From near the village of Harmony, at the foot of the Green Mountains, came Miss Medora Martin to New York with her color-box and easel.
Miss Medora resembled the rose which the autum- nal frosts had spared the longest of all her sister blossoms. In Harmony, when she started alone to the wicked city to study art, they said she was a mad, reckless, headstrong girl. In New York, when she first took her seat at a West Side boardinghouse table, the boarders asked: "Who is the nice-looking old maid?"
Medora took heart, a cheap hall bedroom and two art lessons a week from Professor Angelini, a retired barber who had studied his profession in a Harlem dancing academy. There was no one to set her right, for here in the big city they do it unto all of us.
How many of us are badly shaved daily and taught the two-step imperfectly by ex-pupils of Bastien Le Page and Gerome? The most pathetic sight in New York -- except the manners of the rush-hour crowds -- is the dreary march of the hopeless army of Me- diocrity. Here Art is no benignant goddess, but a Circe who turns her wooers into mewing Toms and Tabbies who linger about the doorsteps of her abode, unmindful of the flying brickbats and boot-jacks of the critics. Some of us creep back to our native vil- lages to the skim-milk of "I told you so"; but most of us prefer to remain in the cold courtyard of our mistress's temple, snatching the scraps that fall from her divine table d'hote. But some of us grow weary at last of the fruitless service. And then there are two fates open to us. We can get a job driving a grocer's wagon, or we can get swallowed up in the Vortex of Bohemia. The latter sounds good; but the former really pans out better. For, when the grocer pays us off we can rent a dress suit and -- the cap- italized system of humor describes it best -- Get Bo- hemia On the Run.
Miss Medora chose the Vortex and thereby fur- nishes us with our little story.
Professor Angelini praised her sketches excessively.
Once when she had made a neat study of a horse- chestnut tree in the park he declared she would be- come a second Rosa Bonheur. Again -- a great art- ist has his moods -- he would say cruel and cutting things. For example, Medora had spent an after- noon patiently sketching the statue and the archi- tecture at Columbus Circle. Tossing it aside with a sneer, the professor informed her that Giotto had once drawn a perfect circle with one sweep of his hand.
One day it rained, the weekly remittance from Har- mony was overdue, Medora had a headache, the pro- fessor had tried to borrow two dollars from her, her art dealer had sent back all her water-colors unsold, and -- Mr. Binkley asked her out to dinner.
Mr. Binkley was the gay boy of the boarding- house. He was forty-nine, and owned a fishstall in a downtown market. But after six o'clock he wore an evening suit and whooped things up connected with the beaux arts. The young men said he was an "Indian." He was supposed to be an accomplished habitue of the inner circles of Bohemia. It was no secret that he had once loaned $10 to a young man who had had a drawing printed in Puck. Often has one thus obtained his entree into the charmed circle, while the other obtained both his entree and roast.
The other boarders enviously regarded Medora as she left at Mr. Binkley's side at nine o'clock. She was as sweet as a cluster of dried autumn grasses in her pale blue -- oh -- er -- that very thin stuff -- in her pale blue Comstockized silk waist and box- pleated voile skirt, with a soft pink glow on her thin cheeks and the tiniest bit of rouge powder on her face, with her handkerchief and room key in her brown walrus, pebble-grain band-bag.
And Mr. Binkley looked imposing and dashing with his red face and gray mustache, and his tight dress coat, that made the back of his neck roll up just like a successful novelist's.
They drove in a cab to the Cafe Terence, just off the most glittering part of Broadway, which, as every one knows, is one of the most popular and widely patronized, jealously exclusive Bohemian re- sorts in the city.
Down between the rows of little tables tripped Medora, of the Green Mountains, after her escort.
Thrice in a lifetime may woman walk upon clouds once when she trippeth to the altar, once when she first enters Bohemian halls, the last when she marches back across her first garden with the dead hen of her neighbor in her band.
There was a table set, with three or four about it.
A waiter buzzed around it like a bee, and silver and glass shone upon it. And, preliminary to the meal, as the prehistoric granite strata heralded the pro- tozoa, the bread of Gaul, compounded after the for- mula of the recipe for the eternal bills, was there set forth to the hand and tooth of a long-suffering city, while the gods lay beside their nectar and home-made biscuits and smiled, and the dentists leaped for joy in their gold-leafy dens.
The eye of Binkley fixed a young man at his table with the Bobemian gleam, which is a compound of the look of the Basilisk, the shine of a bubble of Wurzburger, the inspiration of genius and the plead- ing of a panhandler.
The young man sprang to his feet. "Hello, Bink, old boy! be shouted. "Don't tell me you were go- ing to pass our table. Join us -- unless you've an- other crowd on hand."
"Don't mind, old chap," said Binkley, of the fish- stall. "You know how I like to butt up against the fine arts. Mr. Vandyke -- Mr. Madder -- er --
Miss Martin, one of the elect also in art -- er -- "
The introduction went around. There were also Miss Elise and Miss 'Toinette. Perhaps they were models, for they chattered of the St. Regis decora- tions and Henry James -- and they did it not badly.
