II. The Society Story
What the society story is
Society stories are those non-consequential narratives of modern fashionable life which have in their very lightness their sole excuse for being. They are set up as only partial reflections of the actual. Since their chief purpose is to please, they have no studied realism in them. All things intense and unattractive are omitted. If trouble appears, it is but as "sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh," as one of their authors might promptly quote, and everything is brought to harmonize with everything else at last. Richard Harding Davis for his "Van Bibber" tales seems to have found a wide public.
The pastoral romance
An older representative of the society story is the pastoral romance, once a very popular form of the love tale. In it we have a picture of country life, but it is not the hard, toil-beleaguered life of the real peasant. It is the imaginary out-of-doors living-for-a-few-days of the courtier who masquerades as a shepherd and sits cavalierly on a grassy bank with a golden crook in his hand, sighing out his heart in silvery madrigals. His lady-love is no ordinary milk-maid, but a courtly princess on vacation. In this romantic land of shepherd loves, nothing realistic enters. The talk in even the first examples is philosophic and in the later becomes euphuistic as well. The critics maintain that the pastoral romance as a type does not go more than ten years back of the middle of the fourteenth century, although we have "Aucassin and Nicolette" of the thirteenth and "Daphnis and Chloe" of the fifth. The prime fact of the history of the pastoral romance as a society story is that it grew up as a revolt against the licentious realism of the Italian novellieri. The "Arcadia" by Sannazaro, written about 1500, is the book that made the epoch and established the rule for pastoral romance in all languages. Sannazaro took what had been foreshadowed by Boccaccio in the "Ameto" in 1340, and, enriching it with elements derived from Theocritus and Virgil, created the "perfect" example. From Sannazaro, Sir Philip Sidney borrowed the spirit, many episodes, and part of the name for his notable combination of prose and verse—the "Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia." Shakespeare, too, derived much from this important Italian book. For one thing, he took the name Ophelia; for another, his charming society pastoral drama "As You Like It" goes historically back to Sannazaro's "Arcadia" for its lyrics, out-of-doors courting, its real shepherds, its obvious love of nature, its touch of magic, and its wholesome morality. The lack of allegorical significance is also straight example from Sannazaro; but the love chain, the disguised shepherd princesses, the humorous element in connection with the coarse shepherds, a touch of adventure, and the cavalier tone are of later Spanish and English contamination, immediately through Lodge's prose romance "Rosalynd," and more remotely through Greene's three pastorals—"England's Mourning Garment," "Menaphon," and "Pandosto,"—and through Cervantes's "Galatea" and Montemayor's "Diana," and Ribeyro's Portuguese "Fragments."
Though the pastoral romance, as we notice, became more and more artificial, it always remained pure in tone. It centered itself in idealism and stood against the low, utterly debased, more realistic novella, which was its predecessor and continued rival for popularity. The pastoral held the field as the chief and most influential prose form in Spain until the picaresque romance came to be recognized as a distinct genre.
Suggestions for writing
To write a modern society story that will be worth while is no easy task; for here an author readily descends to banalities, and the class itself is hardly acceptable to the serious critic. Yet stories of this kind are so popular and form (I am sorry to say) so large a part of the reading of our young women—and our young men, too, for that matter—that the type surely has come to stay for sometime and must be taken account of. To make your story commendable, then, you will need to be original and striking in your choice of situation and to write with a succinctness and verve that will animate even the commonplace. Be careful not to be sentimental. If you touch on love, do so with dignity—with either clean, pure humor, or unaffected seriousness. Try hard to save your hero from being a cad. The namby-pamby, third-generation-millionaire protagonist, if not altogether uninteresting, is surely exasperating to a sensible reader. By playful imitation, you might write a good satire on this class of story. If you do so, you will need to be familiar with one or more of the popular examples in order to use them specifically. Or you might try your hand at a pastoral, just for the history of the thing. If you care to adhere to certain elements of the genre, you could put together under this guise allegorical scenes in which the present lords of the earth figure as weak or lusty shepherds piping a tune to the watch-dogs of war, the sheep of commerce, and the Goddess of Getting-On. If you wish to be more than half serious, you can find countenance in a number of our most recent light stories that undoubtedly turn toward the pastoral. This type, too, will give you a chance at a mixture of prose and verse. Here you can put in some of those fetching sylvan lyrics that you must have composed long before now and have always been afraid to mention.
The Fur Coat
Translated by Mrs. J. M. Lancaster. Copyright, 1903, by The Current Literature Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission.
Prof. Max Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch
Berlin, November 20.
Dear Gustav—I have some news to tell you to-day which will certainly surprise you. I have separated from my wife, or rather we have separated from each other. We have come to an amicable agreement henceforth to live entirely independent of each other. My wife has gone to her family in Freiburg, where she will no doubt remain. I am for the present in our old house; perhaps in the spring I may look for a smaller house—perhaps not, for I can hardly hope to find so quiet a workroom as I now have, and the idea of moving appals me, especially when I think of my large library. You will, of course, want to know what has happened, though, to tell the truth, nothing has happened. The world will seek for all possible and impossible reasons why two people who married for love and who have for eleven years lived what is called happily together should now have decided to part. Yes, this world which thinks itself so wise, but whose judgments are nevertheless so petty, so superficial, will doubtless be of the opinion that there is something hidden—will include this case too in one of the two great categories prepared for such affairs, because it can not conceive of the fact that life in its inexhaustible variety never repeats itself and that the same circumstances may assume different aspects according to the character and disposition of those interested. I need not tell you this, my dear Gustav. You will understand how two finely organized natures should rebel against a tie which binds them together after they have once become fully convinced that in all matters of real importance a mutual understanding is possible.
My wife and I are too unlike. Between her views of life and mine there yawns an impassable gulf. The first few years I hoped to influence her, to win her to my ways of thinking—she seemed so docile, so yielding, took so warm an interest in my work, so willingly allowed herself to be taught by me. Not till after our children's death did she begin to change. Her grief at this loss—a grief which neither of us has ever been able to live down—matured her, made her independent of me. A tendency to morbid introspection took possession of her, and gave increased tenacity to those ideas and convictions which my influence had hitherto held in check, though not wholly eradicated. She plunged deeper and deeper into those mists of sentimentally fantastic imaginings, passionately demanding my concurrence in her views. She lost all interest in my professional work, evidently regarding the results of my researches in natural science as troops from an enemy's camp. At last there was hardly a subject in the wide realm of nature and human existence on which we agreed. To be sure we never came to an open quarrel, but the breach between us was constantly widening. Every day we saw more and more plainly that though we lived side by side, we no longer belonged to each other. This discovery irritated and distressed us, and at last forced all other feelings into the background. If we had not once loved each other so dearly, or even if we had now ceased to feel a mutual respect, this state of affairs might perhaps have lasted for years, but our ideas of the true meaning of marriage were too lofty, our sense of our own dignity as human beings too profound to permit us to be content with so incomplete a realization of our ideals. I hardly know who spoke first, but our resolution was at once taken, and the decisive words uttered as calmly and naturally as the overripe fruit falls from the tree. For the first time in many years we were able with perfect unanimity of sentiment to discuss a subject of the greatest importance to us both, and this fact alone soothed our overwrought nerves. We parted yesterday with the utmost decorum, without a word of reproach, a note of discord.
The many beautiful memories of our early married life, of the long years we had lived together, made it difficult to refrain from some manifestation of tenderness, and I assure you that I never felt greater respect for my wife than at the moment when, all petty considerations cast aside, the true magnanimity of her nature asserted itself. Her manner, what she said, and also what she did not say, robbed the situation of all trace of the commonplace, and gave it dignity. Deeply moved, almost in tears, we clasped hands in farewell, so we may look back upon the closing scene of our wedded life with unalloyed satisfaction.
I had already, with her consent, referred all business details to our lawyers, for we were not even to communicate with each other by letter.
Life must begin again for both of us, and already I breathe more freely. The Rubicon is passed. I believe that you will congratulate me.
Prof. Max Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch
Berlin, December 12.
Dear Gustav—Pardon me that I have so long delayed thanking you for your answer of friendly sympathy to my last letter.
I have been in no condition to write, and even now find it difficult. You congratulate me without reserve on a step which you regard as essential to my welfare and to my intellectual development, but you do not take into consideration what it means to separate from one who has for eleven years been one's constant companion, day and night. Indeed, it is only during these last dreary weeks that I, myself, have realized what the change signifies to me. Habit is all powerful, especially with men who, like you and me, live in the intellectual world and so require a solid sub-structure.
How are we to take observations from the tower battlements when its foundations are not firmly established? Of course, I am as certain as ever I was that our decision is for the best interests of us both, but in this queer world of ours we can take no step without unlooked-for results.
I am bothered from morn till night with trifles to which I have never given a thought since my bachelor days—things which I will not mention, so absurdly insignificant are they—and yet they rob me of my time and destroy my peace. I am at a loss what steps to take to rid myself of the thousand petty cares and annoyances which my wife has hitherto borne for me. These servants! Now that the cat is away they think that they can do just as they please, and you have no idea of the silly obstacles over which I am continually stumbling, of the wretched pitfalls which beset my path. Here is one instance out of many: For several days it has been very cold, and I can not find my fur coat. With the chambermaid's assistance I have turned the whole house upside down, until she finally remembered that my wife, last spring, sent it to a furrier's to be kept from the moth. But to which furrier? I have been to a dozen and can not find it.
If I had only not agreed with my wife that we were, under no circumstances, to write to each other, I should simply ask her—but it is best so. No strain of the commonplace must mingle with the sad echoes of our farewell. No—a farce never follows a drama. Perhaps she might even imagine that I seize the first pretext to renew relations with her.
Never!
To-day it is six below zero.
Prof. Max Wiegand to Frau Emma Wiegand
Berlin, December 14.
Dear Emma—You will be greatly surprised at receiving a letter from me in spite of our mutual agreement, but do not fear that I have any intention of opening a correspondence with you. Our relations terminated with all possible dignity, and the sealed door shall never be re-opened. I have but to ask a simple question which you alone can answer. What is the name of the man to whom you sent my fur coat last spring? Lina has forgotten the address. Hoping soon to receive an answer, for which I thank you in advance,
Max.
Frau Emma Wiegand to Prof. Max Wiegand
Freiburg, December 15.
Dear Max—His name is Palaschke, and he is on Zimmer Street. I can not understand Lina's forgetfulness, as she took the coat there herself.
Emma.
Prof. Max Wiegand to Frau Emma Wiegand
Berlin, December 17.
Dear Emma—I must trouble you once more—for the last time. Herr Palaschke refuses to let the coat go without the ticket, as he has had several disagreeable experiences which have made it necessary to be very strict. But where is the ticket? I spent the whole morning looking for it, and, of course, Lina has not the slightest idea where it is. She flew into a rage when I found a little fault with her, and she leaves the house to-morrow. I prefer paying her till the end of her engagement, and in addition shall give her a moderate Christmas gift, for I can not stand for a great length of time such an impertinent person about me.
Well—be so kind as to write me a line telling me where to find the ticket. I have already taken a severe cold for want of the fur coat.
Hoping that you are well and quite comfortable with your family.
Max.
Frau Emma Wiegand to Prof. Max Wiegand
Freiburg, December 19.
Dear Max—The ticket is either in the second or third upper drawer of the little wardrobe in the dressing-room or in my desk, in the right or left pigeon-hole. I could find it in a minute if I were there. Lina has great faults, but she is very respectable. I doubt whether you can do better, and now, just before Christmas, you will not be able to replace her. You should have put up with her at least a fortnight longer, but it is none of my business. I hope your cold is better. I am quite well.
Emma.
Prof. Max Wiegand to Frau Emma Wiegand
Berlin, December 21.
Dear Emma—The ticket is not to be found either in the wardrobe or in the desk. Perhaps it slipped out when you were packing, and was thrown away. I can think of no other explanation.
To-morrow or next day I will again go to Herr Palaschke, and try to wheedle him out of my property by all possible blandishments and assurances, but to-day I am confined to my room, for my cold has resulted in a severe attack of neuralgia.
I had a dreadful scene with the cook yesterday. On the day of your departure she gave me notice, and when I tried to persuade her to remain she turned on me and told me in a very insolent manner that I knew nothing about house-keeping, and that it was only out of sympathy for you, dear Emma, that she had so long remained with us at such low wages, and that she should leave immediately. I answered calmly, but firmly, that she must stay till the end of her engagement. Then she began to cry and storm, and at last was so outrageously impertinent as to declare that even you could not manage to live with me. I lost my temper and must, I suppose, have called her an "impudent woman," though I can not remember saying it. Unfortunately for me I have had no experience in dealing with viragos.
Two hours later, after supper, I rang and discovered that she was already gone, bag and baggage, leaving in the kitchen a badly spelled billet doux, in which she threatened me with a lawsuit for calling her an "impudent woman," in case I should refuse to give her a certificate of character.
I am now entirely without servants. The porter's wife blacks my shoes for a handsome consideration, and brings me from the café meals which ought to be condemned by the health inspector. As you have truly remarked, it will be impossible to replace these women before the New Year, but I have already written to a dozen employment bureaus, and will go myself as soon as I am able to leave the house. This has grown into a long letter, my dear Emma, but when the heart is full the pen runs rapidly.
I also suspect that abominable cook of taking my gold sleeve buttons—those left me by Uncle Friedrich—though I have, of course, no proof. Have you any idea where they are? If so please drop me a line. Good-by, my dear Emma, and I trust you are more comfortable than I am.
Your Max.
Frau Emma Wiegand to Prof. Max Wiegand
Freiburg, December 23.
Dear Max—I have read with much sympathy your account of your little mishaps and annoyances. The cook often spoke to me very much as she did to you, but I put up with it because she is a good cook, and only cooks who know nothing are polite. Now you see what I have had to stand for years, and that there are problems in that department also which can not be solved by natural science.
I can not, at this instance, advise you what to do, and should not consider myself justified in doing so now that our intimate relations have been terminated in so dignified a manner, as you so truly remark in your first letter. As for the furrier's ticket and the sleeve buttons, I will wager that I could find them both in five minutes. You must remember how often you have hunted in vain for a thing which I have found at the first attempt. Men occasionally discover a new truth but never an old button.
Since a correspondence has been begun by you, I have a little request to make. I forgot before I left to ask you for the letters which you wrote me during our engagement, and which at my request you put in your safe. They are my property, and I should like to have them as a reminder of happier days. Will you be so kind as to send them to me?
Wishing you a Merry Christmas,
Emma.
Prof. Max Wiegand to Frau Emma Wiegand
Berlin, December 25.
My Dear Emma—Your kind wish that I might have a Merry Christmas has not been fulfilled. I never spent so melancholy a Christmas Eve. You will not wonder that I could not bear to accept the invitations of friends—to be a looker-on at family rejoicings—so I stayed at home, entirely alone. I found it utterly impossible to get a servant before New Year's, and yesterday was even without a helper from outside. The porter's wife put a cold supper on the table for me early in the afternoon, for she was too busy later with Christmas preparations for her children. A smoky oil lamp took the place of the Christmas tree which you always adorned so charmingly and with such exquisite taste every year, and there were none of those pretty surprises by which you supplied my wants and wishes almost before I was conscious of them. There was nothing on the Christmas table but my old fur coat, which Herr Palaschke—softened by my entreaties and assurances and perhaps also by the spirit of Christmastide—had allowed me to take the preceding day. It was as cold as charity in the room, for the fire had gone out and it was beyond my skill to rekindle it, so I put on the fur coat, sat down by the smoky lamp, and read over the letters which I wrote you during the time of our engagement and which I had taken from their eleven years' resting-place to send to you to-day.
Dear Emma, I can not tell you how they have moved me. I cried like a child, not over the tragic ending of our marriage alone, but at the change in myself which I recognize. They are very immature and in many ways not in accordance with my present way of thinking, but what a fresh, frank, warm-blooded fellow I was then, and how I loved you! How happy I was! How artlessly and unreservedly did I give myself up to my happiness! Till now I have thought that there has been a gradual, slow change in you alone, but now I see that I also have altered, and God knows, when I compare the Max of those days with the Max of to-day, I do not know to which to give the preference. In the sleepless nights which I have lately spent, I have thought over the possibility of transforming myself into the Max I then was, and grave doubts have suggested themselves whether the differences in our views of matters and things were really as great as they seemed to us, whether there is not outside of them something eternally human, some neutral ground where we might continue to have interests in common.
Try and see, dear Emma, whether such a voice does not speak also to your soul. We can not undo the past, but nothing could give me greater consolation in my present unhappy condition than to know that you could say yes to this question, for your departure has left a void in my house and in my life that I can never, never fill.
Thy most unhappy Max.
Frau Emma Wiegand to Prof. Max Wiegand
Freiburg, December 27.
Dear Max—I very willingly gave you information as long as it related only to tickets and sleeve buttons, but I must decline answering the question contained in your last letter. Did you really believe, you old Pedant, that I left your home—which was also mine—because we disagreed in our views of matters and things in general? Then you are mightily mistaken. I left you because I saw more plainly every day that you no longer loved me. Yes, I had become a burden to you—you wanted to get rid of me. If in that dignified parting scene you had said one single tender word to me, I should probably have stayed, but, as usual, you were on your high horse, from which you have now had so lamentable a tumble just because your servants have left you. I too have served you faithfully, though you do not seem to have recognized that fact. I never let the fire go out on your hearth. It was not my fault when it grew cold.
Who knows whether you would have noticed the void left by my going if your fur coat had not also been missing? This gave you an opportunity of opening a correspondence with me, and it seems to be only fitting that it should now close, since you have once more regained possession of your property. I, at least, have nothing more to say.
Good-by forever,
Emma.
Prof. Max Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch
Berlin, January 8.
Dear Gustav—I have a great piece of news to tell you. My wife returned to me yesterday, and at my earnest solicitation. I thought I could no longer live with her, but I find it equally impossible to live without her. I have just discovered that she too was very unhappy during the time of our separation, but she would never have acknowledged it, for hers is the stronger character of the two. I do not know how to explain the miracle, but we love each other more dearly than ever. We are celebrating a new honeymoon. The great questions of life drove us apart, but is it only the little ones which have reunited us? Would you suppose that one could find a half-desiccated heart in the pocket of an old fur coat? The stately edifice of my worldly knowledge totters on its foundations, dear Gustav. I have a great deal to unlearn.
Max.
—Ludwig Fulda.
The Lady in Pink
If I hadn't had to stop in the middle of my painting and run down to the house to get some more rose-madder I never in the world should have seen her; I had to leave all my things up on the hill with little David, and on the way down to the village I passed the place.
The only thing I remember now is that I was hurrying along by a stone wall which was higher than my head and that above it dark pines clustered in pointed masses against a blue and white sky—it was just the kind of sky Bougereau would have loved, with soft, opaque clouds—when I came past the gate, and one can never go by a gate, you know, and not look in, and it was there that I saw her. She was sitting on a bench built under a tree—the trunk of which did for the perpendicular in the composition and gave such a good contrast in color, too, for she—well, there she was just sitting there with her hands in her lap, her head against the tree and her feet out in front of her, and oh, dreams of loveliness—her dress was pink! Think of that! Rose pink where it touched the grass, lavender pink where it fell in shadows, shell pink where the sun flickered on it—and in her hand she held a kind of golden straw hat, and that was just dripping with roses, and they were the pinkest of all. Oh! it was a picture for the gods. I made quick work of my errand and hastened back to tell David about it.
"Well, I've seen it," I announced breathlessly, coming up the slope.
"Seen what?" asked David, not stopping from his clover chain.
"My masterpiece," I answered, squirting out much more of the rose-madder than I needed—this paltry little sketch I was working on now would have to be finished up and gotten out of the road for real work.
"Where?" asked David, with the laconic briefness of childhood.
"Down inside the big gate—behind the stone wall."
"Oh, that's where the Cory's live—there's a stream there, with pollywogs in it." David's mind was beginning to wander.
"But you never saw such a study in pink in all your life—think of it—pink dress—all different shades of pink—pink roses for the high-note, and then pale pink repeated in the cheeks and then way off in the background there were some pink hollyhocks." "My, oh, my," I added to myself, stubbing gamboge into the canvass to get a sunshiny effect, "My, oh, my—she sat there just like a Grenze—a Gainsborough lady, now, never would have had the courage to have leaned against the tree in that lackadaisical manner; the Lady in Pink—Whistler painted a Lady in White—I shall paint the Lady in Pink! Tomorrow I shall begin, David," I said, "tomorrow I am going down to get my masterpiece."
"Well, but you can't go in the Cory's to get it," said David; "that's private grounds."
Private grounds! The words stunned me. Couldn't an artist usually go any place he liked?
"Private grounds!" I echoed, "oh, yes; why that's so. Why, what on earth will I do?"
"I don't know," said David, with a half-rising inflection showing an abstract sympathy.
"Think of that! And there it all is just waiting to be painted. Why, look here, David, how on earth did you ever get in to know there were pollywogs?"
"Oh," said David, "the folks were away."
"Well, I will wait then till they are all away! But, good heavens, what am I thinking about! The garden isn't what I want—it's the Lady in Pink." I began packing up my paints—there was no use trying to do anything more now.
"Well, at any rate, we will go down tomorrow," said I, wiping some brushes on my handkerchief, "and maybe in the meanwhile we can think up a way to get in."
"Oh, let's go now," suggested David, seeing that things were really moving.
"You mean it?" I asked, rather astonished at his sudden desire for action.
"All right, then! You fold up the camp stool and umbrella and I'll take the box and the pallet along with me."
"Dear me! What on earth now will we ever say when we get there?" I began on the way down the hill.
"We might ask for a glass of milk."
"Oh, no, we can't do that—it isn't in the country."
"Well, I might ask for some hollyhocks."
"Well, I guess not! The hollyhocks can't be picked—they're part of the masterpiece."
"Then you think something yourself," and David lapsed into a discouraged silence.
But I couldn't think of anything save that I must and would have the lady at any cost and though I couldn't see how I was going to get it, I had a very clear picture of myself in the garden, painting away.
"You just wait till we get there," I said to David, as we stumped down the walk together. David was used to my enthusiasms over all sorts of things which he usually only vaguely assented that he could see, and though he never said much when I fell to talking about principles of art, I liked to have him with me always when I worked, because he had such a joyous, fresh little face. I couldn't help but catch the sunshine of it when I did an outdoor sketch; and if I had lived in the days when no picture was complete without a Love in it, David would always have been the one to have posed for me.
Presently we came near the gate and, to speak truly, I was becoming a bit fearful as to just what was going to happen, but David, eager and anticipatory, hopped on ahead of me and peered in.
"Oh!" he called back, "there isn't anything here at all."
"Oh, isn't there?" I said; "you don't mean to say it's gone in."
"If you mean the lady, she isn't here."
And true enough, when I came up there wasn't a soul in sight. How empty the place looked! It was just like a disappointing exhibition—here were all the people come to see the great works, and when the door was reached, there hung a sign which said that the management was sorry, but the best paintings had been delayed on the way, and wouldn't be here till tomorrow at two o'clock! I gazed at my ruined masterpiece—the background was all there, but there was no picture, for what moaning had broad green masses of foliage and shaded distances apart from a contrasting center of interest, of what meaning was there anyhow in a landscape without a human touch?
David pressed his hand on the latch of the gate and it opened for him. I have always liked to think since that he was the one that really opened the way there.
"Let's go in," he said in a half challenging whisper, but with eyes pleading authority from me.
I couldn't resist. "Well, all right—it will be like Corot wandering around in the forest of Fontainbleau—and if anybody comes——" I didn't know what I would do, so I took my pallet in my hand fancying to myself it would do very well for a shield against any contingent. So we slowly walked up the winding path together.
"The pollywogs are over there," said David, pointing a slender finger toward the house.
"You never mind them," I answered, "what we are here for is to get the setting of this picture. My! Almost any view would do—I never saw so many colors in all my life. Look, David, at that bust over there with the gray-green leaves brushing up against the gray stone—oh, there ought to be a peacock under there, to give a strong iridescent blue note—do you suppose there is a peacock around any place?" I said, laying down my pallet and circling my eyes with my hands so as to localize the color masses better.
But David was sorting pebbles on the walk and so I expected no answer from him, but was scarcely prepared for the one I did receive.
"No, there is no peacock here, but—can I do anything for you?"
I swept around and there was that radiant figure in pink, melting into the green behind her, the soft roundness of her figure echoed in the larger circling outlines of the trees, her brown hair the delicate counterpart in color of the ground she stood on, and her eyes, deep ultramarine, the concentrated blue of all the pale sky—what a picture, what a picture! My imagination flew to grasp it, and I forgot everything but that I must have it, swept up clean from the pallet and made living on the canvas.
"Yes," I said, "yes—there is something you can do for me. You can stay right there—or you can go over there and sit down, while I get you," and I dashed back to the gate after my paints.
When I returned she was still standing and the corners of her lips were twitching. They were very red. I began unpacking my tubes and unfolding my easel. "Wouldn't you like to sit on the bench over there? You have no idea how much the tree trunk will help out the composition." And I begged her silently.
But she stood there perfectly still and looked at me with eyes full of question; they had a moving highlight in them, like the sun on a wave—if I could only catch that!
"You want to get me!" she finally stammered.
"Oh, yes!" I said, "don't you see? I was walking by the gate and I saw you, and I want you to pose for me," and then as I saw her hesitate, "oh, surely you don't mind being gotten?" With what a terror the thought filled me—but I had to do it somehow.
"Well—only—but why don't you paint the little boy?"
"Oh, David! Oh, I paint him in everything—he comes in the sunshine and the blowing wind and all the feeling of movement I ever get in a picture—and then if people are happy when they look at the picture, that is because David was with me when I painted it. David is a little Love."
Well, she never said a word, but I think she understood what I meant, because she went over and sat down and called David to her and began talking with him. I am sure I had no idea what she was saying to him, because I set to the work then with all my might. I sketched in the figure, and set up my pallet with plenty of color and then flew to the brushes; it seemed as if I could work with the culminative inspiration of all the painting I had ever done.
While I was blocking in the hat with the roses, she looked up.
"Won't you tell me what it is going to be?" she asked with the air of having thought of the question some time before.
"Well," I replied, knowing I would have to make a step somehow, "Whistler painted a Lady in White, so I thought I would call this the Lady in Pink; and if it comes out and I really get you——"
"If you really get me?"
"Why, yes; if I can just catch you the way I want you; that is one of the troubles of the artist, you know—he never really is sure whether he is going to be able to get what he wants or——"
"Not even when he is so eager about it?"
"No, not always then," I laughed, wondering though if she didn't know that inspiration was in truth something more than eagerness.
"Not even—when he is painting in a garden—like this?"
Her eyes were brimming with a half-concealed mirth.
"Oh, this garden is a lovely place," I answered, "but it wouldn't make all the picture—there's got to be some spirit in it beside—a kind of informing mood. Now it is very quiet here and you are posing for me——"
"Oh! so I must be quiet, too?"
"Yes, I suppose so," I answered boldly enough; "only, of course, a different kind of quiet, you know; for if the garden is still, that's because—well, there isn't anybody mowing the grass, or there isn't any wind or—oh, the quietness of a person sitting in a garden is quite a different thing."
She kept looking at me all the time I was saying this, and then replied slowly:
"I see; you don't want me just to sit still."
"Certainly not," I answered. "I want you to be—"
Her eyes suddenly became dreamy, and I felt much more at ease.
"It's like David and the sunshine," she went on.
"Yes, just exactly; you are to be the spirit of the garden, the human symbol of its mood—its real meaning," and happy that she understood the way I felt about David, I fell to laying on the paint in broad, easy strokes, wondering how I could ever imitate the emerald transparency of the trees.
She did not speak again and presently my glance returned to her. She was holding David's cap in her hand and looking out—nowhere, I guess. I stopped my work, stepping back to study it and survey the scene.
"I'm glad you like my garden," she finally said, smiling; and such a smile as she gave me—it was like a stream of golden haze on a white flower, a change very subtle, and yet so striking.
"Your garden is the very best place yet I've found to work in," I said, well pleased. "It is just as fine a place as the Forest of Fontainebleau, and Corot did some great masterpieces there."
"Well, then, this surely ought to be your masterpiece, because, according to your own definition, you have all the conditions just perfect; the garden, and David——"
"Besides you," I interrupted, looking at her through the point of the easel, hoping to see the smile again; but she had suddenly changed her position, quite unconscious that in doing so she had spoiled the composition. But it made no difference, for I already had the posture, and the dress with its lavender and shell-pink lights and all the green behind—it was all there on the canvas, and the echo of it all on my pallet just like the memory of an overture which has played with all the various themes; and as to the rest—ah, she had indeed given me a glimpse of the tender mood and the stilling charm with which I wished to finish the picture. I was quite content.
Presently a tide of yellow evening light flooded into the garden, making the ground luminous and throwing deep shadows everywhere. I laid down my brushes.
"I shall have to stop now," I said, "evening is coming on—I shall have to be going," and I whistled for David.
He came running across the grass, one hand full of hollyhocks. "Oh, my stars, David!" I exclaimed, "what have you been doing?"
"Never mind," said the lady, "you know you have been helping yourself to things, too," and she rose and came over.
"Oh, there I am," she said lightly, looking at what I had done.
"No, indeed," I hastened to assure her, "that isn't you—yet; so far it is a composition in pink and green, but you aren't in it. When I put in the sunlit background, then David comes, you know, and then when I put a gentle repose in every line of the figure, and a dreamy, tender sweetness in the face, then I will be painting the real spirit of the garden—don't you see?"
And then, oh, my heart, she smiled again, but this time such a smile as no man deserves twice—and stooped and kissed David.
"He says he wants to get me for his painting, David. Shall I let him?"
"Why, hasn't he gotten you already?" asked David, tying the hollyhocks with grass.
"Yes, I think he has," she answered slowly. "David, you are a little Love," she added.
"Yes, isn't he, though!" I said.
—Wilma I. Ball.