Hazard of New Fortunes - Volume 2 , livre ebook

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65 pages

English

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. The evening when March closed with Mrs. Green's reduced offer, and decided to take her apartment, the widow whose lodgings he had rejected sat with her daughter in an upper room at the back of her house. In the shaded glow of the drop-light she was sewing, and the girl was drawing at the same table. From time to time, as they talked, the girl lifted her head and tilted it a little on one side so as to get some desired effect of her work.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819947899
Langue	English

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PART SECOND
I.
The evening when March closed with Mrs. Green'sreduced offer, and decided to take her apartment, the widow whoselodgings he had rejected sat with her daughter in an upper room atthe back of her house. In the shaded glow of the drop-light she wassewing, and the girl was drawing at the same table. From time totime, as they talked, the girl lifted her head and tilted it alittle on one side so as to get some desired effect of herwork.
“It's a mercy the cold weather holds off, ” said themother. “We should have to light the furnace, unless we wanted toscare everybody away with a cold house; and I don't know who wouldtake care of it, or what would become of us, every way. ”
“They seem to have been scared away from a housethat wasn't cold, ” said the girl. “Perhaps they might like a coldone. But it's too early for cold yet. It's only just in thebeginning of November. ”
“The Messenger says they've had a sprinkling ofsnow. ”
“Oh yes, at St. Barnaby! I don't know when theydon't have sprinklings of snow there. I'm awfully glad we haven'tgot that winter before us. ”
The widow sighed as mothers do who feel the contrasttheir experience opposes to the hopeful recklessness of such talkas this. “We may have a worse winter here, ” she said, darkly.
“Then I couldn't stand it, ” said the girl, “and Ishould go in for lighting out to Florida double-quick. ”
“And how would you get to Florida? ” demanded hermother, severely.
“Oh, by the usual conveyance Pullman vestibuledtrain, I suppose. What makes you so blue, mamma? ” The girl was allthe time sketching away, rubbing out, lifting her head for theeffect, and then bending it over her work again without looking ather mother.
“I am not blue, Alma. But I cannot endure this— thishopefulness of yours. ”
“Why? What harm does it do? ”
“Harm? ” echoed the mother.
Pending the effort she must make in saying, the girlcut in: “Yes, harm. You've kept your despair dusted off and readyfor use at an instant's notice ever since we came, and what goodhas it done? I'm going to keep on hoping to the bitter end. That'swhat papa did. ”
It was what the Rev. Archibald Leighton had donewith all the consumptive's buoyancy. The morning he died he toldthem that now he had turned the point and was really going to getwell. The cheerfulness was not only in his disease, but in histemperament. Its excess was always a little against him in hischurch work, and Mrs. Leighton was right enough in feeling that ifit had not been for the ballast of her instinctive despondency hewould have made shipwreck of such small chances of prosperity asbefell him in life. It was not from him that his daughter got hertalent, though he had left her his temperament intact of hiswidow's legal thirds. He was one of those men of whom the countrypeople say when he is gone that the woman gets along better withouthim. Mrs. Leighton had long eked out their income by taking asummer boarder or two, as a great favor, into her family; and whenthe greater need came, she frankly gave up her house to thesummer-folks (as they call them in the country), and managed it fortheir comfort from the small quarter of it in which she shutherself up with her daughter.
The notion of shutting up is an exigency of therounded period. The fact is, of course, that Alma Leighton was notshut up in any sense whatever. She was the pervading light, if notforce, of the house. She was a good cook, and she managed thekitchen with the help of an Irish girl, while her mother lookedafter the rest of the housekeeping. But she was not systematic; shehad inspiration but not discipline, and her mother mourned moreover the days when Alma left the whole dinner to the Irish girlthan she rejoiced in those when one of Alma's great thoughts tookform in a chicken-pie of incomparable savor or in a matchlesspudding. The off-days came when her artistic nature was expressingitself in charcoal, for she drew to the admiration of all among thelady boarders who could not draw. The others had their reserves;they readily conceded that Alma had genius, but they were sure sheneeded instruction. On the other hand, they were not so radical asto agree with the old painter who came every summer to paint theelms of the St. Barnaby meadows. He contended that she needed to bea man in order to amount to anything; but in this theory he wasopposed by an authority, of his own sex, whom the lady sketchersbelieved to speak with more impartiality in a matter concerningthem as much as Alma Leighton. He said that instruction would do,and he was not only, younger and handsomer, but he was fresher fromthe schools than old Harrington, who, even the lady sketchers couldsee, painted in an obsolescent manner. His name was Beaton— AngusBeaton; but he was not Scotch, or not more Scotch than Mary Queenof Scots was. His father was a Scotchman, but Beaton was born inSyracuse, New York, and it had taken only three years in Paris toobliterate many traces of native and ancestral manner in him. Hewore his black beard cut shorter than his mustache, and a littlepointed; he stood with his shoulders well thrown back and with alateral curve of his person when he talked about art, which wouldalone have carried conviction even if he had not had a thick, darkbang coming almost to the brows of his mobile gray eyes, and hadnot spoken English with quick, staccato impulses, so as to give itthe effect of epigrammatic and sententious French. One of theladies said that you always thought of him as having spoken Frenchafter it was over, and accused herself of wrong in not being ableto feel afraid of him. None of the ladies was afraid of him, thoughthey could not believe that he was really so deferential to theirwork as he seemed; and they knew, when he would not criticise Mr.Harrington's work, that he was just acting from principle.
They may or may not have known the deference withwhich he treated Alma's work; but the girl herself felt that hisabrupt, impersonal comment recognized her as a real sister in art.He told her she ought to come to New York, and draw in the League,or get into some painter's private class; and it was the sense ofduty thus appealed to which finally resulted in the hazardousexperiment she and her mother were now making. There were nological breaks in the chain of their reasoning from past successwith boarders in St. Barnaby to future success with boarders in NewYork. Of course the outlay was much greater. The rent of thefurnished house they had taken was such that if they failed theirexperiment would be little less than ruinous.
But they were not going to fail; that was what Almacontended, with a hardy courage that her mother sometimes feltalmost invited failure, if it did not deserve it. She was one ofthose people who believe that if you dread harm enough it is lesslikely to happen. She acted on this superstition as if it were areligion.
“If it had not been for my despair, as you call it,Alma, ” she answered,
“I don't know where we should have been now. ”
“I suppose we should have been in St. Barnaby, ”said the girl. “And if it's worse to be in New York, you see whatyour despair's done, mamma. But what's the use? You meant well, andI don't blame you. You can't expect even despair to come out alwaysjust the way you want it. Perhaps you've used too much of it. ” Thegirl laughed, and Mrs. Leighton laughed, too. Like every one else,she was not merely a prevailing mood, as people are apt to be inbooks, but was an irregularly spheroidal character, with surfacesthat caught the different lights of circumstance and reflectedthem. Alma got up and took a pose before the mirror, which she thentransferred to her sketch. The room was pinned about with othersketches, which showed with fantastic indistinctness in the shadedgaslight. Alma held up the drawing. “How do you like it? ”
Mrs. Leighton bent forward over her sewing to lookat it. “You've got the man's face rather weak. ”
“Yes, that's so. Either I see all the hiddenweakness that's in men's natures, and bring it to the surface intheir figures, or else I put my own weakness into them. Either way,it's a drawback to their presenting a truly manly appearance. Aslong as I have one of the miserable objects before me, I can drawhim; but as soon as his back's turned I get to putting ladies intomen's clothes. I should think you'd be scandalized, mamma, if youwere a really feminine person. It must be your despair that helpsyou to bear up. But what's the matter with the young lady in younglady's clothes? Any dust on her? ”
“What expressions! ” said Mrs. Leighton. “Really,Alma, for a refined girl you are the most unrefined! ”
“Go on— about the girl in the picture! ” said Alma,slightly knocking her mother on the shoulder, as she stood overher.
“I don't see anything to her. What's she doing?”
“Oh, just being made love to, I suppose. ”
“She's perfectly insipid! ”
“You're awfully articulate, mamma! Now, if Mr.Wetmore were to criticise that picture he'd draw a circle round itin the air, and look at it through that, and tilt his head first onone side and then on the other, and then look at you, as if youwere a figure in it, and then collapse awhile, and moan a littleand gasp, 'Isn't your young lady a little too-too— ' and then he'dtry to get the word out of you, and groan and suffer some more; andyou'd say, 'She is, rather, ' and that would give him courage, andhe'd say, 'I don't mean that she's so very— ' 'Of course not. ''You understand? ' 'Perfectly. I see it myself, now. ' 'Well,then'— -and he'd take your pencil and begin to draw— 'I should giveher a little more— Ah? ' 'Yes, I see the difference. '— 'You seethe difference? ' And he'd go off to some one else, and you'd knowthat you'd been doing the wishy-washiest thing in the world, thoughhe hadn't spoken a word of criticism, and couldn't. But he wouldn'thave noticed the expression at all; he'd have shown you where yourdrawing was bad. He doesn't care for what he calls the litera