Part 2

Walking along the river wall at Botzen, Edmund Dawney said to Alois Harz: “Would you care to know the family at that pink house, Villa Rubein?”

Harz answered with a smile:

“Perhaps.”

“Come with me then this afternoon.”

They had stopped before an old house with a blind, deserted look, that stood by itself on the wall; Harz pushed the door open.

“Come in, you don't want breakfast yet. I'm going to paint the river to-day.”

He ran up the bare broad stairs, and Dawney followed leisurely, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his head thrown back.

In the attic which filled the whole top story, Harz had pulled a canvas to the window. He was a young man of middle height, square shouldered, active, with an angular face, high cheek-bones, and a strong, sharp chin. His eyes were piercing and steel-blue, his eyebrows very flexible, nose long and thin with a high bridge; and his dark, unparted hair fitted him like a cap. His clothes looked as if he never gave them a second thought.

This room, which served for studio, bedroom, and sitting-room, was bare and dusty. Below the window the river in spring flood rushed down the valley, a stream, of molten bronze. Harz dodged before the canvas like a fencer finding his distance; Dawney took his seat on a packingcase.

“The snows have gone with a rush this year,” he drawled. “The Talfer comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the Etsch and make it green; a parable of the Spring for you, my painter.”

Harz mixed his colours.

“I've no time for parables,” he said, “no time for anything. If I could be guaranteed to live to ninety-nine, like Titian—he had a chance. Look at that poor fellow who was killed the other day! All that struggle, and then—just at the turn!”

He spoke English with a foreign accent; his voice was rather harsh, but his smile very kindly.

Dawney lit a cigarette.

“You painters,” he said, “are better off than most of us. You can strike out your own line. Now if I choose to treat a case out of the ordinary way and the patient dies, I'm ruined.”

“My dear Doctor—if I don't paint what the public likes, I starve; all the same I'm going to paint in my own way; in the end I shall come out on top.”

“It pays to work in the groove, my friend, until you've made your name; after that—do what you like, they'll lick your boots all the same.”

“Ah, you don't love your work.”

Dawney answered slowly: “Never so happy as when my hands are full. But I want to make money, to get known, to have a good time, good cigars, good wine. I hate discomfort. No, my boy, I must work it on the usual lines; I don't like it, but I must lump it. One starts in life with some notion of the ideal—it's gone by the board with me. I've got to shove along until I've made my name, and then, my little man—then—”

“Then you'll be soft!”

“You pay dearly for that first period!”

“Take my chance of that; there's no other way.”

“Make one!”

“Humph!”

Harz poised his brush, as though it were a spear:

“A man must do the best in him. If he has to suffer—let him!”

Dawney stretched his large soft body; a calculating look had come into his eyes.

“You're a tough little man!” he said.