Chapter I

When Amy Martin was thirteen years old she read, in a book she had borrowed from the Fortnightly Library, something that interested her a great deal. She liked the thought so much that she accepted it quite thoroughly and kept it with her as a delightful secret. It was to the effect that each person’s life is an interesting plot and that, if written out, it would make a fascinating story.

To Amy the idea opened up infinite avenues of adventure. Until then she had taken for granted her life in Belleville. Now, other things seemed just about to happen to her.

Amy was one of two children. Her brother Clarence was two years younger, a slow, shy, blond boy. Her father was a fat, soft fellow, with bushy reddish hair which stood up in a stiff halo from an always slightly red forehead. He had no chin at all, but he did have rather a thick neck, so that below his mouth his chin and throat formed a sagging, uneven line. He carried his head a bit high, and his prominent nostrils seemed as peering as his eyes.

Mrs. Martin was a neat, dark-haired woman, a trifle sleek and oily as to complexion and hair. She liked to spend her time mixing not particularly good cakes or talking with her neighbours, taking hours to elaborate over trifles. She liked to give the impression of being always busy, though she kept one servant and did not do much of anything.

Mr. Martin was in the retail hardware business. On the front of his store and on his letterheads he used the picture of an ax, in red, with the irrelevant motto: “It Pays to Trade at Martin’s.” There was only one other hardware store in Belleville, so he had quite a good trade.

The Martins lived in Myrtle Street, one of the nicest streets in Belleville. The house was of clapboards, painted a cheerful yellow with white trimmings, and had a wide porch with a scroll-work railing. The yard had several nice fruit trees and a variety of bushes placed without regard to landscaping. The house was cut up into small and not particularly attractive rooms.

At thirteen Amy was a freshman in High School and already a recognized member of Belleville’s “younger set,” with dancing school Saturday afternoons, parties on Friday nights and many Christmas-week activities. After she read that every life is an interesting story, Amy began to visualize herself as the heroine of a definite romance, still without a plot, but alluring and pleasant. The thought became personal, immediately. She forgot that every other life in Belleville contained a plot for a story, too. The thought seemed to belong only to her. Life stretched out, fragrant with possibilities of living.

Crossing the street on an errand—to borrow a cup of sugar from Mrs. Oglesthorn—Amy noticed the shadow of a tree on the dusty street. She made up sentences:

“As Amy crossed the street, the sunshine and shade cast contrasting shadows on her—”

“Amy ran across the street, enjoying the warm sunlight—”

She made up frequent sentences. Why not? Wasn’t she a person in a story? Wasn’t anything liable to happen to her at any time? Often, after that, she thought of herself in the third person.

Amy’s first year in High School was pleasant enough. She envied Luetta Corman when, in the Christmas cantata, Luetta was chosen Queen of the Good Fairies and wore white tarlatan and spangles, while Amy, as one of the Pleasant Dreams, had to be content with a silver-starred wand and pink cheesecloth. What did that matter? Later, she was going to live, to have important things happen to her. She could laugh at these little disappointments in Belleville.

The next year Amy had a real ambition. Because several people had praised her singing, she decided she had a good voice and should become a singer. The Martins had an upright and rather tinny piano, a symbol of small-town gentility, and Amy had had three years of piano lessons.

She had no talent or real love for music, and she hated to practise. She felt that learning to sing would be more pleasant than learning to play. She was rather a pretty girl, with light brown hair and indefinite blue-grey eyes. In her imagination she saw herself on the concert stage and in opera even, costumed in any of the rôles she could think of. On the stage she would find real romance.

Her vocal teacher came to her house for two half-hour lessons a week. She was not an inspired teacher, but Amy needed nothing better than Miss Patten could give. She hated scales and breathing exercises. But she sang, eagerly enough, sentimental songs. Those by Carrie Jacobs-Bond were her favourites. After six months of lessons she sang “Spring Rain” in a thin, uneven voice, noticeably weak in the lower register, at a pupils’ recital. Her parents were quite proud of her.

Two months later she sang at a concert given for a local charity. On the program was a fairly well-known visiting soprano. This woman listened to Amy’s singing, and when Amy eagerly asked her opinion about “keeping on with lessons,” told her truthfully, though brutally, that she could never learn to sing.

Amy gave up her singing quite willingly. She had really lost interest, anyhow. She was becoming interested in boys. She had a chum now, Lulu Brown, a dark-haired, bright-eyed girl with rather boisterous manners, and they were reaching the giggling stage. They put themselves in the way of masculine attentions, invitations to play tennis or go walking, with a soda at the Central Drug Store as an objective.

Lulu was more attractive and vivacious than Amy, but her family was not as high socially. Lulu’s father was a bookkeeper. In Belleville the “society set” was composed of the families of professional men and those who owned businesses. Lulu went with the same crowd as Amy, though her parents did not go into society. Amy was fond of her, but sometimes she was ashamed of her on the street, and she was always afraid that Lulu would do something unconventional. If it had not been that boys sought Lulu’s company and that Amy received many of her invitations through her chum, it is possible that she would have dropped her altogether.

The next summer Amy decided to be an artist. Three times a week, during vacation, she went to Miss Matson’s “studio,” the second-floor front room of the Matson home.

Miss Matson had had several years of study in New York. On the wall of her living-room there was a picture in oils that, it was said, had been done at the Art Students’ League. Amy did not know just what this was, but she was impressed because of the name and because her teacher had studied in New York.

Miss Matson’s students could do two kinds of work, copying pictures or still-life. If they chose copying, they made meticulous replicas of fancy heads, usually in water-colour, imitating every curve and shadow, putting on daubs of red where the originator had put daubs of red, unquestioning. The homes in Belleville were filled with these pictures in elaborate gold frames, the work of Miss Matson’s pupils. The “still-life” studies were groups of fruit or vegetables, a yellow mixing bowl, a red tomato and a green pepper, or, perhaps, a pitcher, two lemons and a slice of cake.

Amy copied pictures all summer. Then some one told her that this was not art, so she joined the still-life group.

So—she was going to be an artist. She tried to see colour in everything that year. She read the lives of the painters. She knew that years of hard work lay before her, but she felt she wouldn’t mind that. She knew she would do something remarkable. Life was seizing her—going to make an artist out of her—to think that her romance, her story—was coming out this way.

The next winter she went to High School and spent three afternoons a week, after school, with Miss Matson. At the end of the year she could do a “still-life study” of a couple of eggs, a mixing bowl and a bunch of radishes with fair skill. She went to parties and enjoyed them. She giggled with Lulu over the boys. But she felt that life stretched out beyond Belleville.

That summer she persuaded her father to let her go to a near-by city and take a summer course at an art school. She was only sixteen, but there were cousins with whom she could stay. Her mother and Clarence wanted to go to Benton Springs, near Belleville, where her father could go for week-ends.

Her father laughed condescendingly and told her that she could study, that he thought it would be very nice to have an artist as a daughter.

The art students were older than Amy and greatly in earnest. Amy lived near the school and worked hard. All summer she didn’t pay attention to anything else. She always felt embarrassed when she met a model from the life-classes, wrapped in a bathrobe, waiting to pose. Amy was not in the life-class, but knew that drawing from the nude was all right “for art’s sake.” She even peeked into a life-class and pretended that she didn’t mind, though she really felt that she was doing something wrong.

She attended a series of lectures and learned something about anatomy and the history of art. She even learned a little of colour and composition.

She found art a serious thing. She met men and women who had been working for five or six years—and still were doing charcoal drawings. She hated charcoal as a medium. Others spoke knowingly of schools of art and new interpretations, and these things annoyed and puzzled her.

At the end of the term she had done half a dozen drawings from casts, three compositions and a few outdoor sketches. She had thought of art as a way to produce pretty pictures quickly. She saw how inadequate she was for such a big subject and that she lacked ability and ambition. She was glad to be back in Belleville for the opening of High School. After all, life offered many things beside music and art.