“But doesn’t religion mean more than a stroke or two?” she ventured to reply.
“I’m not so sure,” he answered, thoughtfully. “If the stroke or two is taken from one’s own work instead of being given in excess of it. One must do one’s own hoeing first. That’s the foundation of things. A religion that would mean to be ‘altogether absorbed’ in my neighbour’s hoeing would be genuinely pernicious, surely. My row, meanwhile, would lie open to weeds.”
“But if your neighbour’s row grew flowers?”
“Unfortunately weeds grow faster than the flowers, and the weeds of my row would spread until they choked and killed my neighbour’s flowers, I am sure.”
“That seems selfish though,” she persisted. “Suppose my neighbour were maimed or halt or blind? His poor little row would never be finished. My stroke or two would not help very much.”
“Yes, but every row lies between two others, you know. The hoer on the far side of the cripple’s row would contribute a stroke or two as well as you. No,” he went on, “I am sure one’s first duty is to do one’s own work. It seems to me that a work accomplished benefits the whole world—the people—pro rata. If we help another at the expense of our work instead of in excess of it, we benefit only the individual, and, pro rata again, rob the people. A little good contributed by everybody to the race is of more, infinitely more, importance than a great deal of good contributed by one individual to another.”
“Yes,” she admitted, beginning at last to be convinced, “I see what you mean. But one must think very large to see that. It never occurred to me before. The individual—I, Laura Jadwin—counts for nothing. It is the type to which I belong that’s important, the mould, the form, the sort of composite photograph of hundreds of thousands of Laura Jadwins. Yes,” she continued, her brows bent, her mind hard at work, “what I am, the little things that distinguish me from everybody else, those pass away very quickly, are very ephemeral. But the type Laura Jadwin, that always remains, doesn’t it? One must help building up only the permanent things. Then, let’s see, the individual may deteriorate, but the type always grows better. … Yes, I think one can say that.”
“At least the type never recedes,” he prompted.
“Oh, it began good,” she cried, as though at a discovery, “and can never go back of that original good. Something keeps it from going below a certain point, and it is left to us to lift it higher and higher. No, the type can’t be bad. Of course the type is more important than the individual. And that something that keeps it from going below a certain point is God.”
“Or nature.”
“So that God and nature,” she cried again, “work together? No, no, they are one and the same thing.”
“There, don’t you see,” he remarked, smiling back at her, “how simple it is?”
“Oh-h,” exclaimed Laura, with a deep breath, “isn’t it beautiful?” She put her hand to her forehead with a little laugh of deprecation. “My,” she said, “but those things make you think.”
Dinner was over before she was aware of it, and they were still talking animatedly as they rose from the table.
“We will have our coffee in the art gallery,” Laura said, “and please smoke.”
He lit a cigarette, and the two passed into the great glass-roofed rotunda.
“Here is the one I like best,” said Laura, standing before the Bougereau.
“Yes?” he queried, observing the picture thoughtfully. “I suppose,” he remarked, “it is because it demands less of you than some others. I see what you mean. It pleases you because it satisfies you so easily. You can grasp it without any effort.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she ventured.
“Bougereau ‘fills a place.’ I know it,” he answered. “But I cannot persuade myself to admire his art.”
“But,” she faltered, “I thought that Bougereau was considered the greatest—one of the greatest—his wonderful flesh tints, the drawing, and colouring.”
“But I think you will see,” he told her, “if you think about it, that for all there is in his picture—back of it—a fine hanging, a beautiful vase would have exactly the same value upon your wall. Now, on the other hand, take this picture.” He indicated a small canvas to the right of the bathing nymphs, representing a twilight landscape.
“Oh, that one,” said Laura. “We bought that here in America, in New York. It’s by a Western artist. I never noticed it much, I’m afraid.”
“But now look at it,” said Corthell. “Don’t you know that the artist saw something more than trees and a pool and afterglow? He had that feeling of night coming on, as he sat there before his sketching easel on the edge of that little pool. He heard the frogs beginning to pipe, I’m sure, and the touch of the night mist was on his hands. And he was very lonely and even a little sad. In those deep shadows under the trees he put something of himself, the gloom and the sadness that he felt at the moment. And that little pool, still and black and sombre—why, the whole thing is the tragedy of a life full of dark, hidden secrets. And the little pool is a heart. No one can say how deep it is, or what dreadful thing one would find at the bottom, or what drowned hopes or what sunken ambitions. That little pool says one word as plain as if it were whispered in the ear—despair. Oh, yes, I prefer it to the nymphs.”
“I am very much ashamed,” returned Laura, “that I could not see it all before for myself. But I see it now. It is better, of course. I shall come in here often now and study it. Of all the rooms in our house this is the one I like best. But, I am afraid, it has
