The Adventures of a Modest Man

"Yes."

He nodded: "And now I'm going to venture another question which may sound impertinent, but I do not mean it so. May I?"

"Yes," she said in a low, hushed voice, as though a clearer tone might break some spell.

"It is about your salary. I do not suppose it is very large."

"My wages? Shall I tell you?" she asked, so innocently that he flushed up.

"No, no! – I merely wish to – to find out from you whether you might care to take a chance of increasing your salary."

"I don't think I know what you mean," she said, looking at him.

"I know you don't," he said, patiently; "let me begin a little farther back. I am a sculptor. You know, of course, what that is – "

"Yes. I am educated." She even found courage to smile at him.

His answering smile covered both confusion and surprise; then perplexity etched a crease between his brows.

"That makes it rather harder for me" – he hesitated – "or easier; I don't know which."

"What makes it harder?" she asked.

"Your being – I don't know – different – from what I imagined – "

"Educated?"

"Y-yes – "

She laughed deliciously in her new-born confidence.

"What is it you wish to ask?"

"I'll tell you," he said. "I need a model – and I'm too poor to pay for one. I've pledged everything in my studio. A chance has come to me. It's only a chance, however. But I can't take it because I cannot afford a model."

There was a silence; then she inquired what he meant by a model. And he told her – not everything, not clearly.

"You mean that you wish me to sit for my portrait in marble?"

"There are two figures to be executed for the new Department of Peace in Washington," he explained, "and they are to be called 'Soul' and 'Body.' Six sculptors have been invited to compete. I am one. We have a year before us."

She remained silent.

"It is perfectly apparent, of course, that you are exquis – admirably fitted" – he stammered under her direct gaze, then went on; "I scarcely dared dream of such a model even if I had the means to afford – " He could get no further.

"Are you really poor?" she asked in gentle wonder.

"At present – yes."

"I never dreamed it," she said. "I thought – otherwise."

"Oh, it is nothing; some day things will come out right. Only – I have a chance now – if you – if you would help me… I could win with you; I know it. And if I do win – with your aid – I will double your present salary. And that is what I've come here to say. Is that fair?"

He waited, watching her intently. She had dropped her eyes, sitting there very silent at the foot of the tree, cradling the big straw hat in her lap.

"Whatever you decide to be fair – " he began again, but she looked up wistfully.

"I was not thinking of that," she said; "I was only – sorry."

"Sorry?"

"That you are poor."

He misunderstood her. "I know; I wish I could offer you something beside a chance – "

"Oh-h," she whispered, but so low that he heard only a long, indrawn breath.

She sat motionless, eyes on the grass. When again she lifted them their pure beauty held him.

"What is it you wish?" she asked. "That I should be your model for the – this prize which you desire to strive for?"

"Yes; for that."

"How can I? I work all day."

"I could use you at night and on Saturday afternoons, and all day Sunday. And – have you had your yearly vacation?"

She drew a quietly tired breath. "No," she said.

"Then – I will give you two hundred dollars extra for those ten days," he went on eagerly – so eagerly that he forgot the contingency on which hung any payment at all. As for her, payment was not even in her thoughts.

Through the deep, sweet content which came to her with the chance of serving him, ran an undercurrent of confused pain that he could so blindly misunderstand her. If she thought at all of the amazing possibility of such a fortune as he offered, she knew that she would not accept it from him. But this, and the pain of his misunderstanding, scarcely stirred the current of a strange, new happiness that flowed through every vein.

"Do you think I could really help you?"

"If you will." His voice trembled.

"Are you sure – quite sure? If you are – I will do what you wish."

He sprang up buoyant, transfigured.

"If I win it will be you!" he said. "Could you come into the studio a moment? I'll show you the two sketches I have made for 'Soul' and 'Body'."

On the prospect of a chance – the chance that had come at last – he was completely forgetting that she must be prepared to comprehend what he required of her; he forgot that she could know nothing of a sculptor's ways and methods of production. On the way to the studio, however, he tardily remembered, and it rather scared him.

"Do you know any painters or sculptors?" he asked, keeping impatient pace beside her.

"I know a woman who makes casts of hands and arms," she said shyly. "She stopped me in the street once and asked permission to cast my hands. Would you call her a sculptor?"

"N – well, perhaps she may be. We sculptors often use casts of the human body." He plunged into it more frankly: "You know, of course, that to become a sculptor or a painter, one has to model and paint from living people."

"Yes," she said, undisturbed.

"And," he continued, "it would be impossible for a sculptor to produce the beautiful marbles you have seen – er – around – unless he could pose a living model to copy from."

An unquiet little pulse began to beat in her breast; she looked up at him, but he was smiling so amiably that she smiled, too.

Mortally afraid of frightening her, he could not exactly estimate how much she divined of what was to be required of her.

He continued patiently: "Unless a student dissects he can never become a surgeon. It is the same with us; our inspiration and originality must be founded on a solid study of the human body. That is why we must always have before us as perfect a living model as we can find."

"Do – do you think – " she stopped, pink and confused.

"I think," he said, quietly impersonal, "that, speaking as a sculptor, you are as perfect and as beautiful a model as ever the old Greek masters saw, alive or in their dreams."

"I – did not – know it," she faltered, thrilling from head to foot.

They entered the corridor together. Her breath came faster as he unlocked his door and, turning up a lamp, invited her to enter.

At last in the magic world! And with him!

Figured tapestries hung from the golden mystery of the ceiling; ancient dyes glowed in the soft rugs under foot; the mellow light glimmered on dull foliations. She stood still, looking about her as in a trance.

"All this I will buy back again with your help," he said, laughingly; but his unsteady voice betrayed the tension to which he was keyed. A slow excitement was gaining on her, too.

"I will redeem all these things, never fear," he said, gayly.

"Oh – if you only can… It is too cruel to take such things from you."

The emotion in her eyes and voice surprised him for one troubled moment. Then the selfishness of the artist ignored all else save the work and the opportunity.

"You will help me, won't you?" he asked. "It is a promise?"

"Yes – I will."

"Is it a promise?"

"Yes," she said, wondering.

"Then please sit here. I will bring the sketches. They merely represent my first idea; they are done without a living model." He was off, lighting a match as he hastened. A tapestry fell back into place; she lifted her blue eyes to the faded figures of saints and seraphim stirring when the fabric moved.

CHAPTER VI

SOUL AND BODY

As in a blessed vision, doubting the reality of it all, she sat looking upward until his step on some outer floor aroused her to the wondrous reality.

He came, holding two clay figures. The first was an exquisite winged shape, standing with delicate limbs parallel, arms extended, palms outward. The head was lifted a little, poised exquisitely on the perfect neck. Its loveliness thrilled her.

"Is it an angel?" she asked, innocently.

"No… I thought you understood – this is only a sketch I made. And this is the other." And he placed on a table the second figure, a smooth, youthful, sensuous shape, looking aside and down at her own white fingers playing with her hair.

"Is it Eve?" she inquired, wondering.

"These," he said slowly, "are the first two sketches, done without a model, for my two figures 'Soul' and 'Body'."

She looked at him, not comprehending.

"I – I must have a living model – for these," he stammered. "Didn't you understand? I want you to work from."

From brow to throat the scarlet stain deepened and spread. She turned, laid one small hand on the back of the chair, faltered, sank onto it, covering her face.

"I thought you understood," he repeated stupidly. "Forgive me – I thought you understood what sort of help I needed." He dropped on one knee beside her. "I am so sorry. Try to reason a little. You – you must know I meant no offense – that I never could wish to offend you. Look at me, please; I am not that sort of a man. Can't you realize how desperate I was – how I dared hazard the chance that you might help me?"

She rose, her face still covered.

"Can't you comprehend?" he pleaded, "that I meant no offense?"

"Y-yes. Let me go."

"Can you forgive me?"

"I – yes."

"And you cannot – help me?"

"H-help you?.. Oh, no, no, no!" She broke down, sobbing in the chair, her golden head buried in her arms.

Confused, miserable, he watched her. Already the old helpless feeling had come surging back, that there was to be no chance for him in the world, no hope of all he had dared to believe in, no future. Watching her he felt his own courage falling with her tears, his own will drooping as she drooped there – slender and white in her thin, black gown.

Again he spoke, for the moment forgetting himself.

"Don't cry, because there is nothing to cry about. You know I did not mean to hurt you; I know that you would help me if you could. Isn't it true?"

"Y-yes," she sobbed.

"It was only a sculptor who asked you, not a man at all. You understand what I mean? – only a poor devil of a sculptor, carried away by the glamour of a chance for better fortune that seemed to open before him for a moment. So you must not feel distressed or sensitive or ashamed – "

She sat up, wet eyed, cheeks aflame.

"I am thinking of you!" she cried, almost fiercely, "not of myself; and you don't understand! Do you think I would cry over myself? I – it is because I cannot help you!"

He found no words to answer as she rose and moved toward the door. She crossed the threshold, turned and looked at him. Then she entered her own doorway.

And the world went badly for her that night, and, after that, day and night, the world went badly.

Always the confusion of shame and dread returned to burn her; but that was the least; for in the long hours, lying amid the fragments of her shattered dreams, the knowledge that he needed her and that she could not respond, overwhelmed her.

The house, the corridor, her room became unendurable; she desired to go – anywhere – and try to forget. But she could not; she could not leave, she could not forget, she could not go to him and offer the only aid he desired, she could not forgive herself.

In vain, in vain, white with the agony of courage, she strove to teach herself that she was nothing, her body nothing, that the cost was nothing, compared to the terrible importance of his necessity. She knew in her heart that she could have died for him; but – but – her courage could go no further.

In terrible silence she walked her room, thinking of him as one in peril, as one ruined for lack of the aid she withheld. Sometimes she passed hours on her knees, tearless, wordless; sometimes sheerest fear set her creeping to the door to peer out, dreading lest his closed door concealed a tragedy.

And always, burning like twin gray flames before her eyes, she saw the figures he had made, 'Soul' and 'Body.' Every detail remained clear; their terrible beauty haunted her. Night after night, rigid on her bed's edge, she stretched her bared, white arms, staring at them, then flung them hopelessly across her eyes, whispering, "I cannot – O God – I cannot – even for him."

And there came a day – a Saturday – when the silence of the house, of her room, the silence in her soul, became insupportable.

All day she walked in the icy, roaring streets, driving herself forward toward the phantom of forgetfulness which fled before her like her shadow. And at the edge of noon she found herself – where she knew she must come one day – seeking the woman who made plaster casts of hands and arms and shapely feet.

For a little while they talked together. The woman surprised, smiling sometimes, but always very gentle; the girl flushed, stammering, distressed in forming her naïve questions.

Yes, it could be done; it had been done. But it was a long process; it must be executed in sections, then set together limb by limb, for there were many difficulties – and it was not pleasant to endure, even sometimes painful.

"I do not mind the pain," said the girl. "Will it scar me?"

"No, not that… But, another thing; it would be expensive."

"I have my vacation money, and a little more." She named the sum timidly.

Yes, it was enough. And when could she come for the first casts to be taken?

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