reasonable calculatin’ that you want to be glad you got the Briscoe brand on you, my son.”
That remark clinched in Lonny’s mind an unpleasant, vague suspicion to the same effect. His reticence increased, and he gathered grass from the ground, chewing it pensively. The picture as a picture had been humiliatingly absent from the Senator’s arguments. The painter had been held up as a grandson, pure and simple. While this was gratifying on certain lines, it made art look little and slab-sided. The Boy Artist was thinking.
The hotel Lonny stopped at was near the Capitol. It was near to the one o’clock dinner hour when the appropriation had been passed by the Senate. The hotel clerk told Lonny that a famous artist from New York had arrived in town that day and was in the hotel. He was on his way westward to New Mexico to study the effect of sunlight upon the ancient walls of the Zuñis. Modern stone reflects light. Those ancient building materials absorb it. The artist wanted this effect in a picture he was painting and was traveling two thousand miles to get it.
Lonny sought this man out after dinner and told his story. The artist was an unhealthy man, kept alive by genius and indifference to life. He went with Lonny to the Capitol and stood there before the picture. The artist pulled his beard and looked unhappy.
“Should like to have your sentiments,” said Lonny, “just as they run out of the pen.”
“It’s the way they’ll come,” said the painter man. “I took three different kinds of medicine before dinner
