The three most important events of her brief career had occurred within the twelvemonth — her mother’s death, her coming here to live — and love. That also had happened. But she did not call it love; it did not occur to her to consider him in any possible, tangible relation to herself.
She never even expected to know him, to speak to him, or that he could possibly care to speak to her. As far as the east is from the west, so far apart were their two worlds. For them the gusty corridor was wider than interstellar voids; she had not even a thought that a miracle might bridge the infinite from her tiny world to his, which seemed to her so bright and splendid; she had never advanced farther than the happiness of lying still after the day’s work, and thinking, innocently, of what she knew about him and what she timidly divined.
At such times, stretched across her bed, the backs of her hands resting on her closed lids, she pondered on that alluring wonderland, his studio — of the mystery that so fittingly surrounded his artist’s life. She saw him always amid the tints and hues of ancient textiles, sometimes dreaming, sometimes achieving with fiery inspiration — but precisely how or what he achieved remained to her part of his mystery. She cherished only the confused vision of the youth of him, and its glorious energy and wisdom.
He could be very human, too, she thought; and often the smile curved her lips and cheeks at the recollection of the noisy gayety coming in gusts through his transom on those nights when his friends were gathered there — laughter and song — the incense of tobacco drifting into her own white room from the corridor. She loved it; the odor seemed spicy with a delicate hint of sweet-brier, and she opened her transom wider to let it in.
Usually she fell asleep, the distant uproar of gayety lulling her into happier slumbers. And for days and nights afterward its recollection made life easier and pleasanter, as though she lived with amusing memories of events in which she herself had participated.
All day long, in a fashionable dry-goods shop, she sold cobweb finery and frail, intimate, lacy stuffs to very fine ladies, who usually drew a surprised breath at her beauty, and sometimes dealt with her as though they were dealing with one of their own caste.
At night, tired, she looked forward to her return, when, behind her own closed door, she could rest or read a little, or lie still and think of Landon. But even in the daring magic of waking dreams she had scarcely ventured any acquaintance with him; in dreamland they were as yet only just aware of one another. He had lately — oh, breathless and audacious imagination of hers! — smiled at her in the corridors of dreamland; and she had been a good many days trying to decide what she was going to do about it. In her phantom world matters were going well with her.
Meanwhile, except for the stupefying heat, the actual world was also going well with her. She had saved a little money, enough to give her ten days of luxury and fresh air when the time came. She needed it; the city had been hard on her. Yet the pleasure of going was not unmixed; for, as the day of her release drew nearer, she realized how, within the year, he had, in her dreams, insensibly become to her a part of her real life, and that she would miss him sorely. Which gave her courage to hasten their acquaintance in dreamland; and so it came about that he spoke to her one night as she lay dreaming, awake on her pillow; and she felt her cheeks burn in the dark as though it had all been real.
Yet he was very gentle with her in dreamland — quite wonderful — indeed, all that the most stilted vision of a young girl could desire.
Less unquiet, now that they knew each other, she looked forward to the real separation with comparative resignation.
Then came that unexpected episode when she seated herself on the same bench with him, unintentionally braving him in the flesh.
All that night she thought about it in consternation — piteously explaining it to him in dreamland. He understood — in dreamland — but did he understand in real life? Would he think she had meant to give him a chance to speak — horror of crimson dismay! Would he think her absurd to leave so abruptly when he caught her eye? And oh, she cared so much what he might think, so much more than she supposed she dared care!
All day long it made her miserable as she moved listlessly behind the counter; at night the heated pavements almost stunned her as she walked home to save the pennies.
She saw no light in his studio as she slipped through the corridor into her stifling room. Later, she bathed and dressed in a thinner gown, but it, also, was in black, in memory of her mother, and seemed to sere her body. The room grew hotter; she went out to the passage; no light threatened her from his transom, so she ventured to leave her door open.
But even this brought no relief; the heat became unendurable; and she rose at last, pinned on her big black hat of straw, and went out into the dusk.
Through the gates of the square she saw the poor surging into the park. The police had opened the scant bits of lawn to them. Men, women, children, lay half-naked on the grass, fighting for breath. And, after a little while, she crossed the street and went in among them.
The splash of the fountain was refreshing. She wandered at random, past the illuminated façade of the Lying-in Hospital, past the painted Virgin, then crossed Second Avenue, entered the gates again, and turned aimlessly by the second fountain. There seemed to be no resting-place for her on the crowded benches.
Beyond the fountain a shadowy sycamore stood in the centre of a strip of lawn. She went toward it, hesitated, glancing at the motionless, recumbent figures near by, then ventured to seat herself on the grass and lean back against the tree. Presently, she unpinned her hat, lifted a white face to the night, and closed her eyes.
How long she sat there she did not know when again she opened her tired lids.
A figure stood near her. For a moment she confused dream and reality and smiled at him; then sat up, rigid, breathless, as the figure stirred and came forward.
She remembered attempting to rise, remembered nothing else very distinctly — not even his first words, though his voice was gentle and pleasant, just as it was in dreamland.
“Do you mind my speaking to you?” he was asking now.
“No,” she said faintly.
He raised his head and looked out across the feverish city, passing one thin hand across his eyes. Then, with a slight movement of his shoulders, he seated himself on the ground at her feet.
“We have been neighbours so long,” he said, “that I thought perhaps I might dare to speak to you to-night. My name is Landon — James Landon. I think I know your last name.”
“O’Connor — Ellie O’Connor — Eleanor, I mean,” she added, unafraid. A curious peace seemed to possess her at the sound of his voice. There was a stillness in it that reassured.
The silence between them was ringed with the distant roar of the city. He looked around him at the shadowy forms flung across bench and lawn; his absent glance swept the surrounding walls of masonry and iron, all a-glitter with tiny, lighted windows. Overhead a tarnished moon looked down into the vast trap where five million souls lay caught, gasping for air — he among the others — and this young girl beside him — trapped, helpless, foredoomed. The city had got them all! But he sat up the straighter, giving the same slightly-impatient shake to his shoulders.
“I came,” he said, “to ask you one or two questions — if I may.”
“Ask them,” she answered, as in a dream.
“Then — you go to business, do you not?”
“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.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 560