'Yes, natural as nature; an' lime'll fly up in a man's eyes without any breath o' wind sometimes,' said Mr Springett. 'But who's to show 'twasn't a accident?'
'Who do these things?' Dan asked, and straightened his back at the bench as he turned the schooner end-for-end in the vice to get at her counter.
'Them which don't wish other men to work no better nor quicker than they do,' growled Mr Springett. 'Don't pinch her so hard in the vice, Mus' Dan. Put a piece o' rag in the jaws, or you'll bruise her. More than that'- he turned towards Hal -'if a man has his private spite laid up against you, the Unions give him his excuse for workin' it off.'
'Well I know it,'said Hal.
'They never let you go, them spiteful ones. I knowed a plasterer in Eighteen hundred Sixty-one - down to the wells. He was a Frenchy - a bad enemy he was.'
'I had mine too. He was an Italian, called Benedetto. I met him first at Oxford on Magdalen Tower when I was learning my trade -or trades, I should say. A bad enemy he was, as you say, but he came to be my singular good friend,' said Hal as he put down the mallet and settled himself comfortably.
'What might his trade have been - plastering' Mr Springett asked.
'Plastering of a sort. He worked in stucco - fresco we call it.
Made pictures on plaster. Not but what he had a fine sweep of the hand in drawing. He'd take the long sides of a cloister, trowel on his stuff, and roll out his great all-abroad pictures of saints and croppy-topped trees quick as a webster unrolling cloth almost.
Oh, Benedetto could draw, but 'a was a little-minded man, professing to be full of secrets of colour or plaster - common tricks, all of 'em - and his one single talk was how Tom, Dick or Harry had stole this or t'other secret art from him.'
'I know that sort,' said Mr Springett. 'There's no keeping peace or making peace with such. An' they're mostly born an' bone idle.'
'True. Even his fellow-countrymen laughed at his jealousy. We two came to loggerheads early on Magdalen Tower. I was a youngster then. Maybe I spoke my mind about his work.'
'You shouldn't never do that.' Mr Springett shook his head.
'That sort lay it up against you.'
'True enough. This Benedetto did most specially. Body o' me, the man lived to hate me! But I always kept my eyes open on a plank or a scaffold. I was mighty glad to be shut of him when he quarrelled with his Guild foreman, and went off, nose in air, and paints under his arm. But' - Hal leaned forward -'if you hate a man or a man hates you -'
'I know. You're everlastin' running acrost him,' Mr Springett interrupted. 'Excuse me, sir.' He leaned out of the window, and shouted to a carter who was loading a cart with bricks.
'Ain't you no more sense than to heap 'em up that way?' he said. 'Take an' throw a hundred of 'em off. It's more than the team can compass. Throw 'em off, I tell you, and make another trip for what's left over. Excuse me, sir. You was sayin'-'
'I was saying that before the end of the year I went to Bury to strengthen the lead-work in the great Abbey east window there.'
'Now that's just one of the things I've never done. But I mind there was a cheap excursion to Chichester in Eighteen hundred Seventy-nine, an' I went an' watched 'em leadin' a won'erful fine window in Chichester Cathedral. I stayed watchin' till 'twas time for us to go back. Dunno as I had two drinks p'raps, all that day.'
Hal smiled. 'At Bury, then, sure enough, I met my enemy Benedetto. He had painted a picture in plaster on the south wall of the Refectory - a noble place for a noble thing - a picture of Jonah.'
'Ah! Jonah an' his whale. I've never been as far as Bury. You've worked about a lot,' said Mr Springett, with his eyes on the carter below.
'No. Not the whale. This was a picture of Jonah and the pompion that withered. But all that Benedetto had shown was a peevish grey-beard huggled up in angle-edged drapery beneath a pompion on a wooden trellis. This last, being a dead thing, he'd drawn it as 'twere to the life. But fierce old Jonah, bared in the sun, angry even to death that his cold prophecy was disproven -
Jonah, ashamed, and already hearing the children of Nineveh running to mock him - ah, that was what Benedetto had not drawn!'
'He better ha' stuck to his whale, then,' said Mr Springett.
'He'd ha' done no better with that. He draws the damp cloth off the picture, an' shows it to me. I was a craftsman too, d'ye see?'
'"Tis good," I said, "but it goes no deeper than the plaster."
'"What?" he said in a whisper.
'"Be thy own judge, Benedetto," I answered. "Does it go deeper than the plaster?"
'He reeled against a piece of dry wall. "No," he says, "and I know it. I could not hate thee more than I have done these five years, but if I live, I will try, Hal. I will try." Then he goes away. I pitied him, but I had spoken truth. His picture went no deeper than the plaster.'
'Ah!' said Mr Springett, who had turned quite red. 'You was talkin' so fast I didn't understand what you was drivin' at. I've seen men - good workmen they was - try to do more than they could do, and - and they couldn't compass it. They knowed it, and it nigh broke their hearts like. You was in your right, o' course, sir, to say what you thought o' his work; but if you'll excuse me, was you in your duty?'
'I was wrong to say it,' Hal replied. 'God forgive me - I was young! He was workman enough himself to know where he failed. But it all came evens in the long run. By the same token, did ye ever hear o' one Torrigiano - Torrisany we called him?'
'I can't say I ever did. Was he a Frenchy like?'
'No, a hectoring, hard-mouthed, long-sworded Italian builder, as vain as a peacock and as strong as a bull, but, mark you, a master workman. More than that - he could get his best work out of the worst men.'
'Which it's a gift. I had a foreman-bricklayer like him once,' said Mr Springett. 'He used to prod 'em in the back like with a pointing-trowel, and they did wonders.'
I've seen our Torrisany lay a 'prentice down with one buffet and raise him with another - to make a mason of him. I worked under him at building a chapel in London - a chapel and a tomb for the King.'
