of thing, she's merely 'creating
atmosphere,' as we say,--she's simply after the 'envelopment,' in fact."
"She is just getting into tone," Bond re-enforced, "with the
candle-shades and the peppermints."
"Medora," declared the painter, "is as sensible and capable a girl as I
know. Why, the very dress she wore that afternoon----You noticed it?"
"I--I----" began Abner.
"No, you didn't--of course you didn't. Well, she made every stitch of it
with her own hands."
"And those tea-cakes, that afternoon," supplemented Bond. "She made
every stitch of them with her own hands. She told me so herself, when I
stayed afterward, to help wash things up."
"I may have done her an injustice," Abner acknowledged. "Perhaps I
might like to know her, after all."
"You might be proud to," said Bond.
"And the favour would be the other way round," declared the painter
stoutly.
Abner passed over any such possibility as this. "How long was she
abroad?" he asked Bond.
"Let's see. She studied music in Leipsic two years; she plays the violin

like an angel--up to a certain point. Then she was in Paris for another
year. She paints a little--not enough to hurt."
"Leipsic? Two years?" pondered Abner. It seemed more staid, less
vicious, after all, than if the whole time had been spent in Paris. The
violin; painting. Both required technique; each art demanded long,
close application. "Well, I dare say she is excusable." But here, he
thought, was just where the other arts were at a disadvantage compared
with literature: you might stay at home wherever you were, if a writer,
and get your own technique.
"And you have done it," said Bond. "I admire some of your things so
much. Your instinct for realities, your sturdy central grasp--"
"What man has done, man may do," rejoined Abner. "Yet what is
technique, after all? There remains, as ever, the problem, the great