Part 5

He sped into the cleft and I moved on. Surmounting a mound in the ice, I could scan the whole surface. A quarter of a mile beyond me, the dark figures of the party crouched beside a long narrow crevasse. As I drew near, the tall figure of the Professor rose and faced me. He made no move to meet me, and when I had approached within a few feet of him, I saw that his hands hung limp at his sides and that he was sobbing. He could not speak, but he pointed to the crevasse. I threw myself at full length upon the ice and peeped over the brink.

A hundred feet below me, on the edge of a block of ice that hung unsteadily upon a mass of _débris_, lay Daniel. His head was doubled unnaturally forward upon his chest. The trash about him was stained with red. He must have died in an instant.

One look was enough. I sprang to my feet and faced the Professor.

"How did that happen?" I exclaimed. "Good God, man, speak! Don't act like a baby!"

Praed burst out sobbing afresh. It was a moment before he could control his tongue. When he spoke he clinched his hands and gazed blankly up the glacier toward the sun.

"It was I," he said; "he saved me. I fell—"

"Well?" I demanded.

"Do you see that shoulder of ice on this side of the crevasse, and the shelf jutting out opposite?"

I peered over the edge once more. The wall hung slightly out at the top and I had a good view of everything beneath. The cleft was not more than five feet wide, but, except for the _débris_ lodged below me, it sank away into darkness. It may have been a thousand feet deep.

Some twenty feet down the side a ledge, perhaps twelve inches broad, started from the wall. Upon the opposite wall, about six feet higher, as far as I could estimate, allowing for the foreshortening, there was another shelf, considerably broader. Upon it sprang up the stumps of two or three heavy icicles that had grown down from an ice-bridge. Doubtless, anciently the _débris_ caught below had been part of this bridge, and in its fall had carried the upper ends of the icicles with it. One end of the shelf slanted up almost to the surface.

I took this in at a glance.

"Yes," I said; "go on."

"I must confess from the beginning," he proceeded, in a curious monotone, as if his body, not his mind, were talking, "I doubted your judgment of the glacier. The access to the summit was evidently so easy that, I thought, some route across would surely open out before us. I desired to surprise you; I knew you could easily overtake us. Therefore, I set forth. The Eskimos hung back, but I promised them knives if they would follow.

"It was easy enough until we came to this crevasse. I attempted to leap across, but I slipped and fell. I do not know how it happened, but I struck several times and whirled over and over, and felt a blow upon the back of my head. It dazed me. When I came to myself I was seated upon that ledge, with my back against the wall. The wall slants in, as you see, and the outer edge of the ledge is raised, so I was secure.

"But I had only half recovered my senses and I began to cry out for help. I was so much disturbed that I didn't know what was going on until I saw someone upon the shelf opposite. Then I think I shouted louder. Suddenly there came another shock and I should have fallen, but someone held me up. It was Daniel. He must have leaped across."

He paused and I looked down again. The ledge, at its broadest barely a foot and a half wide, fell away into the wall, not two feet from the spot where Praed must have brought up. It was a brave leap.

"Go on," I commanded.

"Daniel laughed at me," resumed the Professor, like a child reading from a book, "and waited till I got back some of my self-possession. Then he made signs to me to spring across and catch the icicles with my arms. I was afraid. He laughed again and made another sign that he would lift me across. I let him take me by the knees and lift me until my head and waist rose above the shelf, and then I leaned forward and we both toppled over. I caught the icicles, and he held me firm and perhaps—I don't know—if I had kept still—"

I hastened to steady him.

"What did you do?" I asked. "Keep cool."

"I struggled. I squirmed with my feet in getting up—and kicked him free. When I was safe I tried to help him—I meant to help him. But the ledge was empty and he lay there."

"Good God!" was all I could say.

We passed the succeeding three hours in dead silence. Praed never moved, I think, and never took his eyes from the sky above the _névé_ basin. The Eskimos sat quietly beside the grave of their friend. I sprang across the crevasse where it narrowed, descended to the shelf with the icicles, and mused upon the courage that had dared a leap to that narrow footing.

At last the party from the ship arrived with ropes. The leader of the Relief Party hastened in advance. His pale face turned red as he saw Praed, and he sprang forward with hand outstretched.

"Praed, old fellow!" he exclaimed. "By the Lord, I'm glad to see you alive. How did you get out?"

Praed turned toward him. I couldn't see his face, but the leader fell back.

"What's the matter?" he said. "What is it?"

"It's an accident," I put in. "Daniel has fallen and is dead."

Then Praed showed the first sign of manliness that I had ever seen in him.

"It is my fault," he proclaimed. "I am to blame for his death. I demand the right to fetch up his body."

In pity for his evident wretchedness, the leader consented. We lowered the Professor by a rope to the heap of trash. But as his weight bore upon the block where the body lay, the ice tilted and fell. Daniel fell with it. The ringing of icicles on either wall of the glacier lessened to a tinkling; the tinkling merged into a sustained harmonic, like the final note of some violin sonata. The tone died away. No final crash followed. The utmost depths were beyond our hearing.

During most of the voyage home, Praed behaved like a man in a dream. He rarely spoke, and when we addressed him he started before he replied. Only once did he show any trace of his ancient aggressive manner, and that was when someone said a slighting word of an Eskimo.

"The Eskimos," retorted Praed, "are heroes."

That was absurd. Perhaps there are three or four left in the tribe who would have done what Daniel did. The Professor was pitiful in his broken condition. We deemed him a chastened man.

The other day, however, a member of our old party came to see me. There is only one topic of conversation among men who have journeyed to the Far North. In the course of our Arctic gossip I asked for news of Praed.

"Haven't you heard?" asked my friend. "He is lecturing through the West. He has won a great reputation for his courage in descending into the crevasse."

"Hm!" I said, and both of us were silent. We were thinking of a strain of ice-music as unearthly as the Theme of the Grail, and of a vast white tomb, now doubtless afloat upon some Arctic sea. It bears the body of a better man than Praed.

A SLUMBER-SONG

FOR THE FISHERMAN'S CHILD

By Henry van Dyke

Furl your sail, my little boatie; Here's the harbor, still and deep, Where the dreaming tides, in-streaming, Up the channel creep. See, the sunset breeze is dying; Hark, the plover, landward flying, Softly down the twilight crying; Come to anchor, little boatie, In the port of Sleep.

Far away, my little boatie, Roaring waves are white with foam; Ships are striving, onward driving, Day and night they roam. Father's at the deep-sea trawling, In the darkness, rowing, hauling, While the hungry winds are calling,— God protect him, little boatie, Bring him safely home!

Not for you, my little boatie. Is the wide and weary sea; You're too slender, and too tender, You must rest with me. All day long you have been straying Up and down the shore and playing; Come to port, make no delaying! Day is over, little boatie, Night falls suddenly.

Furl your sail, my little boatie; Fold your wings, my tired dove. Dews are sprinkling, stars are twinkling Drowsily above. Cease from sailing, cease from rowing; Rock upon the dream-tide, knowing Safely o'er your rest are glowing, All the night, my little boatie, Harbor-lights of love.

M. COWLES.

THE PAINTING OF GEORGE BUTLER

By W. C. Brownell

The painting of George Butler has the interest of all art that is not manifestly the product of the influences of the moment, but owes its quality to the personality of the painter. Such is the interest of Whistler's, Winslow Homer's, the late Homer Martin's, LaFarge's, Vedder's. It is art that has a direct rather than an illustrative interest—a real rather than a historical value. It does not contribute much to the race, the moment, and the _milieu_ theory. And, of course, it suffers some neglect at the present time, which apparently belongs to the theoreticians, and when, accordingly, the illustrative and historical interest of all data that can contribute to the construction of formulary is felt so universally and so nearly exclusively. But the play of those forces that are so highly differentiated as to escape classification—the forces that make up personality—rewards contemplation in quite a different way. It eludes the pursuit of philosophy, but it repays the æsthetic attention quite as much, quite as legitimately, as the study of that impersonal and rather mechanical result of current habits of mind and points of view, the art of the schools. Butler was a pupil—long ago—of Couture, and one may still see evidences of the fact in his portraits now and then. But compare his relation to Couture with that of Sargent to Carolus Duran, for example, in order to see how wholly personal his painting is and how little he owes to any mere source of acquisition, except in certain means of technical expression, early adopted and perhaps rather lazily adhered to. Power and distinction such as Sargent's, even when exhibited almost solely within the range of technical expression, have certainly an individuality of their own that is most striking and admirable. But it is an individuality of accomplishment rather than of quality, marked more by its eminence of excellence than by its native idiosyncrasy. Of course, any intimate association of the two painters would be more misleading than illuminating, and in contrasting them in this single but fundamental respect I only have in mind the radical difference thus illustrated between a painter who has achieved fame by distancing competition in following traditional lines and expressing current tendencies, and a painter who has a controlling personal bent and has followed that.

Butler has, at all events, always done just what he wanted to do, and in the strictest sense. His temperament has always dictated his expression, and in thoroughly imperious fashion. It may be said, indeed, to have dominated his intelligence to the extent, at least, of eliminating, as objects of curiosity, interest, or effort, everything not strictly in accord with itself. But the result has been the felicity of extreme concentration. If in doing what he wanted to do his wants have been few, he has, on the other hand, wanted them with an intensity proportionate to its singleness. Beauty exhibited in the human face and form has absorbed his artistic attention and activity. I remember not only no landscapes, but nothing really to be called a composition among his works. A few Barye-like animal fragments, of heroic mould—a tiger's head, a dog's head and shoulders, the foreparts of an extremely leonine lion, some very feline cats—are, I fancy, the only diversion of his devotion to the single figure and the portrait, and they are but examples of the instinctive exercise of his remarkable gift of representation, and show a fine faculty at play rather than at work. They do not illustrate the "discipline of genius" as some writer has defined art to be, but are merely "artistic" in the sense in which artists use the word, _i.e._, born of the impulse to create or reproduce an "effect" of some kind. In the portrait and the single figure, however, he has expressed himself with freedom, with zest, and with completeness.

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Portraiture is a branch of art in which artistic aptitudes exhibit themselves in as individual a way as in any other perhaps, despite the preponderance usually assigned to the "likeness." And neither _à priori_ nor historically can it be asserted that the imagination itself plays in portraiture an inferior part. The material is possibly less varied than that of landscape or decorative art; but that is nothing. A painter shows his quality quite as much within a limited as within a wider range. And the material of portraiture is at least as highly differentiated as it is limited. The interest of the "Lesson in Anatomy" resides in many of its various pictorial elements no doubt, but also and in the supreme degree in what Burger calls "the working of intellect," as seen in the countenances of the listening circle around the demonstrator. A painter who exhibits himself in portraying human intellect, emotions, character, personality, and with these highly complicated and maturely developed phenomena shows us his point of view and way of looking at things—which are what art and genius mainly are, according to Mr. Henry James—has an opportunity certainly of doing so on a very high plane. And on such a plane Butler is, I think, very much at home. The quality that all his portraits show in common is displayed with perfect freedom and the effect only to be attained by the easy exercise of a native gift.

In the first place they are extremely human. They are in no degree portraits _à la mode_ and do not exploit the painter's virtuosity. They show, on the contrary, his respect for, and interest in, his model. One establishes relations through them with their originals. They have character in the moral and intellectual, as well as in the artistic sense. They acquire in this way a typical value. The Century Club's portrait of General Greene is also a portrait of the American soldier, as many another, easily mentioned, is that of the American lady. They are intellectually generalized, that is to say, endowed with a wider than merely individual interest. In the second place they are extremely pictorial. The most intractable subject is made agreeable by being handled with a touch directed by an instinctive preference for, and delight in, the beautiful. The sitter receives the benefit of a translation into a heightened and poetized medium without loss of anything essentially characteristic. In both these respects—their humanity and their pictorial quality—Butler's portraits are decidedly exceptional in current art.

Current art is certainly concentrated upon physical character rather than upon beauty, and current appreciation of it is in harmonious accord with its realistic effort and aim. One may refine speculation to the point of asserting that there is no opposition, essentially considered, between the two; that Rembrandt is as distinguished for his beauty as Raphael, and that on the other hand there is as much character in "The School of Athens" as in the "Lesson in Anatomy." But in matters of this kind terms are approximate only, and the fact that definition is a difficult matter does not obscure the plain truth that a marked difference exists between the work of a painter in whose mind an agreeable conception of an object mirrors itself, and that of one mainly anxious to be exact. Technic has spread prodigiously (quite as much perhaps as it has developed) in the present epoch, and has become rather arrogant in its aggrandizement. Criticism, too, in becoming largely technical has assisted the tendency, so far as it exerts an influence on practice. It has grown tired, no doubt, of its own commonplaces and generalities, its easy habit of estimating aims rather than accomplishment, its routine insensitiveness to aspect and perfunctory absorption in significance. But in assuming the painter's point of view—not a very esoteric one, certainly—it has not been quite self-respectfully discriminating enough to avoid the purely professional attitude. And it is perhaps time for the pendulum to swing back again a little, so that both in estimating and in enjoying the painter's art we may once more think of its intellectual rather than so wholly of its mechanical side, which latter we may also be sure, nowadays, will be quite carefully, and in many cases competently, attended to by the painters themselves.

In this way, at any rate, having in mind Butler's portraits, we shall be able, whether or no they have the accent and relief requisite for a portrait of the striking or "stunning" order—in this way we shall be able to appreciate what a fine talent it predicates to say of a painter that he sees the finest side of his subject. This is often understood as lightly as it is said, and taken to indicate merely a preference for the agreeable to the more markedly characteristic. And this is no doubt especially true in the field of portraiture. But certainly, and especially in portraiture, very little reflection is needed to show one that the great peril to be avoided, and the most constant menace, is caricature of one sort or another. It may be the caricature that comes from imperfectly seizing and imperfectly rendering the traits of the subject, the caricature that inadequacy is. Or it may be that which comes from undue and disproportionate accentuation of what is perceived too exclusively. Success depends upon avoiding both by forming a correspondent conception of the subject—a conception that is clear and consistent and positive—and painting that. The painter then copies his conception, not his model, and the representative value of his portrait will have precisely the interest of his conception—in so far, of course, as he is able to convey it. In a sense, to be sure, it may be said that it is impossible to paint a portrait without proceeding in this way, without first forming a conception of the sitter plastically, if not morally; that the result is necessarily the product of some preliminary conception. But that is metaphysical fine-spinning. Empirically we all know that unconscious caricature—which is the caricature here referred to—is due to either a defective or a distorted conception, in other words, to a mental image either so faint or so little correspondent to the original as to be practically no conception at all. Of a very large number of portraits, assuredly, it may be asserted that they embody no more developed and complete an antecedent image in the mind of the painter than a mere mechanical impression, barely distinct enough to direct the muscular movements requisite to register it upon canvas.

Butler's conception is, as I have intimated, always very sympathetically formed. It seems to indicate that he likes the sitter. His own cordiality enters into it. It is a result of harmonious relations between his imagination and the sitter's nature—the qualities, as well as the appearance, of the subject. Landscape painting, says Eugène Véron, is "the painting of one's emotions in the presence of nature." Butler's portraits, similarly, seem the painting of his idea of the subject in its suggestive, stimulating, rectifying presence. His conception implies a certain slowness of formation—the time to become acquainted, at least. That of such a painter as Sargent is so rapid as to seem quite impersonal, in comparison. It is apparently formed so quickly as to be really an impression rather than a conception at all. Though occasionally plainly transitory, it is often wonderfully vivid and searching, but rarely does it attest that assimilation which is a necessary preliminary of synthesis of such complexity as the conception of an active personality is entitled to. Its qualities are fundamentally "artistic." Butler's is at the same time more mature and less objective. Sargent's _grandes dames_, for example, are always fine ladies, but Butler's portraits of women have, all of them, whatever the sitter's type, the patrician look. Yet they are noble rather than elegant, and simple in their refinement. Their graciousness is native, and there is something ample in the ease with which they carry themselves. Add to this a poetic strain that characterizes very intimately their unaffected naturalness and gives them a universal as well as a specific interest, making of them abiding works of art.

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The Italian type, which almost all his single figures illustrate, has had a particular charm for Butler—as the accompanying illustrations attest. And to its interpretation he has brought a remarkable and an instinctive sympathy. Stendhal would have liked his Italian figures—Stendhal, who better than any other writer, perhaps, has understood the Italian national character in its nobility as well as its finesse. Its finesse has not interested Butler, as indeed it could hardly interest a painter of his frank nature, and it is not, of course, a particularly paintable quality, though it must be confessed that Velasquez made something of it in his Innocent X. of the Doria Gallery. But its nobility, its largeness, its elemental and untormented quality, its freedom from pettiness and perplexities, its naturalness, its frank following of the dictates of will and passion, unsophisticated by the restraints and complications of vanity or self-consciousness in any of its myriad forms—can be read in Butler's Capri peasants as in a book. Health and vigor, an animation that is not feverish or hardly alert, the charm of pensiveness without sadness, of repose without revery, of work without strain, and existence without effort, they show in every expression of their large lines and simple, graceful attitudes. Now and then from the face shines a beautiful soul, its innocence untouched by experience and acquiring an almost pathetic quality from its unworldly, yet by no means spiritual serenity. They win your admiration and your heart. They have infinite capacities of feeling, of loving, of wilfulness, of self-sacrifice. They have been refined but not corrupted by their not too close or too reciprocal contact with civilization. They are all of a piece, and one comprehends the tragedy that excess would mean for them. In their way they are the acme of poetry and beauty expressed in character that has a wonderful correspondence to the envelope of its plastic manifestation. "I would rather," exclaimed once a friend of mine—a lady, naturally—"I would rather know one Jew than forty Gentiles, they have so much more _character_." Character in this sense the Italians possess in effusion, so to speak, and Butler's Capriotes and Venetians exhibit it with a native dignity and charm that one has only to think of such contrasts as Bastien-Lepage's, or even Millet's, peasants (far more interesting in many other respects, of course) to appreciate.