BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 12661, 15 September 1904, Page 3

BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

[BY HOWARD FIELDING.] We were smoking in Curtis Pounds' studio, half-a-dozen of us. We usually go there to smoke after dinner, because Pounds does not like the odour of tobacco. On this particular occasion we found Pounds' putting the finishing touches'upon a woman's head. She was a somewhat startling creature, gray eyed and thin lipped, and she stared straight out of the canvas with the expression of on© who would say: " You know why I am here." "That's all right," said Earle Dean, to whom I communicated my idea of the head, " but why is she here? What is she going to say or do? What is in her mind? I couldn't guess."' Divergent views upon this subject were expressed by the company, and we agreed upon only one point —that 'Pounds had painted a fascinating mystery. "I was driven to it!" growled Pounds. " The rent is two months overdue." " I would bke to produce a similar effect in a story," said Dean, " and largely for the same reason." "There is only one way for a man to portray a woman in fiction," said Langdon, who writes book reviews. "Ke must tell precisely what she does and must say no more about her. Then women will understand what she is, and she will make the same impression upon men that she would in real —that is, she will be entirely incomprehensible to them, for it is the oldest and the truest truth in the business that a woman's mind is forever and always a sealed book to a man." " I can tell you a story," said Pounds, staring gloomily at his picture, "that will throw a good deal of light upon the mystery of woman." Pounds is the coldest misogynist that ever grew out of the ground as the result of some one's having planted a. piece of ice. He has a smooth, polite way of relegating^women to a place in the scheme of nature a little lower than the domestic animals, which has led some of us to suspect a romance in his life. It could not be possible that he was going to tell us about it, yet there was something quite unusual in his manner as he sat glowering at the picturewhich all of us knew must be a portrait. " A good many years ago," said he, " when I had more money and less sense, and was in every way better off than I am to-day, I knew a woman who was just like every other woman, I suppose, but she seemed different to me. She was a slender, nervous, active creature, and she had gray eyes and a firm, strong, earnest face. " She lived in the Bancroft, where I had my studio —and let me remark in passing that it was the best studio building ever put up in this country. The little suites there are comfortable beyond belief, and the lighting lias been managed wonderfully well. But the rents " —he threw up his hands with a gesture of despair.

"The Woman," continued Pounds, " couldn't have afforded to live there, but she happened to be the niece of the owner, and he gave her a fine studio for nothing. She seemed to be a true Bohemian, who appreciated the delight?', of living like a bachelor. I say 'seemed' because in those days I bothered my head a good deal trying to understand her, and the failure that I made was a notable failure, even for one so gifted as I am with the faculty of not being right about anything. " My suite was directly under hers, and exactly similar in design. The door from the hall opened into the larger room. On. the right was what was intended as the sleeping apartment, and on the left a bathroom, with tiled iioor and a porcelain tub big enough to swim in. The baths are the special glory of the Bancroft. " The Woman had her studio furnished rather prettily with plenty of pictures and hangings; a, big canopied couch in a corner, an antique writing table in another corner, and the materials of our trade in the middle of the floor. Across the doorway, between the two rooms, hung a very heavy dark blue curtain, which was fastened in several places on the sides with thumb tacks. I noticed that the first time I was permitted to call, for it seemed so unnecessary. The curtain was so heavy that no draught could have displaced it; so that, however anxious she might bo to screen her bedchamber from casual observation, the tacks were a superfluity.

"Still it was no business,of mine, and I should never have given it a second thought had I not chanced to hear two of the girls ■who took care of the rooms discussing the blue curtain as they stood in. the hall outside her door. One of the girls was the regular maid, and the other a newcomer— in. that wart of the house, at least. "'You musn't go into the small room,' said the former. ' She never lets anybody go in there.' "'Why not?' asked the other. 'Ain't it never swept out?' "' II ain't been swept out by me,' was the answer, ' and I'm telling you to keep away from it. Put your hand on that curtain and she'll take your head off. And don't you go peeping neither.'. "'Ain't that funny'/' said the new girl, with her eyes wide open. ' What d'you s'pose she's got in there?' "At this moment the Woman answered my knock, and I entered the studio. It was as neat as a. pin, and I couldn't imagine what a maid could find to do there. The blue curtain was in its place, and it seemed to me to be tacked up more firmly than, usual. " The Woman was not looking well that day. Her eyes were heavy and the lines of the face all drooped as if with weariness. We were well enough acquainted by that time for me to speak of her altered looks, and I did- so sympathetically. "' I can't sleep,' she said. 'I lay on that couch wide awake all night, as I have done many nights before.' '"Why didn't you go to bed?' I asked, with sweet, simplicity. " She looked surprised. '"That is my bed,' she said. 'I sleep there.' • " ' I had supposed that the other room'— I began, but siie interrupted me hastily. "'' No, no,' she said, with evident embarrassment ; ' the other room is not furnished as a bedroom.' " ' J. should think you'd find it more convenient—'. " ' Don't let's talk about it,' she said. ' What do you think of my roses?' " She never painted anything but flowers ; at least I had never seen her at work upon anything else. They were always correct enough in outline and colouring, and yet in effect t'hey were the flowers that grow ou wall paper and not those of nature. '•' I said that they were very good, for 1 hadn't the heart to speak otherwise. That was the sort of work by which she lived, and I did not haje much faith in her ever doing much better. Yet after I had returned to my own quarters that day an idea came to me that wanned my heart. I believed that I had guessed what lay behind the curtain. Something better than the roses: something more important than a living; her real work in the world! "A quite different idea was suggested to me that evening by a fellow named Karris, a landscape artist with no particular excuse for existence, who was also a tenant in the Bancroft at that time. He was acquainted with the Woman and was, I fancy, a little sentimental in his thoughts of her. He told me that a promising young artist (whose name I can't remember) had died in the Bancroft about two years before. To the best of Harris' knowledge, the fellow had occupied the rooms then held by the Woman. "' I" believe,' said he. 'that she was in love with him, and that she makes that little room a sort of shrine. It may be that the furnishings which he had are still there, and that she does not wish anyone but. herself to see them.' "Here was an explanation of sentiment. My own had been one of ambition. I believe that the Woman did her trivial work where all might see and earned her living in the light of day; but that in the secret place behind the curtain she toiled for the ideal, which to her was sacred. There was that in my heart which mads the fancy grievous. I would have given much to have her share the secret of her strivings with me. It would,, have made my life mean something if I could have helped her through the rough road that leads upwards to the' stars. But she did not so honour [ ia« 4

" Many a day after that I sat in her ; studio, with my eyes on the blue curtain, ; bub never a hint did she give to me of what '■ lay behind it. Sometimes by night I seemed to hear her walking in that room, but I could only guess what pleasure or pain she hid there. "It was a long time before I had the indelicacy to ask her a direct question; yet I did it at last. A man in love will not tolerate such mystery. There Ist a chance for another opera upon the theme of " Lohengrin," with the secret of Elsa's keeping and the fatal curiosity in the breast of her husband. "The Woman put me oft" with the plea that the matter was trivial; it was not worth my while to know; not worth the time of the question and the answer. Yet, as she said this she stood with her back to the blue curtain, and her hand raised in, a gesture that warned me. " Then I got angry, like an idiot, and said some of the most foolish things that ever passed my lips. We were not upon terms that permitted me to insist, and yet I talked as if she ought not to have any secrets from me.' Of course, I made a joke of it part of the time, and sometimes I hinted at Harris' theory of the mystery, and sometimes at my own. She seemed not to understand very clearly, but at last she made out that I was in earnest. And when that conviction came upon her she laughed, and, pulling the tacks out of one side of the curtain, she said: " ' Go in. if you want to.' " And iu I went. Well, what do you suppose 1 found? Just what I might have expected, and the last thing that I actually would have imagined. "The room was absolutely empty! There was nothing at all in it. She simply didn't have enough furniture for both rooms, and she had so fitted up the studio and left the other room bare. " The instinct of concealment, which is the basis of the feminine character, made her wish to hide the deficiency, but she had no very strong feeling about it. She kept the maids out of the place because she knew that they would tell, and that's all there is to it —except that the disclosure spoiled the only romance I ever had. " And in conclusion, my friends, let me warn you that is all you'll ever find beneath this ancient delusion of woman's incomprehensibility. Her mind must ever remain a mystery to man because there's nothing in it. He will suppose that there's a great heart history or he will furnish forth the mind he cannot see into with noble aspirations and high ambitious. And he will strive and strive to get behind the curtain. And if he succeeds, heaven pity him! " That's the secret of my canvas. Here's a woman's face intent and earnest. She's corning right at you, with her month and eyes open. And she absolutely doesn't mem anything. I know because I painted her. She's a typical woman, a thoroughly—" But we six fellows were all men of heartand sentiment- Some of us loved one woman apiece, and some of us loved several, but we all loved, and we couldn't stand Pounds'' philosophy another minute. So we arose and fell upon Pounds and threw him out. It was his room, but out he went, just the same. And he stayed in the hall until he was willing to subscribe to an apology of a sufficiently humble character expressing renewed and unbounded confidence in woman and the highest- appreciation of her mind and soul.