CHAPTER V.
UNDER ANERLY BRIDGE
Although the view from the portico in front of the Beagle Inn at Anerly was very lovely, it would by no means make a good picture. It was too broad and monotonous and scattered. There was no composition in it. The pleasure derived from looking down that peaceful slope and valley was gained by glancing at it unconsciously from several points of view rather than from any particular one. If you fixed your eyes on the central or road line, no doubt you commanded Anerly Church and some fine trees and the wide plain below; but then there was no right-hand or left-hand frame to the picture, and the effect was insipid, if not distracting. If you looked through the trees you had the broad valley and the silver streak of stream; but you missed the church and the pine-clad slope which lent the romantic air to the whole scene.
Edward Graham was not a great artist. He was one of those indolent men who study art no more than the study yields pleasure. He liked painting and artists, but preferred the society of artists to that of a lonely easel, a laborious sketch-book. He was a Bohemian born, not made. He loved art for what it brought him from without more than for any divine joy it aroused within. By fortune he was poor, and by nature idle. He did not like doing anything; but of all occupations that could bring him money he disliked painting least. Therefore he painted for his bread. If he had been rich-so much did he enjoy the atmosphere of art, and the companionship of those who follow art-he would have painted all the same, that he might be entitled to smoke pipes and discuss pictures with better painters than he. He was one of those men who, although earning their bread by a profession, are amateurs to the last, one of those to whom talk of art is dearer than the use of artist's tools. He always wore a brown velveteen coat, a soft hat with a broad brim, and a Cambridge-blue tie. He was about twenty-eight years of age, of medium height, lightly built, and of dark complexion; the most remarkable thing in his face being a pair of large, round, brown eyes. In manner he was cordial, enthusiastic, almost boisterous.
The morning after Edward Graham had heard the story of Stephen Goolby's temptation was bright with dew and sunshine, and sweet with spices from the pine-trees and brisk balm of the meadows. Young Graham was on a walking tour. In his knapsack he carried two clean flannel shirts, a few collars, toilette brushes, and a comb; a couple of pair of thick knitted stockings, and a razor and strop; for Edward Graham shaved his chin and cheeks, wearing no hair on his face but a pair of moustaches. At the back of his knapsack was strapped a small rectangular japanned case, containing a large sketching-pad, three small canvases, a mahlstick, moist water-colours, oil-colours, brushes, and so on. A stout walking-stick he carried was a folded-up easel, and his knapsack served as a seat when he was painting or sketching in the open air.
On this beautiful morning in June Graham rose early, and, having filled and lighted a briar-root pipe, strolled out in front of the Beagle Inn. He took a leisurely survey of the place, drew his hat knowingly on the side of his head, as though to show the crows-the only living things in view-that Nature might be very clever in her way, but that she could not impose on him, and that he was about to probe her to the core.
He lounged indolently down the winding road that led by Anerly Church to the valley and broad stream beyond. He had his hands in the pockets of his velveteen shooting-jacket, as, with hat on one side and head on the other, and legs moving loosely and without any premeditation, he strolled down the hill.
As soon as he got near Anerly Church he paused, and, turning half round, looked up the pine-clad slope. After a careful scrutiny of a few minutes, he shook his head gloomily at it, as though he had expected and deserved much better treatment at its hands. Then, drawing his jacket tightly round his hips in a leisurely and dejected way, he continued his descent.
When he got as far as Anerly Church he paused again and looked round him. There was a slight relaxation of his critical stare, and a glance of approval in his large brown eyes. The approval was not so much of the landscape as of the fact that he, Edward Graham, approved of himself for having found out a suitable standpoint from which to make a picture of the place. For, give Nature all her due, what was the good of setting forth fair landscapes if no one with an artistic eye and artistic skill came her way to paint them?
The aspect which the young artist selected was gentle and charming as the soul who loves peaceful England could desire. Beneath the road ran a small stream.
From the right-hand side of the road, as one went down from the village, the ground sloped rapidly towards the valley below. The little stream running under the road had worn a deep narrow ravine, which expanded lower down, and over this rose a gaunt stone bridge supporting the road. The sides of this glen were lined with mountain ash, silver beeches, splay alders, gigantic ferns, and tangles of broad-bladed grasses, and masses of mingled bush and bramble and shrub, down to the golden mosses that slept upon the dark cold rocks above the sparkling curves of falling water. And below each tiny cascade lay a level miniature swamp, with a few huge flags standing up in each green, rush-fringed, open space.
On the slope of this glen, and on the slope of the great valley, stood Anerly Church, a couple of hundred yards from the bridge. Past the church the glen opened, and the dwarf vegetation near the bridge gave way to lofty pines, whose tops made a long sombre arch over the stream. Beyond this dark arch lay a blaze of green light, and a scarf of flaming white satin, where the valley and the stream caught the full sunlight.
"This will be jolly!" said Edward Graham, as he scaled the low parapet to the approach of the bridge, and threw himself down on the slope of the glen. "That archway is partly dry; I'll walk up in it until I get the picture focussed, and then I'll paint it. The bridge is so high there is sure to be plenty of light."
But when he got under the arch, and had picked his way to the rear of it, he altered his mind slightly. "By Jove!" he cried, for a moment looking at the startling effect of light and shade. "I don't know whether Salvator Rosa or Rembrandt would have admired this the more, but I am going to paint it; and instead of using the arch merely as a means of focussing the scene, I will paint the whole blessed lot, archway and stalactites, water under the archway and all."
The picture was striking.
By the sober light of the vault it was possible to make out with dim distinctness the outline of every object in it. This dimness did not arise from want of light, but from the fact that the floor and the sides of the vault were damp, and the outlines of damp objects in such a light are always uncertain to the eye. The archway looked north and south, and now a small portion of the western inner wall had caught a beam of the early sun, and the water in a pool at the eastern side, struck by the rays refracted by the wall, threw a blue and brown patch of trembling light on the middle of the roof. This light in return fell into another pool at the eastern side, where it made a trembling veil of orange-brown and golden-green; while all round, on the grey walls, the white roof, and the ashen stalactites, were scattered wandering hints of prismatic fire, which seemed rather to come through the stone than to be reflected from the water below.
Thus the huge barrel formed by the bridge, with its wavering, dull, dappled, transparent lights, was connected by one patch of brightness on the western pier and vault with the foreground of blue-and-white water, and rich green and yellow stripes of the rushes and grasses and underwood in the flat light of the glen. Beyond the flat light was the gloomy tunnel formed by the pines, where the yellows turned to browns, and the greens to sad blues; and the water flowed furtively from dull olive pool to dull olive pool, until at last it sprang out, a white blaze, into the full sunlight beyond, and fell headlong in foam to join the silver scarf of stream lying across the golden meadows below.
For a long while Edward Graham paused in reverence. He was not in his essence an artist, and the impulse which would have come first to an artist, came second to him.
His first distinct thought was: "What a picture it will make!" His second, "How beautiful it is!" Then he looked for a long time without thinking. He was gazing at the simple whole without reflection, as one may listen