Part 6 (1/2)
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 unfas.h.i.+onable 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.