One beautiful May day Curtis came into the house with shining face.
"Sis, our artists are coming back," he called to Jennie from the hall.
"Are they? Oh, isn't that glorious!" she answered, running to meet him.
"When are they to reach here? Whom did you hear from?"
"Lawson. They can't come till some time in June, however."
Jennie's face fell. "In June! I thought you meant they were coming
now--right away--this week."
"Lawson furthermore writes that he expects to bring a sculptor with
him--a Mr. Parker. You remember those photographs he showed us of some
statues of Indians? Well, this is the man who made the figures. His wife
is coming as chaperon for Miss Brisbane."
"She still needs a chaperon, does she?"
"It would seem so. Besides, Mrs. Parker goes everywhere with her
husband."
"I hope she'll be as nice as Mrs. Wilcox."
"I don't think Lawson would bring any crooked timber along--there must
be something worth while in them."
"Well, I am delighted, George. I confess I'm hungry for a message from
the outside world; and during the school vacation we can get away once
in a while to enjoy ourselves."
The certainty of the return of the artistic colony changed Curtis's
entire summer outlook. Work had dragged heavily upon him during February
and March, and there were moments when his enthusiasm ebbed. It was a
trying position. He began to understand how a man might start in his
duties with the most commendable desire, even solemn resolution, to be
ever kindly and patient and self-respecting, and end by cursing the
redmen and himself most impartially. Misunderstandings are so easy where
two races are forced into daily contact, without knowledge of each
other's speech, and with only a partial comprehension of each other's
outlook on the world. Some of the employes possessed a small vocabulary
of common Tetong words, but they could neither explain nor reason about
any act. They could only command. Curtis, by means of the sign language,
which he had carried to marvellous clearness and swiftness, was able to
make himself understood fairly well on most topics, but nevertheless
found himself groping at times in the obscure caverns of their thinking.
"Even after a man gets their thought he must comprehend the origin of
their motives," he said to Wilson, his clerk. "Everything they do has
meaning and sequence. They have developed, like ourselves, through
countless generations of life under relatively stable conditions. These
material conditions are now giving way, are vanishing, but the mental
traits they formed will persist. Think of this when you are impatient
with them."
Wilson took a pessimistic view. "I defy the angel Gabriel to keep his
temper if he should get himself appointed clerk. If I was a married man
I could make a better mark; but there it is--they can't see me." He
ended with a deep sigh.
Curtis took advantage of Lawson's letter to write again to Elsie, and
though he considered it a very polite and entirely circumspect
performance, his fervor of gladness burned through every line, and the
girl as she read it fell to musing on the singularity of the situation.
He was in her mind very often, now; the romance and the poetry of the
work he was doing began at last to appeal to her, and the knowledge that
she, in a sense, shared the possibilities with him, was distinctly
pleasurable. She had perception enough to feel also the force of the
contrast in their lives, he toiling thanklessly on a barren, sun-smit
land, in effort to lead a subject race to self-supporting freedom, while
she, dabbling in art for art's sake, sat in a secure place and watched
him curiously.
"How well he writes," she thought, returning to his letter. His
sentences clutched her like strong hands, and she could not escape them.
As she read she drew again the splendid lines of his head in profile,
and then, a sentence later, it seemed that he was looking straight into
her eyes, grave of countenance, involved in some moral question whose
solution he considered essential to his happiness and to the welfare of
his people. Surely he was a most uncommon soldier. When she had finished
reading she was sincerely moved to reply. She had nothing definitely in
mind to say, and yet somehow she visualized him at his desk waiting an
answer. "The worst of it is, we seem to have no topic in common except
his distressing Indians," she said, as she returned to her work. "Even
art to him means painting the redmen sympathetically."
But he could not be put aside. He was narrow and one-sided, but he was
sincere and manly--and handsome. That was the very worst of it; he was
too attractive to be forgotten. Therefore she took up her pen again,
being careful to keep close to artistic motives. She spoke of the
success of her spring exhibition, and said: "It has confirmed me in the
desire to go on valiantly in the same line. That is the reason I am
coming back to the Tetongs. I feel that I begin to know
them--artistically, I mean; not as you know them--and I need your
blazing sunlight to drink up the fogs that I brought from Holland and
Belgium. The prismatic flare of color out there pleases me. It's just
the white ray split into its primary colors, but I can get it. I'm going
to do more of those canvases of the moving figure blended with the
landscape; they make a stunning technical problem in vibration as well
as in values; and then the critics shout over them, too. I sold the one
you liked so well, and also five portraits, and feel vastly encouraged.
Owen Field was over from New York and gave me a real hurrah. I am going
to exhibit in New York next fall if all goes well with me among the
Tetongs."