Ludlow descended from the high horse which he saw it was really useless
for him to ride in that simple presence. "I didn't mean that I was a
student of art in that sense, exactly. I suppose I'm a painter of some
sort. I studied in Paris, and I'm working in New York--if that's what
you mean."
"Yes," said the lady, as if she did not know quite what she meant.
Ludlow still remained in possession of the sketches, and he now looked
at them with a new knot between his eyebrows. He had known at the first
glance, with the perception of one who has done things in any art, that
here was the possibility of things in his art, and he had spoken from a
generous and compassionate impulse, from his recognition of the
possibility, and from his sympathy with the girl in her defeat. Now his
conscience began to prick him. He asked himself whether he had any
right to encourage her, whether he ought not rather to warn her. He
asked her mother: "Has she been doing this sort of thing long?"
"Ever since she was a little bit of a thing," said the mother. "You
_might_ say she's been doing it ever since she could do anything; and
she _ain't_ but about fifteen, _now_. Well, she's going on sixteen,"
the mother added, scrupulously. "She was born the third of July, and
now it's the beginning of September. So she's just fifteen years and a
little over two months. I suppose she's too young to commence taking
lessons regularly?"
"No one would be too young for that," said Ludlow, austerely, with his
eyes on the sketch. He lifted them, and bent them frankly and kindly on
the mother's face. "And were you thinking of her going on?" The mother
questioned him for his exact meaning with the sweet unwisdom of her
smile. "Did you think of her becoming an artist, a painter?"
"Well," she returned, "I presume she would have as good a chance as
anybody, if she had the talent for it."
"She has the talent for it," said Ludlow, "and she would have a better
chance than most--that's very little to say--but it's a terribly rough
road."
"Yes," the mother faltered, smiling.
"Yes. It's a hard road for a man, and it's doubly hard for a woman. It
means work that breaks the back and wrings the brain. It means for a
woman, tears, and hysterics, and nervous prostration, and
insanity--some of them go wild over it. The conditions are bad air, and
long hours, and pitiless criticism; and the rewards are slight and
uncertain. One out of a hundred comes to anything at all; one out of a
thousand to anything worth while. New York is swarming with girl
art-students. They mostly live in poor boarding-houses, and some of
them actually suffer from hunger and cold. For men the profession is
hazardous, arduous; for women it's a slow anguish of endeavor and
disappointment. Most shop-girls earn more than most fairly successful
art-students for years; most servant-girls fare better. If you are
rich, and your daughter wishes to amuse herself by studying art, it's
all very well; but even then I wouldn't recommend it as an amusement.
If you're poor----"
"I presume," the mother interrupted, "that she would be self-supporting
by the time she had taken six months' lessons, and I guess she could
get along till then."
Ludlow stared at the amiably smiling creature. From her unruffled
composure his warning had apparently fallen like water from the back of
a goose. He saw that it would be idle to go on, and he stopped short
and waited for her to speak again.
"If she was to go to New York to take lessons, how do you think she'd
better----" She seemed not to know enough of the situation to formulate
her question farther. He had pity on her ignorance, though he doubted
whether he ought to have.
"Oh, go into the Synthesis," he said briefly.
"The Synthesis?"
"Yes; the Synthesis of Art Studies; it's the only thing. The work is
hard, but it's thorough; the training's excellent, if you live through
it."
"Oh, I guess she'd live through it," said the mother with a laugh. She
added, "I don't know as I know just what you mean by the Synthesis of
Art Studies."
"It's a society that the art-students have formed. They have their own
building, and casts, and models; the principal artists have classes
among them. You submit a sketch, and if you get in you work away till
you drop, if you're in earnest, or till you're bored, if you're amusing
yourself."
"And should you think," said the mother gesturing toward him with the
sketches in her hand, "that she could get in?"
"I think she could," said Ludlow, and he acted upon a sudden impulse.
He took a card from his pocketbook, and gave it to the mother. "If
you'll look me up when you come to New York, or let me know, I may be
of use to you, and I shall be very glad to put you in the way of
getting at the Synthesis."
"Thanks," the mother drawled with her eyes on the card. She probably
had no clear sense of the favor done her. She lifted her eyes and
smiled on Ludlow with another kind of intelligence. "You're visiting at
Mrs. Burton's."
"Yes," said Ludlow, remembering after a moment of surprise how
pervasive the fact of a stranger's presence in a village is. "Mr.
Burton can tell you who I am," he added in some impatience with her
renewed scrutiny of his card.
"Oh, it's all right," she said, and she put it in her pocket, and then
she began to drift away a little. "Well, I'm sure I'm much obliged to
you." She hesitated a moment, and then she said, "Well, good
afternoon."
"Good-by," said Ludlow, and he lifted his hat and stood bowing her out
of the Fine Arts Department, while she kept her eyes on him to the last
with admiration and approval.
"Well, I declare, Cornelia," she burst out to her daughter, whom she
found glowering at the agricultural implements, "that _is_ about the
nicest fellow! Do you know what he's done?" She stopped and began a
search for her pocket, which ended successfully. "He's given me his
name, and told me just what you're to do. And when you get to New York,
if you ever do, you can go right straight _to_ him."
She handed Ludlow's card to the girl, who instantly tore it to pieces
without looking at it. "I'll never go to him--horrid, mean, cross old
thing! And you go and talk about me to a perfect stranger as if I were
a baby. And now he'll go and laugh at you with the Burtons, and they'll
say it's just like you to say everything that comes into your head,
that way, and think everybody's as nice as they seem. But _he_ isn't
nice! He's _horrid_, and conceited, and--and--hateful. And I shall
_never_ study art anywhere. And I'd _die_ before I asked _him_ to help
me. He was just making fun of you all the time, and anybody but you
would see it, mother! Comparing me to a hired girl!"
"No, I don't think he did _that_, Cornelia," said the mother with some
misgiving. "I presume he may have been a little touched up by your
pictures, and wanted to put me down about them----"
"Oh, mother, mother, mother!" The girl broke into tears over the
agricultural implements. "They were the dust under his feet."
"Why, Cornelia, how you talk!"
"I wish _you_ wouldn't talk, mother! I've asked you a thousand times,
if I've asked you once, not to talk about me with anybody, and here you
go and tell everything that you can think of to a person that you never
saw before."
"What did I tell him about you?" asked her mother, with the uncertainty
of ladies who say a great deal.
"You told him how old I was almost to a day!"
"Oh, well, that wasn't anything! I saw he'd got to know if he was to
give any opinion about your going on that was worth having."
"It'll be all over town, to-morrow. Well, never mind! It's the last
time you'll ever have a chance to do it. I'll never, never, never touch
a pencil to draw with again! Never! You've done it _now_, mother! _I_
don't care! I'll help you with your work, all you want, but don't ever
ask me to draw a single thing after this. I guess he wouldn't have much
to say about the style of a bonnet, or set of a dress, if it _was_
wrong!"
The girl swept out of the building with tragedy-queen strides that
refused to adjust themselves to the lazy, lounging pace of her mother,
and carried her homeward so swiftly that she had time to bang the front
gate and the front door, and her own room door and lock it, and be
crying on the bed with her face in the pillow, long before her mother
reached the house. The mother wore a face of unruffled serenity, and as
there was no one near to see, she relaxed her vigilance, and smiled
with luxurious indifference to the teeth she had lost.