LITMIR.BIZ

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moment's halt, a momentary taste

       Of Being——"

      ​For this is a land of quest. One does not come to rest or stay, only to search for that which one has not yet found.

      "As we proceed, it shifts its place,"

       and the days go by in swift pursuit.

      But here is none of the reckless, happy-go-lucky temper of the London Prague or the Paris Latin Quarter. Life is earnest, sad, ascetic. Its only lotus-eating is hard work. The shadow of grief rests over it, for women whom life has robbed come here to forget their sorrow, if may be, in philanthropy or in art. Here eager girls toil with pen or canvas, keys or strings.

      Each has a purpose. The little black bag that the Bohemian carries is a symbol of an aim in life. It may hold books, or manuscript poems, or comments on Aristotle. It may hold boxes of crackers or jars of marmalade. Whatever its contents, it is always full.

      These earnest women suffer loneliness, and, it may be, failure. But they have freedom and pleasant companionship, long ​walks by river-bank or bridge, long discussions by tea-table or by fireplace. For the hardship there is compensation. Here the ideal has become real. One may hear the Bohemians condemning, over a luncheon of coffee and rolls, the ascetic idea, and expressing belief in controlled Epicureanism. Bread and cheese for the body's diet; Transcendentalism for the mind: muddy crossings for the feet; for the soul, the paths among the stars.

      The charm of evanescence belongs to this life. Work and friends are doubly dear when every morning brings the thought that they may vanish. For the mortality is great in Bohemia. It lies hard by the borderland of life, life with its ordered sequences of birth and death, of marrying and giving in marriage, of family happenings. A constant fear walks with one that one's friend may at any moment be drawn to that bourne whence none return to Bohemia.

      The charm of the unexpected belongs to it. Who knows what choice spirit may ​come to abide in the next studio or in the vacant suite? Any day may bring within the borders a victim to be sacrificed to one's art, or a friend to be grappled to one's soul.

      The gathering of the inhabitants is ruled by seeming chance. Women drift hither through lack of strong ties to hold them back. Others come to whom this is but a halting place in a road to a chosen goal. A whim, a momentary wish, an old ambition revived, guide many feet to Bohemia.

      This is hence a peculiar race, bound together, not by ties of birth and family, only by community of interest, of hope, of suffering. As in the world of mediæval story here are neither old people nor young children, only the vigorous, ready for battle.

      Yet bits of everyday life float into Bohemia. Children come to play in the Square. Humble lovers stroll past, arm in arm, and little girls with braided hair walk through to school. Frail old ladies ​with nodding curls and men with hair like white spun silk go tremulously by, wondering at the queer life of this secluded spot.

      The place is as quiet as a motionless pool at the side of a moving stream. Hence the tales of Bohemia are not full of strange incident. The hero of romance does not dwell here, and the villain is unknown. There are few men in this new country. Man here is a memory, a shadow, rarely a reality.

      And the stories are incoherent. Only moments of life are represented. Here are but the beginnings and the endings of stories, often the ending that comes after the climax, sometimes the climax itself. Residence in Bohemia is perhaps only as long as the working out of a mood. Therefore its romances are not orderly developments of plot and counterplot, but merely bits of vivid experience in busy people's lives.

      ​

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      "Truly … in respect … of itself it is a good life. In respect that it is solitary I like it very well, but in respect that it is private it is a very vile life. … As it is a spare life, look you, it suits my humour well."

       As You Like It.

      "Don't stop working," begged Mrs. Kent. "I do so like to watch you."

      Anne pushed the ruffle of her blue gingham painting-apron away from her face, and took up her brushes again. She was retouching, from memory, a study of an old sailor.

      Mrs. Kent stooped to pat Miserere, the studio cat, then looked at the pictures on the walls—an old woman, drinking tea; a white-haired man, warming his fingers over the last coals of his fire; a young Italian mother, with a brown baby in her arms.

      "The things you do have an unusual charm for me," said the caller.

      "Yet I am an utter failure, so far as ​any recognition of my work is concerned," responded the artist cheerfully.

      "You have not been working long enough."

      "Ever since I came back to America. That is four whole years. I haven't exhibited a single picture, nor sold one. But I'm having a beautiful time. Maybe if it weren't so hopeless I should not be so enthusiastic about it."

      "That is hard philosophy," said Mrs. Kent, with her sad little smile. "Do you suppose that I could apply it in my charity work?"

      It was a peculiar room. The old-fashioned furniture had brought into the world of art a suggestion of serious and ascetic New England life. A tall old clock stood by the cast of Psyche. The cherry desk, where the artist's father had written sermons for thirty years, was crowned by a Venus de Milo. From claw-footed table and high-backed chairs reminders of the Vermont parsonage stole across the warmth and colour of the studio. Over the door ​Anne had hung a sketch of her father's face—stern, spiritual, Puritan.

      The studio was like Miss Bradford. So were the pictures. Mrs. Kent looked at them again, wondering at the likeness between the artist and her work. There was careful rendering of the wrinkles, the lines about the mouth, the curving of the lips; but the eyes were Anne's own. Into them all had crept that look of mingled thirst for life and fear of life, and they looked out wistfully from the canvases, full of sadness, as if trying to understand.

      Mrs. Kent glanced at the artist's clear gray eyes, determined mouth, and smooth, parted hair.

      "You must never give up."

      "I can't," Anne responded, putting the finishing touches on a thumb. "The work won't give me up. It holds me as a cat does a mouse. You see, it has always been the one thing in the world for me, and life has had no meaning apart from it. I want to be genuine—not like other women. Most women wear their careers ​as if they were jewelry. Work is only a new species of ornament. They aren't great enough to lose themselves in it.

      "Only I should like one wee bit of encouragement! The master never stopped at my easel, as he always does in books, to say, 'You have a touch. There is a future before you.' I've got nothing to depend on but my belief in myself."

      "It is all very wonderful to me," said Mrs. Kent, rising to go. "How can you interpret people's faces in that way without having had their experience?"

      "I don't know. I have an idea that you can interpret other people's lives better if your own isn't too much tangled up. Lack of life is life's best interpreter."

      There was a knock at the door. The janitor had brought Miss Bradford a card. She stood for a minute, turning it over in paint-stained fingers.

      "Say that I will come down directly."

      Then she went back to her canvas and spoiled the thumb.

      Five minutes later Anne walked ​down-stairs with Howard Stanton's card in her hand. Miserere accompanied her to the reception-room door, then dashed away to play with the other studio cats, Victoria Regina, and Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.

      Anne tore up the card, then wondered helplessly what to do with the pieces. It was strange that Howard should come just now. But then, it was strange that he had not come

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