In spite of his theory as to what was best for her, in some ways Ludlow
rather expected that Cornelia would apply to him for advice as to how
and where she should begin work. He forgot how fully he had already
given it; but she had not. She remembered what she had overheard him
say to her mother, that day in the Fair House, about the superiority of
the Synthesis of Studies, and she had since confirmed her faith in his
judgment by much silent inquiry of the newspapers. They had the Sunday
edition of the _Lakeland Light_ at Pymantoning, and Cornelia had kept
herself informed of the "Gossip of the Ateliers," and concerning "Women
and Artists," "Artists' Summer Homes," "Phases of Studio Life," "The
Ladies who are Organizing Ceramic Clubs," "Women Art Students,"
"Glimpses of the Dens of New York Women Artists," and other aesthetic
interests which the Sunday edition of the _Light_ purveyed with the
newspaper syndicate's generous and indiscriminate abundance. She did
not believe it all; much of it seemed to her very silly; but she
nourished her ambition upon it all the same.
The lady writers who celebrated the lady artists, and who mostly
preferred to swim in seas of personal float, did now and then offer
their readers a basis of solid fact; and they all agreed that the
Synthesis of Art Studies was the place for a girl if she was in earnest
and wished to work.
As these ladies described them the conditions were of the exacting sort
which Cornelia's nature craved, and she had her sex-pride in the
Synthesis, too, because she had read that women had borne an important
part in founding it; the strictest technical training and the freest
spirit of artistic endeavor prevailed in a school that owed its
existence so largely to them. That was a great point, even if every one
of the instructors was a man. She supposed that Mr. Ludlow would have
sheltered himself behind this fact if she had used the other to justify
herself in going on with art after he had urged that as a woman, she
had better not do so. But the last thing Cornelia intended was to
justify herself to Mr. Ludlow, and she vehemently wished he would not
try to do anything more for her, now. After sleeping upon the facts of
their meeting she felt sure that he would not try. She approved of
herself for not having asked him to call in parting. She was almost
glad that he hardly had given her a chance to do so.
It was Saturday night when Cornelia arrived, and she spent Sunday
writing home a full account of her adventures to her mother, whom she
asked to give Mrs. Barton the note she enclosed, and in looking over
her drawings, and trying to decide which she should take to the
Synthesis with her. She had a good deal of tacit argument about them
with Mr. Ludlow, who persisted in her thoughts after several definitive
dismissals; and Monday morning she presented herself with some drawings
she had chosen as less ridiculous than some of the others, and hovered
with a haughty humility at the door of the little office till the
janitor asked her if she would not come in and sit down. He had
apparently had official experience of cases like hers; he refused
without surprise the drawings which she offered him as her credentials,
and said the secretary would be in directly. He did not go so far as to
declare his own quality, but he hospitably did what he could to make
her feel at home.
Numbers of young people began to appear, singly and in twos and threes,
and then go out again, and go on up the stairs which led crookedly to
and from the corner the office was cramped into. Some of them went up
stairs after merely glancing into the office, others found letters
there, and staid chatting awhile. They looked at Cornelia with merely
an identifying eye, at first, as if they perceived that she was a new
girl, but as if new girls were such an old story that they could not
linger long over one girl of the kind. Certain of the young ladies
after they went up stairs came down in long, dismal calico aprons that
covered them to the throat, and with an air of being so much absorbed
in their work that they did not know what they had on. They looked at
Cornelia again, those who had seen her before, and those who had not,
made up for it by looking at her twice, and Cornelia began to wonder if
there was anything peculiar about her, as she sat upright, stiffening
with resentment and faintly flushing under their scrutiny. She wore her
best dress, which was a street dress, as the best dress of a village
girl usually is; her mother had fitted it, and they had made it
themselves, and agreed that it was very becoming; Mrs. Burton had said
so, too. The fashion of her hat she was not so sure about, but it was a
pretty hat, and unless she had got it on skewy, and she did not believe
she had, there was nothing about it to make people stare so. There was
one of these girls, whom Cornelia felt to be as tall as herself, and of
much her figure; she was as dark as Cornelia, but of a different
darkness. Instead of the red that always lurked under the dusk in
Cornelia's cheeks, and that now burned richly through it, her face was
of one olive pallor, except her crimson lips; her long eyes were black,
with level brows, and with a heavy fringe of lucent black hair cut
straight above them; her nose was straight, at first glance, but showed
a slight arch in profile; her mouth was a little too full, and her chin
slightly retreated. She came in late, and stopped at the door of the
office, and bent upon Cornelia a look at once prehistoric and _fin de
siecle_, which lighted up with astonishment, interest and sympathy,
successively; then she went trailing herself on up stairs with her
strange Sphinx-face over her shoulder, and turned upon Cornelia as long
as she could see her.
At last a gentleman came in and sat down behind the table in the
corner, and Cornelia found a hoarse voice to ask him if he was the
secretary. He answered in the friendly way that she afterwards found
went all through the Synthesis, that he was, and she said, with her
country bluntness, that she wished to study at the Synthesis, and she
had brought some of her drawings with her, if he wanted to look at
them. He took them, but either he did not want to look at them, or else
it was not his affair to do so. He said she would have to fill out a
form, and he gave her a blank which asked her in print a number of
questions she had not thought of asking herself till then. It obliged
her to confess that she had never studied under any one before, and to
say which master in the Synthesis she would like to study under, now.
She had to choose between life, and still-life, and the antique, and
she chose the antique. She was not governed by any knowledge or desire
in her choice more definite than such as come from her having read
somewhere that the instructor in the antique was the severest of all
the Synthesis instructors, and the most dreaded in his criticisms by
the students. She did not forget, even in the presence of the
secretary, and with that bewildering blank before her, that she wished
to be treated with severity, and that the criticism she needed was the
criticism that every one dreaded.
When the secretary fastened her application to her drawings, she asked
if she should wait to learn whether it was accepted or not; but he said
that he would send her application to the Members' Room, and the
instructor would see it there in the morning. She would have liked to
ask him if she should come back there to find out, but she was afraid
to do it; he might say no, and then she should not know what to do. She
determined to come without his leave, and the next morning she found
that the master whom they had been submitted to had so far approved her
drawings as to have scrawled upon her application, "Recommended to the
Preparatory." The secretary said the instructor in the Preparatory
would tell her which grade to enter there.
Cornelia's heart danced, but she governed herself outwardly, and asked
through her set teeth, "Can I begin at once?" She had lost one day
already, and she was not going to lose another if she could help it.
The secretary smiled. "If the instructor in the Preparatory will place
you."
Before noon she had passed the criticism needed for this, and was in
the lowest grade of the Preparatory. But she was a student at the
Synthesis, and she was there to work in the way that those who knew
best bade her. She wished to endure hardness, and the more hardness the
better.