Viii.--Beside The Drawing-Board

She had turned wearily from the household cares, the daily direction of a little peasant-servant, to her drawing-board. A cast from Leonardo da Vinci of a woman's hand is her model, and for an hour she has been happily working. She has failed; but that has not clouded joy nor damped ardour.

"Its beauty mounted into my brain,"

and, effacing the failures, she has yielded to a fancy--has taken the chalk between her lips, instead of her fingers:

"With soul to help if the mere lips failed, I kissed all right where the drawing ailed, Kissed fast the grace that somehow slips Still from one's soulless finger-tips."

This hand was that of a worshipped woman. Her fancy sets the ring on it, by which one knows

"That here at length a master found His match, a proud lone soul its mate."

Not even Da Vinci's pencil had been able to trace all the beauty--

". . . how free, how fine To fear almost!--of the limit-line."

He, like her, had suffered some defeat. But think of the minutes in which, with her he worshipped, he "looked and loved, learned and drew, Drew and learned and loved again!" Such moments are not for such as she. She will go back to the household cares--she has her lesson, and it is not the same as Da Vinci's.

"Little girl with the poor coarse hand"

. . . this is her model, from whom she had turned to a cold clay cast. Her business is to understand, not the almost fearful beauty of a thing like this, but "the worth of flesh and blood."

But was not that Da Vinci's business too? Would he not, could she speak with him, proudly tell her so? "Nothing but beauty in a hand." Would the Master have turned from this peasant one? No: she hears him condemn her, laugh her woes to scorn.

"The fool forsooth is all forlorn Because the beauty she thinks best Lived long ago or was never born, Because no beauty bears the test In this rough peasant hand!"

It was not long before Da Vinci threw aside the faulty pencil, and spent years instead of hours in studying, not the mere external loveliness, but the anatomy of the hand, learning the veritable use

"Of flesh and bone and nerve that make The poorest coarsest human hand An object worthy to be scanned A whole life long for their sole sake."

Just the hand--and all the body still to learn. Is not this the lesson of life--this incompleteness?

"Now the parts and then the whole!"

And here is she, declaring that if she is not loved, she must die--she, with her stinted soul and stunted body! Look again at the peasant hand. No beauty is there--but it can spin the wool and bake the bread:

"'What use survives the beauty?'"

Yes: Da Vinci would proclaim her fool.

Then this shall be the new formula. She will be of use; will do the daily task, forgetting the unattainable ideals. She cannot keep her husband's love, any more than she can draw the perfect hand; then she will not waste her life in sighing for either gift. She will be useful; she will gain cheer that way, since all the others fail her.

"Go, little girl with the poor coarse hand! I have my lesson, shall understand."

This is the last hope--to be of humble use; this the last formula for survival.