A Puritan Bohemia/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
It was almost spring. The florists' windows were full of yellow primroses, of hyacinths, of blood-red tulips. Sunshades and dimity gowns appeared in the dry-goods shops. In the street, a vender's cry of "Strawberries, fresh strawberries!" floated across fast-falling snow.
The annual March exhibition of the Art Club opened to-day. 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. American art, as represented here, betrayed an eclecticism, a lack of standard, of conviction. Skill in drawing was less important than a certain dash in laying on colour and in making bold outlines.
All day, people streamed up the steps and through the broad doors of the club-house. Carriages blocked the street. Elderly ladies from Riverside Bank panted up the steps. Art students from the West End scrutinized, praised, and blamed. Amateur critics looked knowingly through half-shut eyes, and spoke in disparagement, fearful of approving something that another might condemn.
Helen came very early, in her little worn jacket and the old bonnet. Howard Stanton accompanied her. They climbed the steps in eager excitement, and pushed almost rudely through the crowd to find the picture.
"Oh!" said Howard with a sigh of satisfaction. "That's great!"
In the choicest bit of wall-space, just opposite the entrance to the inner room, hung "Art and Need." Something in its style had impressed strongly the presiding committee. They had given it a place of honour. Anne Bradford's little picture had been assigned to the darkest corner.
Coming in from the outer room, one saw "Art and Need" full in the light of the roof-window, a miracle of opalescent colour, with the beautiful sleeping woman in the shadow of suggested trees. Even the hands and the arms were drowsy, and the white fingers slept.
Helen gazed in silence. People crowded past, pushed her hat awry, stepped on her foot, but she did not know it. Her eyes were moist when she raised them to Howard Stanton's.
"I am so glad!" she whispered.
He bent his head to listen, and laughed excitedly.
"It's rather better than I expected, as the old gentleman said when he went to heaven. Won't you come over here and sit down?"
He found a chair for Helen, and stood leaning over the back.
The artist had been right. His picture meant many things to many people.
"It must be Cleopatra," said one lady, who had not examined the catalogue.
"Or fair Rosamond in her bower," suggested her companion.
"And that little dark figure?" asked the first speaker.
"Maybe that's Cleopatra's conscience," laughed the other. "It ought to be called 'The Queen's Nightmare.'"
Just here a tall girl with a Burne-Jones profile drifted past. She cast a long and intense look upon the picture.
"It is an annunciation," she said, "in modern style. The little brown figure is an angel in disguise."
"How can they be so stupid?" asked Helen, looking up. Howard only chuckled. Once he laughed outright. The great Leighton Reynolds, white-haired dictator in this little world of art, paused before the picture.
"Here's an artist," he remarked, "whose contempt for nature is apparently not the result of familiarity."
The artist and his model waited in silence, watching the spectators. Few people noticed them. A fellow-artist, coming up to congratulate Mr. Stanton, detected the slight resemblance between Miss Wistar and the half-averted face in the picture, and felt wise.
"I don't care what the result is," Howard said at last, breaking a long pause. "I have put the very best of myself into that work."
His seriousness deepened the note of generalized tenderness in his voice. Helen had before mistaken a physical characteristic for emotion.
"All my hold on life is in that face. It stands for my entire aspiration, my ultimate hope."
Helen looked up quickly. She thought that Mr. Stanton was speaking about her. One little gloved hand slipped out toward him, but he did not see it. His eyes were fixed upon the picture. He was thinking about the allegory.
Helen drew her hand back in shame.
"Of course he can't say more," she thought, "while I am alone and so far away from home."
Her hero-worship deepened in fervour.
"If it had not been for you, Miss Wistar," her master was saying, "I should not have had the courage to go on. You make a man believe in himself. But look here," he added rudely, "we haven't thought about Miss Bradford's old sailor. Where is he?"
Patient search revealed the picture in the corner.
"It's a beastly shame," said Howard Stanton fiercely. "They've hung no end of trash in better places."
As they turned to go a plump old gentleman crowded past them, panting in his efforts to reach the centre. He caught sight of the symbolic picture, and examined the catalogue in wonder. Then he put a glass to one eye, and gazed.
"Art and Need! Art and Need!" he stormed. "A yellow woman and blue grass and a purple boy! Art and need of common sense, I should say!"
The artist and his model came away in a fit of childish laughter.