To-day he seated himself and asked her opinion of the drawing he carried. As usual, his manner was without animation, yet she instantly felt that he expected a word of praise. This was extraordinary on his part, as he invariably gave out the wordless impression that he continued to live more from habit than anything else, but found life wholly without interest.
The picture, which was destined to illustrate a jingling little rhyme and visualize it for such readers as have no imagination, represented a short-skirted maid standing by a rustic fountain, pitcher in hand. Cartice gave a little cry of delight, as her eyes fell upon it, though a second glance showed her that something was wrong with it, but what, she could not for a moment say. Presently the blunder stood revealed, and was gross enough to mortify Bardell for all time, if she pointed it out. Yet it would be his ruin to let him go to the “art man,” with the drawing as it was. So she said, “It is charmingly done; but there is a trifling error in it. The girl’s feet are put on wrong. Left and right have changed places.”
The pale, hollow face of the artist flushed red with shame. “I’m most grateful to you, Mrs. Doring,” he said, as his astonished eyes saw the hitherto unnoticed blunder. “Had I gone to Buskirk with that it would have been the end of me in this shop. As it is he almost withers me with his contempt. It doesn’t stop at my work, either, but includes all there is of me, physically, mentally, artistically, and financially. I sustain myself under it with the reflection that, however profound his contempt for me, it is outdone again and again by my contempt for myself.”
Cartice understood well the awful wounds to self-respect men and women are daily forced to endure for the sake of a chance to earn a livelihood. She looked at Bardell with a vast, wordless sympathy shining in her eyes, thinking of the courage necessary in the tragedy of life, as displayed by the man before her and tens of thousands of others. He understood and went on:
“I don’t endure it for the mere sake of living, I assure you. The experience called life, as I know it, isn’t worth it. But when I was younger and considerably more of a fool than I am now, I married, as a kind of business or because others did, or I don’t really know why. Anyhow, I have a little family now, and I have to put up with everything, no matter what, in order to support them. Besides, I have other ties that hold me to life, and those are my ideals.”
Mrs. Doring looked up with a start. “Tell me about them,” she said.
“Ever since I can remember they have been with me, and are my true life,” he said. “They exist in the shape of simple rustic scenes, old-time well-sweeps, tumble-down stone-houses and walls and things of that sort, with people in them who are a part of their history. They come into my mind and insist upon being painted. They are not satisfied to be put in black and white. That is crucifixion for them and for me, too. They beg, entreat and command me to put them in color.
“This girl at the old-time fountain in this drawing is one of them. That’s the reason the picture isn’t hard and lifeless like most of the truck I bring in here. The blunder of putting her feet on wrong occurred, because I drew the feet last, and about that time she found out that she wasn’t being painted, but was to be a sacrifice to the terrible monster of newspaper illustration, which is an easy way to please children and uneducated people, and an offence to those of a higher order of intelligence. In rage at the use I was going to make of her she jumped up and down so fast that her feet got tangled in my mind. I saw her, you understand. She was real—I saw her—not in flesh and blood, but imagination, which to me is a kind of higher reality.”
Astonished and delighted to find one worker with ideals above mere keeping afloat, Cartice asked him if he worked on his ideals or merely dreamed of them.
“I reach after them all I can,” he said, “handicapped as I am. I give my heart to them, though I haven’t been able to give them much of my time. But I have not kicked them out of my way, or murdered them to sell their flesh at the nearest market, as many of my associates have done. Nor have I given up the belief that, if we work on our ideals, devote ourselves to them, in the face of every obstacle, we shall be lifted out of the dreadful mire of the commonplace, where the feet of most of us stick fast all our lives. But they will have no half-hearted devotion. They want whole-souled service only, and they are right. Willing to give us all of themselves it is only fair they should ask all from us.