OLD HOPES
The door which Ariel had entered opened upon a narrow hall, and down this she ran to her own room, passing, with face averted, the entrance to the broad, low-ceilinged chamber that had served Roger Tabor as a studio for almost fifty years.He was sitting there now, in a hopeless and disconsolate attitude, with his back towards the double doors, which were open, and had been open since their hinges had begun to give way, when Ariel was a child.Hearing her step, he called her name, but did not turn; and, receiving no answer, sighed faintly as he heard her own door close upon her.
Then, as his eyes wandered about the many canvases which leaned against the dingy walls, he sighed again.Usually they showed their brown backs, but to-day he had turned them all to face outward.Twilight, sunset, moonlight (the Courthouse in moonlight), dawn, morning, noon (Main Street at noon), high summer, first spring, red autumn, midwinter, all were there--illimitably detailed, worked to a smoothness like a glaze, and all lovingly done with unthinkable labor.
And there were "Italian Flower-Sellers,"
damsels with careful hair, two figures together, one blonde, the other as brunette as lampblack, the blonde--in pink satin and blue slippers--leaning against a pillar and smiling over the golden coins for which she had exchanged her posies; the brunette seated at her feet, weeping upon an unsold bouquet.There were red-sashed "Fisher Lads "wading with butterfly-nets on their shoulders;there was a "Tying the Ribbon on Pussy's Neck";there were portraits in oil and petrifactions in crayon, as hard and tight as the purses of those who had refused to accept them, leaving them upon their maker's hands because the likeness had failed.
After a time the old man got up, went to his easel near a window, and, sighing again, began patiently to work upon one of these failures--a portrait, in oil, of a savage old lady, which he was doing from a photograph.The expression of the mouth and the shape of the nose had not pleased her descendants and the beneficiaries under the will, and it was upon the images of these features that Roger labored.He leaned far forward, with his face close to the canvas, holding his brushes after the Spencerian fashion, working steadily through the afternoon, and, when the light grew dimmer, leaning closer to his canvas to see.When it had become almost dark in the room, he lit a student-lamp with a green-glass shade, and, placing it upon a table beside him, continued to paint.