A Puritan Bohemia/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
"He did, Miss Helen. I heard him say it just as plain. He was coming through the hall, and it was dark, and he didn't see me. An' he said, 'O my Amanda, how smoothly must that life glide in whose destiny you share!"
"'Amanda'?"
The old, puzzled look came into Annabel's eyes. She wriggled in her chair.
"No, he said 'Helen.' He was talking about you."
The child felt encouraged by the silence that followed.
"He said some more," she remarked suggestively.
Miss Wistar was tempted, and she fell.
"What?"
"He said, 'I shall suffer a trembling apprehension until I call you mine.'"
Helen laughed, wondering where the child had found the absurd phrases. Was there a basis of fact for the palpable fiction? Helen had never read "The Children of the Abbey."
"Annabel," said the young teacher severely, a minute later, "are you telling me the truth?"
"I thought that was what he said," answered Annabel mournfully. "I didn't hear it all. Anyhow, I often hear him talking to your picture."
Miss Wistar's mouth was more stern than her eyes.
"Mr. Stanton hasn't my picture. He couldn't possibly have it unless I gave it to him."
The child hesitated for a minute. When she spoke, her voice almost carried conviction to herself as well as to Miss Wistar.
"He painted it, I guess. It's a little bit of a one. I see it every morning when I dust."
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. Some lived in daintily furnished suites; others, in sky-parlours, lunching, perhaps, on doughnuts, two for five cents. All were nomadic, increasingly distrustful of boarding-houses, uncertain where to dine. Tangent-wise they touched the life of the world beyond the Square, going out now and then to dinners or receptions.
Their generous comradeship impressed the girl. They shared one another's hardships, criticised one another's pictures, corrected one another's proof. Helen heard them quarrelling generously at luncheon time over which should have the smaller bit of steak, which should pay the uneven cent. Strong friendships formed a part of the courage with which these women faced the thought of a lonely age, when they should perhaps have nothing left—but a point of view.
Helen made a half-dozen acquaintances among the women of the Rembrandt Studios, and in doing so learned a half-dozen tragedies. Each had "had a history"; each had taken refuge in some new belief.
In Number 12 lived a plump and jovial little lady who owned a pet monkey named the Czar. The Czar was the terror of the building. His mistress was not an heroic figure, yet for twenty years she had been toiling to pay the debts of a worthless brother, and so save the family from disgrace.
She was a Christian Scientist.
The Theosophist was a slim maiden lady who did flowers in water colour. Hers was the tragedy of not having been called upon to suffer. All the pathos of protracted girlhood was in that air, as of one who has not arrived, yet is not pursuing, only waiting.
For the owner of Number 2 art meant a faithless husband. She had found consolation in Astrology.
There was a Whitmanite who did huge landscapes. The short-haired girl who aspired to be an animal sculptor was a follower of Ibsen. She talked much of the emancipation of woman from domestic life. Sometimes, as she toiled with wet clay, she wiped a tear away from her cheek with her short coat-sleeve. She was thinking of her dead lover.
The Baroness was the only inhabitant of this world of definite work and vague spiritual enthusiasms who had not a pet notion. The Baroness made beautiful embroidery.
Helen learned much from these women. There were questions of vast import to discuss how to make drapery out of fishnets; how to convert the lower part of a book-case into a pantry; how to make ball-costumes out of Japanese crepe paper; how to know when Welsh rabbit was done.
In return Helen taught them her views.
"What does Miss Wistar mean by calling herself a Socialist?" the Christian Scientist asked one day of Anne Bradford.
"I don't know," said Anne. "Neither does she."
"She said," continued the owner of the Czar, puckering her plump forehead, "that she could not conceive of Christianity apart from Socialism."
Anne only laughed.
Helen found her relations with these women less simple than she had expected. She had a puzzled feeling that her pity for them was met by an answering pity for her. In their definiteness of aim was a certain rebuke. The only thing about her that they thoroughly appreciated was the colour of her hair.
"I am sorry for that child," said the Astrologist to Mrs. Kent. "She is so young and rash. She has so much to learn."
"Helen isn't accustomed to think that it is the young who have much to learn," answered Mrs. Kent.
The boyish sculptor of animals said that Miss Wistar did not know where she was at.
In despair Helen went one March afternoon to Mrs. Kent to ask why all that she tried to grasp slipped so persistently through her fingers. As she crossed the Square she watched the naked branches of the trees, sharply outlined against the red brick walls where the late sun was shining. In Mrs. Kent's window stood a jar of golden daffodils. Helen caught a glimpse of a slender hand and a bit of black sleeve.
"Shall I tell you what I really think?" asked Mrs. Kent, when she had heard the girl's complaint. Helen had buried her face among the pillows on the lounge. "I think that you are taking the wrong road. There is only one way of entering people's lives. That is by sharing the common experience. This external way of trying to help will never make you understand. One must share life itself, the joy of it, the pain of it, if one is to know. 'He that entereth not in by the door of the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way'"
Helen started to speak, but paused. She could not explain.
Mrs. Kent laid her hand on the girl's bright hair.
"Haven't you run away from the one school where you can learn to be of use to your world? It is only through love and its responsibilities that one can help. They tell me that you cannot conceive of Christianity except from Socialism. Can you conceive of Christianity that does not involve doing your duty to your own people?"
For wounds like these there was balm in Howard Stanton's occasional remarks.
"I can't tell you how I value your sympathy," he said one day. "There are so few people who understand."
These sayings mingled in Helen's mind with Annabel's queer romancing. It was small wonder that she more than half believed the child.