miss mason was sitting in her studio at four o’clock on sunday afternoon. she was reading a small, red-covered book, within whose pages was enshrined a brief account of the life and work of whistler.
at intervals she looked up from her reading to glance round the studio and smile. it was her dream incarnate. she had waited forty-three years for its birth. she realized now that she had always wanted it, had always believed in it. all through the old days in the rose-beds, when she had pruned the trees, when she had grafted new buds, when she had watched the flowers expanding, she had dreamt of this studio. only at moments it had looked real; generally it was far off and shadowy, but always it had been before her, and something had whispered to her heart, “wait; one day it will come.”
and now it was no faint shadowy dream, but a living reality, and it would bring more glorious realities in its train. nothing could be too wonderful to happen in the castle of her dreams.
again she looked round the studio, and again she smiled. she would have liked to sing for happiness, only her voice was too gruff and cracked. she would have liked to dance for joy, only her old legs were too stiff. but she minded neither of these things, for her heart was beating to a little gay secret tune in which joy and thankfulness were woven in delicious harmony.
from behind the door that led to the tiny kitchen she heard murmured sounds and an occasional deep laugh. sally’s scrappy little note had been answered by the appearance of jim in his sunday-best, shining from the washtub, redolent of yellow soap, every trace of his black weekday occupation removed. they were now cooing like a pair of young turtle-doves in a cage.
suddenly miss mason was startled by a knock.
a moment later the door which led from the studio to the little vestibule opened, and sally announced:
“mr. kirby and mr. oldfield.”
miss mason’s heart fluttered. it is an odd emotion, and now nearly out of fashion. it belonged to the days of “cranford,” “evelina,” and “sense and sensibility.” now all emotions are big and passionate, or calm and well-controlled. there are few gentle excitements left.
in spite of the fluttering, miss mason rose to her feet, a quiet dignified old figure.
“i am very pleased to see you,” she said, and she gave them each her hand with the air of a queen. “sally,” she said, “bring tea.”
she sat down again. there was a little pink flush in her cheeks. for forty-three years she had spoken to no man of her own class except the vicar and doctor. the interview with mr. davis being purely on business did not count.
barnabas and dan put their caps on the oak chest beside the sèvres bowl which was filled with the pink roses with whose portraiture miss mason had so sadly failed. then they sat down.
there was a moment’s pause. even barnabas’ mental picture of miss mason—a picture supplied by sally’s unconscious imitation of her—had not quite come up to the quaintness of the reality. he felt that he had suddenly stepped back at least a century. there was about the atmosphere a hint of potpourri and long ago half-forgotten days that are laid up in lavender. there was a completeness about the whole thing—from the oak dresser with its blue plates, the sèvres bowl and the pink roses, to the woman in her voluminous black dress, wide white collar, and abundant grey hair covered with the finest of old lace caps—a completeness that only an artist could fully realize, though most people would have felt.
she was so extraordinarily ugly too. no ordinary commonplace plainness of feature, but downright ugliness, yet without the smallest trace of repulsiveness in it. it was a fascinating [pg 88]kind of ugliness, and the eyes in the ugly face—they alone were really beautiful—shone like bits of red-brown amber. it is a colour rarely seen.
barnabas broke the silence.
“your studio,” he said, “is charming. dan and i watched the furniture coming in on thursday morning. if it is not impertinent of me, may i congratulate you on it?”
“glad you like it,” said miss mason. “it’s the first studio i’ve ever seen, but it’s the kind i always wanted. have always pictured studios in my mind like this one.”
“you’re lucky in your mental images,” said dan. “if you saw ours——” he broke off and shrugged his shoulders.
“but perhaps,” said miss mason anxiously, “yours is the real thing, and mine——”
“yours,” said barnabas, “is the dream to which we aspire, and to which we cannot achieve. when you see ours—and we hope you will honour us with your presence—you will realize how very far short of our aspirations they must fall.”
“but,” said miss mason almost wistfully, “you paint real pictures in them.”
“try to do so,” said dan gruffly, “and a few of us succeed. even in that most of us fail as we fail in our furniture. paul and michael are our geniuses.”
“paul and michael?” queried miss mason.
“mr. treherne and mr. chester,” explained [pg 89]barnabas. “they live in studios numbers one and three respectively. jasper merton has number five, alan farley number four, dan number two, and mine is number six, next door to you.”
“the garden with the faun,” said miss mason.
“the garden with the faun,” replied barnabas. and then he got up to move a table for sally, who had come in with the tea-things, blue willow china on a tray covered with the daintiest of damask cloths. she brought in more dishes with cakes and bread and butter, and a copper kettle which was singing its heart out on a little spirit lamp. then she left the room.
miss mason warmed the teapot and the tea-cups, measured the tea, and filled the teapot with boiling water. then she took up the sugar-tongs.
“sugar?” she asked.
“one lump each,” said barnabas.
she put the little cubes into the cups, poured in milk and tea, and handed the cups to the men.
“help yourselves,” she said. then she looked up and smiled.
“am quite delighted to see you,” she said, “but you’ll have to do the talking. don’t suppose i’ve spoken more than six words a day for the last twenty years, till the last three weeks. then it has been entirely about furniture. i’ve got out of the way of conversation.”
“barnabas will supply the need,” said dan. “he has the biggest flow of conversation i’ve ever met. only it’s largely nonsense.”
“should like nonsense,” said miss mason. “never talked nonsense in my life.”
“no?” queried barnabas politely, his eyes twinkling.
then they all three laughed. and in the laugh miss mason forgot that she was trying to hide her shyness, for it suddenly disappeared, and there was nothing left to hide. she forgot that she had never set eyes on the men till ten minutes ago. she was no longer a hostess trying to feel at ease with strangers. she was just a happy woman talking to two happy men, the difference in age forgotten. such a magic god is laughter.
and before an hour was over miss mason felt that she knew all about them. not the things in which some people consider the knowledge of their fellow-men to consist—their father’s profession, their mother’s family, their relationship to various grandees, the towns in which they have lived, the schools at which they have been educated, the number of their brothers and their sisters, all of which, if you come to think of it, are pure accidents, and have nothing to do with the man himself.
it was none of these things miss mason learnt. she found out that barnabas had a universal love for nature and his fellow-men, in fact, for everything alive; and that his heart was as [pg 91]sunny as his laugh. and that dan’s rather gruff manner hid a heart as tender as a woman’s. there were a thousand minor characteristics she would discover by and by, but these were the salient facts, and showed the true man.
when they said good-bye it was with a promise from her to visit their studios, and with an assurance from them that the other four men were going to call on her.
they did—jasper merton the next day alone; paul, alan, and michael on the tuesday. barnabas and dan had broken the ice for her, and miss mason received them with little trepidation. having come once they came again.
and not one of them guessed in what a curious way the influence of the quaint old lady was to be woven into the lives of at least three of them. for the three fates, who sit all day long spinning in three great black chairs, are strange and ancient dames, and they saw in miss mason a kindred spirit. in fact, they laughed to think of her likeness to them as she sat in the carved oak chair in her studio with her knitting in her hands.
and miss mason took one and all of the six artists of the courtyard to her heart and loved them spontaneously as a mother loves her sons. but jasper she guessed was unhappy, and she was sorry for him, and she was a tiny bit afraid of michael’s tongue and alan she did not quite understand, and paul she was as proud of as if he were truly her son, and dan gave her a delightful feeling of being protected, he was so big, but barnabas—though she loved them all—took the first place in her heart.
