A Puritan Bohemia/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
Something unexpected happened. Anne Bradford, coming home late one afternoon, stopped by the mail-box to open a letter and to tear off the cover of a new number of Art and Life. In the leading article she caught sight of her own name, and she sat down on the stairs with a little gasp.
The critic described her picture at the Art Club exhibition. It was only an unpretentious study, he said, of an old sailor. There was a pathetic quiver in the wrinkled lip. This was a sad ending for a life spent on the high seas. The critic praised the peculiar faithfulness to detail, combined with a poetic inspiration. This carefulness of workmanship was refreshing after the high-handed methods of the impressionists, symbolists, sensationalists. Perhaps this was one of the welcome signs of a coming reaction.
A few days later Miss Bradford received a note from the secretary of the Hague Art Club. Their exhibition was to open in a few days. Usually only the work of club members was exhibited. The exceptional praise given to Miss Bradford in the April number of Art and Life made the members of the club desirous of seeing more of her work. Would she do them the honour of sending two pictures to their exhibition?
Anne read the letter with an unmoved face, then put it down on the cherry desk and looked at it.
"It seems utterly impossible," she said, touching the envelope caressingly. Then she laughed.
"I believe that I have a feeling of deeper sentiment about that type-written communication than I've ever had about any concrete thing before. Think what it means!"
Two weeks later a long article about Miss Bradford's work appeared in The Continent, one of the city dailies. It was entitled, "A New Realism." The critic was apparently excited. He called upon his readers to see how unique this work was. What technique! What sentiment! Here the accuracy of the realist was combined with the sentiment of the symbolist. (The art-critic on The Continent was also literary critic for The Spectator). In these pictures one saw not only a new style but a new inspiration. Here was an interpretation of life.
"There is a certain quaintness in the work," the critic said. "Under all the traces of human suffering (note Miss Bradford's rendering of wrinkles) there is a deep, inextinguishable joy in living. These are faces of those scarred in battle, yet glad of the fight. It is a realism that is both joyous and spiritual."
"Permit me," said Howard Stanton, taking off his hat with a profound bow when he met Anne in the street the next day, "to salute the founder of a new school. I'm very sorry for you," he added, a minute later. "What will you have to fight with now?"
There was a reaction from the passion for symbolism which had already lasted several weeks. Miss Bradford's work and that of a young Danish realist became the fashion.
Anne hardly realized her success until, among her notes of congratulation, she found a line from the great Leighton Reynolds.
"You have style," he said. "I find a certain force in your pictures unusual in feminine work."
Anne felt stunned. She decided to go for a walk. Passing down the old familiar streets, she asked herself sadly if she were too old to care. Surely this praise meant the confirmation of the hope for which she had spent her life.
She was walking in the direction of the tenement-house district. Here was the corner where the thought of the sailor's picture had flashed upon her. A little farther was the crumbling wall that had served as a background for the Italian mother with her baby. Her work was everywhere. She had beaten out her ideas with her footfalls. Now her prayer had been granted, and she felt only this creeping numbness.
Climbing the hill to the old burying-ground, she found herself giving an exultant little laugh. Then her knees trembled, and it became hard to walk. She grasped the churchyard railing, and leaned her forehead against the iron. Oh, she did care! She had created something that seemed to live. She had justified her existence.
As she walked home, she saw that the tops of the willows in the park were yellow. The sky wore the expectant blue of early spring.
The mood of exultation lasted nearly a week. Anne had to adjust life to a new emotion. She had accepted failure. Her whole life had been in accord with that. Now a sudden change had proved her old reckonings false. She must learn to accept success
Mrs. Kent was filled with pride. Helen, too, was pleased, but puzzled. Anne wondered why Howard had deserted her at this moment. She had not seen him for a week. It was Annabel who solved the mystery.
"Mr. Stanton's got measles," she said with an important air. "My little brother had 'em, and my mamma said, two weeks ago, that Mr. Stanton had sympathies of 'em."
"Measles!" gasped Anne.
"My mamma takes care of him. It's very hard work. Sometimes"—Annabel's eyes gleamed—"he's out of his head, an' then he talks about Miss Wistar. He called her a angel the other day."
There was no way of helping.
"I can't go to carry him quivering jellies on a tray, as young ladies do in English stories," said Anne lightly. "Think of that lofty head laid low by measles!"
She turned to her work. After three days of struggle, she put her brushes away. A great unrest possessed her.
"I can't do it!" she said mournfully. "I'm spoiled by compliments."
Her fingers were like lead. The joy in creating was gone. She sat one day on a hassock in the centre of her room. On the floor lay the three pictures that had won her world for her. Anne examined them with unfriendly eyes.
"Howard is right," she said dejectedly, "but I wouldn't tell him so. They call this realism, but it isn't. I'm an impostor. It's nothing but distance from the hardships of living that lends enchantment to my rendering of life."
"What is the matter?" asked Mrs. Kent, coming in half an hour later. Anne was still upon the hassock, her chin resting in the hollow of her hand.
"My courage has given out," said Anne, rising. "I'd give back all my success for any one of my old illusions about it." Her laugh had a note of pathos in it. "There was a certain inspiration in failure, but I can't bear up under approval. I shall never do any more good work."
"That doesn't sound like you."
"Giving you at twenty-seven what at twenty you wanted and could not have," Anne continued, "is adding insult to injury. It is like granting the refused permission to go to the matinée after the play is all over. You have none of the benefit of consistent discipline, and yet none of the fun."
"But giving you at twenty-seven what at twenty-five you had not earned," said Mrs. Kent with deliberation, "is very different, and quite as much as you deserve."
"There's truth in that," Anne answered meekly; "only I liked doing my work better than I like listening to all this talk about it."
"There speaks the artist!" said Mrs. Kent. "Be comforted, my child. There is undoubtedly enough failure in store for you in the future to keep up your spirits."
The next morning Anne drooped over her breakfast.
"The glamour has departed from Bohemia," she said, looking sadly at her china. "A teacup is only a teacup now, and it is nothing more."
The studio looked dingy and full of cobwebs. The marmalade was sticky.
Anne looked at her pictures in disgust. Self-expression! It was there. She had succeeded in putting on canvas something of her inner view of things. Self—it had always been herself! That was in the furnishings of the room, in the painted faces on the walls. Oh, if she could only escape from the loathsome closed circle!
She flung herself upon the sofa, burying her face in a pine pillow. Its pungent odours brought back the old child-days.
"You have succeeded," she murmured, "and I'd like to know of what consequence your self-expression is, anyway!"
Outside was the twitter of nesting sparrows. Her spirits beat against the enclosing bars like the wings of an imprisoned bird. Presently she lifted her face and laughed.
"Nothing sadder can happen to any man than to get what he wants. Henceforth I shall pray daily: 'Grant me anything, O Lord, except the desire of my heart.'"