I was silent for very pity. I knew that all the obstinacy and incredulity of the girl’s nature had risen in battle against this new emotion. Love had come to her, but had come like a great sorrow.
CHAPTER XXV
Of all our protégés among the “People,” none interested us more than the Tailoress. The discovery of interesting characters among the poor was one of the rewards that we hoped for from our work.
The Tailoress was a tall, gaunt, strong-featured woman of forty, who lived alone on the fifth floor of a Brand Street lodging-house. She worked ten hours a day; at night she read. From the city library she had obtained stray volumes of Browning and Ruskin and Carlyle. Her comments on these books had marked individuality.
The Tailoress had been an ambitious country girl, and had come to the city to work her way through sewing into an art-education. Once she had succeeded in taking a six-weeks course in elementary drawing. The work had been interrupted, but the Tailoress had not yet given up her hope. That was the reason why, although she commanded comparatively good wages, she lived up so many flights of stairs, and fared on porridge and tea.
She had a peculiar face, with a long nose, and strong under-jaw. Her skin was brown, despite her years of confinement in a shop, so brown that her blue eyes looked paler than they really were. I liked to see her pupils dilate when an idea came to her. They expanded, and her whole face glowed with enthusiasm.
For the Tailoress had the soul of a poet. Through all her starved life she had carefully saved up every semblance of beauty that had fallen to her lot. In her room hung a Carlo Dolce Madonna, in a narrow black-walnut frame, and an unmounted photograph of two Corregio cherubs was pinned to the wall-paper. She owned a few books: a volume of Longfellow, selections from Ruskin, and an Emerson Birthday Book. The heavy underlining in these few volumes revealed an admiration deep and uncritical.
“It looks,” said Janet, with mock gravity, when I told her about the Tailoress, “as if a sphere of usefulness were going to be given me. May I lead the Tailoress up from Carlo Dolce to a love for French impressionism? I will take her to see the pictures of M. Puvis de Chavannes.”
“If you choose,” I answered, “but leave her her books.”
“Nay,” said Janet, “I will take away her Longfellow and give her Amiel. Shall the poor be shut off from the sources of our inspiration?”