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?
She was ready now.
A little later, turning a lovely, flushed face over her bare shoulder:
"One figure stood like this," and, after a pause, "the other this
way.... If you make them from me, can a sculptor work from life casts
such as these?"
A sculptor could.
About dusk she crept home, trembling in every nerve. Her vacation had
begun.
She had been promoted to a position as expert lace buyer, which
permitted larger liberty. From choice she had taken no vacation during
the summer. Now her vacation, which she requested for December, lasted
ten days; and at the end of it her last penny had been spent, but in a
manner so wonderful, so strange, that no maid ever dreamed such things
might be.
[Illustration: "Christmas Eve she knelt, crying, before the pedestal."]
And on the last evening of it, which was Christmas Eve, she knelt,
crying, before two pedestals from which rose her body and soul as white
as death.
An hour later the snowy twins stood in his empty studio, swathed in
their corpse-white winding-sheets--unstained cerements, sealing beneath
their folds her dead pride, dead hope--all that was delicate and
intimate and subtle and sweet--slain and in cerements, for his sake.
And now she must go before he returned. Her small trunk was ready; her
small account settled. With strangely weak and unsteady hands she stood
before the glass knotting her veil.
Since that night together last summer she had not spoken to him, merely
returning his low greeting in the corridor with a silent little
inclination of her head. But, although she had had no speech with him,
she had learned that he was teaching at the League now, and she knew his
hours and his movements well enough to time her own by them.
He was not due for another hour; she looked out into the snowy darkness,
drawing on her gloves and buttoning the scant fur collar close about her
throat.
The old janitor came to say good-by.
"An' God be with you, miss, this Christmas Eve"--taking the coin
irresolutely, but pocketing it for fear of hurting her.
His fingers, numbed and aged, fumbling in the pocket encountered another
object.
"Musha, thin, I'm afther forgettin' phwat I'm here f'r to tell ye,
miss," he rambled on. "Misther Landon wishes ye f'r to know that he do
be lavin' the house"--the old man moistened his lips in an effort to
remember with all the elegance required of him--"an' Misther Landon is
wishful f'r to say a genteel good luck to ye, miss."
The girl shook her head.
"Tell Mr. Landon good-by for me, Patrick. Say--from me--God bless
him.... Will you remember?... And a--a happy Christmas."
"I will, Miss."
She touched her eyes with her handkerchief hastily, and held out her
hand to the old man.
"I think that is all," she whispered.
She was mistaken; the janitor was holding out a note to her.
"In case ye found it onconvaynient f'r to see Misther Landon, I was to
projooce the letter, Miss."
She took it; a shiver passed over her.
When the old man had shambled off down the passage she reëntered her
room, held the envelope a moment close under the lighted lamp, then
nervously tore it wide.
"_You will read this in case you refuse to say good-by to me. But I
only wanted to offer you a little gift at Christmastide--not in
reparation, for I meant no injury--but in deepest respect for you. And
so I ask you once more to wait for me. Will you?_"
Minute after minute she sat there, dumb, confused, nerves at the
breaking point, her heart and soul crying out for him. Then the memory
of what was awaiting him in his studio choked her with fright. She
sprang to her feet, and at the same moment the outer gate clanged.
Terror froze her; then she remembered that it was too early for him; it
must be the expressman for her trunk. And she went to the door and
opened it.
"Oh-h!" she breathed, shrinking back; but Landon had seen his letter in
her hand, and he followed her into the room.
He was paler than she: his voice was failing him, too, as he laid his
gift on the bare table--only a little book, prettily bound.
"Will you take it?" he asked in a colorless voice; but she could not
answer, could not move.
"I wish you a happy Christmas," he whispered. "Good-by."
She strove to meet his eyes, strove to speak, lifted her slim hand to
stay him. It fell, strength spent, in both of his.
Suddenly Time went all wrong, reeling off centuries in seconds. And
through the endless interstellar space that stretched between her world
and his she heard his voice bridging it: "I love you--I love you
dearly.... Once more I am the beggar--a beggar at Christmastide, asking
your mercy--asking more, your love. Dear, is it plain this time? Is all
clear, dearest among women?"
She looked up into his eyes; his hands tightened over hers.
"Can you love me?" he said.
"Yes," answered her eyes and the fragrant mouth assented, quivering
under his lips.
Then, without will or effort of her own, from very far away, her voice
stole back to her faintly.
"Is all this true? I have dreamed so long--so long--of loving you----"
He drew her closer; she laid both hands against his coat and hid her
face between them.
He whispered:
"It was your unselfishness, your sweetness, and--_you_--all of
you--yes--your beauty--the loveliness of you, too! I could not put it
from me; I knew that night that I loved you--and to-day they said you
were going--so I came with my Christmas gift--the sorry, sorry
gift--myself----"
"Ah!" she whispered, clinging closer. "And what of my gift--my twin
gifts--there, in your studio! Oh, you don't know, you don't know----"
"Dearest!"
"No--you can never know how much easier it had been for me to die than
to love--as I have loved a man this day."
* * * * *
"Confound you, Williams," I said, blinking.
But he did not hear me, sitting there in a literary revery, mentally
repolishing the carefully considered paragraphs with which he had just
regaled me.
"Williams?"
"What?"
"So--they're living in Normandy."
"Who?"
"Jim Landon and that girl, dammit!" I said, crossly.
"Yes--oh, yes, of course. Children--bunches of 'em--and all that."
"Williams?"
"What?"
"_Was_ she so pretty?"
"Certainly," he said, absently. "Don't bother me now; I've got an idea
for another story."
[Illustration]