The
deacon frowned, but said nothing.
And
so, before a week was over, Hiram had said good-bye to his mother
and
Sam Churchill, and was driving over in the deacon's buggy to
Muddy
Creek
deepo, ong rowt for Athens, Madison County.
CHAPTER
VIII. WOOD AND STONE.
|Colin
Churchill's first delight at the wood-carver's at Exeter was of
the
sort that a man rarely feels twice in a lifetime. It was the joy
of
first emancipation. Hitherto, Colin had been only a servant, and
had
looked
forward to a life of service. Not despondently or gloomily--for
Colin
was a son of the people, and he accepted servitude as his natural
guerdon--but
blankly and without eagerness or repining. The children of
the
labouring class expect to walk through life in their humble way
as
through
a set task, where a man may indeed sometimes meet with stray
episodes
of pleasure (especially that one human episode of love-making),
but
where for the most part he will come across nothing whatsoever
save
interminable
rules and regulations. Now, however, Colin felt himself
free
and happy: he had got a trade and a career before him, and a
trade
and
a career into which he could throw himself with his utmost
ardour.
For
the first time in his life Colin began dimly to feel that he too
had
something
in him. How could he possibly have got up an enthusiasm about
the
vicar's boots, or about the proper way to deliver letters on a
silver
salver? But when it came to carving roses and plums out of solid
mahogany
or walnut, why, that of course was a very different sort of
matter.
Even
at Wootton Mandeville, the boy had somehow suspected, in his
vague
inarticulate
fashion (for the English agricultural class has no tongue
in
which to express itself), that he too had artistic taste and
power.
When
he heard the vicar talking to his friends about paintings or
engravings,
he recognised that he could understand and appreciate all
that
the vicar said; nay, more: on two or three occasions he had even
boldly
ventured to conceive that he saw certain things in certain
pictures
which the vicar, in his cold, dry, formal fashion, with
his
coldly critical folding eyeglass, could never have dreamt of or
imagined.
In his heart of hearts, even then, the boy somehow half-knew
that
the vicar saw what the vicar was capable of seeing in each work,
but
that he, Colin Churchill the pageboy, penetrated into the very
inmost
feeling and meaning of the original artist. So much, in his
inarticulate
way, the boy had sometimes surprised himself by dimly
fancying;
but as he had no language in which to speak such things, even
to
himself, and only slowly learnt that language afterwards, he
didn't
formulate
his ideas in his own head for a single minute, allowing them
merely
to rest there in the inchoate form of shapeless feeling.
Now,
at Exeter, however, all this was quite altered. In the aisles
of
the great cathedral, looking up at the many-coloured saints in
the
windows,
and listening to the long notes of the booming organ, Colin
Churchill's
soul awoke and knew itself. The gift that was in him was not
one
to be used for himself alone, a mere knack of painting pictures
to
decorate
the bare walls of his bedroom, or of making clay images for
little
Minna to stick upon the fisherman's wooden mantelshelf: it was
a
talent admired and recognised of other people, and to be employed
for
the
noble and useful purposes of carving pine-apple posts for walnut
bedsteads
or conventional scrolls for fashionable chimneypieces. To
such
great heights did emancipated Colin Churchill now aspire. Even
his
master
allowed him to see that he thought well of him. The boy was given
tools
to work with, and instructed in the use of them; and he learnt
how
to
employ them so fast that the master openly expressed his surprise
and
satisfaction. In a very few weeks Colin was fairly through the
first
stage
of learning, and was set to produce bits of scroll work from his
own
design, for a wainscoted room in the house of a resident canon.
For
seven months Colin went on at his wood-carving with unalloyed
delight,
and wrote every week to tell Minna how much he liked the work,
and
what beautiful wooden things he would now be able to make her.
But
at
the end of those seven months, as luck would have it (whether
good
luck
or ill luck the future must say), Colin chanced to fall in one
day
with
a strange companion. One afternoon a heavy-looking Italian
workman
dropped
casually into the workshop where Colin Churchill was busy
carving.
The boy was cutting the leaves of a honeysuckle spray from life
for
a long moulding. The Italian watched him closely for a while, and
then
he said in his liquid English: 'Zat is good. You can carve, mai
boy.
You must come and see me at mai place. I wawrk for Smeez and
Whatgood.'
Colin
turned round, blushing with pleasure, and looked at the Italian.
He
couldn't tell why, but somehow in his heart instinctively, he
felt
more
proud of that workman's simple expression of satisfaction at
his
work than he had felt even when the vicar told him, in his stiff,
condescending,
depreciatory manner, that there was 'some merit in the
bas-relief
and drawings.' Smith and Whatgood were stonecutters in the
town,
who did a large trade in tombstones and 'monumental statuary.' No
doubt
the Italian was one of their artistic hands, and Colin took his
praise
with a flush of sympathetic pleasure. It was handicraftsman
speaking
critically and appreciatively of handicraftsman.
'What's
your name, sir?' he asked the man, politely.
'You
could not pronounce it,' answered the Italian, smiling and
showing
his
two fine rows of pure white teeth: 'Giuseppe Cicolari. You cannot
pronounce
it.'
'Giuseppe
Cicolari,' the boy repeated slowly, with the precise
intonation
the Italian had given it, for he had the gift of vocal
imitation,
like all men of Celtic blood (and the Dorsetshire peasant is
mainly
Celtic). 'Giuseppe Cicolari! a pretty name. Da you carve figures
for
Smith and Whatgood?'
'I
am zair sculptor,' the Italian replied, proudly. 'I carve for
zem.
I
carve ze afflicted widow, in ze classical costume, who bends under
ze
weeping
willow above ze oorn containing ze ashes of her decease husband.
You
have seen ze afflicted widow? Ha, I carve her. She is expensive.
And
I
carve ze basso-rilievo of Hope, gazing toward ze sky, in
expectation
of
ze glorious resurrection. I carve also busts; I carve ornamental
figures.
Come and see me. You are a good workman. I will show you mai
carvings.'
Colin
liked the Italian at first sight: there was a pride in his
calling
about him which he hadn't yet seen in English workmen--a certain
consciousness
of artistic worth that pleased and interested him. So the
next
Saturday evening, when they left off work early, he went round to
see
Cicolari. The Italian smiled again warmly, as soon as he saw the
boy
coming.
'So you have come,' he said, in his slow English. 'Zat is well.
If
you will be artist, you must watch ozzer artist. Ze art does not
come
of
himself, it is learnt.' And he took Colin round to see his works
of
statuary.
There
was one little statuette among the others, a small figure of
Bacchus,
ordered from the clay by a Plymouth shipowner, that pleased
Colin's
fancy especially. It wasn't remotely like the Thorwaldsen at
Wootton;
that he felt intuitively; it was a mere clever, laughing, merry
figure,
executed with some native facility, but with very little real
delicacy
or depth of feeling. Still, Colin liked it, and singled it out
at
once amongst all the mass of afflicted widows and weeping
children
as
a real genuine living human figure. The Italian was charmed at
his
selection.
'Ah, yes,' he said; 'zat is good. You have choosed right.
Zat
is ze best of ze collection. I wawrk at zat from life. It is from
ze
model.'
And he showed all his teeth again in his satisfaction.
Colin
took a little of Cicolari's moist clay up in his hand and began
roughly
moulding it into the general shape of the little Bacchus. He
did
it almost without thinking of what he was doing, and talking all
the
time,
or listening to the Italian's constant babble; and Cicolari, with
a
little disdainful smile playing round the corners of his full
lips,
made
no outward comment, but only waited, with a complacent sense of
superiority,
to see what the English boy would make of his Bacchus.
Colin
worked away at the familiar clay, and seemed to delight in the
sudden
return to that plastic and responsive material. For the first
time
since he had been at Begg's wood-carving works, it sudddenly
struck
him
that clay was an infinitely finer and more manageable medium
than
that solid, soulless, intractable wood. Soon, he threw himself
unconsciously
into the task of moulding, and worked away silently,
listening
to Cicolari's brief curt criticisms of men and things, for
hour
after hour. In the delight of finding himself once more expending
his
energies upon his proper material (for who can doubt that Colin
Churchill
was a born sculptor?) he forgot the time--nay, he forgot time
and
space both, and saw and felt nothing on earth but the artistic
joy
of
beautiful workmanship. Cicolari stood by gossiping, but said
never
a
word about the boy's Bacchus. At first, indeed (though he had
admired
Colin's
wood-work), he expected to see a grotesque failure. Next, as
the
work grew slowly under the boy's hands, he made up his mind that
he
would produce a mere stiff, lifeless, wooden copy. But by-and-by,
as
Colin
added touch after touch with his quick deft fingers, the
Italian's
contempt
passed into surprise, and his surprise into wonder and
admiration.
At last, when the boy had finished his rough sketch of the
head
to his own satisfaction, Cicolari gasped a little, open-mouthed,
and
then said slowly: 'You have wawrked in ze clay before, mai
friend?'
Colin
nodded. 'Yes,' he said, 'just to amuse myself, don't ee see? Only
just
copyin the figures at the vicarage.'
The
Italian put his head on one side, and then on another, and looked
critically
at the copy of the Bacchus. Of course it was only a raw
adumbration,
as yet, of the head and bust, but he saw quite enough to
know
at a glance that it was the work of a born sculptor. The vicar
had
half
guessed as much in his dilettante hesitating way; but the
workman,
who
knew what modelling was, saw it indubitably at once in that moist
Bacchus.
'Mai friend,' he said decisively, through his closed teeth,
'you
must not stop at ze wood-carving. You must go to Rome and be a
sculptor.
Yes. To Rome. To Rome. You must go to Rome and be a sculptor.'
The
man said it with just a tinge of jealousy in his tone, for he saw
that
Colin Churchill could not only copy but could also improve upon
his
Bacchus.
Still, he said it so heartily and earnestly, that Colin, now
well
awakened from his absorbing pursuit, laughed a boyish laugh of
mingled
amusement and exultation. 'To Rome!' he cried gaily. 'To Rome!
Why,
Mr. Cicolari, that's where all the pictures are, by Raffael and
Michael
Angelo and them that I used to see at the vicarage. Rome! why
isn't
that the capital of Italy?' For he put together naively the two
facts
about Rome which he had yet gathered: the one from the vicar's
study,
and the other from the meagre little geography book in use at the
Wootton
national school.
'Ze
capital of Italy!' cried the Italian contemptuously. 'Yes, mai
friend,
it is ze capital of Italy. And it is somesing more zan zat. I
tell
you, it is ze capital of art.'
Colin
Churchill was old enough now to understand the meaning of those
words;
and from that day onward, he never ceased to remember that the
goal
of all his final endeavours must be to reach Rome, the capital of
art,
and then learn to be a sculptor.
CHAPTER
IX. CONSPIRACY.
|After
that, Colin went many days and evenings to see Cicolari: and
the
more he talked with him and the more he watched him, the more
dissatisfied
did the boy get with the intractability of wood, and the
more
enamoured did he become of the absolute plasticity of clay and
marble.
How could he ever have been such a fool, he thought to himself,
after
having once known what he could do with the kneaded mud of
Wootton
lake,
as to consent--nay, to consent gladly--to work in stupid,
hard,
irresponsive walnut, instead of in his own familiar, plastic,
all
potential material? Why, wood, do what you would to it, was wood
still:
clay, and after clay marble, would answer immediately to every
mood
and fancy and idea of the restless changeable human personality.
The
fact was the ten or twelve months Colin Churchill had spent at
Exeter
had made a vast difference to his unfolding intellect. He was
going
to school now--to the university of native art; he was learning
himself
and his own powers; learning to pit his own views and opinions
against
those of other and less artistic workmen. Every day, though he
couldn't
have told you so himself, the boy was beginning to understand
more
and more clearly that while the other artificers he saw around
him
had
decent training, he himself had instinctive genius. He ought to
have
employed
that genius upon marble, and now he was throwing it away upon
mere
wood. When one of the canons called in one day patronisingly to
praise
his wooden roses, he could scarcely even be civil to the good
man:
praising his wooden roses, indeed, when he saw that fellow
Cicolari
engaged
in modelling from the life a smiling Bacchus! It was all too
atrocious!
'Mai
friend,' Cicolari said to him one day, as he was moulding a bit
of
clay
in his new acquaintance's room, into the counterfeit presentment
of
Cicolari's
own bust, 'you should not stop at ze wood wawrk. You have
no
freedom in ze wood, no liberty, no motion. It is all flat,
stupid,
ungraceful.
You are fit for better sings. Leave ze wood and come, here
and
wawrk wiz me.'
Colin
sighed deeply. 'I wish I could, Mr. Cicolari,' he said eagerly.
'I
was
delighted with the wood at first, and now I'm disgusted at 'un.
But
I
can't leave 'un till I'm twenty-one, because I'm bound apprentice
to
it,
and I've got to go on with the thing now whether I like 'un or
not.'
Cicolari
made a wry face, expressive of a very nasty taste, and went
through
a little pantomime of shrugs and open hand-lifting, which did
duty
instead of several vigorous sentences in the Italian language.
Colin
readily translated the pantomime as meaning in English: 'If I
were
you,
I wouldn't trouble myself about that for a moment.'
'But
I can't help it,' Colin answered in his own spoken tongue; 'I'm
obliged
to go on whether I choose to or not.'
Cicolari
screwed himself up tightly, and held his hands, palms outward,
on
a level with his ears, in the most suggestive fashion. 'England is
a
big
country,' he observed enigmat
|
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