Ethan J. Highfield (the_mastermind) wrote in athensrising, @ 2008-11-04 13:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | christopher ransome, ethan highfield |
Art and Small Talk (Ethan and Kit)
Who: Ethan Highfield and Kit Ransome
What: Checking on Kit
Where: Kit's flat
When: The day after Kit's first meeting with Allaster
Summary: Ethan goes to see how Kit's settling in. Kit tells him about meeting Allaster. Ethan takes an instant dislike to him (based on a sketch of Kit's) so he gives Kit a curfew for their next meeting by inviting him to dinner afterward. Then Kit suggests that he paint Dartie portraits and Ethan sits for him.
Impeccably dressed as always and address in hand, Ethan's shoes clicked against the asphalt briskly in time to his no-nonsense pace. It didn't feel like September, not with the lingering summer heat in the air, and not without the rain. Ethan preferred the rain. It made the world seem more real than in the garish sunlight.
Kit didn't live far from Ethan, but Ethan almost found himself wishing Kit lived farther. He would've preferred to take a cab.
He looked at the address only once, just to check the building number, and even then it was mostly habit. His eyes skimmed over the words without registering, because of course Ethan already knew the number. He folded the paper twice along already sharp creases and tucked it deep into his pocket. Counting the doors in his head until he got to the one he knew was Kit's, he ascended the stairs sharply and rang the bell.
Kit was unpacking his trunks. He was in trousers and a shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his knees were stained with dust from kneeling on the floor. His room was a veritable disaster: sloppy piles of half folded clothes, books of every sort, piles of paint tubes and loose brushes. At the sound of the bell, he paused, grateful for the break, and he lumbered to his feet, attempting to brush the dirt from his trousers.
Kit opened the door slowly, anticipating the downstairs maid with his mail, and he stared in surprise at the familiar facade. "Highfield!" He beamed, surprised by the rush of sentimental affection at the sight of his friend, and he opened his door wide, indicating the other man should enter.
"Come in, come in, try to find some place to sit," and Kit kicked his door closed. The single desk chair was piled with programs from the galleries and exhibitions he saw in London, and Kit shuffled over to clear the seat for Ethan.
Ethan's eyes scanned his young friend's form as soon as he opened the door. He noticed with slight distaste that Kit was not fit to have company in such a disheveled state, but he was satisfied that his star artist had gotten to the US in one piece. He smiled slightly himself and nodded in greeting. “Ransome.”
Stepping inside and setting aside his hat and coat, Ethan took in the state of disarray that matched Kit's appearance. “I came to see how you were settling in,” he said. “Now that I'm here, I'm not entirely sure. Are you settling in all right?”
He didn't protest as Kit removed debris from the chair so that he could sit, and sat once it was suitably cleared.
Kit shrugged and kicked a foot awkwardly before shoving his hands into his trouser pockets. "Settling enough," he murmured, casting a look around his room. The mess before him was five days in the making and at the rate he was working, would require another five days to clean up. But Kit didn't mind the slow time line: it gave him something to do in evening before he finally crawled into bed, homesick and lonely.
He didn't say any of this to Ethan Highfield however. Instead, he offered a half-smile and kicked a foot lightly at the desk chair. "You're settled, then?" He gave Ethan a long look then added, a bit enviously: "Likely you've already sampled the best this city has to offer..."
Ethan crossed his legs and leaned back against the desk, smirking sideways at Kit. "I certainly hope I haven't. All I've experienced so far is this dreadful weather, several pubs with terribly inadequate ale, and the acquaintance of a rather simple young man. Given Boston's reputation, I hardly think I've tasted what this city considers adequate. But I expect to change that shortly, especially now that my friends have begun to arrive." He smiled.
Kit returned the smile, warmed by the use of 'friends' in Ethan's response. Unlike Kit's brothers, Ethan took an interest in him and his painting; it was Ethan who encouraged him to come to Grantmore to explore his passion. For that, Kit was devotedly grateful.
Closing the lid of his truck, he sat, elbows on knees, and watched Ethan a moment. The other man's poise and deportment were breathtaking; even when still, Ethan fairly vibrated with life. For a moment, Kit considered blurting let me paint you but he caught himself just in time. Blushing embarrassment still followed, as if he had spoken the words allowed, and Kit ducked his head, afraid Ethan would notice.
"What young man?" He asked the first thing that came to mind, desperate to distract Ethan.
Ethan shrugged, having not noticed Kit's inner turmoil. "Just some stupidly idealistic university student with a complete disregard for fashion and good taste." He tapped the side of the chair thoughtfully and added, "I may have Donnie investigate him just in case, but I don't believe he is one of our persons of interest."
He turned to study Kit. Ethan had an enormous regard for his young friend, mostly because Kit could do what Ethan only dreamed of, but it would never do to privilege one member of his organization over the others. "How about you?" he asked after a moment. "Have you seen anything interesting since you arrived? Have you felt inspired at all by this change of scenery?"
"G-greatly inspired," Kit admitted with a crooked grin, his stutter appearing with his excitement. He leaned forward, his straw blond hair falling over his eyes. "I'm going to the wharfs tomorrow, in f-fact." He stood and walked to his bed, shuffling through a stack of sketch pads on the nightstand before returning to Ethan's side. "I found an atelier here," and he began flipping pages. "Another artist," and Kit laughed a hint, using the word loosely, "offered to s-show me the real B-Boston." Page found, Kit held out the pad to Ethan. It was a charcoal sketch, the lines quick and loose, drawn from memory: a young man with dark hair and brows, sharp chin and cheekbones, holding a lager. "Allaster H-holt," Kit explained. A grin played on his mouth, and he looked up at Ethan. "No good as f-far as I can t-t-tell." No talent with still life, perhaps, but Kit didn't add that he liked the dark furrow of brows and the cruel smile Holt had. If he did a portrait of Mars, Holt would be the model.
Ethan took the pad and studied it. He didn't like this man's smile. He didn't trust the coolness in the man's eyes, and he especially disliked the cruel twist of his mouth and the way he had made Kit excited enough to stutter. He almost asked whether this was a true likeness, then mentally slapped himself. Of course it was. No artist in the world was a better figure artist than Kit.
“The mere fact that this man claims to be an artist is suspicious,” Ethan said at last, handing the sketch pad back to Kit. “Allow him to show you the real Boston. Paint him if you must, to get it out of your system. Find out what sort of art he does, and whether he keeps the company of any other artistic types. But be careful, Kit. This man is not a nice one, and I should hate having to find someone to hurt him in such an unfamiliar city.”
Kit accepted the pad, casting a glance at the image while he listened to Ethan. He nodded, quiet, chewing over the other man's words, then tossed the pad onto his bed. "Tomorrow." Sitting back down on the trunk, Kit picked at a stain on his forefinger, trying to keep his voice casual. "W-we're going to the docks." Remembering the conversation -- and Allaster's teasing -- made Kit flush, and he lifted his eyes to look at Ethan. "He th-thi-thinks I'm soft."
This artist thought Kit was soft? Well he obviously was, but Ethan didn't expect this Holt to mean it in the same way. Ethan's hand clenched itself into a fist and he felt the cold fire of fury in the pit of his stomach. But the moment passed, and Ethan's hand relaxed. No matter, he just wouldn't leave the two of them alone. After all, it was a leader's job to keep his men safe.
“What do you plan to do on the docks with this Holt?” Ethan asked once he could trust himself to speak without betraying any emotion.
"Painting," Kit replied, staring at Ethan quizzically. What else does he think we're going to? "We d-did still life the other night." Kit flushed again: Allaster teased him about being too slow to do anything but bowls of fruit and he was determined to show the other man that his talent extended far beyond inanimate objects. "I was the b-better painter." Kit didn't often boast but the pride could be heard in his voice, and Kit blushed a little more. "H-holt says he can capture life b-better," and Kit allowed himself a dismissive little shrug.
Painting. Of course. Ethan had no reason to doubt that it was for painting, for he had never met Allaster Holt, and his only misgivings came from an imagined personality quirk based on the facial expression in a drawing. He had learned to trust his intuition, however, and he had never known Kit to paint something less true to life than a photograph. "No one can capture life better than you," Ethan said simply. "Now, given the disarray in your home, I hope you will accept an invitation to join me tomorrow night for a late supper. Come over as soon as you finish with Allaster. I'm sure after your meeting at the docks we'll have much to discuss."
Kit flushed at Ethan's compliment but he didn't insult the other man by feigning humility. He was a great artist. At the invitation, Kit nodded, smiling with pleasure, and he managed to stammer: "Of c-course." He dropped his gaze to his feet, struggling to formulate a question that wouldn't give away how desperately lonely he was feeling.
"H-how do you like Boston s-s-so far?" It was a far cry from his initial thought -- are you ever homesick? -- and Kit lifted his head to watch Ethan, memorising how the other moved and responded. He wanted to nurture the same self-possessed air; he wanted a script at the ready.
“I suppose I like Boston well enough,” Ethan said, pleased that Kit had bought into his scheme to give him a curfew. “It's bloody hot, but the people are interesting, and it will hopefully provide you lot with a great deal more to do than you had done in London.”
The thought did cross his mind that Kit was a quiet and sensitive sort, and quite young, and possibly less able to settle into a new country successfully, so he added, “I suppose since Gabe, Donnie, and I are all that you have at the moment, my dinner invitation can be a running one. I should hate to think that you're dining alone every night.”
Kit broke out into a wide grin then he ducked his head shyly. It was like having one of his older brothers not only acknowledge his existence but actually seek out his company and Kit flushed again with pleasure.
"T-thank you." Kit cleared his throat, embarrassed to be so touched, and he stood up suddenly. Swinging his arms, he stalked across the length of his small room back to the night stand, picking up the pad of paper. He rooted around a drawer for a moment before finding a pencil.
"I sh-should do our portraits," he volunteered, the words out of his mouth before he even finished the thought.
Ethan glanced at him, then at the pad of paper and pencil in Kit's hands. The corners of his mouth tilted upward in a wry smile. “Right now?” he asked, but in truth, it didn't seem like a terrible idea. They were all wealthy young men, they all knew each other, and it would make sense to have Kit do portraits of all of them while they had him available. “Why not?” he assented.
Kit nodded sheepishly but flipped open the pad. "I like your pose." As usual, when working, the stutter seemed to disappear -- which is why he spent so much of his life working on his art. The scent of pastels and India rubber, the soft whisper of pencil against paper, the steady rhythm needed to quickly catch a flash of life that strikes him -- all of it invigorated Kit, made him feel like a kind of god.
He watched Ethan as he worked, only looking down to see what he was missing. The light wasn't quite right in his room but what filtered in -- the golden hue of late afternoon -- colored everything honey and warm, shadowed Ethan's face and body. It was an interesting juxtaposition and reminded him of the sketch he saw the Coal Shoveler by the Dutchman Van Gogh.
"How are your brothers?" Kit had as little interest in Ethan's brothers as his own, but his subjects usually got antsy if they sat quietly for too long. To have any success with this portrait, he needed to get as much of Ethan down on paper this evening.
“Perfect as always,” Ethan said, trying to watch Kit as much as possible without moving. Ethan had sat for portraits before, and he found it quite boring, but he enjoyed watching Kit work. It never ceased to amaze him how confident Kit became while he was working, and how hesitant he seemed the rest of the time. He supposed that if there were a way to infuse Kit with that sort of confidence in general, there would be no stopping him.
To continue the conversation, although Ethan was little interested in it and assumed Kit was talking only for the sake of making conversation, he added, “I've heard no news of them since I arrived, but I assume everyone is the same as before I left. David married less than two months ago so I suppose I'm next in line for that, but I have several years yet before it becomes a pressing issue.”
Kit chuckled at Ethan's terse recap; once Edward married, he would be expected to marry then. As long as his older brother remained single, he was safe; and Kit offered Ethan a sympathetic smile.
"How are Gabe and Donnie?" He flipped a page; he wanted to do a study of Ethan's arm: the way his hand draped loosely over the arm of the chair, fingers casually curled over the wood, the fabric of his suit pulling up to reveal a bony wrist.
He felt flush again but this time it wasn't embarrassment but enthusiasm. He enjoyed painting with live subjects and he grinned automatically at Ethan, as if the other man shared the moment with him.
Ethan caught Kit's grin and sent an easy smile back. He always felt that he should try to encourage confidence in his young painter, although he seldom knew exactly what the young man was thinking. He often thought it might be interesting to open up Kit's head like an old chest and rifle through the thoughts, perhaps change things around a bit.
He didn't speak until his thoughts came back to him, but when he did, his voice cut through the quiet atmosphere like a scalpel, sharp and precise. “Gabe is lazy and Donnie is a pervert, and they seem to have retained those qualities through the duration of their voyage here. I encourage you to meet with them, for I imagine that seeing them so unaltered will give you a bit of comfort, despite being so far from home.”
The immutable nature of his classmates was reassuring to him and Kit found he was openly excited about dinner with Ethan the next night.
"I was thinking of doing Ulysses and Circe. Gabe is dark like Ulysses but I haven't met any..." Kit glanced at Ethan and shrugged. "Any women who..." His voice faded and he shrugged again. Donnie had a preternatural ability to find women willing to pose -- disrobe even! -- while he struggled to meet someone who didn't immediately reduce him to a stuttering, blushing mess.
"And Donnie would make a good Orpheus." He watched Ethan, eager for the other man's approval. After a showing in London of Poynter, Waterhouse, and Burne-Jones, Kit wanted to explore the same ancient myths as his heroes. He felt too shy to tell Ethan he wanted him to pose as Paris and he dropped his gaze back to his sketchpad.
“Women are no problem,” Ethan said, barely catching himself before moving to wave his hand dismissively. The conversation was making him overly comfortable. “There are plenty of women in Boston, and if all else fails, have Donnie find you some. Of course,” he added as an afterthought, “Donnie's women tend to not be the most reputable sort, and your paintings would probably be better if they included the higher-quality women in our own class. It might be best to wait until we're inevitably introduced to one or two and sufficiently acquainted that they'll agree to pose.
“For example,” he added with a small smile, “if I should meet a woman I come to enjoy, I would expect no less than to have her play the counterpart to whatever classical hero you've cast me as.” He turned a teasing smile on Kit and prompted, “Who would be...?”
Kit flushed under Ethan's knowing look and he laughed sheepishly. "Paris," he admitted and he smiled, shy and nervous. "My best wishes as you search for your Helen." The other man would have no problem finding women, of course; the danger was ensuring the model didn't read too much into her role.
Another page; and Kit moved on to sketching Ethan in profile, rushing now as the sun continued to shift away from his windows. "No woman yet?" he asked casually. What he really wanted to know was when Ethan had his first kiss and how he came about it. Kit was starting to despair he would ever have the experience.
“Ah, Paris,” Ethan said, his smile tinged with amusement. “That's quite a tall order. I suppose I must accept none other than the loveliest woman in Boston for her to be worthy of playing Helen.”
He looked at Kit in response to his question. Ethan still couldn't tell what Kit was thinking, which always disconcerted him. “No woman,” he confirmed at last, “but from what I've seen, American women are quite lovely, if not as refined as our English women.”
Kit laughed and shrugged, pausing mid-stroke. "I could, of course, help if she is not entirely enchanting," he offered. "My modest talent allows that." He chuckled then resumed his sketching.
"Would one want an American wife, though?" He asked the question almost as an afterthought, still chewing over Ethan's words; and he stopped to study Ethan a moment before staring critically at the sketch. Too flat, he thought, and he turned another page. In a few minutes, he would need to light the gas lamp in order to see properly and he made a soft noise of frustration.
“I would,” Ethan said, clearly lost in his own thoughts. “Richard and David are proper English gentlemen who married proper English gentlewomen, attended a proper English university, and are fully capable of bearing proper English children and taking over my father's business. My little sister will no doubt marry very well, and the Highfield family will settle into another generation of excellent society and wealth.” His voice was calm, as though he were discussing the weather or fashion. “Sometimes I think if I don't do something completely unexpected, I too will have no choice but to become a proper English gentleman myself.”
Ethan's tone -- composed, nearly bored -- disguised the real vehemence of his words and it took a moment before Kit absorbed the full meaning of what Ethan had said. He looked up in surprise, amazed -- and secretly delighted -- to discover just how deep seated Ethan's revolutionary streak was; and he asked, voice soft: "You don't w-want to be proper either?" The stutter came back: Kit was distracted from his sketch, thirsty for confirmation that he didn't have to capitulate to his mother and be a 'proper English gentleman' as well.
The English part certainly wasn't what Ethan objected to, and not the gentleman part either, so he supposed he didn't want to be proper. He didn't know exactly what he objected to in turning out exactly like his father and brothers; he only knew that whenever he thought of graduating, working for his eldest brother, and marrying one of the many uninteresting society ladies he had been introduced to, his veins burned with objection and the desire to run away. But how could he tell Kit that?
“I suppose I don't,” he said eventually, “although I still haven't figured out whether or not it's something one can avoid.”
"Oh." Ethan's response deflated him a hint and Kit fell silent, mulling over the other man's words. If Ethan couldn't avoid the inevitable mind-numbing future, what chance did he? For a few minutes, Kit was quiet, dismissing the roiling thoughts to focus entirely on the play of light-and-dark in front of him.
"Here." Kit offered the sketchpad to Ethan. The final page was the complete tableau in black-and-white, bold lines of charcoal against the heavy paper. Ethan sat in comfortable repose, almost in profile, hand loose on the arm of the chair, legs uncrossed. But what Kit wanted to convey -- and he felt, without undue pride, he captured -- was the kind of vibrant energy that bounced off Ethan even when the other man was still. The finished painting would be vastly more detailed; Kit anticipated changing the background from his bedroom to something more noble. Particularly, he wanted to include a nod to the nine Muses in the form of discreet symbols scattered about the image. Over the summer, he ploughed through Cesare Ripa's Iconologia overo Descrittione Dell’imagini Universali cavate dall’Antichità et da altri luoghi (a ponderous task given Kit's barely passable Italian) to better understand the use of emblems in art. Now, armed with what felt like secret keys, Kit was eager to lionise his friends and immortalise their revolution.
Ethan took the sketchpad and studied it. It was a true image of himself down to every last detail. It never failed to impress Ethan how sharp was Kit's eye and exact his hand, and yet there was something almost flattering to the drawing, perhaps in the angle or composition. Ethan took in every detail, and handed it back almost reluctantly when he was through. “Perfect as always,” he said.
Now that Kit's painting was finished, Ethan realised it had started to get quite dark, and he wondered that Kit had managed to finish the drawing without hurting his eyes or turning on the gas lamp. “I'm surprised how late it has become,” he observed, with little of the professed emotion apparent in his voice.
Kit looked around the room in surprise, as if just noticing the space and he laughed sheepishly. "Another d-day over," he remarked with a sigh, unsure if he was relieved or depressed. At least, unlike most days, he had his appointment with Allaster Holt to look forward to in the morning; now he wouldn't potter through his day in a solitary malaise.
"The f-footman downstairs can c-call you a hackney," Kit offered and he shrugged. "If you can f-find him." He made a drinking motion and shrugged again. The idea of wiling away the rest of the night until exhaustion overtook him was depressing but he tried to hide it from Ethan. Standing abruptly, he tossed his sketchpad onto his bed and moved around the room, lighting the small gas lamps.
Ethan stood, pausing as a thought occurred to him, but at length, he said only, “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow evening, Kit.” Taking up his overcoat and bowler hat, he nodded to Kit and stepped out to look for the presumably drunken footman.