I fell from the skies on Barbizon about two o’clock of a September afternoon. It is the dead hour of the day; all the workers have gone painting, all the idlers strolling, in the forest or the plain; the winding causewayed street is solitary, and the inn deserted. I was the more pleased to find one of my old companions in the dining-room; his town clothes marked him for a man in the act of departure; and indeed his portmanteau lay beside him on the floor.
“Why, Stennis,” I cried, “you’re the last man I expected to find here.”
“You won’t find me here long,” he replied. “King Pandion he is dead; all his friends are lapped in lead. For men of our antiquity, the poor old shop is played out.”
“I have had playmates, I have had companions,” I quoted in return. We were both moved, I think, to meet again in this scene of our old pleasure parties so unexpectedly, after so long an interval, and both already so much altered.
“That is the sentiment,” he replied. “All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have been here a week, and the only living creature who seemed to recollect me was the Pharaon. Bar the Sirons, of course, and the perennial Bodmer.”
“Is there no survivor?” I inquired.
“Of our geological epoch? not one,” he replied. “This is the city of Petra in Edom.”
“And what sort of Bedouins encamp among the ruins?” I asked.
“Youth, Dodd, youth; blooming, conscious youth,” he returned. “Such a gang, such reptiles! to think we were like that! I wonder Siron didn’t sweep us from his premises.”
“Perhaps we weren’t so bad,” I suggested.
“Don’t let me depress you,” said he. “We were both Anglo- Saxons, anyway, and the only redeeming feature to-day is another.”
The thought of my quest, a moment driven out by this rencounter, revived in my mind. “Who is he?” I cried. “Tell me about him.”
“What, the Redeeming Feature?” said he. “Well, he’s a very pleasing creature, rather dim, and dull, and genteel, but really pleasing. He is very British, though, the artless Briton! Perhaps you’ll find him too much so for the transatlantic nerves. Come to think of it, on the other hand, you ought to get on famously. He is an admirer of your great republic in one of its (excuse me) shoddiest features; he takes in and sedulously reads a lot of American papers. I warned you he was artless.”
“What papers are they?” cried I.
“San Francisco papers,” said he. “He gets a bale of them about twice a week, and studies them like the Bible. That’s one of his weaknesses; another is to be incalculably rich. He has taken Masson’s old studio — you remember? — at the corner of the road; he has furnished it regardless of expense, and lives there surrounded with vins fins and works of art. When the youth of to-day goes up to the Caverne des Brigands to make punch — they do all that we did, like some nauseous form of ape (I never appreciated before what a creature of tradition mankind is) — this Madden follows with a basket of champagne. I told him he was wrong, and the punch tasted better; but he thought the boys liked the style of the thing, and I suppose they do. He is a very good-natured soul, and a very melancholy, and rather a helpless. O, and he has a third weakness which I came near forgetting. He paints. He has never been taught, and he’s past thirty, and he paints.”
“How?” I asked.
“Rather well, I think,” was the reply. “That’s the annoying part of it. See for yourself. That panel is his.”
I stepped toward the window. It was the old familiar room, with the tables set like a Greek P, and the sideboard, and the aphasiac piano, and the panels on the wall. There were Romeo and Juliet, Antwerp from the river, Enfield’s ships among the ice, and the huge huntsman winding a huge horn; mingled with them a few new ones, the thin crop of a succeeding generation, not better and not worse. It was to one of these I was directed; a thing coarsely and wittily handled, mostly with the palette- knife, the colour in some parts excellent, the canvas in others loaded with mere clay. But it was the scene, and not the art or want of it, that riveted my notice. The foreground was of sand and scrub and wreckwood; in the middle distance the many- hued and smooth expanse of a lagoon, enclosed by a wall of breakers; beyond, a blue strip of ocean. The sky was cloudless, and I could hear the surf break. For the place was Midway Island; the point of view the very spot at which I had landed with the captain for the first time, and from which I had re-embarked the day before we sailed. I had already been gazing for some seconds, before my attention was arrested by a blur on the sea-line; and stooping to look, I recognised the smoke of a steamer.
“Yes,” said I, turning toward Stennis, “it has merit. What is it?”
“A fancy piece,” he returned. “That’s what pleased me. So few of the fellows in our time had the imagination of a garden snail.”
“Madden, you say his name is?” I pursued.
“Madden,” he repeated.
“Has he travelled much?” I inquired.
“I haven’t an idea. He is one of the least autobiographical of men. He sits, and smokes, and giggles, and sometimes he makes small jests; but his contributions to the art of pleasing are generally confined to looking like a gentleman and being one. No,” added Stennis, “he’ll never suit you, Dodd; you like more head on your liquor. You’ll find him as dull as ditch water.”
“Has he big blonde side-whiskers like tusks?” I asked, mindful of the photograph of Goddedaal.
“Certainly not: why should he?” was the reply.
“Does he write many letters?” I continued.
“God knows,” said Stennis. “What is wrong with you? I never saw you taken this way before.”
“The fact is, I think I know the man,” said I. “I think I’m looking for him. I rather think he is my long-lost brother.”
“Not twins, anyway,” returned Stennis.
And about the same time, a carriage driving up to the inn, he took his departure.
I walked till dinner-time in the plain, keeping to the fields; for I instinctively shunned observation, and was racked by many incongruous and impatient feelings. Here was a man whose voice I had once heard, whose doings had filled so many days of my life with interest and distress, whom I had lain awake to dream of like a lover; and now his hand was on the door; now we were to meet; now I was to learn at last the mystery of the substituted crew. The sun went down over the plain of the Angelus, and as the hour approached, my courage lessened. I let the laggard peasants pass me on the homeward way. The lamps were lit, the soup was served, the company were all at table, and the room sounded already with multitudinous talk before I entered. I took my place and found I was opposite to Madden. Over six feet high and well set up, the hair dark and streaked with silver, the eyes dark and kindly, the mouth very good-natured, the teeth admirable; linen and h............