style="font-size:15px;"> That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae, May 1915
CHAPTER I.
PORTRAITS
“As to what the picture represents, that depends upon who looks at it.”—Whistler.
The French Mission in its profound wisdom had sent as liaison officer to the Scottish Division a captain of Dragoons whose name was Beltara.
“Are you any relation to the painter, sir?” Aurelle, the interpreter, asked him.
“What did you say?” said the dragoon. “Say that again, will you? You are in the army, aren’t you? You are a soldier, for a little time at any rate? and you claim to know that such people as painters exist? You actually admit the existence of that God-forsaken species?”
And he related how he had visited the French War Office after he had been wounded, and how an old colonel had made friends with him and had tried to find him a congenial job.
“What’s your profession in civilian life, capitaine?” the old man had asked as he filled in a form.
“I am a painter, sir.”
“A painter?” the colonel exclaimed, dumbfounded. “A painter? Why, damn it all!”
And after thinking it over for a minute he added, with the kindly wink of an accomplice in crime, “Well, let’s put down nil, eh? It won’t look quite so silly.”
Captain Beltara and Aurelle soon became inseparable companions. They had the same tastes and different professions, which is the ideal recipe for friendship. Aurelle admired the sketches in which the painter recorded the flexible lines of the Flemish landscape; Beltara was a kindly critic of the young man’s rather feeble verses.
“You would perhaps be a poet,” he said to him, “if you were not burdened with a certain degree of culture. An artist must be an idiot. The only perfect ones are the sculptors; then come the landscape painters; then painters in general; after them the writers. The critics are not at all stupid; and the really intelligent men never do anything.”
“Why shouldn’t intelligence have an art of its own, as sensibility has?”
“No, my friend, no. Art is a game; intelligence is a profession. Look at me, for instance; now that I no longer touch my brushes, I sometimes actually catch myself thinking; it’s quite alarming.”
“You ought to paint some portraits here, mon capitaine. Aren’t you tempted? These sunburnt British complexions——”
“Of course, my boy, it is tempting; but I haven’t got my things with me. Besides, would they consent to sit?”
“Of course they would, for as long as you like. To-morrow I’ll bring round young Dundas, the aide-de-camp. He’s got nothing to do; he’ll be delighted.”
Next day Beltara made a three-crayon sketch of Lieutenant Dundas. The young aide-de-camp turned out quite a good sitter; all he asked was to be allowed to do something, which meant shouting his hunting cries, cracking his favourite whip and talking to his dog.
“Ah,” said Aurelle, at the end of the sitting, “I like that immensely—really. It’s so lightly touched—it’s a mere nothing, and yet the whole of England is there.”
And, waving his hands with the ritual gestures of the infatuated picture-lover, he praised the artlessness of the clear, wide eyes, the delightful freshness of the complexion, and the charming candour of the smile.
But the Cherub planted himself in front of his portrait, struck the classical pose of the golfer, and, poising his arms and hitting at an imaginary ball, pronounced judgment on the work of art with perfect frankness.
“My God,” he said, “what an awful thing! How the deuce did you see, old man, that my breeches were laced at the side?”
“What on earth can that matter?” asked Aurelle, annoyed.
“Matter! Would you like to be painted with your nose behind your ear? My God! It’s about as much like me as it is like Lloyd George.”
“Likeness is quite a secondary quality,” said Aurelle condescendingly. “The interesting thing is not the individual; it is the type, the synthesis of a whole race or class.”
“In the days when I was starving in my native South,” said the painter, “I used to paint portraits of tradesmen’s wives for a fiver. When I had done, the family assembled for a private view. ‘Well,’ said the husband, ‘it’s not so bad; but what about the likeness, eh? You put it in afterwards, I suppose?’ ‘The likeness?’ I indignantly replied. ‘The likeness? My dear sir, I am a painter of ideals; I don’t paint your wife as she is, I paint her as she ought to be. Your wife? Why, you see her every day—she cannot interest you. But my painting—ah, you never saw anything like my painting!’ And the tradesman was convinced, and went about repeating in every café on the Cannebière, ‘Beltara, mon bon, is the painter of ideals; he does not paint my wife as she is, he paints her as she ought to be.’”
“Well,” interrupted young Lieutenant Dundas, “if you can make my breeches lace in front, I should be most grateful. I look like a damned fool as it is now!”
The following week Beltara, who had managed to get hold of some paints, made excellent studies in oil of Colonel Parker and Major Knight. The major, who was stout, found his corporation somewhat exaggerated.
“Yes,” said the painter, “but with the varnish, you know——”
And with an expressive movement of his hands he made as if to restore the figure to more normal dimensions.
The colonel, who was lean, wanted to be padded out.
“Yes,” said Beltara, “but with the varnish, you know——”
And his hands, moving back again, gave promise of astonishing expansions.
