The Coast of Bohemia | Page 6

the drawings, one after another, with various inarticulate notes of comment imitated from a great French master, and with various foreign phrases, such as "Bon! Bon! Pas mauvais! Joli! Chic!" He seemed to waken from them to a consciousness of the mother, and returned to English. "They are very interesting. Has she had instruction?"
"Only in the High School, here. And she didn't seem to care any for that. She seems to want to work more by herself."
"That's wrong," said Ludlow, "though she's probably right about the High School."
The mother made bold to ask, "Where are you taking lessons?"
"I?" said Ludlow, dreamily. "Oh! everywhere."
"I thought, perhaps," the mother began, and she stopped, and then resumed, "How many lessons do you expect to take?"

IV.
Ludlow descended from the high horse which he saw it was really useless for him to ride in that simple presence. "I didn't mean that I was a student of art in that sense, exactly. I suppose I'm a painter of some sort. I studied in Paris, and I'm working in New York--if that's what you mean."
"Yes," said the lady, as if she did not know quite what she meant.
Ludlow still remained in possession of the sketches, and he now looked at them with a new knot between his eyebrows. He had known at the first glance, with the perception of one who has done things in any art, that here was the possibility of things in his art, and he had spoken from a generous and compassionate impulse, from his recognition of the possibility, and from his sympathy with the girl in her defeat. Now his conscience began to prick him. He asked himself whether he had any right to encourage her, whether he ought not rather to warn her. He asked her mother: "Has she been doing this sort of thing long?"
"Ever since she was a little bit of a thing," said the mother. "You might say she's been doing it ever since she could do anything; and she ain't but about fifteen, now. Well, she's going on sixteen," the mother added, scrupulously. "She was born the third of July, and now it's the beginning of September. So she's just fifteen years and a little over two months. I suppose she's too young to commence taking lessons regularly?"
"No one would be too young for that," said Ludlow, austerely, with his eyes on the sketch. He lifted them, and bent them frankly and kindly on the mother's face. "And were you thinking of her going on?" The mother questioned him for his exact meaning with the sweet unwisdom of her smile. "Did you think of her becoming an artist, a painter?"
"Well," she returned, "I presume she would have as good a chance as anybody, if she had the talent for it."
"She has the talent for it," said Ludlow, "and she would have a better chance than most--that's very little to say--but it's a terribly rough road."
"Yes," the mother faltered, smiling.
"Yes. It's a hard road for a man, and it's doubly hard for a woman. It means work that breaks the back and wrings the brain. It means for a woman, tears, and hysterics, and nervous prostration, and insanity--some of them go wild over it. The conditions are bad air, and long hours, and pitiless criticism; and the rewards are slight and uncertain. One out of a hundred comes to anything at all; one out of a thousand to anything worth while. New York is swarming with girl art-students. They mostly live in poor boarding-houses, and some of them actually suffer from hunger and cold. For men the profession is hazardous, arduous; for women it's a slow anguish of endeavor and disappointment. Most shop-girls earn more than most fairly successful art-students for years; most servant-girls fare better. If you are rich, and your daughter wishes to amuse herself by studying art, it's all very well; but even then I wouldn't recommend it as an amusement. If you're poor----"
"I presume," the mother interrupted, "that she would be self-supporting by the time she had taken six months' lessons, and I guess she could get along till then."
Ludlow stared at the amiably smiling creature. From her unruffled composure his warning had apparently fallen like water from the back of a goose. He saw that it would be idle to go on, and he stopped short and waited for her to speak again.
"If she was to go to New York to take lessons, how do you think she'd better----" She seemed not to know enough of the situation to formulate her question farther. He had pity on her ignorance, though he doubted whether he ought to have.
"Oh, go into the Synthesis," he said briefly.
"The Synthesis?"
"Yes; the Synthesis of Art Studies; it's the only thing. The work is hard, but it's thorough; the training's