the window-panes as closely as possible, searching for the whereabouts
of the lads. As she looked, the playing struggling mass of them went
down in the road, the others piled on one. She thought she knew which
one,--he was the strongest,--then they were lost from her sight, as they
rolled in nearer to the sidewalk. And straight toward them rushed that
destroyer in the streets. She tried to throw up the sashes. She tried to
lean out and cry down to him, to wave her hands to him with warning as
she had often done with joy. She could not raise the sashes. She had not
the strength left to turn the rusty bolts. Nor was there time. She
looked again; she saw what was going to happen. Then with frenzy she
began to beat against the window-sashes and to moan and try to stifle
her own moans. And then shrill startled screams and piteous cries came
up to her, and crazed now and no longer knowing what she did, she struck
the window-panes in her agony until they were shattered and she thrust
her arms out through them with a last blind instinct to wave to him, to
reach him, to drag him out of the way. For some moments her arms hung
there outside the shattered window-glass, and a shower of crimson drops
from her fingers splashed on the paving-stones below. She kept on waving
her lacerated hands more and more feebly, slowly; and then they were
drawn inward after her body which dropped unconscious to the garret
floor.
IV
It was a gay scene over at the art school next morning. Even before the
accustomed hour the big barnlike room, with a few prize pictures of
former classes scattered about the walls, and with the old academy
easels standing about like a caravan of patient camels ever loaded with
new burdens but ever traveling the same ancient sands of art--even
before nine o'clock the barnlike room presented a scene of eager healthy
animal spirits. On the easel of every youthful worker, nearly finished,
lay the portrait of the mother. In every case it had been differently
done, inadequately done; but in all cases it had been done. Hardly could
any observer have failed to recognize what was there depicted. Beyond
smearings and daubings of paint, as past the edges of concealing clouds,
one caught glimpses of a serene and steadfast human radiance. There one
beheld the familiar image of that orb which in dark and pathless hours
has through all ages been the guardian light of the world--the mother.
The best in them had gone into the painting of this portrait, and the
consciousness of our best gives us the sense of our power, and the
consciousness of our power yields us our enthusiasm; hence the
exhilaration and energy of the studio scene.
The interest of the members of the class was not concerned solely with
the portrait, however: a larger share went to the model herself. They
had become strongly bound to her. All the more perhaps because she held
them firmly to the understanding that her life touched theirs only at
the point of the stranger in need of a small sum of money. Repulsed and
baffled in their wish to know her better, they nevertheless became aware
that she was undergoing a wonderful transformation on her own account.
The change had begun after the ordeal of the first morning. When she
returned for the second sitting, and then at later sittings, they had
remarked this change, and had spoken of it to one another--that she was
as a person into whose life some joyous, unbelievable event has fallen,
brightening the present and the future. Every day some old cloudy care
seemed to loose itself from its lurking-place and drift away from her
mind, leaving her face less obscured and thus the more beautifully
revealed to them. Now, with the end of the sittings not far off, what
they looked forward to with most regret was the last sitting, when she,
leaving her portrait in their hands, would herself vanish, taking with
her both the mystery of her old sorrows and the mystery of this new
happiness.
Promptly at nine o'clock the teacher of the class entered, greeted them,
and glanced around for the model. Not seeing her, he looked at his
watch, then without comment crossed to the easels, and studied again the
progress made the previous day, correcting, approving, guiding,
encouraging. His demeanor showed that he entered into the mounting
enthusiasm of his class for this particular piece of work.
A few minutes were thus quickly consumed. Then, watch in hand once more,
he spoke of the absence of the model:
"Something seems to detain the model this morning. But she has sent me
no word and she will no doubt be here in a few minutes."
He went back to the other end of the studio and sat down, facing them
with the impressiveness which belonged to him even without speech. They
fixed their eyes on him with the usual expectancy. Whenever as now an
unforeseen delay occurred, he was always prompt to take advantage of the
interval with a brief talk. To them there were never enough of these
brief talks, which invariably drew human life into relationship to the
art of portraiture, and set the one reality over against the other
reality--the turbulence of a human life and the still image of it on the
canvas. They hoped he would thus talk to them now; in truth he had the
air of casting about in his mind for a theme best suited to the moment.
* * * * *
That mother, now absent, when she had blindly found her way to him,
asking to pose, had fallen into good hands. He was a great teacher and
he was a remarkable man, remarkable even to look at. Massively built,
with a big head of black hair, olive complexion, and bluntly pointed,
black beard, and with a mold of countenance grave and strong, he looked
like a great Rembrandt; like some splendid full-length portrait by
Rembrandt painted as that master painted men in the prime of his power.
With the Rembrandt shadows on him even in life. Even when the sun beat
down upon him outdoors, even when you met him in the blaze of the city
streets, he seemed not to have emerged from shadow, to bear on himself
the traces of a human night, a living darkness. There was light within
him but it did not irradiate him.
Once he had been a headlong art student himself, starting out to become
a great painter, a great one. After years abroad under the foremost
masters and other years of self-trial with every favorable circumstance
his, nature had one day pointed her unswerved finger at his latest
canvas as at the earlier ones and had judged him to the quick: you will
never be a great painter. If you cannot be content to remain less, quit,
stop!
Thus youth's choice and a man's half a lifetime of effort and ambition
ended in abandonment of effort not because he was a failure but because
the choice of a profession had been a blunder. A multitude of men topple
into this chasm and crawl out nobody. Few of them at middle age in the
darkness of that pit of failure can grope within themselves for some
second candle and by it once more become illumined through and through.
He found _his_ second candle,--it should have been his first,--and he
lighted it and it became the light of his later years; but it did not
illumine him completely, it never dispelled the shadows of the flame
that had burned out. What he did was this: having reached the end of his
own career as a painter, he turned and made his way back to the fields
of youth, and taking his stand by that ever fresh path, always, as
students would rashly pass him, he halted them like a wise monitor,
describing the best way to travel, warning of the difficulties of the
country ahead, but insisting that the goal was worth the toil and the
trouble; searching secretly among his pupils year after year for signs
of what he was not, a great painter, and pouring out his sympathies on
all those who, like himself, would never be one.
Now he sat looking across at his class, the masterful teacher of them.
They sat looking responsively at him. Then he took up his favorite
theme:
"Your work on this portrait is your best work, because the model, as I
stated to you at the outset would be the case, has called forth your
finer selves; she has caused you to _feel_. And she has been able to do
this because her countenance, her whole being, radiates one of the great
passions and faiths of our common humanity--the look of reverent
motherhood. You recognize that look, that mood; you believe in it; you
honor it; you have worked over its living eloquence. Observe, then, the
result. Turn to your canvases and see how, though proceeding
differently, you have all dipped your brushes as in a common medium;
how you have all drawn an identical line around that old-time human
landmark. You have in truth copied from her one of the great
beacon-lights of expression that has been burning and signaling through
ages upon ages of human history--the look of the mother, the angel of
self-sacrifice to the earth.
"While we wait, we might go a little way into this general matter, since
you, in the study of portraiture, will always have to deal with it. This
look of hers, which you have caught on your canvases, and all the other
great beacon-lights of human expression, stand of course for the inner
energies of our lives, the leading forces of our characters. But, as
ages pass, human life changes; its chief elements shift their relative
places, some forcing their way to the front, others being pushed to the
rear; and the prominent beacon-lights change correspondingly. Ancient
ones go out, new ones appear; and the art of portraiture, which is the
undying historian of the human countenance, is subject to this shifting
law of the birth and death of its material.
"Perhaps more ancient lights have died out of human faces than modern
lights have been kindled to replace them. Do you understand why? The
reason is this: throughout an immeasurable time the aim of nature was to
make the human countenance as complete an instrument of expression as it
could possibly be. Man, except for his gestures and wordless sounds, for
ages had nothing else with which to speak; he must speak with his face.
And thus the primitive face became the chronicle of what was going on
within him as well as of what had taken place without. It was his
earliest bulletin-board of intelligence. It was the first parchment to
bear tidings; it was the original newspaper; it was the rude, but vivid,
primeval book of the woods. The human face was all that. Ages more had
to pass before spoken language began, and still other ages before
written language began. Thus for an immeasurable time nature developed
the face and multiplied its expressions to enable man to make himself
understood. At last this development was checked; what we may call the
natural occupation of the face culminated. Civilization began, and as
soon as civilization began, the decline in natural expressiveness began
with it. Gradually civilization supplanted primeval needs; it contrived
other means for doing what the face alone had done frankly,
marvelously. When you can print news on paper, you may cease to print
news on the living countenance. Moreover, the aim of civilization is to
develop in us the consciousness not to express, but to suppress. Its aim
is not to reveal, but to conceal, thought and emotion; not to make the
countenance a beacon-light, but a muffler of the inner candle, whatever
that candle for the time may be. All our ruling passions, good or bad,
noble or ignoble, we now try publicly to hide. This is civilization. And
thus the face, having started out expressionless in nature, tends
through civilization to become expressionless again.
"How few faces does any one of us know that frankly radiate the great
passions and moods of human nature! What little is left of this ancient
tremendous drama is the poor pantomime of the stage. Search crowds,
search the streets. See everywhere masked faces, telling as little as
possible to those around them of what they glory in or what they suffer.
Search modern portrait galleries. Do you find portraits of either men or
women who radiate the overwhelming passions, the vital moods, of our
galled and soaring nature? It is not a long time since the Middle Ages.
In the stretch of history centuries shrink to nothing, and the Middle
Ages are as the earlier hours of our own historic day. But has there not
been a change even within that short time? Did not the medieval
portrait-painters portray in their sitters great moods as no painter
portrays them now? How many painters of to-day can find great moods in
the faces of their sitters?
"And so I come again to your model. What makes her so remarkable, so
significant, so touching, so exquisite, so human, is the fact that her
face seems almost a survival out of a past in which the beacon-lights of
humanity did more openly appear on the features. In her case one
beacon-light most of all,--the greatest that has ever shone on the faces
of women,--the one which seems to be slowly vanishing from the faces of
modern women--the look of the mother: that transfiguration of the
countenance of the mother who believed that the birth of a child was the
divine event in her existence, and the emotions and energies of whose
life centered about her offspring. How often does any living painter
have his chance to paint that look now! Galleries are well filled with
portraits of contemporary women who have borne children: how often among
these is to be found the portrait of the mother of old?"
He rose. The talk was ended. He looked again at his watch, and said:
"It does not seem worth while to wait longer. Evidently your model has
been kept away to-day. Let us hope that no ill has befallen her and that
she will be here to-morrow. If she is here, we shall go on with the
portrait. If she should not be here, I shall have another model ready,
and we shall take up another study until she returns. Bring fresh
canvases."
He left the room. They lingered; looking again at their canvases,
understanding their own work as they had not hitherto and more strongly
than ever drawn toward their model whom that day they missed. Slowly and
with disappointment and with many conjectures as to why she had not
come, they separated.
V
It was Sunday. All round St. Luke's Hospital quiet reigned. The day was
very still up there on the heights under the blue curtain of the sky.
When he had been hurled against the curb on the dark street, had been
rolled over and tossed there and left there with no outcry, no movement,
as limp and senseless as a mangled weed, the careless crowd which
somewhere in the city every day gathers about such scenes quickly
gathered about him. In this throng was the physician whose car stood
near by; and he, used to sights of suffering but touched by that tragedy
of unconscious child and half-crazed mother, had hurried them in his
own car to St. Luke's--to St. Luke's, which is always open, always
ready, and always free to those who lack means.
Just before they stopped at the entrance she had pleaded in the doctor's
ear for a luxury.
"To the private ward," he said to those who lifted the lad to the
stretcher, speaking as though in response to her entreaty.
"One of the best rooms," he said before the operation, speaking as
though he shouldered the responsibility of the further expense. "And a
room for her near by," he added. "Everything for them! Everything!"
* * * * *
So there he was now, the lad, or what there was left of him, this quiet
Sunday, in a pleasant room opposite the cathedral. The air was like
early summer. The windows were open. He lay on his back, not seeing
anything. The skin of his forehead had been torn off; there was a
bandage over his eyes. And there were bruises on his body and bruises on
his face, which was horribly disfigured. The lips were swollen two or
three thicknesses; it was agony for him to speak. When he realized what
had happened, after the operation, his first mumbled words to her were:
"They will never have me now."
About the middle of the forenoon of this still Sunday morning, when the
doctor left, she followed him into the hall as usual, and questioned him
as usual with her eyes. He encouraged her and encouraged himself:
"I believe he is going to get well. He has the will to get well, he has
the bravery to get well. He is brave about it; he is as brave as he can
be."
"Of course he is brave," she said scornfully. "Of course he is brave."
"The love of such a mother would call him back to life," he added, and
he laid one of his hands on her head for a moment.
"Don't do that," she said, as though the least tenderness toward herself
at such a moment would unnerve her, melt away all her fortitude.
Everybody had said he was brave, the head nurse, the day nurse, the
night nurse, the woman who brought in the meals, the woman who scrubbed
the floor. All this had kept her up. If anybody paid any kind of tribute
to him, realized in any way what he was, this was life to her.
After the doctor left, as the nurse was with him, she walked up and down
the halls, too restless to be quiet.
At the end of one hall she could look down on the fragrant leafy park.
Yes, summer was nigh. Where a little while before had been only white
blossoms, there were fewer white now, more pink, some red, many to match
the yellow of the sun. The whole hillside of swaying; boughs seemed to
quiver with happiness. Her eyes wandered farther down to the row of
houses at the foot of the park. She could see the dreadful spot on the
street, the horrible spot. She could see her shattered window-panes up
above. The points of broken glass still seemed to slit the flesh of her
hands within their bandages.
She shrank back and walked to the end of the transverse hall. Across the
road was the cathedral. The morning service was just over. People were
pouring out through the temporary side doors and the temporary front
doors so placidly, so contentedly! Some were evidently strangers; as
they reached the outside they turned and studied the cathedral curiously
as those who had never before seen it. Others turned and looked at it
familiarly, with pride in its unfolding form. Some stopped and looked
down at the young grass, stroking it with the toes of their fine shoes;
they were saying how fresh and green it was. Some looked up at the sky;
they were saying how blue it was. Some looked at one another keenly;
they were discussing some agreeable matter, being happy to get back to
it now after the service. Not one of them looked across at the hospital.
Not a soul of them seemed to be even aware of its existence. Not a soul
of them!
Particularly her eyes became riveted upon two middle-aged ladies in
black who came out through a side door of the cathedral--slow-paced
women, bereft, full of pity. As they crossed the yard, a gray squirrel
came jumping along in front of them on its way to the park. One stooped
and coaxed it and tried to pet it: it became a vital matter with both of
them to pour out upon the little creature which had no need of it their
pent-up, ungratified affection. With not a glance to the window where
she stood, with her mortal need of them, her need of all mothers, of
everybody--her mortal need of everybody! Why were they not there at his
bedside? Why had they not heard? Why had not all of them heard? Why had
anything else been talked of that day? Why were they not all massed
around the hospital doors, tearful with their sympathies? How could they
hold services in the cathedral--the usual services? Why was it not
crowded to the doors with the clergy of all faiths and the laymen of
every land, lifting one outcry against such destruction? Why did they
not stop building temples to God, to the God of life, to the God who
gave little children, until they had stopped the massacre of children,
His children in the streets!
Yes; everybody had been kind. Even his little rivals who had fought with
him over the sale of papers had given up some of their pennies and had
bought flowers for him, and one of them had brought their gift to the
main hospital entrance. Every day a shy group of them had gathered on
the street while one came to inquire how he was. Kindness had rained on
her; there was that in the sight of her that unsealed kindness in every
heart.
She had been too nearly crazed to think of this. Her bitterness and
anguish broke through the near cordon of sympathy and went out against
the whole brutal and careless world that did not care--to legislatures
that did not care, to magistrates that did not care, to juries that did
not care, to officials that did not care, to drivers that did not care,
to the whole city that did not care about the massacre in the streets.
Through the doors of the cathedral the people streamed out unconcerned.
Beneath her, along the street, young couples passed, flushed with their
climb of the park hillside, and flushed with young love, young health.
Sometimes they held each other's hands; they innocently mocked her agony
with their careless joy.
One last figure issued from the side door of the cathedral hurriedly and
looked eagerly across at the hospital--looked straight at her, at the
window, and came straight toward the entrance below--the choir-master.
She had not sent word to him or to any one about the accident; but he,
when his new pupil had failed to report as promised, had come down to
find out why. And he, like all the others, had been kind; and he was
coming now to inquire what he could do in a case where nothing could be
done. She knew only too well that nothing could be done.
* * * * *
The bright serene hours of the day passed one by one with nature's
carelessness about the human tragedy. It was afternoon and near the hour
for the choral even-song across the way at the cathedral, the temporary
windows of which were open.
She had relieved the nurse, and was alone with him. Often during these
days he had put out one of his hands and groped about with it to touch
her, turning his head a little toward her under his bandaged eyes, and
apparently feeling much mystified about her, but saying nothing. She
kept her bandaged hands out of his reach but leaned over him in response
and talked ever to him, barely stroking him with the tips of her
stiffened fingers.
The afternoon was so quiet that by and by through the opened windows a
deep note sent a thrill into the room--the awakened soul of the organ.
And as the two listened to it in silence, soon there floated over to
them the voices of the choir as the line moved slowly down the aisle,
the blended voices of the chosen band, his school-fellows of the altar.
By the bedside she suddenly rocked to and fro, and then she bent over
and said with a smile in her tone:
"_Do you hear? Do you hear them?_"
He made a motion with his lips to speak but they hurt him too much. So
he nodded: that he heard them.
A moment later he tugged at the bandage over his eyes.
She sprang toward him:
"O my precious one, you must not tear the bandage off your eyes!"
"I want to see you!" he mumbled. "It has been so long since I saw you!
What's the matter with you? Where are your hands? Why don't you put your
arms around me?"
VI
The class had been engaged with another model. Their work was forced and
listless. As days passed without the mother's return, their thought and
their talk concerned itself more and more with her disappearance. Why
had she not come back? What had befallen her? What did it all mean?
Would they ever know?
One day after their luncheon-hour, as they were about to resume work,
the teacher of the class entered. He looked shocked; his look shocked
them; instant sympathy ran through them. He spoke with difficulty:
"She has come back. She is down-stairs. Something had befallen her
indeed. She told me as briefly as possible and I tell you all I know.
Her son, a little fellow who had just been chosen for the cathedral
choir school was run over in the street. A mention of it--the usual
story--was in the papers, but who of us reads such things in the papers?
They bore us; they are not even news. He was taken to St. Luke's, and
she has been at St. Luke's, and the end came at St. Luke's, and all the
time we have been here a few yards distant and have known nothing of it.
Such is New York! It was to help pay for his education in music that she
first came to us, she said. And it was the news that he had been chosen
for the choir school that accounts for the new happiness which we saw
brighten her day by day. Now she comes again for the same small wage,
but with other need, no doubt: the expenses of it all, a rose-bush for
his breast. She told me this calmly as though it caused her no grief. It
was not my privilege, it is not our privilege, to share her unutterable
bereavement.