VISITORS
Miss Mason was sitting in her studio at four o'clock on Sunday
afternoon. She was reading a small, red-covered book, within whose
pages was enshrined a brief account of the life and work of Whistler.
At intervals she looked up from her reading to glance round the studio
and smile. It was her dream incarnate. She had waited forty-three
years for its birth. She realized now that she had always wanted it,
had always believed in it. All through the old days in the rose-beds,
when she had pruned the trees, when she had grafted new buds, when she
had watched the flowers expanding, she had dreamt of this studio. Only
at moments it had looked real; generally it was far off and shadowy,
but always it had been before her, and something had whispered to her
heart, "Wait; one day it will come."
And now it was no faint shadowy dream, but a living reality, and it
would bring more glorious realities in its train. Nothing could be too
wonderful to happen in the castle of her dreams.
Again she looked round the studio, and again she smiled. She would
have liked to sing for happiness, only her voice was too gruff and
cracked. She would have liked to dance for joy, only her old legs were
too stiff. But she minded neither of these things, for her heart was
beating to a little gay secret tune in which joy and thankfulness were
woven in delicious harmony.
From behind the door that led to the tiny kitchen she heard murmured
sounds and an occasional deep laugh. Sally's scrappy little note had
been answered by the appearance of Jim in his Sunday-best, shining
from the washtub, redolent of yellow soap, every trace of his black
weekday occupation removed. They were now cooing like a pair of young
turtle-doves in a cage.
Suddenly Miss Mason was startled by a knock.
A moment later the door which led from the studio to the little
vestibule opened, and Sally announced:
"Mr. Kirby and Mr. Oldfield."
Miss Mason's heart fluttered. It is an odd emotion, and now nearly
out of fashion. It belonged to the days of "Cranford," "Evelina," and
"Sense and Sensibility." Now all emotions are big and passionate, or
calm and well-controlled. There are few gentle excitements left.
In spite of the fluttering, Miss Mason rose to her feet, a quiet
dignified old figure.
"I am very pleased to see you," she said, and she gave them each her
hand with the air of a queen. "Sally," she said, "bring tea."
She sat down again. There was a little pink flush in her cheeks. For
forty-three years she had spoken to no man of her own class except the
vicar and doctor. The interview with Mr. Davis being purely on business
did not count.
Barnabas and Dan put their caps on the oak chest beside the Sèvres bowl
which was filled with the pink roses with whose portraiture Miss Mason
had so sadly failed. Then they sat down.
There was a moment's pause. Even Barnabas' mental picture of Miss
Mason--a picture supplied by Sally's unconscious imitation of her--had
not quite come up to the quaintness of the reality. He felt that he
had suddenly stepped back at least a century. There was about the
atmosphere a hint of potpourri and long ago half-forgotten days that
are laid up in lavender. There was a completeness about the whole
thing--from the oak dresser with its blue plates, the Sèvres bowl and
the pink roses, to the woman in her voluminous black dress, wide white
collar, and abundant grey hair covered with the finest of old lace
caps--a completeness that only an artist could fully realize, though
most people would have felt.
She was so extraordinarily ugly too. No ordinary commonplace plainness
of feature, but downright ugliness, yet without the smallest trace of
repulsiveness in it. It was a fascinating kind of ugliness, and the
eyes in the ugly face--they alone were really beautiful--shone like
bits of red-brown amber. It is a colour rarely seen.
Barnabas broke the silence.
"Your studio," he said, "is charming. Dan and I watched the furniture
coming in on Thursday morning. If it is not impertinent of me, may I
congratulate you on it?"
"Glad you like it," said Miss Mason. "It's the first studio I've ever
seen, but it's the kind I always wanted. Have always pictured studios
in my mind like this one."
"You're lucky in your mental images," said Dan. "If you saw ours----"
he broke off and shrugged his shoulders.
"But perhaps," said Miss Mason anxiously, "yours is the real thing, and
mine----"
"Yours," said Barnabas, "is the dream to which we aspire, and to which
we cannot achieve. When you see ours--and we hope you will honour
us with your presence--you will realize how very far short of our
aspirations they must fall."
"But," said Miss Mason almost wistfully, "you paint real pictures in
them."
"Try to do so," said Dan gruffly, "and a few of us succeed. Even in
that most of us fail as we fail in our furniture. Paul and Michael are
our geniuses."
"Paul and Michael?" queried Miss Mason.
"Mr. Treherne and Mr. Chester," explained Barnabas. "They live in
studios numbers one and three respectively. Jasper Merton has number
five, Alan Farley number four, Dan number two, and mine is number six,
next door to you."
"The garden with the faun," said Miss Mason.
"The garden with the faun," replied Barnabas. And then he got up to
move a table for Sally, who had come in with the tea-things, blue
willow china on a tray covered with the daintiest of damask cloths. She
brought in more dishes with cakes and bread and butter, and a copper
kettle which was singing its heart out on a little spirit lamp. Then
she left the room.
Miss Mason warmed the teapot and the tea-cups, measured the tea, and
filled the teapot with boiling water. Then she took up the sugar-tongs.
"Sugar?" she asked.
"One lump each," said Barnabas.
She put the little cubes into the cups, poured in milk and tea, and
handed the cups to the men.
"Help yourselves," she said. Then she looked up and smiled.
"Am quite delighted to see you," she said, "but you'll have to do the
talking. Don't suppose I've spoken more than six words a day for the
last twenty years, till the last three weeks. Then it has been entirely
about furniture. I've got out of the way of conversation."
"Barnabas will supply the need," said Dan. "He has the biggest flow of
conversation I've ever met. Only it's largely nonsense."
"Should like nonsense," said Miss Mason. "Never talked nonsense in my
life."
"No?" queried Barnabas politely, his eyes twinkling.
Then they all three laughed. And in the laugh Miss Mason forgot that
she was trying to hide her shyness, for it suddenly disappeared, and
there was nothing left to hide. She forgot that she had never set eyes
on the men till ten minutes ago. She was no longer a hostess trying
to feel at ease with strangers. She was just a happy woman talking to
two happy men, the difference in age forgotten. Such a magic god is
laughter.
And before an hour was over Miss Mason felt that she knew all about
them. Not the things in which some people consider the knowledge of
their fellow-men to consist--their father's profession, their mother's
family, their relationship to various grandees, the towns in which they
have lived, the schools at which they have been educated, the number of
their brothers and their sisters, all of which, if you come to think of
it, are pure accidents, and have nothing to do with the man himself.
It was none of these things Miss Mason learnt. She found out that
Barnabas had a universal love for nature and his fellow-men, in fact,
for everything alive; and that his heart was as sunny as his laugh.
And that Dan's rather gruff manner hid a heart as tender as a woman's.
There were a thousand minor characteristics she would discover by and
by, but these were the salient facts, and showed the true man.
When they said good-bye it was with a promise from her to visit their
studios, and with an assurance from them that the other four men were
going to call on her.
They did--Jasper Merton the next day alone; Paul, Alan, and Michael
on the Tuesday. Barnabas and Dan had broken the ice for her, and Miss
Mason received them with little trepidation. Having come once they came
again.
And not one of them guessed in what a curious way the influence of the
quaint old lady was to be woven into the lives of at least three of
them. For the Three Fates, who sit all day long spinning in three great
black chairs, are strange and ancient dames, and they saw in Miss Mason
a kindred spirit. In fact, they laughed to think of her likeness to
them as she sat in the carved oak chair in her studio with her knitting
in her hands.
And Miss Mason took one and all of the six artists of the courtyard
to her heart and loved them spontaneously as a mother loves her sons.
But Jasper she guessed was unhappy, and she was sorry for him, and she
was a tiny bit afraid of Michael's tongue and Alan she did not quite
understand, and Paul she was as proud of as if he were truly her son,
and Dan gave her a delightful feeling of being protected, he was so
big, but Barnabas--though she loved them all--took the first place in
her heart.