Margaret Sherwood

“ Mrs. Kent looked at them with pity in her eyes. They were so happy, she thought, misunderstanding. She, who had suffered the extreme hurt, was safe and sheltered in her great grief. She could not be afraid again.
Then once more that sudden sense of her own hurt smote her, and her life went out in the cry of the human heart for its own. A pitying wind had blown her long black veil across her face. ”

“ Kent's idea that opinions are not of much account," said Anne. "Miserere is the only one who has been true to his philosophy." She stroked the cat lying in her lap. "He has the only kind of philosophy one can be true to."
"We have changed our points of view," said Mrs. Kent meditatively. "That, is because we have faced certain experiences. Life always outstrips opinion. We learn the secret bit by bit, and not by thinking only. Every vivid experience is like touching the eyes of the blind. ”

“ The charm of evanescence belongs to this life. Work and friends are doubly dear when every morning brings the thought that they may vanish. For the mortality is great in Bohemia. It lies hard by the borderland of life, life with its ordered sequences of birth and death, of marrying and giving in marriage, of family happenings. A constant fear walks with one that one's friend may at any moment be drawn to that bourne whence none return to Bohemia.
The charm of the unexpected belongs to it. Who knows what choice spirit may come to abide in the next studio or in the vacant suite? ”

“ Would forgetting her own hurt mean forgetting the world's pain? She walked swiftly on in half-ecstatic weariness. Just now it seemed that the glory and the grief of life are one.
As she entered the Square she was conscious of colour and of fragrance. The young leaves on the elms and the willows shimmered in the sun. Flower-boys stood at the corners with their baskets. The odour of new grass was in the air. ”

“ In no flippant sense was it true that the thing one has is not the thing one wants. Truly one never reaches any place without finding that the place is not there. The worn ideas came to the girl with the poignancy of a new experience. She had—all she wanted—a chance to work on. In store for her were perhaps keener insight, greater skill, a firmer grasp on the real meanings of things.
A spray of ivy outside the window blew out into the sun. Its beauty brought quick tears to Anne's tired eyes. For all that the artist missed there was compensation in the added preciousness of little things. ”

“ Anne remarked sententiously. "I suppose that I am mean and selfish and unenlightened," she added, clenching her little hand; "but I'd rather be able to paint well those wrinkles around my old sailor's eyes, than to teach all the masses in the world how to draw."
"You don't love human nature enough," said Howard.
"You don't love it enough to paint it as it is," Anne retorted. "All your idealism is made up of disrespect for the facts of life." ”

“ Life had begun to play havoc with Helen's work. Her mission turned into a long reverie. When she drew, her fingers trembled. Then she stopped and watched the sunshine, her eyes full of dreams.
Yet her wish to know women who toiled for art was being slowly fulfilled. She had watched them in public places, or at their windows in the Square, talking, two and two, as they slowly rocked. Now she learned something of the inner conditions of their life. ”

“ Kent glanced at the artist's clear gray eyes, determined mouth, and smooth, parted hair.
"You must never give up."
"I can't," Anne responded, putting the finishing touches on a thumb. "The work won't give me up. It holds me as a cat does a mouse. You see, it has always been the one thing in the world for me, and life has had no meaning apart from it. I want to be genuine—not like other women. Most women wear their careers as if they were jewelry. Work is only a new species of ornament. They aren't great enough to lose themselves in it. ”

“ Pieces of clever work covered the walls of the club-rooms. There were landscapes, seascapes, faces, figures, interiors. A white Indian mosque jostled the corner of an old New England garden; a view of Siberian convict life, in the style of Verestschagin, rested by the portrait of an anæmic woman, painted in the manner of Whistler; and a daring study (inspired by Zorn) of six people in a theatre box, full in the glare of electric light, hung close to Anne Bradford's tiny picture of the old sailor.
In most of the work a mannerism was apparent, a touch of impressionism, some trick of colour. ”

“ It was a group of chattering Italian women on a dark side street. Children were playing about them.
"Those children all look ill," remarked Mrs. Kent sadly, as she guided Anne down the narrow alley way. "Most of them are bow-legged."
"Oh dear!" groaned Anne, "I never thought of that! I just saw how picturesque it all was, the bright kerchiefs and the wrinkled faces and the brown curls of the children. I don't believe I've got any human instincts. Why are people made with eyes that see only one thing and hearts that wish only one thing, unless they are meant to have it?" ”

“ Anne replied. "A queen might envy Annabel's savoir faire; but a queen should not be blamed for not having it. She could never have Annabel's opportunity for knowing the world."
"Isn't that rather fine in Mr. Stanton?" said Helen.
"Why, you didn't believe that, did you?" cried Anne. "That is one of Annabel's yarns. Next time she will tell you what Mr. Stanton says and what he eats. By the next time she will have forgotten it entirely."
"But the child spoke so earnestly," remonstrated Mrs. Kent.
"The earnestness is always in direct proportion to the size of her fiction," said Anne. ”

“ Your idealism shirks the battle with things as they are."
"But you are no more a realist than I am."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Howard, laying down his brush and looking at the pictures on the walls, "that you put into those faces all sorts of heroic emotions that the people never had. You make the wrinkles deeper than they really are, and you idealize the feelings that they stand for. Your people all look hungry, and not for bread and butter."
"Please speak slowly so that I can take all this in," said Anne. ”

“ She revelled in the waywardness of her new life. Lunching every day at a restaurant; breakfasting when she chose in her studio; exploring at her own will the irregular streets of the old city, this was freedom, this was reality.
"How can people go on living in stiff houses and doing the same things over every day?" she asked Anne Bradford one rainy noon, over an improvised luncheon of caraway cakes and tea.
"Giving stupid dinners and luncheons and receptions," Anne rejoined.
"And making senseless calls. Oh, this is the only life to live!"
The severity of Helen's mood abated. ”

“ Very often Anne went with her. Mrs. Kent marvelled at the artist's insight into the expression of inanimate things, her swift recognition of human feeling. It was Anne who pointed out a door-step, worn by many feet; a bit of New England garden, sunflower or hollyhock, among the swarming tenements; the curve of a woman's arm as she held her child. ”

“ She was sitting in an old-fashioned arm-chair, the light falling softly on her smooth pale hair.
"Living? Is that all?" asked Anne with a laugh. "Life's just a chance to watch other people's lives and put down what you see. It is a stepping-stone to art." ”

“ Anne Bradford caught her look of keen interest in the faded brick façade, the battered stone lions that guarded the entrance, and in the preoccupied women passing two by two.
"What is that child doing in Bohemia?" wondered Anne, noticing that her trunk was being carried in. "It is somebody new in search of the ideal life. She ought to know that she cannot enter the kingdom of the ideal in clothes like that." ”

“ Yet bits of everyday life float into Bohemia. Children come to play in the Square. Humble lovers stroll past, arm in arm, and little girls with braided hair walk through to school. Frail old ladies with nodding curls and men with hair like white spun silk go tremulously by, wondering at the queer life of this secluded spot. ”

“ Anne pushed the ruffle of her blue gingham painting-apron away from her face, and took up her brushes again. She was retouching, from memory, a study of an old sailor.
Mrs. Kent stooped to pat Miserere, the studio cat, then looked at the pictures on the walls,—an old woman, drinking tea; a white-haired man, warming his fingers over the last coals of his fire; a young Italian mother, with a brown baby in her arms.
"The things you do have an unusual charm for me," said the caller.
"Yet I am an utter failure, so far as any recognition of my work is concerned," responded the artist cheerfully. ”

“ Her ambition had outstripped her gift.
"I needn't have been so supercilious, Miserere," she remarked, stroking the cat's gray head. "I'm like you, after all. I thought that it was work I cared for, the discipline of hand and brain. But I rather think I wanted only 'sweet victual.'"
Then she reddened at the memory of her thoughts of the night before.
"A woman's despair — with complications" — she said, half laughing, "is very dangerous. I can't surrender now, anyway. Whatever love is, it isn't a second choice." ”

“ Kent consented with reluctance. Perhaps it was her duty. Yet this was hard for one who asked only that she might walk on softly in the bitterness of her soul, guarding for herself the hush that lies about new-made graves.
She had grown almost content, living in the constant presence of the dead. Now a sudden change of work disturbed her. She was asked to leave her books, and to do district visiting in the slums. The swarming people irritated her. The sights and sounds made her ill. She could not really care, she said to herself, about the wretched people she was trying to serve. ”

“ Anne's face grew wistful.
"You see, it would be cruel to you to consent when I don't care enough. Besides," she added, with changing mood, "I told you long ago that I am a deliberate egoist."
"The only perfect egoism lies in self-surrender. One can't fulfil one's personality all alone."
"That," said Anne, "almost wins me."
Striding up and down, Howard watched her as she worked. The penetrating odour of violets filled the room. He would always remember her as she looked now. ”

“ Anne, after a losing struggle with her conscience, betrayed the same to Mrs. Kent.
"Helen is painting a picture," said the artist, the corners of her mouth twitching. "She calls it symbolic. It is the rich young man of the Gospels going back to his own selfish life. There's a group of ragged people in the foreground. One model posed for them all. The young man is turning away. Only, the perspective is queer, and the canvas is so crowded with the poor that there isn't going to be much room for the rich young man." ”

“ She is always bent on a solitary and egoistic life, but in the end she always gives in."
"That is only in story-books," retorted Anne Bradford. "And I'm not a modern young woman. I am old-fashioned, and very much like my Puritan grandfather."
"I wish," said Howard Stanton, with a sudden flash of impertinence, "that you were a little bit more like your Puritan grandmother."
"You see," said Anne wistfully, "I've got to do it all myself. I am not a genius, and yet I think that if I was born for any purpose it was to paint pictures. Is trying to find one's best self-expression egoism?" ”

“ Anne thought of the way in which the autumn sunlight used to crawl in the early morning up the meadow by her father's parsonage. The grass was always covered with misty cobwebs that glistened in the sun. That was so long ago.
She poured her coffee into the white and gold cup. Miserere jumped mewing to her lap.
"You miserable, carnal-minded beast," she said, touching him affectionately. "You will never be happy, because you want the wrong thing. Somebody said once, 'Man is not a happy animal, because his appetite for sweet victual is so enormous.' You are like man." ”

“ Tell me: do you mean on general principles that my pictures ought to look as if I did not understand things, or do they look so?"
"They do look so, I think," he answered slowly. "It isn't honest human feeling, but a woman's notion of things she hasn't known."
A startled look came into Anne's eyes.
"At least," she said coldly, "I am not a monster. I shall not sacrifice you to my need of experience. You have used the wrong argument."
"The trouble with you, Nannie, is that you think too hard. Your conscience has got into your feelings." ”

“ All about, laughing Italian children were playing in the sun. Above was the glory of May sunshine. Mrs. Kent felt a sudden reaction from a long strain. Her anger with the unnatural mother was melting into a sense of deep kinship. Her pity came back upon herself with a sense of forgiven sin.
"For none may walk in perfect white
Till every soul be clean,"
she murmured. ”

“ I just want to ask why you degrade part of nature as unworthy of your work. It all seems to me worth reproducing as perfectly as possible—the little common things that the unenlightened do not see. Every trace of human expression is sacred to me."
"I simply go one step further. You copy facts, you say. I try to distill from facts an inner meaning. I try to express my sense of things. ”

“ The girl started, and Anne's pet Sèvres cup fell to the floor. Then, first, the young man caught the expression in Helen's eyes when they rested on him.
"That's symbolic," said Anne. "No; I don't mind in the least. Bohemia began with that cup, and all the illusions of Bohemia perish with it."
"Mend it," suggested Howard, holding up the fragments. "Life is nothing but a putting together of the broken pieces. I can imagine a process of learning through loss that would make one's failures satisfactory. By the way, when success comes, it doesn't usually take the shape that you expect. ”

“ Anne replied dryly. "She decided to keep on with art, after a year's study, because her instructor showed her how really serious a thing art is!"
From these slight demands for human interest, Mrs. Kent turned with relief to her work. This was largely mechanical. She did her duty with precision, and went her way, sweet, sad, and remote. The harder the work, the more content she was. She liked to come home late in the afternoon, so tired that the old sense of physical and mental paralysis which had come to her when she first knew how great a grief was hers, returned and took possession. ”