It was his first journey to the Campagna; he was going without a guide, only inquiring now and then for Valdiorno, a small mountain town lying near the Neapolitan frontier. To the “sindico” of this place he carried a letter of introduction, obtained from his son, who was the young Italian artist he had left behind him in London. But the chief object of this country excursion was to find some scene paintable, and worthy of being painted.
He had not made many miles along his route before he was tempted to stop, and this more than once. Every turn of the road presented him with a landscape; every peasant would have made a picture. He resisted these allurements with the thought, that these landscapes, so near to the city, might all have been sketched before; while the peasants could be caught at any time, in the streets of Rome itself, and there painted in all their picturesqueness.
On towards some shaggy hills he saw looming out in the distance; and on went he, until near the close of the day he found himself toiling up a steep ravine, whose every turn gave him a tableau worthy of being transferred to canvas, framed, and conspicuously suspended against the walls of the Royal Academy.
After a slight repast drawn from his wallet, and a smoke from his meerschaum pipe, he set about painting a scene, he had at length selected. He fought against the fatigue of his journey, for the sake of catching a magnificent mellow sunset that had welcomed his approach to the place. He had no need to add to the “composition” of his picture. Rocks, trees, cliffs, torrents foaming over them, points of chiaro and oscuro, abruptly contrasted—all were under his eye. If there was aught wanting to give life to the landscape, it was only a few figures—animal or human—and these he could fill in according to his fancy.
“Ah,” he reflected aloud, “just the scene for a band of brigands. I’d give something to have a half-dozen of them in the foreground. I could then make a picture of these fantastic Turpins drawn from real life—a thing, I take it, which has never been done before. That would be something to hang up in the Royal Academy—something worth wasting colour and canvas on. I’d give—”
“How much?” answered a voice that seemed to issue out of the rocks behind him. “How much would you give, Master Painter, for that you speak o’? If you bid high enough, I dare say I mout find the means o’ accommodatin’ you.”
Along with the voice came the footsteps of a man—not in soft, stealthy tread, as of one approaching unawares, but with a quick thump, as the man himself dropped down from a rock above upon the little platform where the artist had planted his sticks. The latter looked up, at first in surprise, then rather in pleased admiration. He was thinking only of his art, and before him stood the very model of his imagination—a man clad in a complete suit of plush and coloured velvet, breeched, bandaged, and belted, with a plumed hat upon his head, and a short carbine across his arms—in costume and caparison the beau-ideal of a brigand. Two things alone hindered him from appearing the true heroic type of stage representation, such as we are accustomed to see in “Mazzaroni” and the “Devil’s Brother.” There was a broad Saxon face, and a tongue unmistakably from the shire of Somerset. Both were so marked, that but for the velveteen knee-breeches, the waist-belt, the elaborately buttoned vest, and the plumed hat upon his head, Henry Harding might have thought himself at home, and in the presence of a man he had met before.
Ere the young artist had sufficiently recovered from his surprise to respond to the unexpected salutation, the picturesque stranger continued—
“Want to paint brigands, do ye? Well, there’s a chance for ye now. The band’s close by. Jess wait a bit; I’ll call ’em down. Hey, there, captin!” he cried, changing his English to Italian, “ye may come on. It’s only one o’ them poor devils o’ daubers from the city. He wants to take our likenesses. I s’pose you’ve no objection to his doin’ it?”
Before the painter could make response, or remove his paraphernalia out of the way, the ledge he had selected for his “point of view” was crowded with figures—one and all of them so picturesquely attired, that had they stood in the Corso, or elsewhere within police protection, he would have been only too delighted to have painted them with the most Pre-Raphaelitish detail. As it was, all thoughts of art were chased out of his mind. He saw that he was encircled by banditti!