Jean’s frankness, now that her diffidence had passed, revealed her in a new light. Wayne had never placed her, never found an adequate background for her. In their several meetings he had been satisfied with what the moment disclosed. A reference to her fondness for walking served to open a long vista, which his fancy crowded with pictures.
“I was born and brought up in the hills,” Jean said, “but a long way from here. I don’t belong in the soft coal country—my home is in the anthracite region. I never was here before, and probably shouldn’t be here now if it weren’t that I’m able to spend the winter in study at the Institute. I think I like my own country better than this; I have never been in cities very much. Just a few times I have been down to Philadelphia to look at the exhibitions. I should have spent this year there, but I came here, for several reasons, and now the winter is going so fast and I have so little to show for it.”
“You can’t do it all in one winter,” Mrs. Craighill remarked sympathetically.
“No—and you can’t do much in many winters! I’m not a genius—I know that as well as anybody; but I want to make the most of my little talent. Bad pictures seem so much worse than anything else—worse than bad music even. It’s better not to start if you’ve got to go on forever being an amateur.”
“Well, one has the fun of trying,” murmured Mrs. Craighill. She had seen American students abroad on their eternal pursuit of fame, and her words were lightly shaded with her forbearance of all hopeless aspirants.
“Did you always fancy pictures and drawing?”
“I’m afraid so! It seems absurd to speak of my things at all to people who know—to those who have seen the great galleries abroad. But I used to pick up pieces of charcoal and try to draw when I was a child, and I never seemed able to give it up. I would bribe the little neighbour children to pose for me; the boys who worked in the breakers were nicer to draw because if I smutted my picture it didn’t matter—it made it all the truer to life. When we had the last strike up there in my country”—she called it “my country,” as though it were detached and alien and Wayne liked it in her—“a lot of newspaper correspondents came to report the troubles, and I suppose if it hadn’t been for the strike I should have lost my courage and given up trying. But I was sketching some of the children in town one day with charcoal on wrapping-paper and one of the newspaper men asked me to give him a few souvenirs. I had a whole trunkful and he helped himself. He sent them off with an article called ‘The Children of the Breakers’ and it came out the next Sunday in a Philadelphia paper with my pictures. The artist on the paper sent me some ink and paper of the kind used in black and white work and then a check came for twenty dollars. That helped to spoil me; and then I heard of a free scholarship here and when I came Mrs. Blair, who’s on the Students’ Aid Committee of the Institute, was kinder than anyone else had ever been; she’s been lovely to me!”
“Mrs. Blair is splendid to everyone—so enthusiastic and helpful. You are fortunate in having her for your friend.”
It was in Mrs. Craighill’s mind that if the girl should tell Mrs. Blair just how she came to be dining at the Craighill table the story might require elucidation. Fanny Blair believed her to be in Boston, and from Boston to the Rosedale Country Club was a far cry. Her irritation at Wayne increased: he had certainly made a mess of things; and his absorption in the girl, his ready transfer of interest, did not mitigate his offense. She was not in the least interested in Jean Morley’s studies in black and white, and she was considering the advisability of anticipating the girl by telling Fanny Blair the Rosedale story first, in a way to protect herself. The prospect did not please her. She had a high opinion of Fanny Blair’s intelligence, which caught at truth in zigzag lightning flashes of intuition. And while she considered these things, Jean Morley, whose character was not involved, described the landscape of the upper Susquehanna with almost childish enthusiasm and Wayne, who had no reputation to lose, listened to her with an attention that would have been excessive if paid to a first visitor from Mars.
Mrs. Craighill preceded them slightly as they sought the library. Her fine carriage, her short, even step, the train of her gown that swept after her detainingly—these trifles added to Jean’s impression of her hostess as a finished product of the fashionable world.