I
The next afternoon they were all settled peacefully at work. They had
agreed to give up the idea of getting all in order first; they had
decided that they would do a little every day.
Miss Mell was at work on an oil painting representing a white tiled
bathroom in which sat a heavenly fair young mother undressing a baby on
her lap, while near her were playing two misty, wistful little children
in bathgowns. In the air, over their heads, was a huge tin of talcum
powder, and beneath the picture were the words--“THAT COM’FY, SILKY,
CUDDLY FEELING WHICH ONLY FEATHERBLO POWDER CAN GIVE.”
It was an order; she had enough commissions ahead to keep her busy for
months. She made it her business to suit her clients and their public;
if she had any tastes of her own, she set them aside. She had good sense
and shrewdness and no illusions of her own greatness. She wished to earn
a living by drawing, because she was fond of it and did it fairly well.
She never used the word “Art,” never expressed an aesthetic opinion. The
advertising agency for which she did most of her work considered her in
all things perfect and especially created to fill their wants.
Miss Bainbridge was stippling the background of a little pen and ink
sketch--a bizarre thing which she was going to try on a brand new art
magazine. It was a woman, nude except for an immense black cloak
sprinkled with white stars which floated from her shoulders. She stood
alone on an immense stage with a background of black dots; and before
and below her was a swimming sea of eyes. She called it “Failure.”
Rosaleen too was working, but neither contentedly nor successfully. The
more she saw of the others, the less she thought of herself. They worked
with such industry, hour after hour. They didn’t seem to have the
slightest trace of her fatal desire for distraction. After she had been
drawing for an hour or so, she always became intolerably restless, so
that even washing dishes was a relief.... By the side of Enid Bainbridge
she felt as some poor little clergyman, struggling incessantly to feed
and clothe his family, sick with cares and worries of this world, might
feel by the side of Saint Paul. Enid worshipped her god with a single
heart. Not for money, not for praise, not for any conceivable reward,
would she do anything but her best. Even her ruthlessness, her
selfishness, had in them something sublime. She was the priestess,
sacrificing all things on her altar. Rosaleen, while disagreeing with
her as to the relative importance of art in life, nevertheless venerated
her devotion.
She wanted very much to ask their opinion of the design she had just
made, but she didn’t venture to interrupt them. She regarded them
covertly; Miss Mell in her gingham apron, with her calm, bespectacled
face cheerfully intent on her painting; Enid Bainbridge bending over her
drawing with desperate intensity.... She had beautiful hair, Rosaleen
observed, and she knew how to dress it.
She got up and crossed the room, very quietly, so as not to shake the
floor, and sat down before the hearth to bait a mouse-trap. The place
was overrun with mice; they had disturbed her horribly the night before.
And suddenly the industrious silence was broken by a tremendous knock at
the door.
“_Come_ in!” called Miss Mell, in her cheerful, encouraging voice.
The door opened, so widely that it slammed against the wall, and in
walked an enormously fat man, with a swarthy face, an upturned mustache
and a monocle dangling by a broad black ribbon. He was dressed with
extreme care, with well-creased trousers, a fastidious necktie, and
fawn-coloured spats; but the greater part of him was enveloped in a
flowing grey linen smock.
They all stared at him, astonished; he was so extraordinary. He stared
at them.
“I heard,” he said, “that there were three little female artists up
here, and I came in to look them over, to see if they were pretty and
interesting, or not. I live downstairs, my children, and my name is
Lawrence Iverson.”
“I’ve seen some of your work,” said Enid, carelessly. “In the Kremoth
Galleries. Rather good.”
He looked critically at Enid, but she met his glance with one quite as
cool and appraising.
“Who are _you_?” he asked. “To call my work ‘rather good’?”
“No one much, _just yet_,” she answered.
He crossed the room and fixing his monocle, examined her work.
“Not even ‘rather good,’” he said. “Clever--cheaply clever. Trick
stuff--all in one dimension. Worthless.”
“No, it isn’t,” she contradicted. “It’s what I mean it to be, anyway. It
expresses what I want it to. Now, a thing like that ‘Idols’ you did is
what I call a failure. You had something you wanted to express, and you
didn’t. It didn’t mean anything.”
“My God! Young woman, I never mean anything.... But you’re the perfect
school marm ‘doing art.’ You’re concerned with ideas, because you have a
brain, a little tiny one, but no soul. You don’t know what beauty is.
What, you girl, does a tree _mean_? What does a lovely arm _mean_? I
give my pictures names because people won’t buy them without names. But
the names are all damn nonsense, just to make the fools talk. For
instance, I will conceive a group, of perfect, heart-breaking harmony,
three figures in attitudes which form a complete and exquisite
design.... You see that sort of thing once in a while, without
forethought. I saw, the other day, a woman bending down from the top of
a flight of steps to take a bag a grocer’s boy was reaching up to her.
They made the most beautiful combination of curves God ever allowed....
_You’re_ not bad looking....”
Enid paid no attention to this compliment. She frowned.
“You’re wrong,” she said, after a while. “I’m not that sort--the school
marm.... But you _did_ have an idea in that picture of yours. I think
you wanted it to be ironic and terrible. And it wasn’t. It was only
severe. You missed what you aimed at. But I _don’t_ care about
ideas....”
“Keep quiet, sensitive, egotistic, female thing!” said Lawrence Iverson.
“Why do you care what I think about you? I don’t care--I couldn’t
possibly care--what you thought about me. Now to show you--what mood are
you trying to get in your little picture there? Explain it! If it means
something, what does it mean? Eh?”
“It’s the sensation of an actress who knows she’s failing----”
“Oh bosh! Oh rot! Oh stale, idiotic futility! So we have here the
portrait of a sensation! Well, here is what you want.”
He took Enid by the arm and pulled her to her feet; then he sat down on
her chair and began to draw with her pen, in strong, fine, sure lines,
the figure of a woman, in a strange attitude, half defiant, half
cringing.
“There’s your silly idea,” he said. “Without any black dots or white
stripes.... You can’t draw. No woman can. But it’s pretty to see them
try. I approve. I approve of you all. Even the trying will give you some
faint comprehension of what I accomplish. But now, my dear little souls,
put down your work and let us become acquainted!”