She was standing in her studio, in front of her Academy picture,
wondering lazily when it would be finished, and if it would get in.
She had exhibited several times at Birmingham and Manchester, and last
spring her "The Grove is all a Pale Frail Mist" in the Leeds Exhibition
had sold for thirty guineas, but she had had nothing hung yet in the
Royal Academy, though she had sent there more than once.
Her studio was an attic. On the discoloured walls, and stacked in
corners on the floor, were early works--a record to the investigator of
the various stages she had passed. They were all there--the pictures
that one would have expected to find. There were the usual attempts
at family portraits, the usual still-life groups of ginger-jars,
Japanese fans, and bowls of flowers; there were the more ambitious
canvases depicting lackadaisical females posturing in medieval
landscapes--painstaking exaggerations of a famous man's most obvious
faults. There were the subjects with silver beeches and willowy
streams, painted after she had given her heart to landscape for good and
all, and had returned to Beckenhampton entranced by the work of Corot.
Compared with those early insincerities the picture on the easel was a
masterpiece; but she was not looking at them for encouragement--indeed
not many of them were in a position to be observed--nor was she at work,
though the colours on the palette were freshly set. Although her gaze
wandered constantly from the picture to the study beside it--showing in
miniature the same stretch of gorse-grown common, the same sunk wayfarer
upon a bench--her brush was motionless, and presently she tossed it to
the table with a gesture of impatience.
She was thinking of _A Celibate's Love Songs_. A fortnight had passed
since she bought it, and the volume haunted her. She had been filled by
an intense desire to write to the author, to tell him of the effect his
poetry had had on her, also to ask him one or two questions about it.
Such impulses are obeyed by a thousand women every day in the year, but
to this woman, remote, unfashionable, the desire seemed so romantic, and
even immodest, that she blushed at the temptation. She wondered again
if such things were done, wondered if the appreciation of an obscure,
bent, plain little artist would excite his ridicule.
It was the latter doubt that deterred her most strongly, the fear
that he might scoff. The sensitiveness to her deformity which made it
an ordeal to her to confront a stranger, which made her ashamed of
her Christian name, rendered her shy even in correspondence, and she
shrank as much from revealing herself on paper as in speech. Still this
correspondent would not know that she was bent, or plain, or an obscure
artist, so there would be nothing for him to scoff at, excepting,
perhaps, the way she expressed her ideas. She reflected for a moment
that the "H. Sorrenford," which was her usual signature, might even
conceal her sex.
That fancy faded almost as it rose. Since her object in writing would
be to obtain an answer, she ought to enclose an envelope stamped and
addressed. Yes, he was bound to know that the appreciation was a
woman's. She faltered again, and wished that the poet were not a man.
In one respect she resembled all the readers who want autographs or
information; she was supported by the remembrance that she meant to
spare him the expense of the penny stamp. It emboldened her to begin
the letter. She had not a sentence in her mind when she sat down, and
her opening lines were the lines that popular authors have come to know
by heart--the lines with which even less favoured authors are familiar.
Before long, though, the knowledge that she was free to destroy the
letter when it was finished made her spontaneous, and she ceased to
consider the propriety of her action, forgot to question whether he
would sneer or not.
She was not a literary woman and she did not write literary English,
but she was an unhappy woman, who for the first time in her life had
experienced the joy of finding herself understood; and she came nearer
to uttering what she meant with her untutored pen than she had ever done
with her misguided brush. Because she was not literary, she believed
that when she suppressed the pronoun "I" she stilled the personal note,
and the true value of the letter lay in its suggestiveness. The pleasure
of expressing her love, her gratitude for the verse was very great, and
though she chose to ignore the fact that the pages were destined to meet
his eyes, the inward consciousness of it remained forceful.
When the letter was written, she read it slowly through, and twice she
made as if to tear it up. But she did not tear it up; she put it away
irresolutely. It occurred to her now that she could direct it only to
the office of the publisher, and several times during the day she
wondered if the publisher would forward it. Once in recalling something
that she had said, she regretted a word that had been used, and she
wished she could substitute a weaker one. She went to the studio and
took the letter out and examined it. She wrote with a "J," and the
word was thick and black; the alteration would be noticeable. She did
not like the thought of that, was averse from giving to an unaffected
letter an air of artifice, and she was reluctant to copy it. She stood
hesitating a long while. But how foolish she was! She had not decided
yet that she meant to post it at all.
The same on the morrow; she vacillated hourly. She wanted so much to
post it, but it seemed such a preposterous thing to do; the more she
reflected, the more certain she was that she would feel ashamed if she
yielded to the desire. Still she would put the letter in the pocket of
her jacket! She could determine whether it should go into the pillar-box
or the fire while she was out.
Beckenhampton itself is not picturesque, though the outskirts are
pretty enough. The visitor finds nothing to admire in the town save the
factory-girls, some of whom are beautiful--excepting on Sunday when
they wear their best clothes and mock pearl necklaces. She was tired
to death of the long, dull, stuccoed roads that offered nothing to the
imagination. She crossed the market-place and passed a post-office and
made her way towards London Street. In London Street the Misses Simpson
nodded to her without stopping. They agreed that she was "beginning to
look old, poor girl," as they went on. In her hand were the letter,
and the cheesemonger's bill, which she was about to pay. The fancy did
not strike her, but the two things that she held were typical of her
existence.
She paid the bill and turned homeward. Now she walked more slowly, and
when she reached the post-office again, she paused. She moved a step
closer to it--and wavered. The thought came, to embarrass her, that she
was making herself more ridiculous still by so much hesitation. At the
worst the man would throw the thing aside and forget it. She wished that
it had been sent at once, or that she had never written it at all. The
whole incident seemed to her intolerably stupid. She pushed the letter
hastily into the box.