[CHAPTER XII]
She was standing in her studio, in front of her Academy picture, wondering lazily when it would be finished, and if it would get in. She had exhibited several times at Birmingham and Manchester, and last spring her "The Grove is all a Pale Frail Mist" in the Leeds Exhibition had sold for thirty guineas, but she had had nothing hung yet in the Royal Academy, though she had sent there more than once.
Her studio was an attic. On the discoloured walls, and stacked in corners on the floor, were early works—a record to the investigator of the various stages she had passed. They were all there—the pictures that one would have expected to find. There were the usual attempts at family portraits, the usual still-life groups of ginger-jars, Japanese fans, and bowls of flowers; there were the more ambitious canvases depicting lackadaisical females posturing in medieval landscapes—painstaking exaggerations of a famous man's most obvious faults. There were the subjects with silver beeches and willowy streams, painted after she had given her heart to landscape for good and all, and had returned to Beckenhampton entranced by the work of Corot. Compared with those early insincerities the picture on the easel was a masterpiece; but she was not looking at them for encouragement—indeed not many of them were in a position to be observed—nor was she at work, though the colours on the palette were freshly set. Although her gaze wandered constantly from the picture to the study beside it—showing in miniature the same stretch of gorse-grown common, the same sunk wayfarer upon a bench—her brush was motionless, and presently she tossed it to the table with a gesture of impatience.
She was thinking of A Celibate's Love Songs. A fortnight had passed since she bought it, and the volume haunted her. She had been filled by an intense desire to write to the author, to tell him of the effect his poetry had had on her, also to ask him one or two questions about it. Such impulses are obeyed by a thousand women every day in the year, but to this woman, remote, unfashionable, the desire seemed so romantic, and even immodest, that she blushed at the temptation. She wondered again if such things were done, wondered if the appreciation of an obscure, bent, plain little artist would excite his ridicule.
It was the latter doubt that deterred her most strongly, the fear that he might scoff. The sensitiveness to her deformity which made it an ordeal to her to confront a stranger, which made her ashamed of her Christian name, rendered her shy even in correspondence, and she shrank as much from revealing herself on paper as in speech. Still this correspondent would not know that she was bent, or plain, or an obscure artist, so there would be nothing for him to scoff at, excepting, perhaps, the way she expressed her ideas. She reflected for a moment that the "H. Sorrenford," which was her usual signature, might even conceal her sex.
That fancy faded almost as it rose. Since her object in writing would be to obtain an answer, she ought to enclose an envelope stamped and addressed. Yes, he was bound to know that the appreciation was a woman's. She faltered again, and wished that the poet were not a man.
In one respect she resembled all the readers who want autographs or information; she was supported by the remembrance that she meant to spare him the expense of the penny stamp. It emboldened her to begin the letter. She had not a sentence in her mind when she sat down, and her opening lines were the lines that popular authors have come to know by heart—the lines with which even less favoured authors are familiar. Before long, though, the knowledge that she was free to destroy the letter when it was finished made her spontaneous, and she ceased to consider the propriety of her action, forgot to question whether he would sneer or not.
She was not a literary woman and she did not write literary English, but she was an unhappy woman, who for the first time in her life had experienced the joy of finding herself understood; and she came nearer to uttering what she meant with her untutored pen than she had ever done with her misguided brush. Because she was not literary, she believed that when she suppressed the pronoun "I" she stilled the personal note, and the true value of the letter lay in its suggestiveness. The pleasure of expressing her love, her gratitude for the verse was very great, and though she chose to ignore the fact that the pages were destined to meet his eyes, the inward consciousness of it remained forceful.
When the letter was written, she read it slowly through, and twice she made as if to tear it up. But she did not tear it up; she put it away irresolutely. It occurred to her now that she could direct it only to the office of the publisher, and several times during the day she wondered if the publisher would forward it. Once in recalling something that she had said, she regretted a word that had been used, and she wished she could substitute a weaker one. She went to the studio and took the letter out and examined it. She wrote with a "J," and the word was thick and black; the alteration would be noticeable. She did not like the thought of that, was averse from giving to an unaffected letter an air of artifice, and she was reluctant to copy it. She stood hesitating a long while. But how foolish she was! She had not decided yet that she meant to post it at all.
The same on the morrow; she vacillated hourly. She wanted so much to post it, but it seemed such a preposterous thing to do; the more she reflected, the more certain she was that she would feel ashamed if she yielded to the desire. Still she would put the letter in the pocket of her jacket! She could determine whether it should go into the pillar-box or the fire while she was out.