A Bookful Of Girls Part 6

CHAPTER I

THE PRIZE CONTEST

"Artful Madge" was the very flippant name by which Madge Burtwell's brother Ned had persisted in calling her from the time when, at the age of sixteen, she gained reluctant permission to become a student at the Art School.

"Not that we have any objection to art," Mrs. Burtwell was wont to explain in a deprecatory tone; "only we should have preferred to have Madge graduate first, before devoting herself to a mere accomplishment. It seems a little like putting the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g on a dress before sewing the seams up," she would add; "I did it once when I was a girl, and the dress always had a queer look."

But Mrs. Burtwell, though firm in her own opinions, was something of a philosopher in her att.i.tude toward the contrary-minded, and even where her own children were concerned she never allowed her influence to degenerate into tyranny. When she found Madge, at the age of sixteen, more eager than ever before to study art, and nothing else, she told her husband that they might as well make up their minds to it, and, at the word, their minds were made up. For Mr. Burtwell was the one entirely and unreasoningly tractable member of Mrs. Burtwell's flock; in explanation of which fact he was careful to point out that only a mature mind could appreciate the true worth of Mrs. Burtwell's judgment.

The Burtwells were people of small means and of correspondingly modest requirements. They lived in an unfashionable quarter of the city, kept a maid-of-all-work, sent their children to the public schools, and got their books from the Public Library. Having no expensive tastes, they regarded themselves as well-to-do and envied no one.

If Madge Burtwell's eyes had been a whit less clear, or her nature a thought less guileless, Ned would not have been so enchanted with his new name for her. Indeed, a few years ago she had been described by an only half-appreciative friend as "a splendid girl without a mite of tact," and if she had succeeded in somewhat softening the asperity of her natural frankness, there was enough of it left to lend a delicate shade of humour to the name.

Artful Madge, then, was a student at the Art School, and a very promising one at that. At the end of three years she had made such good progress that she was promoted to painting in the Portrait Cla.s.s, and since her special friend and crony, Eleanor Merritt, was also a member of that cla.s.s, Madge considered her cup of happiness full. Not that there were not visions in plenty of still better things to come, but they seemed so far in the future that they hardly took on any relation with the actual present. Madge and Eleanor dreamed of Europe, of the old masters and of the great Paris studios, but it is a question whether the fulfillment of any dream could have made them happier than they were to-day. Certain it is, that, as they stood side by side in the great barren studio, clad in their much-bedaubed, long-sleeved ap.r.o.ns, and working away at a portrait head, they had little thought for anything but the task in hand. The one vital matter for the moment was the mixing and applying of their colours, and, in their eagerness to reproduce the exact contour of a cheek, or the precise shadow of an unbeautiful nose, they would hardly have transferred their attention from the most ill-favoured model to the last and greatest Whistler masterpiece.

The girls at the Art School had got hold of Ned's name for his sister and adopted it with enthusiasm.

"If you want to know the truth, ask Artful Madge," was a very common saying among them.

"Artful Madge says it's a good likeness, anyhow!" modest little Minnie Drayton would maintain, when hard pressed by the teasing of the older girls.

The incongruity of the name seemed somehow to throw into brighter relief the peculiar sincerity of its bearer's character, and by the time it was generally adopted among the students Madge Burtwell's popularity was established.

It was well that Madge was a favourite, for in certain respects she was the worst sinner in the cla.s.s. To begin with, her palette was the very largest in the room, and the most plentifully besmeared with colours, and woe to the girl who ventured too near it! As Madge stood before her easel, tall and fair and earnest, painting with an ardour and concentration which was all too sure to beguile her into her besetting sin of "exaggerating details," she wielded both brush- and palette-arm with a genial disregard of consequences. Nor could one count upon her confining her activities to one location. Like all the students, she was in the habit of backing away from her natural anchorage from time to time, the better to judge of her work, and not one of them all had such a fatal tendency to come up against an unoffending easel in the rear, sending canvas and paint-tubes rattling upon the floor.

Instantly she would drop upon her knees, overcome with contrition, and help collect the scattered treasures, giving many a jar or joggle to neighbouring easels in the process.

"It's a shame, Miss Folsom!" she would cry, struggling to her feet again, still clutching her beloved palette, which seemed fairly to rain colours on every surrounding object. "It's a shame! But if you will just cast your eye upon that thing of mine, you will perceive that it was the recklessness of desperation. Look at it! There's not a value in it!"

Artful Madge was always forgiven, and no one ever thought of calling her awkward, and when, in the early autumn, a Sat.u.r.day sketching club was organised, it was christened "The Artful Daubers" in honor of Madge, and she was unanimously elected president.

The girls were not in the habit of paying much attention to chance visitors who came in from time to time and made the perilous pa.s.sage among the easels, and lucky was the "parent" or "art-patron" who escaped without a streak of colour on some portion of his raiment.

When Mrs. Oliver Jacques looked in upon them one memorable morning in February no premonition of great things to come stirred the company; only indifferent glances were directed upon her by the few who deigned to observe her at all. And this pleased Mrs. Oliver Jacques very much indeed.

Yet, if the girls had paused to consider,--a thing which they never did when there was a model on the platform,--they would have been aware that their visitor was a person of importance in the world of Art, for importance in no other world would have secured to her the personal escort of Mr. Salome, the adored teacher of their cla.s.s. Yet Mrs. Jacques was a charming little old lady who would have commanded attention on her own merits in any less preoccupied a.s.sembly than that of the studio. Her exceedingly bright eyes and her exceedingly white hair seemed to accentuate her animation of manner; there was so much sparkle in her face that even her silence did not lack point.

She had accomplished her tortuous pa.s.sage among the easels without meeting with any mishaps in the shape of Cremnitz-white or crimson-lake. She had paused occasionally and had bestowed a critical nod upon the one "blocked-in" countenance, or had drawn her brows together questioningly over a study in which the nose had a startlingly finished appearance in a still sketchy environment, but not until she had successfully avoided the last easel, planted at an erratic angle just where the unwary would be sure to stub his toe, did she make any remark.

"A lot of them, aren't there?" she observed.

"Yes, the school is pretty full," Mr. Salome replied. "In fact, we're a little bothered for room."

"Any imagination among them?"

"Well, as to that, it's rather early to form an opinion. Our aim just now is to keep them to facts. Some of them," the artist added with a smile, "are rather too much inclined to draw upon their imagination.

Now there is one girl there who is, humanly speaking, certain to paint the model's hair jet-black, or as black as paint can be made. And yet, you see, there is not a black thread in it."

"I wonder whether you would object to my making an experiment?" Mrs.

Jacques asked, abruptly.

And from that seemingly unpremeditated question of Mrs. Jacques', and from the consultation that ensued, grew the Prize Contest, destined to be famous in the annals of the school.

When, on that very afternoon, the students were a.s.sembled for the occasion, they had not yet had time to adjust their minds to the magnitude of the interests involved. Yet the conditions were simple enough. That student who should, in the s.p.a.ce of two hours, produce the best composition ill.u.s.trative of "Hope" was to receive a prize of five hundred dollars! The conviction prevailed among them that the vivacious little old lady with the white hair could be none other than the fairy G.o.dmother of nursery lore, and it was only too delightful to find that agile and beneficent myth interesting herself in the cause of Art.

When once the cla.s.s was fairly launched upon its new emprise, a change in the usual aspect of things became apparent. In the first place, most of the students were seated; for, in a task of pure composition, there was no occasion either for standing or for "prowling,"--the term familiarly applied to the sometimes disastrous backward and forward movements of which mention has been made, and which ordinarily gave so much action to the scene. Furthermore, the use of watercolor, as lending itself more readily than oils to rapid execution, deprived the scene of one of its most picturesque features,--namely, the brilliant-hued palette which, with its similarity to a shield, was wont to lend its bearer an Amazonian air, not lost upon the cla.s.s caricaturists. Subdued, however, and almost "lady-like" as the appearance of the cla.s.s had become, hardly half an hour had pa.s.sed before the genial spirit of creation had so taken possession of the a.s.sembly as to cast a glow and glamour of its own upon it. Here and there, to be sure, might still be seen an anxious, intent young face with eyes fixed upon vacancy, or an idle, if somewhat begrimed and parti-coloured hand, fiercely clutching a dejected head; but nearly all were already busily at work, eagerly painting, or as eagerly obliterating strokes too hastily made. The subject, hackneyed as it certainly is, had pleased and stimulated the girls. There was a mingled vagueness and familiarity in its suggestion which puzzled them and spurred them on at the same time.

Among the most impetuous workers, almost from the outset, was Artful Madge. She had instantly conceived of Hope as a vague, beckoning figure, which was to take its significance from the mult.i.tude and variety of its followers. She chose a large sheet of paper and quickly sketched in the upper left-hand corner a very indefinite hint of a winged, luminous something,--it might have been an angel or a bird or a cloud, seen from a great distance, against a somewhat threatening sky. Without defining the form at all she very cleverly produced an impression of receding motion;--she ventured even to hope that there was something alluring in the motion. That, however, must be made unmistakably clear through the pursuing figures with which she proposed to fill the foreground.

She glanced at Eleanor, who had not yet mixed a colour.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked.

"I don't seem ready to begin," said Eleanor, in an absent tone of voice.

"Have you got an idea?"

"I think so."

"Then do hurry up and go ahead, or you'll get left."

Madge sat a moment, looking straight before her.

"What are you going to put in there?" asked Eleanor.

"What I want is all the people in the world," Madge replied, with perfect gravity. "But there is not room for them."

A moment later she was working furiously, with hot cheeks and shining eyes and breath coming faster and faster.

First she would have a soldier. Madge had always loved a soldier; her father had been one in the great and splendid days before she was born. Yes, a soldier must come first. And forthwith a very sketchy warrior stepped, with a very martial air, upon the paper. Then an artist ought to come next;--only she could not think of any way of indicating his calling without the aid of some conventional emblem. A mere look of inspiration might belong to a poet or a preacher as well as to an artist. Besides which, she was by no means sure that she knew how to paint a look of inspiration. And then it came to her that, unless she could paint just that, her picture must be a failure; and so she fell upon it, and began sketching in figures of old and young, rich and poor, trying only to put into each face the eager, upward look which should focus all, in spirit as well as in actual direction, upon the flying, luminous figure. In some attempts she succeeded and in some she failed. There was one old woman, with abnormally deep wrinkles, and shoulders somewhat out of drawing, whose face had caught a curiously inspired look; Madge did not dare touch her again for fear of losing it. Her artist, on the other hand, the young man with the ideal brow and very large eyes, grew more and more inane and expressionless the more eagerly his creator worked at him.

On the whole, the production as a two-hour composition by a three-year student was rather good than bad. When time was called Madge felt pretty sure that she should not win the prize; she had undertaken too much, both for the occasion and for her own ability. And yet it was borne in upon her to-day that she was going to make a better artist than she had ever before dared hope.

So absorbed had she been in her own work, that she had completely forgotten Eleanor, and had not even been aware that her friend had begun painting an hour ago. Now she turned to her with compunction in her heart. Eleanor held her finished sketch in her hand, but her eyes had wandered to the high, broad north window which was one great sheet of radiant blue sky.

Eleanor's composition was very simple, but extremely well done, and in the glance Madge was able to give it before the sketches were handed in she saw that it was delicately suggestive. It represented a curving sh.o.r.e, a quiet sea, and a saffron sky,--no sails on the sea, no clouds in the sky. Upon the sh.o.r.e stood a solitary pine-tree, almost denuded of branches, and against the tree leaned the slender figure of a youth, looking dreamily across the sea to the horizon, where the saffron colour was tinged with gold. That was all, but Madge felt sure that it was enough; and, as she thought about it, she felt herself very small and crude and confused, and she was conscious of a perfectly calm and dispa.s.sionate wish to tear her own sketch in two.

She did not do so, however. There was no irritation, nor envy, nor even displeasure, in her mind. She had not supposed that either she or Eleanor could do anything so good as that sketch,--since one of them could, why, that was just so much clear gain.

A moment later the studio was in a tumult. The sketches had been handed over to the three judges, who had gone into instant consultation over them. Mrs. Jacques had decreed, with characteristic decision, that the judges were bound to be as prompt as the compet.i.tors, and the award was promised within half an hour. What wonder if the usual tumult of dispersion was increased tenfold by the excitement of the occasion? The voices were pitched in a higher key, the easels clattered more noisily than ever, there was a more lively movement among the many-hued ap.r.o.ns, as they were pulled off and consigned with many a shake and a flourish to their respective pegs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Eleanor's eyes had wandered to the high, broad north window."]

"What did you paint?" asked one high voice, whose owner was enthusiastically shaking the water from her paint-brush all over the floor.

"I painted you--working for the prize."

"Not really!"