Bab planted both elbows on the little square willow table, holding her cup of chocolate aloft, her straight brows drawn together in a pucker of perplexity.
“Because they won’t be great geniuses, you mean?”
“Surely. They’re just half way. All they’ve got is the longing, the urge forward.”
Jean smiled, looking past her at the view beyond the yellow curtains and box of winter greens outside. There was a little courtyard below with one lone sumac tree in it, and red brick walks. A black and white cat licked its paws on the side fence. From a clothes line fluttered three pairs of black stockings. The voices of the little Vatellis floated up as they played house in the sunshine.
“Somebody wrote a wonderful poem about that,” she said. “I forget the name, but it’s about those whose aims were greater than their ability, don’t you know what I mean? It says that the work isn’t the greatest thing, the purpose is, the dream, the vision, even if you fall short of it. I know up home there’s one dear little old lady, Miss Weathersby. We’ve just got acquainted with her. She’s the last of three sisters who were quite rich for the country. Doris found her, way over beyond the old burial ground, and she was directing some workmen. Doris said they were tearing down a long row of old sheds and chicken houses that shut off her view of the hills. She said she’d waited for years to clear away those sheds, only her sisters had wanted them there because their grandfather had built them. I think she was awfully plucky to tear them down, so she could sit at her window and see the hills. Maybe it’s the same way with Signa and the others. It’s something if they have the eyes to see the hills.”
“Maybe so,” Bab said briskly. “Maybe I can’t see them myself, and it’s just a waste of money keeping me at the Academy. I’m not a genius, and I’ll never paint great pictures, but I am going to be an illustrator, and while I’m learning I can imagine myself all the geniuses that ever lived. You know, Jean, we were told, not long ago, to paint a typical city scene. Well, the class went in for the regulation things, Washington Arch and Grant’s Tomb, Madison Square and the opera crowd at the Met. Do you know what I did?” She pushed back her hair from her eager face, and smiled. “I went down on the East Side at Five Points, right in the Italian quarter, and you know how they’re always digging up the streets here after the gas mains or something that’s gone wrong? Well, I found some workmen resting, sitting on the edge of the trench eating lunch in the sunlight, and some kiddies playing in the dirt as if it were sand. Oh, it was dandy, Jean, the color and composition and I caught it all in lovely splashes. I just called it ‘Noon.’ Do you like it?”
“Splendid,” said Jean.
Bab nodded happily.
“Miss Patmore said it was the best thing I had done, the best in the class. You can find beauty anywhere if you look for it.”
“Oh, it’s good to be down talking to you again,” Jean exclaimed. “It spurs one along so to be where others are working and thinking.”