I
When Amy Martin was thirteen years old she read, in a book she had
borrowed from the Fortnightly Library, something that interested her a
great deal. She liked the thought so much that she accepted it quite
thoroughly and kept it with her as a delightful secret. It was to the
effect that each person’s life is an interesting plot and that, if
written out, it would make a fascinating story.
To Amy the idea opened up infinite avenues of adventure. Until then she
had taken for granted her life in Belleville. Now, other things seemed
just about to happen to her.
Amy was one of two children. Her brother Clarence was two years
younger, a slow, shy, blond boy. Her father was a fat, soft fellow,
with bushy reddish hair which stood up in a stiff halo from an always
slightly red forehead. He had no chin at all, but he did have rather
a thick neck, so that below his mouth his chin and throat formed a
sagging, uneven line. He carried his head a bit high, and his prominent
nostrils seemed as peering as his eyes.
Mrs. Martin was a neat, dark-haired woman, a trifle sleek and oily
as to complexion and hair. She liked to spend her time mixing not
particularly good cakes or talking with her neighbours, taking hours
to elaborate over trifles. She liked to give the impression of being
always busy, though she kept one servant and did not do much of
anything.
Mr. Martin was in the retail hardware business. On the front of his
store and on his letterheads he used the picture of an ax, in red, with
the irrelevant motto: “It Pays to Trade at Martin’s.” There was only
one other hardware store in Belleville, so he had quite a good trade.
The Martins lived in Myrtle Street, one of the nicest streets in
Belleville. The house was of clapboards, painted a cheerful yellow
with white trimmings, and had a wide porch with a scroll-work railing.
The yard had several nice fruit trees and a variety of bushes placed
without regard to landscaping. The house was cut up into small and not
particularly attractive rooms.
At thirteen Amy was a freshman in High School and already a recognized
member of Belleville’s “younger set,” with dancing school Saturday
afternoons, parties on Friday nights and many Christmas-week
activities. After she read that every life is an interesting story, Amy
began to visualize herself as the heroine of a definite romance, still
without a plot, but alluring and pleasant. The thought became personal,
immediately. She forgot that every other life in Belleville contained a
plot for a story, too. The thought seemed to belong only to her. Life
stretched out, fragrant with possibilities of living.
Crossing the street on an errand—to borrow a cup of sugar from Mrs.
Oglesthorn—Amy noticed the shadow of a tree on the dusty street. She
made up sentences:
“As Amy crossed the street, the sunshine and shade cast contrasting
shadows on her—”
“Amy ran across the street, enjoying the warm sunlight—”
She made up frequent sentences. Why not? Wasn’t she a person in a
story? Wasn’t anything liable to happen to her at any time? Often,
after that, she thought of herself in the third person.
Amy’s first year in High School was pleasant enough. She envied Luetta
Corman when, in the Christmas cantata, Luetta was chosen Queen of the
Good Fairies and wore white tarlatan and spangles, while Amy, as one of
the Pleasant Dreams, had to be content with a silver-starred wand and
pink cheesecloth. What did that matter? Later, she was going to live,
to have important things happen to her. She could laugh at these little
disappointments in Belleville.
The next year Amy had a real ambition. Because several people had
praised her singing, she decided she had a good voice and should become
a singer. The Martins had an upright and rather tinny piano, a symbol
of small-town gentility, and Amy had had three years of piano lessons.
She had no talent or real love for music, and she hated to practise.
She felt that learning to sing would be more pleasant than learning
to play. She was rather a pretty girl, with light brown hair and
indefinite blue-grey eyes. In her imagination she saw herself on the
concert stage and in opera even, costumed in any of the rôles she could
think of. On the stage she would find real romance.
Her vocal teacher came to her house for two half-hour lessons a week.
She was not an inspired teacher, but Amy needed nothing better than
Miss Patten could give. She hated scales and breathing exercises.
But she sang, eagerly enough, sentimental songs. Those by Carrie
Jacobs-Bond were her favourites. After six months of lessons she sang
“Spring Rain” in a thin, uneven voice, noticeably weak in the lower
register, at a pupils’ recital. Her parents were quite proud of her.
Two months later she sang at a concert given for a local charity.
On the program was a fairly well-known visiting soprano. This woman
listened to Amy’s singing, and when Amy eagerly asked her opinion about
“keeping on with lessons,” told her truthfully, though brutally, that
she could never learn to sing.
Amy gave up her singing quite willingly. She had really lost interest,
anyhow. She was becoming interested in boys. She had a chum now, Lulu
Brown, a dark-haired, bright-eyed girl with rather boisterous manners,
and they were reaching the giggling stage. They put themselves in the
way of masculine attentions, invitations to play tennis or go walking,
with a soda at the Central Drug Store as an objective.
Lulu was more attractive and vivacious than Amy, but her family was
not as high socially. Lulu’s father was a bookkeeper. In Belleville
the “society set” was composed of the families of professional men
and those who owned businesses. Lulu went with the same crowd as Amy,
though her parents did not go into society. Amy was fond of her, but
sometimes she was ashamed of her on the street, and she was always
afraid that Lulu would do something unconventional. If it had not
been that boys sought Lulu’s company and that Amy received many of
her invitations through her chum, it is possible that she would have
dropped her altogether.
The next summer Amy decided to be an artist. Three times a week, during
vacation, she went to Miss Matson’s “studio,” the second-floor front
room of the Matson home.
Miss Matson had had several years of study in New York. On the wall of
her living-room there was a picture in oils that, it was said, had been
done at the Art Students’ League. Amy did not know just what this was,
but she was impressed because of the name and because her teacher had
studied in New York.
Miss Matson’s students could do two kinds of work, copying pictures
or still-life. If they chose copying, they made meticulous replicas
of fancy heads, usually in water-colour, imitating every curve and
shadow, putting on daubs of red where the originator had put daubs of
red, unquestioning. The homes in Belleville were filled with these
pictures in elaborate gold frames, the work of Miss Matson’s pupils.
The “still-life” studies were groups of fruit or vegetables, a yellow
mixing bowl, a red tomato and a green pepper, or, perhaps, a pitcher,
two lemons and a slice of cake.
Amy copied pictures all summer. Then some one told her that this was
not art, so she joined the still-life group.
So—she was going to be an artist. She tried to see colour in everything
that year. She read the lives of the painters. She knew that years of
hard work lay before her, but she felt she wouldn’t mind that. She knew
she would do something remarkable. Life was seizing her—going to make
an artist out of her—to think that her romance, her story—was coming
out this way.
The next winter she went to High School and spent three afternoons a
week, after school, with Miss Matson. At the end of the year she could
do a “still-life study” of a couple of eggs, a mixing bowl and a bunch
of radishes with fair skill. She went to parties and enjoyed them. She
giggled with Lulu over the boys. But she felt that life stretched out
beyond Belleville.
That summer she persuaded her father to let her go to a near-by city
and take a summer course at an art school. She was only sixteen, but
there were cousins with whom she could stay. Her mother and Clarence
wanted to go to Benton Springs, near Belleville, where her father could
go for week-ends.
Her father laughed condescendingly and told her that she could study,
that he thought it would be very nice to have an artist as a daughter.
The art students were older than Amy and greatly in earnest. Amy lived
near the school and worked hard. All summer she didn’t pay attention to
anything else. She always felt embarrassed when she met a model from
the life-classes, wrapped in a bathrobe, waiting to pose. Amy was not
in the life-class, but knew that drawing from the nude was all right
“for art’s sake.” She even peeked into a life-class and pretended that
she didn’t mind, though she really felt that she was doing something
wrong.
She attended a series of lectures and learned something about anatomy
and the history of art. She even learned a little of colour and
composition.
She found art a serious thing. She met men and women who had been
working for five or six years—and still were doing charcoal drawings.
She hated charcoal as a medium. Others spoke knowingly of schools of
art and new interpretations, and these things annoyed and puzzled her.
At the end of the term she had done half a dozen drawings from casts,
three compositions and a few outdoor sketches. She had thought of art
as a way to produce pretty pictures quickly. She saw how inadequate she
was for such a big subject and that she lacked ability and ambition.
She was glad to be back in Belleville for the opening of High School.
After all, life offered many things beside music and art.