Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) by Rudyard Kipling Read Free Book Online Page A

learnt something while I’ve been away. What is Art?’
    ‘Give ‘em what they know, and when you’ve done it once do it again.’
    Dick dragged forward a canvas laid face to the wall. ‘Here’s a sample of real Art. It’s going to be a facsimile reproduction for a weekly. I called it “His Last Shot.” It’s worked up from the little water-colour I made outside El Maghrib. Well, I lured my model, a beautiful rifleman, up here with drink; I drored him, and I redrored him, and I redrored him, and I made him a flushed, dishevelled, bedevilled scallawag, with his helmet at the back of his head, and the living fear of death in his eye, and the blood oozing out of a cut over his ankle-bone. He wasn’t pretty, but he was all soldier and very much man.’
    ‘Once more, modest child!’
    Dick laughed. ‘Well, it’s only to you I’m talking. I did him just as well as I knew how, making allowance for the slickness of oils. Then the art-manager of that abandoned paper said that his subscribers wouldn’t like it. It was brutal and coarse and violent, — man being naturally gentle when he’s fighting for his life. They wanted something more restful, with a little more colour. I could have said a good deal, but you might as well talk to a sheep as an art-manager. I took my “Last Shot” back. Behold the result! I put him into a lovely red coat without a speck on it. That is Art. I polished his boots, — observe the high light on the toe. That is Art. I cleaned his rifle, — rifles are always clean on service, — because that is Art.
    I pipeclayed his helmet, — pipeclay is always used on active service, and is indispensable to Art. I shaved his chin, I washed his hands, and gave him an air of fatted peace. Result, military tailor’s pattern-plate. Price, thank Heaven, twice as much as for the first sketch, which was moderately decent.’
    ‘And do you suppose you’re going to give that thing out as your work?’
    ‘Why not? I did it. Alone I did it, in the interests of sacred, home-bred Art and Dickenson’s Weekly.’
    Torpenhow smoked in silence for a while. Then came the verdict, delivered from rolling clouds: ‘If you were only a mass of blathering vanity, Dick, I wouldn’t mind, — I’d let you go to the deuce on your own mahl-stick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I find that to vanity you add the twopenny-halfpenny pique of a twelve-year-old girl, then I bestir myself in your behalf. Thus!’
    The canvas ripped as Torpenhow’s booted foot shot through it, and the terrier jumped down, thinking rats were about.
    ‘If you have any bad language to use, use it. You have not. I continue.
    You are an idiot, because no man born of woman is strong enough to take liberties with his public, even though they be — which they ain’t — all you say they are.’
    ‘But they don’t know any better. What can you expect from creatures born and bred in this light?’ Dick pointed to the yellow fog. ‘If they want furniture-polish, let them have furniture-polish, so long as they pay for it.
    They are only men and women. You talk as if they were gods.’
    ‘That sounds very fine, but it has nothing to do with the case. They are they people you have to do work for, whether you like it or not. They are your masters. Don’t be deceived, Dickie, you aren’t strong enough to trifle with them, — or with yourself, which is more important.
    Moreover, — Come back, Binkie: that red daub isn’t going anywhere, — unless you take precious good care, you will fall under the damnation of the check-book, and that’s worse than death. You will get drunk — you-re half drunk already — on easily acquired money. For that money and you own infernal vanity you are willing to deliberately turn out bad work. You’ll do quite enough bad work without knowing it. And, Dickie, as I love you and as I know you love me, I am not going to let you cut off your nose to spite your face for all the gold in England.