A MOVEMENT IN ART

IT was Sunday forenoon, and Lodilla Jackson was engaged in “doing up” the morning’s work. She had washed the breakfast dishes, put the kitchen in order, made the beds, helped get her young brother and sister off to Sunday-school and her mother started to church, and had got the dinner well under way. Lodilla worked during the week in the establishment of a manufacturing chemist, or, as the place was otherwise known, a patent-medicine factory, where she pasted labels on bottles and pill-boxes, afterwards putting these articles in elaborately printed wrappers. Sunday was her “off” day, but she usually spent the first half of it in the manner described in order to relieve her mother, who was also a hard-working woman, as widows with children and little money are apt to be. She was twenty years old, and a good girl. Ever since she was fourteen she had been earning money, and, with the help of her mother, her brother two years younger, and, now, of a younger sister who answered to the call of “H-e-r-e, C-a-s-h,” in a dry goods shop, had almost succeeded in clearing their little house of the mortgage that encumbered it when her father died. Almost, but not quite. There was still necessity for frugality and self-denial, and little chance for indulgence in the vanities and luxuries in which girls delight. Nevertheless, Lodilla was not downcast or unhappy; far from it. She looked forward confidently to the time when debt would cease to be a burden, and, meanwhile, planned a little for that happy day.

This morning, while the corned beef and cabbage boiled merrily on the stove and the molasses cake browned in the oven, she opened the parlor door, and, dust-cloth in hand, gazed meditatively about that retreat. The room had been a source of great comfort to her mother and herself. Its possession seemed to them a visible token of their respectable social standing. It was not every one of their neighbors on the quiet little South-side Indianapolis street who could afford a parlor. A good many of the people in their part of town lived in houses so small, or had families so large, that not a corner of their establishments could be spared for company uses exclusively. Or, sometimes, when the extra room was there, the occupant of the house could not afford the necessary outlay for suitable furniture.

The fittings for the Jackson parlor had been bought when the paternal Jackson was alive and in the enjoyment of health and good wages. The selection of this furniture had been the outcome of much thought, consultation and financial calculation on the part of the two older members of the family, Lodilla at that time being of an age when her opinion on such matters was not influential. There, as the foundation of the outfit, was the ingrain carpet, with a green and black vine of most luxuriant growth meandering over its bright red ground. There, against the widest wall space, was a haircloth sofa, now worn to a gloss that rivaled the Russia-iron stove, and with a lumpiness of surface and weakness of springs unknown to it when new. The stove, an upright cylinder, decorated with much nickel-plating, was regarded when purchased as a great ornament to the room, and, although now adapted to the use of natural gas instead of the coal for which it was originally meant, was still held in much esteem in the household. There were several cane-seated chairs, a table which held a large glass lamp, and, on a shelf underneath, the family Bible. The crowning glory of the room was the small cabinet organ in one corner. Lodilla, at an early age, had learned to play “by ear” a few simple tunes and accompaniments, and when the family and their visitors gathered there on Sunday afternoons and sang “Shall We Gather at the River,” “Hold the Fort,” “Whiter than Snow,” “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” and other “gospel hymns,” Mrs. Jackson, for one, felt that she enjoyed many blessings, while the pleasure felt by all in the music would certainly have been far less intense at a symphony concert.

But it was not on any of these pieces of furniture that Lodilla was looking with some discontent visible in her face; it was upon the more decorative features of the apartment. Over the high wooden mantel hung a crayon portrait of her departed father, enlarged to a head of life size from a tintype of thumb-nail proportions by one of those mysterious processes practiced by peripatetic artisans. Her father had been gone too long for her to feel any deep personal sentiment in regard to him, but the picture was invested with the interest of a sacred relic, and she had no thought of disturbing it. On the wall, over the sofa, hung that pair of chromos, “Wide Awake” and “Fast Asleep,” which, when, as newspaper prizes, they found places in a multitude of homes years ago, were so universally characterized as “perfectly lovely.” Lodilla was a trifle tired of these pictures, not because she detected any lack of artistic merit, but because she did not think the chubby little girl portrayed in them a pretty child. Still, she did not at this time cherish any designs against them.

Her eyes moved slowly along the row of photographs of various sizes resting on the mantel, from there passed to the framed marriage certificate of her parents hanging above the cabinet organ in a line with the framed certificates of baptism of herself and her brother and sister, then wandered from these to a large “memorial piece,” framed in black and hanging in the place of honor between the windows, and rested there with especial dissatisfaction. This piece, which was printed in very black inks, with very deep shadows and very white high lights, represented a marble tombstone of dazzling whiteness, a willow tree and a kneeling widow, who had evidently come to weep, but had changed her mind and was looking up with ecstatic gaze at an angel with powerful wings bearing the astral body of the occupant of the grave up to a heaven beyond a flock of woolly clouds. Printed on scrolls in the corners were sundry comforting texts, and below, the full name of the deceased Jackson, engrossed in an ornamental, Spencerian hand. This remarkable work of art was kindly furnished to the widow for $2.75—$1.25 off for an immediate sale—by the agent of an enterprising engraving firm soon after her husband’s death.

“I do wish, ma,” said Lodilla to her mother, who entered just then, “I do wish I had a photograph album—one like Nell Abbott’s, a big plush-covered one. It would be so stylish on the table, and, besides, is so much better for keeping photographs than setting them around on things. And, ma—”

Here Lodilla hesitated and blushed a little.

“Ma, Joe—Mr. Little—is getting his pictures taken—great big cabinets—and if he gives me one it would be nice to have a place to put it. He just admires Nell’s album; told her he thought every family ought to have one.”

It will be observed that Lodilla, capable young woman that she was, was not quite up to date in this matter, but in her behalf it must be said that she had not had the advantage of association with young society women, who claim to lead in fads and fashions of this sort, and who abandoned the album as a drawing-room ornament some time since. Her ideas as to the desirability of the article had been gathered from visits to the homes of her friends, who were still in the plush album and chromo stage of development. She had also gone with her mother on one occasion to carry a basket of mended clothing to a bachelor apartment, where, in the common sitting-room of the half dozen young men, the center-table held six large family albums arranged about the lamp, and presumably containing likenesses of the relatives, sweethearts and favorite actresses of the respective owners. Lodilla, who was much impressed with the luxury of other fittings of this room, felt that the albums were the crowning touch of elegance, and had longed for one ever since. She had particularly desired one since Joe Little, brakeman on the Big Four railroad, had loomed on her social horizon. She wanted his picture, and fancied that he would be the more willing to bestow it if she had a suitable casket for the treasure. She was an unsophisticated girl, you see, unaware that no man needs encouragement to his vanity beyond the mere willingness on the part of a young woman to accept a likeness of himself.

Mrs. Jackson, who, mother-like, would have been glad to gratify all her daughter’s tastes, looked a little troubled.

“I don’t see, Dilly,” she said hesitatingly, “I don’t see how we can afford one now.”

“Of course not, ma; of course not,” said Lodilla, with a sudden return to cheerfulness. “I know we can’t afford it yet a while, and I’m not grumbling. Don’t you think it. I was just wishing and talking, and that don’t hurt, you know. But some day, ma, I’m going to have that album, and some day I’m going to buy some pictures and get you to put the memorial piece and the certificates in your bedroom. They’ve hung where they are so long I’d like a change, and the parlor needs a little freshening up and more style.”

Her mother sighed a little, without looking at all sad. Her grief for the departed Jackson was so mitigated by time that the sighs brought by allusions to him were more from habit than emotion, and no longer indicated the least depression of spirits.

“I always liked that memorial,” she said. “It’s so sort of satisfactory. That angel who’s carrying your pa is so big and strong that you can easy enough see how he can do it. He looks so substantial. The Widow Thomas, she has one where the angel’s just starting down after Thomas—a little, thin, weakly angel you can see through, and you know the old man must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds if he did one. Of course, we don’t suppose his spirit was heavy, but, somehow, there don’t seem to be a fitness in sending such a puny messenger after him. It seems a pity to put that memorial out of sight in the bedroom, but young folks must have their way, I reckon. You don’t think of taking the chromos down, do you?” she asked, anxiously. “Your pa gave them to me before we was married, and people come from all around to see them, and everybody said they were just the finest pictures that had ever been seen in Cherry Corners. Old Mr. Van Lew offered ten dollars for them, because Little Wide Awake looked so much like his grand-daughter, Lucy Ann Rodibaugh. But I wouldn’t a’ taken twice that then.”

Dilly assured her mother that she had no intention of removing “Wide Awake” and “Fast Asleep,” and hastened to look after her dinner.

The cabbage which had boiled so long and steadily, was tender, the potatoes mealy, the corned beef just as it should be, the molasses cake light and sweet and delicious—just the cake that children remember all their lives as the kind mother used to make, a memory which causes them, when they are old, to wonder why no one else can ever make as good.

And if you think the family gathered around that board and partaking of that frugal fare were not as happy as it is often given to people to be in this rather pleasant world, then you know little of the rewards of honest toil, of the delights of home provided, and its comforts earned and paid for by the efforts of all; you have forgotten the eager appetite of healthy youth, which gives the plainest food a zest that a Lucullus feast could not offer now. And if you think Miss Lodilla, with her narrow life, her daily labor and her simple hopes and ambitions, was wasting time or energy in repinings at her lot, or fancied herself in any respect ill-used by fate, then you little understand the serene independence of the self-reliant, self-supporting American girl, who, confident of her ability to provide for herself, envies no one.

Lodilla, in her neat black skirt and shirt waist, in summer—oh, the ever-useful, universal shirt waist!—and her trim cloth jacket over the waist in winter, wended her way back and forth each day between home and factory, making one of the great army of working women, but having her own little plans and cares apart from such associations, and her maidenly dreams, just as other girls do with more time for dreams—just as all girls do while life is young and love is sweet. Joe Little, the big, fair-haired brakeman, figured a good deal in these meditations. He came to see her now and then, when he had no “run” to make, but it was always on a week-day evening. Sunday evenings he spent with Nellie Abbott, Lodilla’s dearest friend. That is, she had been her nearest and most confidential friend, the girl to whom she had confided all her little secrets, but lately the intimacy had waned somewhat, and perhaps Joe Little had, unconsciously to himself, something to do with the coolness. These ardent friendships between girls are so apt to die a sudden death when an attractive young man comes on the scene.

Joe Little had first met both the girls at a church strawberry festival, but had seemed to give preference to Nellie. The chief sign of his favor was the fact that his calls upon her were made on Sunday nights, and in their social circle this meant more serious intentions than an ordinary week-night visit. He was a musician of local repute, being known as a “boss fiddler,” and this accomplishment gave him welcome admission to the best society of the neighborhood. Nellie, being something of a coquette, did not appear to care especially for him, and, for that matter, neither did Lodilla—she was too fully a woman for that—but she did care, and was learning to think about him more and more.

“I really don’t think Nell’s prettier than I am,” she would say to herself, looking anxiously in the glass. “Nell’s got a real good complexion, lots better than mine, but her nose is pug and her eyes are squinty. They are; she can’t deny it, and they do say cross-eyed people get to have bad tempers, even if they don’t begin with them. Nell’s awful peppery sometimes now when things don’t go her way. It can’t be her looks; it must be other things. She’s got a piano and can play the ‘Maiden’s Prayer,’ ‘The Brook,’ ‘The Gussie Waltz’ and a lot of pieces, and he likes music so. And she’s got a photograph album, and, oh dear!”

You people who accept the assurances of novelists and cheap critics that women with the smallest claims to comeliness—and where is she who has none?—are satisfied with themselves, and unable to recognize the charms of their rivals—you merely show your ignorance. The normal girl is distinctly aware of her own defects, and as keenly conscious of the other girl’s especial attractions. She recognizes, with a pang at her heart, the captivating effect of the little curl on her rival’s white neck, the dimple in her chin, of the long lashes, under which she glances so bewitchingly. She may honestly wonder why the man in the case is so stupid and blind as not to detect that other girl’s faults of character which are so clear to her, but she never undervalues the outward allurements.

Strawberry time and its festivals were now long past, and early winter was here, but Joe Little showed no signs of change in his fancy for Nellie Abbott, except that his calls at the Widow Jackson’s were rather less frequent than they had been. Lodilla began to have little heartaches, and if she cried when her sister was asleep and she could smother her sobs in the pillow, it would not be at all surprising. But if anybody guessed her sadness and its cause it was only her mother, and mothers never betray such secrets.

She worked as industriously as ever over her bottles and pill-boxes, chattered as gayly with her companions as usual, and loitered before the shop windows during the noon hour with the natural and wholesome curiosity of a healthy young woman. Love, of the lurid, all-absorbing kind we read about, that takes the appetite, banishes sleep and destroys other interests of life, is less frequent than the variety which permits other sentiments to exist simultaneously and allows the sufferer intervals of comparative comfort and cheer.

One evening Mr. Little dropped in unexpectedly and brought his fiddle—he did not call it a violin. He did not tell Lodilla that he had intended to go to Nellie’s, but from across the street had chanced to see William Marvin, freight conductor on his road, enter before him and receive a warm greeting from the young lady. He “never could abide Bill Marvin,” and wouldn’t spend an hour in the same room if he could help it.

Lodilla made herself particularly agreeable that evening. She begged him to play for her, and he did play the “Wrecker’s Daughter,” “Fisher’s Hornpipe,” “Drunkard’s Heecups”—a tune in which the plunking of the strings gives the realistic effect of hiccoughs—the “Arkansaw Traveler” and a Strauss Waltz. At least these are what he told her they were, and she thanked him and praised him and said she loved the fiddle, and could never grow tired of it; and then she sang all her songs to the cabinet organ accompaniment with its undertone of wheezy groans, suggestive of misery in its inside, and never before had she put such feeling and earnestness into tunes or words. And, after the visitor had been served with doughnuts and a big glass of unfermented grape juice that ma put up herself, he went home, well pleased with himself and all the world, Lodilla included. She was happy, but not confident. She had still an oppressive fear of her rival.

The very next day she was drawn by irresistible attraction into a crowd in front of a big Washington street shoe-shop, and stood there with fascinated eyes watching a man in the window who painted a beautiful landscape while you waited. There he stood, painting clouds, trees, rivers and river banks, grassy knolls, mossy dells and gray rocks with lightning swiftness—laying on one color and then another, and bringing out marvelous effects before you fairly knew what he had intended.

A yellow circular thrust into her hand by a boy informed her that she could have one of these works of art free of cost if she would purchase a pair of shoes in the shop—the frame only being charged for.

A sudden ambition filled her mind. She had the money in her pocket for a pair of shoes and meant to buy them that very afternoon. Why not purchase them here instead of at the little shop on the side street, which she had always patronized? They might cost a little more here, but then, just for once, and with this prize in view, she might surely venture the additional outlay. The frame was extra, but she would take a ninety-eight-cent one and save the amount after awhile out of the price of her winter gown. Without giving herself time to reconsider, she bought the shoes, selected the picture she had seen painted, or one precisely like it, and went her way, feeling the fearful joy of a wish gratified at the cost of wild extravagance.

The purchase created a sensation at home, and though the careful mother shook her head doubtfully over the investment of so much money for purely decorative purposes, she did not remonstrate, but joined with the rest of the family in admiring the new possession.

“You see, ma,” said Lodilla, with intent to justify herself, “you see, hand-painted pictures are the thing now-days; everybody says so, and they cost like everything. Nell says her uncle’s sister-in-law in Chicago paid twenty-five dollars for a painting not more than ten inches across, and Joe Little, he told me about a five-hundred-dollar picture he’d seen a man carrying home on the train one day, and there wasn’t a thing to it but two or three sheep and a dog on a side-hill. And just think! This didn’t cost a cent without the frame.”

The next day was Sunday, and frequent were Lodilla’s visits to the parlor to look at her treasure hanging in state between the windows, in place of the memorial piece, now retired to the privacy of ma’s bedroom. That night who should come but Joe Little to ask her to go to church. She accepted the invitation with sedate dignity, but with secret joy. Sunday night! That meant so much.

Nellie Abbott was there with the freight conductor, whom Lodilla mentally classified at once as “perfectly horrid,” and was instantly convinced that her old friend was consumed with envy of her superior good fortune in securing the handsome and altogether more desirable escort. Filled with which thought, she smiled with great sweetness on Miss Nellie.

After services were over Joe came in with intent to sit by the sheet-iron cylinder and enjoy an hour of social converse. Lodilla wished her new art acquisition to dawn upon him unannounced, and sat in tremulous expectation of his verdict. Finally, after talk about the weather, ma’s cold, the new choir and various neighborhood topics had begun to languish, Mr. Little’s glance chanced to fall upon the picture. He rose slowly and stood before it, inspecting it closely with a critical eye; then he made a telescope of his hands and viewed it from a more distant standpoint. Then he said impressively:

“Lodilla, that’s a mighty good thing; it’s got good points. You don’t want to stand too close to one of them hand-painted oil pictures, they’re apt to blur, but just get off a piece and they come right out. That lightning artist’s a dandy. Shows what a painter man can do who puts his mind to it and isn’t afraid to work. It must make those fellows who potter over one picture for weeks just sick to see him dash them things off at such a rate. I tell you, Lodilla,” he added with animation, after a pause and further inspection, “it looks like a place on the old farm down home. I’ve set on that rock, or one like it, and fished for bass in just such a hole many of a time.”

Then, as if with inspiration of the instant; “And say, Lodilla”—here he faltered and his voice grew soft—“say, don’t you want to marry me some day and go down there and visit the home place and the old folks?”

It was sudden, but she was equal to the emergency. His arm was around her, and her answer was whispered on his shoulder, but not so low that he could not hear.

When Christmas came, a few weeks later, he gave her a big red plush album with gilt trimmings and a little mirror set in the corner, and she felt that her cup of bliss was full.

The album was a treasure, but Lodilla will value that picture between the windows till the end of her days. It brought her love and Joe. Art education is not always a rapid process. Her children may learn to appreciate picture posters and know what Beardsleyism means, but she will be forever satisfied with her landscape painted in nine minutes as her mother before her was with the chromos.