“I desire the truth, Mr. Walton.”
“God bless you! God is blessing you,” I said.
“Amen,” returned Percivale devoutly; and we strolled away together in silence towards the cliffs.
The recession of the tide allowed us to get far enough away from the face of the rocks to see the general effect. With the lisping of the inch-deep wavelets at our heels we stood and regarded the worn yet defiant, the wasted and jagged yet reposeful face of the guardians of the shore.
“Who could imagine, in weather like this, and with this baby of a tide lying behind us, low at our feet, and shallow as the water a schoolboy pours upon his slate to wash it withal, that those grand cliffs before us bear on their front the scars and dints of centuries, of chiliads of stubborn resistance, of passionate contest with this same creature that is at this moment unable to rock the cradle of an infant? Look behind you, at your feet, Mr. Percivale; look before you at the chasms, rents, caves, and hollows of those rocks.”
“I wish you were a painter, Mr. Walton,” he said.
“I wish I were,” I returned. “At least I know I should rejoice in it, if it had been given me to be one. But why do you say so now?”
“Because you have always some individual predominating idea, which would give interpretation to Nature while it gave harmony, reality, and individuality to your representation of her.”
“I know what you mean,” I answered; “but I have no gift whatever in that direction. I have no idea of drawing, or of producing the effects of light and shade; though I think I have a little notion of colour—perhaps about as much as the little London boy, who stopped a friend of mine once to ask the way to the field where the buttercups grew, had of nature.”
“I wish I could ask your opinion of some of my pictures.”