A Puritan Bohemia/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
Helen Wistar had spent three days in finding appropriate furniture for her studio. She looked with satisfaction at the sofa-bed, draped with unhemmed brown denim, the pine chiffonnier, the huge screen covered with burlap. Three willow-ware cups, with plates to match, some plated spoons and forks, and a tiny coffee-pot decorated a shelf on the wall. These were for her housekeeping.
"I'm so glad I'm here at last!" she said.
She took the "Fabian Essays on Socialism" and Ruskin's "Political Economy of Art" out of her trunk and put them on the floor.
Somebody knocked.
The girl greeted her visitor with an embarrassed self-possession, gazing with wide-opened brown eyes as she heard her name.
"Miss Bradford? Oh, do you know, I have a note of introduction to you from my old art teacher, Mr. Stanton!"
She gracefully offered Anne a wooden kitchen chair, and seated herself on a pine box under the window.
Anne was puzzled. The bare walls and cheap furniture wore the desolation of apparent poverty. But a gold-mounted travelling-bag stood in one corner. From the box where her hostess was sitting, the strong light bringing out all the rich colouring of her hair and lashes and curving cheeks, came the gleam of the silver furnishings of her toilet-table.
"Yes," Anne was saying, "I knew Mr. Stanton when we were children. We went to the same village school. My father was the minister. His father owned the mills."
"Mr. Stanton has very remarkable theories about art," observed the girl solemnly.
"He used to have when I knew him," Anne replied, smiling in reminiscence. "What are the new ones?"
"He thinks that art should not be monopolized by the cultured classes, but should be shared with common people."
"That isn't precisely an art theory, is it?"
"It is the new art," answered Helen with sudden dignity, "the art that is no longer selfish, but that recognizes the claims of human brotherhood."
Decidedly the child was interesting. That little air of self-importance was charming, taken in connection with the rounded outlines of her face. Anne watched her hostess unobserved. Those gray eyes never seemed to see, yet nothing escaped them.
"She is just a bewitching baby," said the caller to herself, "masquerading in the manner of a woman of the world."
"Mr. Stanton always was an enthusiast," she remarked. "He has not changed, unless he has found an enthusiasm that lasts."
"Oh, Miss Bradford!" cried Helen. "Don't!"
A look of swift intelligence flashed into Anne's face, but she turned toward the girl with her usual inscrutable smile.
"Mr. Stanton's teaching has opened a whole new world for me," said Helen bravely. Her face had grown severe over Anne Bradford's flippancy. "I see everything differently now. I never knew before that it is wrong to shut one's life away from poorer people, and to live selfishly with one's own beautiful things. Now, I don't want to keep any part of my life, my aim, or hope, or achievement, to myself."
She stopped, excited and embarrassed.
"The eagerness of the young to give what they have not got is very sweet," thought the guest.
"I am carrying out one of Mr. Stanton's suggestions now," said Helen shyly. "I am going to study, of course, but that isn't what I am most interested in. I have come here in order to find out all about the lives of poor artists who have to struggle for an education. I am going to live with absolutely no luxuries, and am going to try to help them.
"It was hard to come," she added. "My family disapprove. They say that it is very foolish and very improper."
"Do they need you?"
Red colour surged to Helen's cheeks.
"That's the way everybody talks!" she cried. "If I were a man, I should by general consent have a right to live my own life. But just because I am a woman, with an aim of my own, nobody understands.
"You see," she pleaded, "it is impossible for me to live out at home my beliefs. It is a Christian home, they say, and yet my family feels a great deal more responsible to social convention than to its faith. I cannot have simple relations there. My position in regard to the maids in my father's house contradicts my idea of the Gospels."
"You are a new kind of Saint Francis," said Anne with a smile. "You seem to have taken a vow of poverty and disobedience."
The door was suddenly pushed open. A little girl in a calico gown and broken straw hat appeared.
"Why, Annabel!" exclaimed Miss Bradford.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said Annabel, with utmost politeness, to the mistress of the studio. "You said 'Come,' didn't you? My mamma wanted me to ask you if you have any laundry. The janitress recommended you."
"How are your little sisters, Annabel?" asked Anne.
"Pretty well, thank you. They've almost got to Greenland."
Annabel still panted from rapid walking.
"I thought they were going to Japan."
A troubled look came into the child's face. She touched Miss Bradford's arm affectionately; then her eyes brightened in triumph.
"They're going to Greenland first, and Japan afterward. I've travelled a good deal in my day, too," said Annabel, looking up guilelessly into Miss Wistar's face. "It runs in the family. I went with my sailor uncle to Switzerland and Greenland and Iceland and Africa and New Jersey!"
"Indeed!" said Miss Wistar gravely.
"We went past Asia too, but we didn't stop to Asia."
"That's Annabel," explained Anne, after the child had gone. "Her real name is Sarah Orr. She insists on Annabel because it is romantic. She is the mainstay of an entire family. It is 'personally conducted' by Annabel. She's one of the most interesting characters in Bohemia."
"Why does she tell such queer tales?"
"That's genius. It is Annabel's way of escaping from her hard world. Her imagination has been fed by geography and a few stray books. She lies with such accuracy and precision that she would deceive the very elect. Sometimes she tells the truth, and that complicates things. She never lies about business matters."
Miss Bradford lingered on the threshold.
"It is rather strange that Mr. Stanton should come here to work just now," she said.
"Here!" cried Helen.
"Yes. Didn't you know?"
"No. I thought he was still at Eliot."
Across the way an open door gave a glimpse of the mysterious recesses of a studio. Hidden behind the tall green plants and Japanese screens was some one playing a violin.
"Oh!" exclaimed the girl. "It is glorious! Life is so free, and so full of things to do!"
"Maybe the child thinks that this is altruistic passion, but I doubt if it is," meditated Anne.
Suddenly Helen turned, with a quiver on her lips that completed the conquest of the older woman's heart.
"Oh, Miss Bradford! I do so want to help! Do you think I can?"