A Puritan Bohemia/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII
Helen Wistar came in out of the twilight in a mood half tragic, half joyous. She had been walking along the river. All the way her feet had beaten time to the music of her thoughts.
She scrutinized her picture in the gathering darkness. Was it so bad? That very morning Mr. Stanton had pronounced severe judgment upon it.
"The drawing's all wrong," he had said with frankness. "And it is neither one thing nor the other. Your figures aren't people and they aren't symbols."
Something on the canvas had caught his attention. He had examined it closely, then had turned toward Helen with astonishment in his eyes. The girl looked hurt.
"Miss Wistar," he had said, in that voice which so often caressed the listener without the owner's will, "you weren't meant for this kind of thing. There is surely something better in store for you than the dry bones of art."
Yes, the picture was bad. Helen realized this as she looked at it in the fading light. But it did not matter. Sorrow for the loss of the lesser thing only added glory to the greater.
She seized a large brush, and, with a pretty, melodramatic motion, dashed a long streak of red paint across the canvas.
"Vanish!" she said, half laughing. "So my hopes perish." She pushed the easel away from her.
"Oh, Miss Helen!" cried a wildly excited voice. "Oh, Miss Helen! what do you 'spose?"
It was Annabel, breathless with excitement. Her little straw hat was hanging by its elastic to her neck. The pupils of her eyes were dilated.
"I always thought it was you," gasped Annabel.
"Thought what was I?" asked Miss Wistar, bewildered.
"Her, Miss Bradford. I mean him. He came into Miss Bradford's studio, and she said, 'Gracious heavens! What can have brought you here?"
"Who came?"
"Mr. Stanton!" ejaculated Annabel. "And then, and then he said: 'Deem me not too precipitate, my Amanda, and he passed his arm gently around her waist."
"Annabel, what are you making up now?" asked Miss Wistar, putting her hand upon the child's shoulder. "You said something like that once before. Who taught you?"
"It's true," whimpered Annabel, "true as I live and breathe. I saw it. 'Alternately he knelt at her feet, alternately he folded her to his bosom.'"
Miss Wistar's bewildered laugh brought the child back from the world of her imagination. She looked up, hurt. Then she spoke with a candour that carried conviction:
"Anyhow, he kissed her. I seen him do it, Miss Helen. And I always thought it was you he liked, didn't you?"
"No," answered Helen bravely but untruthfully, "never."
Annabel went away after a brief conversation. Helen stood by her ruined picture, shamefacedly conscious of what she had been thinking when she made the great red stroke.
"Oh," she said, gazing at her work with wet brown eyes. "Why did I never see?"
Annabel's words had been a sudden flash of light along the path of the whole winter. It was all clear. Helen sat down on the pine box and hid her face in her hands. She had neither art nor life. There was nothing for her hands to hold by. She had failed to reach and help her suffering fellow-women. She had failed in art. Defeat, defeat, defeat was written on the walls, the windows, the furniture of the room. All that the past months had done was to create a great lack in her life that nothing now could ever fill.
A practical thought at last stemmed the tide of her young despair. She remembered that she had not washed her breakfast dishes, and rose with a certain sense of relief. She lit her lamp and put on a white apron, then washed her china, drying it daintily. There was comfort in the act. It was a kind of link between this existence of shifting sand and the old life. The linen towel in her hand and the tiny dish-pan carried her thoughts back to the days when her old-fashioned mother had washed the silver in the mornings on the dining-room table.
Helen paused, with soapsuds on her hands, in sudden longing for the warmth and comfort and safety of that unenlightened home. She could see it distinctly—the elm trees by the gate, the green embankment, and, inside the broad door, the great hall with its deep fireplace and leather-cushioned chairs.
"I am going back," she said simply.