Once a week, if she could, Esther passed an hour or two with the children at the hospital.  This building had accommodations for some twenty-five or thirty small patients, and as it was a private affair, the ladies managed it to please themselves.  The children were given all the sunlight that could be got into their rooms and all the toys and playthings they could profitably destroy.  As the doctors said that, with most of them, amusement was all they would ever get out of life, an attempt was made to amuse them.  One large room was fitted up for the purpose, and the result was so satisfactory that Esther got more pleasure out of it than the children did.  Here a crowd of little invalids, playing on the yellow floor or lying on couches, were always waiting to be amused and longing to be noticed, and thought themselves ill-treated if at least one of the regular visitors did not appear every day to hear of their pains and pleasures.  Esther’s regular task was to tell them a story, and, learning from experience that she could double its effect by illustrating it, she was in the custom of drawing, as she went on, pictures of her kings and queens, fairies, monkeys and lions, with amiable manners and the best moral characters.  Thus drawing as she talked, the story came on but slowly, and spread itself over weeks and months of time.

On this Saturday afternoon Esther was at her work in the play-room, surrounded by a dozen or more children, with a cripple, tortured by hip-disease, lying at her side and clinging to her skirt, while a proud princess, with red and white cheeks and voluminous robes, was making life bright with colored crayons and more highly colored adventures, when the door opened and Esther saw the Rev. Stephen Hazard, with her aunt, Mrs. Murray, on the threshold.

Mr. Hazard was not to blame if the scene before him made a sudden and sharp picture on his memory.  The autumn sun was coming in at the windows; the room was warm and pleasant to look at; on a wide brick hearth, logs of hickory and oak were burning; two tall iron fire-dogs sat up there on their hind legs and roasted their backs, animals in which the children were expected to take living interest because they had large yellow glass eyes through which the fire sparkled; with this, a group of small invalids whose faces and figures were stamped with the marks of organic disease; and in the center ­Esther!

Mr. Hazard had come here this afternoon partly because he thought it his duty, and partly because he wanted to create closer relations with a parishioner so likely to be useful as Mrs. Murray.  He was miserable with a cold, and was weak with fatigue.  His next sermon was turning out dull and disjointed.  His building committee were interfering and quarreling with Wharton.  A harsh north-west wind had set his teeth on edge and filled his eyes with dust.  Rarely had he found himself in a less spiritual frame of mind than when he entered this room.  The contrast was overwhelming.  When Esther at first said quite decidedly that nothing would induce her to go on with her story, he felt at once that this was the only thing necessary to his comfort, and made so earnest an appeal that she was forced to relent, though rather ungraciously, with a laughing notice that he must listen very patiently to her sermon as she had listened to his.  The half hour which he now passed among kings and queens in tropical islands and cocoanut groves, with giants and talking monkeys, was one of peace and pleasure.  He drew so good a monkey on a cocoanut tree that the children shouted with delight, and Esther complained that his competition would ruin her market.  She rose at last to go, telling him that she was sorry to seem so harsh, but had she known that his pictures and stories were so much better than hers, she would never have voted to make him a visitor.

Mr. Hazard was flattered.  He naturally supposed that a woman must have some fine quality if she could interest Wharton and Strong, two men utterly different in character, and at the same time amuse suffering children, and drag his own mind out of its deepest discouragement, without show of effort or consciousness of charm.  In this atmosphere of charity, where all faiths were alike and all professions joined hands, the church and the world became one, and Esther was the best of allies; while to her eyes Mr. Hazard seemed a man of the world, with a talent for drawing and a quick imagination, gentle with children, pleasant with women, and fond of humor.  She could not help thinking that if he would but tell pleasant stories in the pulpit, and illustrate them on a celestial blackboard such as Wharton might design, church would be an agreeable place to pass one’s Sunday mornings in.  As for him, when she went away with her aunt, he returned to his solitary dinner with a mind diverted from its current.  He finished his sermon without an effort.  He felt a sort of half-conscious hope that Esther would be again a listener, and that he might talk it over with her.  The next morning he looked about the church and was disappointed at not seeing her there.  This young man was used to flattery; he had been sickened with it, especially by the women of his congregation; he thought there was nothing of this nature against which he was not proof; yet he resented Esther Dudley’s neglect to flatter him by coming to his sermon.  Her absence was a hint that at least one of his congregation did not care to hear him preach a second time.

Piqued at this indifference to his eloquence and earnestness he went the next afternoon, according to his agreement, to Strong’s rooms, knowing that Miss Dudley was to be there, and determined to win her over.  The little family party which Strong had got together was intended more for this purpose than for any other, and Strong, willing to do what he could to smooth his friend’s path, was glad to throw him in contact with persons from whom he could expect something besides flattery.  Strong never conceived it possible that Hazard could influence them, but he thought their influence likely to be serious upon Hazard.  He underrated his friend’s force of character.

His eyes were soon opened.  Catherine Brooke made her first appearance on this occasion, and was greatly excited at the idea of knowing people as intellectual as Mr. Hazard and Mr. Wharton.  She thought them a sort of princes, and was still ignorant that such princes were as tyrannical as any in the Almanach de Gotha, and that those who submitted to them would suffer slavery.  Her innocent eagerness to submit was charming, and the tyrants gloated over the fresh and radiant victim who was eager to be their slave.  They lured her on, by assumed gentleness, in the path of bric-a-brac and sermons.

In her want of experience she appealed to Strong, who had not the air of being their accomplice, but seemed to her a rather weak-minded ally of her own.  Strong had seated her by the window, and was teaching her to admire his collections, while Wharton and Hazard were talking with the rest of the party on the other side of the room.

“What kind of an artist is Mr. Wharton?” asked Catherine.

“A sort of superior house-painter,” replied Strong.  “He sometimes does glazing.”

“Nonsense!” said Catherine contemptuously.  “I know all about him.  Esther has told me.  I want to know how good an artist he is.  What would they think of him in Paris?”

“That would depend on whether they owned any of his pictures,” persisted Strong.  “I think he might be worse.  But then I have one of his paintings, and am waiting to sell it when the market price gets well up.  Do you see it?  The one over my desk in the corner.  How do you like it?”

“Why does he make it so dark and dismal?” asked Catherine.  “I can’t make it out.”

“That is the charm,” he replied.  “I never could make it out myself; let’s ask him;” and he called across the room:  “Wharton, will you explain to Miss Brooke what your picture is about?  She wants to know, and you are the only man who can tell her.”

Wharton in his grave way came over to them, and first looking sadly at Miss Brooke, then at the picture, said at length, as though to himself:  “I thought it was good when I did it.  I think it is pretty good now.  What criticism do you make, Miss Brooke?”

Catherine was in mortal terror, but stood her ground like a heroine.  “I said it seemed to me dark, Mr. Wharton, and I asked why you made it so.”

Wharton looked again at the picture and meditated over it.  Then he said:  “Do you think it would be improved by being lighter?”

Although Catherine pleaded guilty to this shocking heresy, she did it with so much innocence of manner that, in a few minutes, Wharton was captured by her sweet face, and tried to make her understand his theory that the merit of a painting was not so much in what it explained as in what it suggested.  Comments from the by-standers interfered with his success.  Hazard especially perplexed Catherine’s struggling attention by making fun of Wharton’s lecture.

“Your idea of a picture,” said he, “must seem to Miss Brooke like my Cincinnati parishioner’s idea of a corn-field.  I was one day admiring his field of Indian corn, which stretched out into the distance like Lake Erie in a yellow sunset, when the owner, looking at his harvest as solemnly as Wharton is looking at his picture, said that what he liked most was the hogs he could see out of it.”

“Well,” said Wharton, “the Dutch made a good school out of men like him.  Art is equal to any thing.  I will paint his hogs for him, slaughtered and hung up by the hind legs, and if I know how to paint, I can put his corn-field into them, like Ostade, and make the butchers glow with emotion.”

“Don’t believe him, Miss Brooke,” said Hazard.  “He wants you to do his own work, and if you give in to him you are lost.  He covers a canvas with paint and then asks you to put yourself into it.  He might as well hold up a looking-glass to you.  Any man can paint a beautiful picture if he could persuade Miss Brooke to see herself in it.”

“What a pretty compliment,” said Esther.  “It is more flattering than the picture.”

“You can prove its truth, Miss Dudley,” said Hazard.  “It is easy to show that I am right.  Paint Miss Brooke yourself!  Give to her the soul of the Colorado plains!  Show that beauty of subject is the right ideal!  You will annihilate Wharton and do an immortal work.”

Hazard’s knack of fixing an influence wherever he went had long been the wonder of Strong, but had never surprised or amused him more than now, when he saw Esther, after a moment’s hesitation, accept this idea, and begin to discuss with Hazard the pose and surroundings which were to give Catherine Brooke’s picture the soul of the Colorado plains.  Hazard drew well and had studied art more carefully than most men.  He used to say that if he had not a special mission for the church, as a matter of personal taste he should have preferred the studio.  He not only got at once into intimate relations with Esther and Catherine, but he established a sort of title in Esther’s proposed portrait.  Strong laughed to himself at seeing that even Mr. Dudley, who disliked the clergy more than any other form of virtue, was destined to fall a victim to Hazard’s tact.

When the clergyman walked away from Strong’s rooms that afternoon, he felt, although even to himself he would not have confessed it, a little elated.  Instinct has more to do than vanity with such weaknesses, and Hazard’s instinct told him that his success, to be lasting, depended largely on overcoming the indifference of people like the Dudleys.  If he could not draw to himself and his church the men and women who were strong enough to have opinions of their own, it was small triumph to draw a procession of followers from a class who took their opinions, like their jewelry, machine-made.  He felt that he must get a hold on the rebellious age, and that it would not prove rebellious to him.  He meant that Miss Dudley should come regularly to church, and on his success in bringing her there, he was half-ready to stake the chances of his mission in life.

So Catherine’s portrait was begun at once, when Catherine herself had been barely a week in New York.  To please Esther, Mr. Dudley had built for her a studio at the top of his house, which she had fitted up in the style affected by painters, filling it with the regular supply of eastern stuffs, porcelains, and even the weapons which Damascus has the credit of producing; one or two ivory carvings, especially a small Italian crucifix; a lay figure; some Japanese screens, and eastern rugs.  Her studio differed little from others, unless that it was cleaner than most; and it contained the usual array of misshapen sketches pinned against the wall, and of spoiled canvases leaning against each other in corners as though they were wall flower beauties pouting at neglect.

Here Catherine Brooke was now enthroned as the light of the prairie, and day after day for three weeks, Esther labored over the portrait with as much perseverance as though Hazard were right in promising that it should make her immortal.  The last days of November and the first of December are the best in the year for work, and Esther worked with an energy that surprised her.  She wanted to extort praise from Mr. Wharton, and even felt a slight shade of responsibility towards Mr. Hazard.  At first no one was to be admitted to see it while in progress; then an exception was made for Strong and Hazard who came to the house one evening, and in a moment of expansiveness were told that they would be admitted to the studio.  They came, and Esther found Mr. Hazard’s suggestions so useful that she could not again shut him out.  In return she was shamed into going to church with her aunt the following Sunday, where she heard Mr. Hazard preach again.  She did not enjoy it, and did not think it necessary to repeat the compliment.  “One should not know clergymen,” she said in excuse to her father for not liking the sermon; “there is no harm in knowing an actress or opera-singer, but religion is a serious thing.”  Mr. Hazard did not know how mere a piece of civility her attendance was; he saw only that she was present, that his audience was larger and his success more assured than ever.  With this he was well satisfied, and, as he had been used in life always to have his own way, he took it for granted that in this instance he had got it.

The portrait of course did not satisfy Esther.  Do what she would, Catherine’s features and complexion defied modeling and made the artificial colors seem hard and coarse.  The best she could paint was not far from down-right failure.  She felt the danger and called Mr. Hazard to her aid.  Hazard suggested alterations, and insisted much on what he was pleased to call “values,” which were not the values Esther had given.  With his help the picture became respectable, as pictures go, although it would not have been with impunity that Tintoret himself had tried to paint the soul of the prairie.

Esther, like most women, was timid, and wanted to be told when she could be bold with perfect safety, while Hazard’s grasp of all subjects, though feminine in appearance, was masculine and persistent in reality.  To be steadily strong was not in Esther’s nature.  She was audacious only by starts, and recoiled from her own audacity.  Before long, Hazard began to dominate her will.  She felt a little uneasy until he had seen and approved her work.  More than once he disapproved, and then she had to do it over again.  She began at length to be conscious of this impalpable tyranny, and submitted to it only because she felt her own dependence and knew that in a few days more she should be free.  If he had been clerical or dogmatic, she might have resented it and the charm would have broken to pieces on the spot, but he was for the time a painter like herself, as much interested in the art, and caring for nothing else.

Towards Christmas the great work was finished, and the same party that had met a month before at Strong’s rooms, came together again in Esther’s studio to sit upon and judge the portrait they had suggested.  Mr. Dudley, with some effort, climbed up from his library; Mrs. Murray again acted as chaperon, and even Mr. Murray, whose fancy for pictures was his only known weakness, came to see what Esther had made of Catherine.  The portrait was placed in a light that showed all its best points and concealed as far as possible all its weak ones; and Esther herself poured out tea for the connoisseurs.

To disapprove in such a company was not easy, but Wharton was equal to the task.  He never compromised his convictions on such matters even to please his hosts, and in consequence had given offense to most of the picture-owners in the city of New York.  He showed little mercy now to Esther, and perhaps his attack might have reduced her courage to despair, had she not found a champion who took her defense wholly on his own shoulders.  It happened that Wharton attacked parts of the treatment for which Hazard was responsible, and when Hazard stepped into the lists, avowing that he had advised the work and believed it to be good, Esther was able to retire from the conflict and to leave the two men fighting a pitched battle over the principles of art.  Hazard defended and justified every portion of the painting with a vigor and resource quite beyond Esther’s means, and such as earned her lively gratitude.  When he had reduced Wharton to silence, which was not a difficult task, for Wharton was a poor hand at dispute or argument, and felt rather than talked, Mr. Hazard turned to Esther who gave him a look of gratitude such as she had rarely conferred on any of his sex.

“I think we have ground him to powder at last,” said Hazard with his boyish laugh of delight.

“I never knew before what it was to have a defender,” said she simply.

Meanwhile Strong, who thought this battle no affair of his, was amusing himself as usual by chaffing Catherine.  “I have told my colleague, who professes languages,” said he, “that I have a young Sioux in the city, and he is making notes for future conversation with you.”

“What will he talk about,” asked Catherine; “are all professors as foolish as you?”

“He will be light and airy with you.  He asked me what gens you belonged to.  I told him I guessed it was the grouse gens.  He said he had not been aware that such a totem existed among the Sioux.  I replied that, so far as I could ascertain, you were the only surviving member of your family.”

“Well, and what am I to say?” asked Catherine.

“Tell him that the Rocky Mountains make it their only business to echo his name,” said Strong.  “Have you an Indian grandmother?”

“No, but perhaps I could lariat an old aunt for him, if he will like me better for it.”

“Aunt will do,” said Strong.  “Address the old gentleman in Sioux, and call him the ‘dove with spectacles.’  It will please his soft old heart, and he will take off his spectacles and fall in love with you.  There is nothing so frivolous as learning; nothing else knows enough.”

“I like him already,” said Catherine.  “A professor with spectacles is worth more than a Sioux warrior.  I will go with him.”

“Don’t be in a hurry,” replied Strong; “it will come to about the same thing in the end.  My colleague will only want your head to dry and stuff for his collection.”

“If I were a girl again,” said Mrs. Murray, who was listening to their conversation, “I would much rather a man should ask for my head than my heart.”

“That is what is the matter with all of you,” said Strong.  “There are Wharton and Esther at it again, quarreling about Catherine’s head.  Every body disputes about her head, and I am the only one who goes for her heart.”

“Mr. Wharton is so stern,” pleaded Esther in defense against the charge of quarreling.  “A hundred times he has told me that I can’t draw; he should have made me learn when he undertook to teach me.”

“You might learn more easily now, if you would be patient about it,” said Wharton.  “You have too much quickness and not enough knowledge.”

“I think Mr. Hazard turns his compliments better than you,” said Esther.  “After one of your speeches I have to catch my breath and think what it means.”

“I mean that you ought to be a professional,” replied Wharton.

“But if I were able to be a professional, do you think I would be an amateur?” asked Esther.  “No!  I would decorate a church.”

“If that is all your ambition, do it now!” said Wharton.  “Come and help me to finish St. John’s.  I have half a dozen workmen there who are certainly not so good as you.”

“What will you give me to do?” asked she.

“I will engage you to paint, under my direction, a large female figure on the transept wall.  There are four vacant spaces for which I have made only rough drawings, and you can try your hand on whichever you prefer.  You shall be paid like the other artists, and you will find some other women employed there, to keep you company.”

“Let me choose the subject,” said Mr. Hazard.  “I think I have a voice in the matter.”

“That depends on your choice,” replied Wharton.

“It must be St. Cecilia, of course,” said Hazard; “and Miss Brooke must sit again as model.”

“Could you not sit yourself as St. George on the dragon?” asked Strong.  “I have just received a tertiary dragon from the plains, which I should like to see properly used in the interests of the church.”

“Catherine is a better model,” answered Esther.

“You’ve not yet seen my dragon.  Let me bring him round to you.  With Hazard on his back, he would fly away with you all into the stars.”

“There are dragons enough at St. John’s,” answered Hazard.  “I will ride on none of them.”

“You’ve no sense of the highest art,” said Strong.  “Science alone is truth.  You are throwing away your last chance to reconcile science and religion.”

So, after much discussion, it was at last decided that Esther Dudley should begin work at St. John’s as a professional decorator under Mr. Wharton’s eye, and that her first task should be to paint a standing figure of St. Cecilia, some eight or ten feet high, on the wall of the north transept.