with an air of such good faith as made him helpless. Whether it were
real or assumed, he could not make up his mind. He took a great fancy to
the Sage Hen, while she in her turn took a violent liking for Esther, as
the extremest contrast to herself. When Esther realized that this
product of Colorado was likely to be on her hands for several hours
every day, she felt less amused than either Strong or Mr. Murray, for
Miss Brooke's conversation, though entertaining as far as it went, had
not the charm of variety. It was not long before her visits to Esther's
studio became so frequent and so exhausting that Esther became desperate
and felt that some relief must at any cost be found. The poor little
prairie flower found New York at first exciting; she felt shy and
awkward among the swarms of strange people to whose houses Mrs. Murray
soon began to take her by way of breaking her in at once to the manners
of New York society; and whenever she could escape, she fled to Esther
and her quiet studio, with the feelings of a bird to its nest. The only
drawback to her pleasure there was that she had nothing to do; her
reading seemed to have been entirely in books of a severely moral caste,
and in consequence she could not be induced to open so much as a
magazine. She preferred to chatter about herself and the people she met.
Before a week had passed Esther felt that something must be done to
lighten this burden, and it was then that, as we shall see, Mr. Hazard
suggested her using Catherine for a model. The idea might not have been
so easily accepted under other circumstances, but it seemed for the
moment a brilliant one.
As Wharton had said of Esther, she was but a second-rate amateur.
Whether there was a living artist whom Wharton would have classed higher
than a first-rate amateur is doubtful. On his scale to be second-rate
was a fair showing. Esther had studied under good masters both abroad
and at home. She had not the patience to be thorough, but who had? She
asked this question of Mr. Wharton when he attacked her for bad drawing,
and Wharton's answer left on her mind the impression that he was himself
the only thorough artist in the world; yet others with whom she talked
hinted much the same thing of themselves. Esther at all events painted
many canvases and panels, good or bad, some of which had been exhibited
and had even been sold, more perhaps owing to some trick of the
imagination which she had put into them than to their technical merit.
Yet into one work she had put her whole soul, and with success. This was
a portrait of her father, which that severe critic liked well enough to
hang on the wall of his library, and which was admitted to have merits
even by Wharton, though he said that its unusual and rather masculine
firmness of handling was due to the subject and could never be repeated.
Catherine was charmed to sit for her portrait. It was touching to see
the superstitious reverence with which this prairie child kneeled before
whatever she supposed to be learned or artistic. She took it for granted
that Esther's painting was wonderful; her only difficulty was to
understand how a man so trivial as George Strong, could be a serious
professor, in a real university. She thought that Strong's taste for
bric-à-brac was another of his jokes. He tried to educate her, and had
almost succeeded when, in producing his last and most perfect bit of
Japanese lacquer, he said: "This piece, Catherine, is too pure for man.
We pray to it." Catherine sat as serious as eternity, but she believed
in her heart that he was making fun of her.
In this atmosphere, to sit for her portrait was happiness, because it
made her a part of her society. Esther was surprised to find what a
difficult model she was, with liquid reflections of eyes, hair and skin
that would have puzzled Correggio. Of course she was to be painted as
the Sage Hen. George sent for sage brush, and got a stuffed sage hen,
and photographs of sage-plains, to give Esther the local color for her
picture.
_Chapter III_
Once a week, if she could, Esther passed an hour or two with the
children at the hospital. This building had accommodations for some
twenty-five or thirty small patients, and as it was a private affair,
the ladies managed it to please themselves. The children were given all
the sunlight that could be got into their rooms and all the toys and
playthings they could profitably destroy. As the doctors said that, with
most of them, amusement was all they would ever get out of life, an
attempt was made to amuse them. One large room was fitted up for the
purpose, and the result was so satisfactory that Esther got more
pleasure out of it than the children did. Here a crowd of little
invalids, playing on the yellow floor or lying on couches, were always
waiting to be amused and longing to be noticed, and thought themselves
ill-treated if at least one of the regular visitors did not appear every
day to hear of their pains and pleasures. Esther's regular task was to
tell them a story, and, learning from experience that she could double
its effect by illustrating it, she was in the custom of drawing, as she
went on, pictures of her kings and queens, fairies, monkeys and lions,
with amiable manners and the best moral characters. Thus drawing as she
talked, the story came on but slowly, and spread itself over weeks and
months of time.
On this Saturday afternoon Esther was at her work in the play-room,
surrounded by a dozen or more children, with a cripple, tortured by
hip-disease, lying at her side and clinging to her skirt, while a proud
princess, with red and white cheeks and voluminous robes, was making
life bright with colored crayons and more highly colored adventures,
when the door opened and Esther saw the Rev. Stephen Hazard, with her
aunt, Mrs. Murray, on the threshold.
Mr. Hazard was not to blame if the scene before him made a sudden and
sharp picture on his memory. The autumn sun was coming in at the
windows; the room was warm and pleasant to look at; on a wide brick
hearth, logs of hickory and oak were burning; two tall iron fire-dogs
sat up there on their hind legs and roasted their backs, animals in
which the children were expected to take living interest because they
had large yellow glass eyes through which the fire sparkled; with this,
a group of small invalids whose faces and figures were stamped with the
marks of organic disease; and in the center--Esther!
Mr. Hazard had come here this afternoon partly because he thought it his
duty, and partly because he wanted to create closer relations with a
parishioner so likely to be useful as Mrs. Murray. He was miserable with
a cold, and was weak with fatigue. His next sermon was turning out dull
and disjointed. His building committee were interfering and quarreling
with Wharton. A harsh north-west wind had set his teeth on edge and
filled his eyes with dust. Rarely had he found himself in a less
spiritual frame of mind than when he entered this room. The contrast was
overwhelming. When Esther at first said quite decidedly that nothing
would induce her to go on with her story, he felt at once that this was
the only thing necessary to his comfort, and made so earnest an appeal
that she was forced to relent, though rather ungraciously, with a
laughing notice that he must listen very patiently to her sermon as she
had listened to his. The half hour which he now passed among kings and
queens in tropical islands and cocoanut groves, with giants and talking
monkeys, was one of peace and pleasure. He drew so good a monkey on a
cocoanut tree that the children shouted with delight, and Esther
complained that his competition would ruin her market. She rose at last
to go, telling him that she was sorry to seem so harsh, but had she
known that his pictures and stories were so much better than hers, she
would never have voted to make him a visitor.
Mr. Hazard was flattered. He naturally supposed that a woman must have
some fine quality if she could interest Wharton and Strong, two men
utterly different in character, and at the same time amuse suffering
children, and drag his own mind out of its deepest discouragement,
without show of effort or consciousness of charm. In this atmosphere of
charity, where all faiths were alike and all professions joined hands,
the church and the world became one, and Esther was the best of allies;
while to her eyes Mr. Hazard seemed a man of the world, with a talent
for drawing and a quick imagination, gentle with children, pleasant
with women, and fond of humor. She could not help thinking that if he
would but tell pleasant stories in the pulpit, and illustrate them on a
celestial blackboard such as Wharton might design, church would be an
agreeable place to pass one's Sunday mornings in. As for him, when she
went away with her aunt, he returned to his solitary dinner with a mind
diverted from its current. He finished his sermon without an effort. He
felt a sort of half-conscious hope that Esther would be again a
listener, and that he might talk it over with her. The next morning he
looked about the church and was disappointed at not seeing her there.
This young man was used to flattery; he had been sickened with it,
especially by the women of his congregation; he thought there was
nothing of this nature against which he was not proof; yet he resented
Esther Dudley's neglect to flatter him by coming to his sermon. Her
absence was a hint that at least one of his congregation did not care to
hear him preach a second time.
Piqued at this indifference to his eloquence and earnestness he went the
next afternoon, according to his agreement, to Strong's rooms, knowing
that Miss Dudley was to be there, and determined to win her over. The
little family party which Strong had got together was intended more for
this purpose than for any other, and Strong, willing to do what he could
to smooth his friend's path, was glad to throw him in contact with
persons from whom he could expect something besides flattery. Strong
never conceived it possible that Hazard could influence them, but he
thought their influence likely to be serious upon Hazard. He underrated
his friend's force of character.
His eyes were soon opened. Catherine Brooke made her first appearance on
this occasion, and was greatly excited at the idea of knowing people as
intellectual as Mr. Hazard and Mr. Wharton. She thought them a sort of
princes, and was still ignorant that such princes were as tyrannical as
any in the Almanach de Gotha, and that those who submitted to them would
suffer slavery. Her innocent eagerness to submit was charming, and the
tyrants gloated over the fresh and radiant victim who was eager to be
their slave. They lured her on, by assumed gentleness, in the path of
bric-à-brac and sermons.
In her want of experience she appealed to Strong, who had not the air
of being their accomplice, but seemed to her a rather weak-minded ally
of her own. Strong had seated her by the window, and was teaching her to
admire his collections, while Wharton and Hazard were talking with the
rest of the party on the other side of the room.
"What kind of an artist is Mr. Wharton?" asked Catherine.
"A sort of superior house-painter," replied Strong. "He sometimes does
glazing."
"Nonsense!" said Catherine contemptuously. "I know all about him. Esther
has told me. I want to know how good an artist he is. What would they
think of him in Paris?"
"That would depend on whether they owned any of his pictures," persisted
Strong. "I think he might be worse. But then I have one of his
paintings, and am waiting to sell it when the market price gets well up.
Do you see it? The one over my desk in the corner. How do you like it?"
"Why does he make it so dark and dismal?" asked Catherine. "I can't make
it out."
"That is the charm," he replied. "I never could make it out myself;
let's ask him;" and he called across the room: "Wharton, will you
explain to Miss Brooke what your picture is about? She wants to know,
and you are the only man who can tell her."
Wharton in his grave way came over to them, and first looking sadly at
Miss Brooke, then at the picture, said at length, as though to himself:
"I thought it was good when I did it. I think it is pretty good now.
What criticism do you make, Miss Brooke?"
Catherine was in mortal terror, but stood her ground like a heroine. "I
said it seemed to me dark, Mr. Wharton, and I asked why you made it so."
Wharton looked again at the picture and meditated over it. Then he said:
"Do you think it would be improved by being lighter?"
Although Catherine pleaded guilty to this shocking heresy, she did it
with so much innocence of manner that, in a few minutes, Wharton was
captured by her sweet face, and tried to make her understand his theory
that the merit of a painting was not so much in what it explained as in
what it suggested. Comments from the by-standers interfered with his
success. Hazard especially perplexed Catherine's struggling attention by
making fun of Wharton's lecture.
"Your idea of a picture," said he, "must seem to Miss Brooke like my
Cincinnati parishioner's idea of a corn-field. I was one day admiring
his field of Indian corn, which stretched out into the distance like
Lake Erie in a yellow sunset, when the owner, looking at his harvest as
solemnly as Wharton is looking at his picture, said that what he liked
most was the hogs he could see out of it."
"Well," said Wharton, "the Dutch made a good school out of men like him.
Art is equal to any thing. I will paint his hogs for him, slaughtered
and hung up by the hind legs, and if I know how to paint, I can put his
corn-field into them, like Ostade, and make the butchers glow with
emotion."
"Don't believe him, Miss Brooke," said Hazard. "He wants you to do his
own work, and if you give in to him you are lost. He covers a canvas
with paint and then asks you to put yourself into it. He might as well
hold up a looking-glass to you. Any man can paint a beautiful picture if
he could persuade Miss Brooke to see herself in it."
"What a pretty compliment," said Esther. "It is more flattering than the
picture."
"You can prove its truth, Miss Dudley," said Hazard. "It is easy to show
that I am right. Paint Miss Brooke yourself! Give to her the soul of the
Colorado plains! Show that beauty of subject is the right ideal! You
will annihilate Wharton and do an immortal work."
Hazard's knack of fixing an influence wherever he went had long been the
wonder of Strong, but had never surprised or amused him more than now,
when he saw Esther, after a moment's hesitation, accept this idea, and
begin to discuss with Hazard the pose and surroundings which were to
give Catherine Brooke's picture the soul of the Colorado plains. Hazard
drew well and had studied art more carefully than most men. He used to
say that if he had not a special mission for the church, as a matter of
personal taste he should have preferred the studio. He not only got at
once into intimate relations with Esther and Catherine, but he
established a sort of title in Esther's proposed portrait. Strong
laughed to himself at seeing that even Mr. Dudley, who disliked the
clergy more than any other form of virtue, was destined to fall a victim
to Hazard's tact.
When the clergyman walked away from Strong's rooms that afternoon, he
felt, although even to himself he would not have confessed it, a little
elated. Instinct has more to do than vanity with such weaknesses, and
Hazard's instinct told him that his success, to be lasting, depended
largely on overcoming the indifference of people like the Dudleys. If he
could not draw to himself and his church the men and women who were
strong enough to have opinions of their own, it was small triumph to
draw a procession of followers from a class who took their opinions,
like their jewelry, machine-made. He felt that he must get a hold on the
rebellious age, and that it would not prove rebellious to him. He meant
that Miss Dudley should come regularly to church, and on his success in
bringing her there, he was half-ready to stake the chances of his
mission in life.
So Catherine's portrait was begun at once, when Catherine herself had
been barely a week in New York. To please Esther, Mr. Dudley had built
for her a studio at the top of his house, which she had fitted up in the
style affected by painters, filling it with the regular supply of
eastern stuffs, porcelains, and even the weapons which Damascus has the
credit of producing; one or two ivory carvings, especially a small
Italian crucifix; a lay figure; some Japanese screens, and eastern rugs.
Her studio differed little from others, unless that it was cleaner than
most; and it contained the usual array of misshapen sketches pinned
against the wall, and of spoiled canvases leaning against each other in
corners as though they were wall flower beauties pouting at neglect.
Here Catherine Brooke was now enthroned as the light of the prairie, and
day after day for three weeks, Esther labored over the portrait with as
much perseverance as though Hazard were right in promising that it
should make her immortal. The last days of November and the first of
December are the best in the year for work, and Esther worked with an
energy that surprised her. She wanted to extort praise from Mr. Wharton,
and even felt a slight shade of responsibility towards Mr. Hazard. At
first no one was to be admitted to see it while in progress; then an
exception was made for Strong and Hazard who came to the house one
evening, and in a moment of expansiveness were told that they would be
admitted to the studio. They came, and Esther found Mr. Hazard's
suggestions so useful that she could not again shut him out. In return
she was shamed into going to church with her aunt the following Sunday,
where she heard Mr. Hazard preach again. She did not enjoy it, and did
not think it necessary to repeat the compliment. "One should not know
clergymen," she said in excuse to her father for not liking the sermon;
"there is no harm in knowing an actress or opera-singer, but religion is
a serious thing." Mr. Hazard did not know how mere a piece of civility
her attendance was; he saw only that she was present, that his audience
was larger and his success more assured than ever. With this he was well
satisfied, and, as he had been used in life always to have his own way,
he took it for granted that in this instance he had got it.
The portrait of course did not satisfy Esther. Do what she would,
Catherine's features and complexion defied modeling and made the
artificial colors seem hard and coarse. The best she could paint was not
far from down-right failure. She felt the danger and called Mr. Hazard
to her aid. Hazard suggested alterations, and insisted much on what he
was pleased to call "values," which were not the values Esther had
given. With his help the picture became respectable, as pictures go,
although it would not have been with impunity that Tintoret himself had
tried to paint the soul of the prairie.
Esther, like most women, was timid, and wanted to be told when she could
be bold with perfect safety, while Hazard's grasp of all subjects,
though feminine in appearance, was masculine and persistent in reality.
To be steadily strong was not in Esther's nature. She was audacious only
by starts, and recoiled from her own audacity. Before long, Hazard began
to dominate her will. She felt a little uneasy until he had seen and
approved her work. More than once he disapproved, and then she had to do
it over again. She began at length to be conscious of this impalpable
tyranny, and submitted to it only because she felt her own dependence
and knew that in a few days more she should be free. If he had been
clerical or dogmatic, she might have resented it and the charm would
have broken to pieces on the spot, but he was for the time a painter
like herself, as much interested in the art, and caring for nothing
else.
Towards Christmas the great work was finished, and the same party that
had met a month before at Strong's rooms, came together again in
Esther's studio to sit upon and judge the portrait they had suggested.
Mr. Dudley, with some effort, climbed up from his library; Mrs. Murray
again acted as chaperon, and even Mr. Murray, whose fancy for pictures
was his only known weakness, came to see what Esther had made of
Catherine. The portrait was placed in a light that showed all its best
points and concealed as far as possible all its weak ones; and Esther
herself poured out tea for the connoisseurs.
To disapprove in such a company was not easy, but Wharton was equal to
the task. He never compromised his convictions on such matters even to
please his hosts, and in consequence had given offense to most of the
picture-owners in the city of New York. He showed little mercy now to
Esther, and perhaps his attack might have reduced her courage to
despair, had she not found a champion who took her defense wholly on his
own shoulders. It happened that Wharton attacked parts of the treatment
for which Hazard was responsible, and when Hazard stepped into the
lists, avowing that he had advised the work and believed it to be good,
Esther was able to retire from the conflict and to leave the two men
fighting a pitched battle over the principles of art. Hazard defended
and justified every portion of the painting with a vigor and resource
quite beyond Esther's means, and such as earned her lively gratitude.
When he had reduced Wharton to silence, which was not a difficult task,
for Wharton was a poor hand at dispute or argument, and felt rather than
talked, Mr. Hazard turned to Esther who gave him a look of gratitude
such as she had rarely conferred on any of his sex.
"I think we have ground him to powder at last," said Hazard with his
boyish laugh of delight.
"I never knew before what it was to have a defender," said she simply.
Meanwhile Strong, who thought this battle no affair of his, was amusing
himself as usual by chaffing Catherine. "I have told my colleague, who
professes languages," said he, "that I have a young Sioux in the city,
and he is making notes for future conversation with you."
"What will he talk about," asked Catherine; "are all professors as
foolish as you?"
"He will be light and airy with you. He asked me what gens you belonged
to. I told him I guessed it was the grouse gens. He said he had not been
aware that such a totem existed among the Sioux. I replied that, so far
as I could ascertain, you were the only surviving member of your
family."
"Well, and what am I to say?" asked Catherine.
"Tell him that the Rocky Mountains make it their only business to echo
his name," said Strong. "Have you an Indian grandmother?"
"No, but perhaps I could lariat an old aunt for him, if he will like me
better for it."
"Aunt will do," said Strong. "Address the old gentleman in Sioux, and
call him the 'dove with spectacles.' It will please his soft old heart,
and he will take off his spectacles and fall in love with you. There is
nothing so frivolous as learning; nothing else knows enough."
"I like him already," said Catherine. "A professor with spectacles is
worth more than a Sioux warrior. I will go with him."
"Don't be in a hurry," replied Strong; "it will come to about the same
thing in the end. My colleague will only want your head to dry and stuff
for his collection."
"If I were a girl again," said Mrs. Murray, who was listening to their
conversation, "I would much rather a man should ask for my head than my
heart."
"That is what is the matter with all of you," said Strong. "There are
Wharton and Esther at it again, quarreling about Catherine's head. Every
body disputes about her head, and I am the only one who goes for her
heart."
"Mr. Wharton is so stern," pleaded Esther in defense against the charge
of quarreling. "A hundred times he has told me that I can't draw; he
should have made me learn when he undertook to teach me."
"You might learn more easily now, if you would be patient about it,"
said Wharton. "You have too much quickness and not enough knowledge."
"I think Mr. Hazard turns his compliments better than you," said
Esther. "After one of your speeches I have to catch my breath and think
what it means."
"I mean that you ought to be a professional," replied Wharton.
"But if I were able to be a professional, do you think I would be an
amateur?" asked Esther. "No! I would decorate a church."
"If that is all your ambition, do it now!" said Wharton. "Come and help
me to finish St. John's. I have half a dozen workmen there who are
certainly not so good as you."
"What will you give me to do?" asked she.
"I will engage you to paint, under my direction, a large female figure
on the transept wall. There are four vacant spaces for which I have made
only rough drawings, and you can try your hand on whichever you prefer.
You shall be paid like the other artists, and you will find some other
women employed there, to keep you company."
"Let me choose the subject," said Mr. Hazard. "I think I have a voice in
the matter."
"That depends on your choice," replied Wharton.
"It must be St. Cecilia, of course," said Hazard; "and Miss Brooke must
sit again as model."