Esther | Page 7

with you at church this morning," said
Wharton, still absorbed in study of his enamel, and quite unconscious
of his host's evident restlessness.
"Ah! then you could see Miss Dudley!" cried the clergyman, who could
not forgive the abrupt dismissal of his own affairs by the two men, and
was eager to bring the talk back to his church.
"I can always see Miss Dudley," said Wharton quietly.
"Why?" asked Hazard.
"She is interesting," replied the painter. "She has a style of her own,
and I never can quite make up my mind whether to like it or not."
"It is the first time I ever knew you to hesitate before a style," said
Hazard.
"I hesitate before every thing American," replied Wharton, beginning to
show a shade of interest in what he was talking of. "I don't know--you
don't know--and I never yet met any man who could tell me, whether
American types are going to supplant the old ones, or whether they are
to come to nothing for want of ideas. Miss Dudley is one of the most
marked American types I ever saw."

"What are the signs of the most marked American type you ever saw?"
asked Hazard.
"In the first place, she has a bad figure, which she makes answer for a
good one. She is too slight, too thin; she looks fragile, willowy, as the
cheap novels call it, as though you could break her in halves like a
switch. She dresses to suit her figure and sometimes overdoes it. Her
features are imperfect. Except her ears, her voice, and her eyes which
have a sort of brown depth like a trout brook, she has no very good
points."
"Then why do you hesitate?" asked Strong, who was not entirely
pleased with this cool estimate of his cousin's person.
"There is the point where the subtlety comes in," replied the painter.
"Miss Dudley interests me. I want to know what she can make of life.
She gives one the idea of a lightly-sparred yacht in mid-ocean;
unexpected; you ask yourself what the devil she is doing there. She
sails gayly along, though there is no land in sight and plenty of rough
weather coming. She never read a book, I believe, in her life. She tries
to paint, but she is only a second rate amateur and will never be any
thing more, though she has done one or two things which I give you my
word I would like to have done myself. She picks up all she knows
without an effort and knows nothing well, yet she seems to understand
whatever is said. Her mind is as irregular as her face, and both have the
same peculiarity. I notice that the lines of her eyebrows, nose and
mouth all end with a slight upward curve like a yacht's sails, which
gives a kind of hopefulness and self-confidence to her expression. Mind
and face have the same curves."
"Is that your idea of our national type?" asked Strong. "Why don't you
put it into one of your saints in the church, and show what you mean by
American art?"
"I wish I could," said the artist. "I have passed weeks trying to catch it.
The thing is too subtle, and it is not a grand type, like what we are used
to in the academies. But besides the riddle, I like Miss Dudley for
herself. The way she takes my brutal criticisms of her painting makes

my heart bleed. I mean to go down on my knees one of these days, and
confess to her that I know nothing about it; only if her style is right, my
art is wrong."
"What sort of a world does this new deity of yours belong to?" asked
the clergyman.
"Not to yours," replied Wharton quickly. "There is nothing medieval
about her. If she belongs to any besides the present, it is to the next
world which artists want to see, when paganism will come again and
we can give a divinity to every waterfall. I tell you, Hazard, I am sick at
heart about our church work; it is a failure. Never till this morning did I
feel the whole truth, but the instant I got inside the doors it flashed
upon me like St. Paul's great light. The thing does not belong to our
time or feelings."
The conversation having thus come round to the subject which Mr.
Hazard wanted to discuss, the three men plunged deep into serious talk
which lasted till after midnight had struck from the neighboring church.

Chapter II
Punctually the next day at three o'clock, Esther Dudley appeared in her
aunt's drawing-room where she found half a dozen ladies chatting, or
looking at Mr. Murray's pictures in the front parlor. The