“You begin to see what one may get out of a dead tree?”
“Yes. There is another, below,—just below.”
“Yes; I sketched it last year. Here it is: ‘Dead tree; poplar; split by lightning; black and gray. The lower half thrown out like a leg. Above, one limb has fallen against the trunk; top of tree tufted and thrown back. Queer expression of jollity.’ Sketch it, dear.
“How ready you are!” he said, over her shoulder. “Look at the one farther away,—bent back with two great limbs high in air. It is prayer, deprecation—dread: I am not sure,—and again, before you draw it, look across to the other side. This is my sketch. ‘Late twilight; a huge, gray rock in the water. Deep cleft in it; out of this rises a dead pine. It leans toward me. Two vast limbs extended right and left. Top tufted as usual, and bent to one side. All set against a bleak mass of boulders.’”
“I see, even in this light; but at dusk! at dusk it must be terrible,—a crucifixion!”
“Yes, that is it. It recalls to me an odd thing. A few years ago I was fishing as late as ten o’clock at night on the Metapedia, and, looking up, saw on the hill above me a cross set against the blood-red, newly risen moon. Next morning I perceived that it was only a telegraph-pole with its cross-bar.”
“What a theme for Heine!” said Rose.
“Yes, indeed. Now sketch me this, and the other trees. I want only just mere hints of form. There are no end of strange things among dead trees. I could not exhaust them in hours of description. There was last year a fallen tree on an island near our camp. I suppose the mass of stuff sent down by freshets protected it below, and the ice and so on swept away the branches which lay uppermost. At last the wreckage was washed off. When I came on it at evening it looked like one of those prehistoric lizards Dicky delights in. There were many legs on each side as it lay and—”
“Do let me see, Pardy. You drew it?” and she laughed. “I don’t think it would go into the Salon. There ought to be a place for embryo art like this.”
“Like ‘Rejected Addresses’?”