What a curious thing is a piece of clay, and, dear Lord, how willing it
is, under our fingers! Look now, here is a bit of clay, no larger than a
pullet’s egg, and no one knows what may come of it. Shall I mould you a
few petals, with my thumb and forefinger, like this, and then shape up a
closed golden heart, like that, and next fuss and fuse them all together,
thus? You see, it is a rose! It has all the form a clay rose need ask,
for the moment; if it had but color and perfume, it might be the rose of
the world! However, I set no great store by it; I shall tear my rose in
twain, to please you; and if you like, I will pinch up the lesser part
into a bishop’s mitre, and the greater part into a churchly face, no
feature lacking. Indeed, I will put in as many features as you suggest,
though, of course, from the modern point of view, too few are better than
too many.
Will you have Stephen Langton, or Thomas à Becket, or Saint Francis
himself, God reward him, or would you prefer my dear old neighbor
there across the street, Father Geronimo of the Carmelites? One is
as easy as the other, when the clay is obedient. Or if by mischance
you do not “love a priest and love a cowl and love a prophet of the
soul,” I can easily transform my monk into—You would like to go back
to that rose-of-the-world idea? Very well, we shall make the hood into
a mantilla, thus, and the good priestly face into the flower-like
countenance of a girl. The flower must have a stem, too, a well-rounded,
slender stem; and the petal of her lower lip needs caressing. Surely
you see that it is a girl; a señorita, signora, fräulein, mademoiselle,
miss. A lady of any country; yes, perhaps even the gracious Madonna of
all lands! What a curious thing is a piece of clay, and how willing it is
under the fingers!
The boy Raymond Brooke had often seen and heard his father the sculptor
do and say such things, while resting.
But—but—it was nevertheless a mistake of the boy Raymond, when, on
finding a bit of clay in his hands, he looked about him with starry
eyes, seeking something to adorn, with whatever he and his accomplice
clay should create. And I hold it very strange, too, that on this bright
June morning, with all the beautiful shapes still unsummoned from the
deep, he could think of nothing better to mould into a fine symmetry than
a pair of fierce moustaches and a goatee; and further, that he could
discover no better use for these vain ornaments than to affix them neatly
upon the countenance of the clay lady in his father’s studio, that noble
new-made portrait of the venerable mistress of Highcourt.
Raymond was seven. Surely at this age, if ever, a child should show
himself “_un enfant déjà raisonnable_.” The new governess had said so;
she had added, in gentle despair, that without doubt it was different
with the children of artists and the criminal classes. She was a
puzzle-headed young creature from the devastated regions, and not yet
hardened to life’s surprises. Her career among us had early been darkened
by the discovery that the children of American artists have no real
feeling for the relative pronoun, in French. And what, she passionately
demanded of the elder Brooke girl, what would our noble French literature
be, without its relative pronouns? She was in earnest, and looked very
pretty and bright-eyed as she asked it. Raymond, poor Nordic, was
fascinated by that slender dark streak above her upper lip. It seemed
very firm and permanent, yet fragile and downy, too; he wondered
whether, if you touched it, it would vanish. But Mademoiselle chose that
moment to inquire of him, the youngest infant of the Brooke trio, whether
he had the very smallest idea what a relative pronoun was, or even an
ordinary pronoun, for example! Raymond was either unable or unwilling to
throw light on the situation, and had fled toward the studio to escape
his responsibilities. From Scylla to Charybdis, from French literature
to American art! He was not thinking of his pronouns, either; he was
thinking of that downy shadow. But this, I admit, scarcely excuses his
grotesque conduct.
His father was not in the studio; the clay lady reigned supreme; a
fine challenging old lady she was, drawing her breath with that superb
kindliness the clay allows. The portrait was still, according to its
creator, in the chrysalis stage. Later, it would be transformed into
white plaster, and later yet, if luck held, it would issue, gleaming
and triumphant, in spotless Carrara. The sculptor was by no means
dissatisfied with that clay portrait; the world called it a speaking
likeness. He himself found it a trace too masculine, perhaps; but that
was inevitable, with a type so full of high character. He was glad it
was so, because he knew well enough that the marble would only too easily
soften and spiritualize his interpretation of the old lady of Highcourt,
with her white hair nobly tossed up from her candid brow.
She was a very beautiful old lady, truly; no one denied that; straight
as an arrow and graceful as a palm, for all her seventy years; not fat,
not lean; greatly given to charming clothes, too, and not particularly
scandalized by our shocking modern custom of short skirts for all,
especially grandmothers. You see her own feet were very shapely. And
her profile was that of Cato’s daughter, softened by centuries. All the
little wrinkles around her eyes were kind and smiling ones. No wonder
those college girls had voted that the old lady of Highcourt should be
immortalized in fair Carrara, at a fair price, and shrined in a niche in
their stately new Library, her gift.
But Raymond, you remember, was only seven years high in his sandal
shoon. His nose hardly reached to the top of the modelling-stand. He was
forced to mount a box to carry out his decorative intentions. The little
typewriter box would do. Now! A slender sausage of clay moustache on the
left of the lady’s mouth, another on the right; for the chin, a rather
stouter lump. No compromises anywhere; swift work, and sure. Raymond
stepped down from his box, and walked slowly backward, quite in his
father’s manner, to study the effect. Alas, how brief is the delirium of
design! Raymond’s flight of genius was over, and the result appalled him.
Indeed, it was rather remarkable, that transformation; and very curious
is the power of a bit of clay, in willing fingers! That beautifully
modelled countenance no longer suggested Madam Randolph of Highcourt; it
had become the face of some Light-Horse Harry, some devil-may-care D’Arcy
of the Guards. If that portrait had been scarce feminine enough before,
what was it now, with those singular additions bristling from lips and
chin? A warrior, no less. A moment ago, a lady; at present, a grenadier!
An uninstructed observer, suddenly encountering that piece of family
sculpture, might well ask, in his bewilderment, “But why does the noble
Confederate officer wear a lace kerchief over his epaulets?”
Raymond himself could no longer endure the power of his own performance.
He darted back toward his box, to annul his handiwork. Too late! In
his terror he heard a voice in the garden, near at hand; his father was
talking with the old lady of Highcourt.
Having finished their excellent morning sitting (indeed, it was the last
sitting that would be needed until marble-time should come), artist and
model had strayed into the garden to see the Antonin Mercié phlox in
all its glory; Raymond’s father made a specialty of that, in honor of
M. Mercié, his old master in sculpture. The two had touched lightly on
many topics,—phlox, M. Mercié, old masters, sculpture,—_que sais-je?_
And now the old lady of Highcourt, with a new thrill in her voice, was
speaking very earnestly about a projected portrait in bronze, a work the
sculptor seemed unwilling to undertake. He said, with force, that he much
preferred to work from life. In working from photographs, he couldn’t
do justice to himself, or his subject, or his client. And the old lady
was ruthlessly chaffing him because, in his Northern way, he was putting
himself, the artist, first, and herself, the client, last. Her face
beamed with mischief as she spoke. Beware of that old lady, she has her
designs on the sculptor; she means, by hook or by crook, to make him do
her bidding! She has managed many men, in her time; and always in her
own way, so that they shall not perceive what is happening to them, until
at last they have become the willing clay in her fingers.
However, Mr. Brooke was holding out bravely; I’ll say that for him. He
had had previous experience in making bronze portraits of dear women’s
dead fathers. He well knew that the odds were bitterly against any artist
who should pledge himself to show forth Father, in his era of prosperity,
just by imagining all things from a dim, lean profile of Father in
his salad days. In short, according to Mr. Brooke, we were now in the
nineteen-twenties; and back in the nineteen-tens, he had taken an oath,
had Mr. Brooke, never again to interpret for the world, by means of the
willing clay, just how a great man who died in the eighteen-eighties
really looked in the eighteen-seventies, when all there was to go by
was a wraithlike, looking-glassy daguerreotype of the eighteen-sixties.
Yes, Madam, no matter how elegant the crimson velvet brocade that lined
the little leather case! The old lady of Highcourt had plenty to say in
answer to that; but long before she had begun to say it, the culprit
Raymond, stricken by the lightning of his own genius, had fled away,
away on sandalled feet, to hide behind the tomato plants and the tall
corn.
A great persuader, Madam Randolph! She refused to see herself as beaten.
“I don’t ask you to promise me anything to-day. I only ask you to give
this matter your prayerful consideration. And wouldn’t it be rather
criminal on your part if you, a strong man, should allow me, a weak old
lady, to degrade our American art by giving this commission to some one
else, who would no doubt make a bigger mess of it than you will? Mr.
Brooke, you don’t know how much I want to leave behind me, for those
grandsons of mine, at least some inkling of what my honored father looked
like in Civil War days!”
They were stepping into the studio. It was a high step, but the old lady
was a high-stepper, and Mr. Brooke chuckled over her disdain of his
helping hand. Suddenly his smile vanished. A look of incredulous horror
engulfed it utterly. His precious handiwork had been profaned, Southern
womanhood insulted!
“Good God, what devil has been here?” He himself groaned aloud the
shameful answer, “That devil Raymond!”
It is hard to find a really neat thing to say at such moments; luckily
actions speak louder than words. In wrathful haste, the sculptor strode
forward to kick away Raymond’s box, and to tear off those bits of clay
foully misplaced on the portrait of a lady.
But the dame of Highcourt, though in her seventies, had a longer and
quicker sight than even Mr. Brooke himself; she had a larger experience
in the misdeeds of the young; it was she, not the sculptor, who had spied
those sandalled feet winging toward the tomato plants. And indeed she was
a valiant little old person, whom life had trained to all sorts of ready
readjustments. Long before Mr. Brooke had worked himself up to anywhere
near the height of passion he fully intended to reach, Madam Randolph had
viewed the situation by and large, and had resolved it into its elements.
With a singular phrase, borrowed no doubt from her grandchildren, she
pulled our sculptor down on his haunches, so to speak; she stayed his
hand in midair.
“Cut it out, old dear,” she said soothingly, as if she were reining in
her favorite thoroughbred. “And oh, won’t you please, _please_, stop,
look, listen? Mr. Brooke, Mr. Brooke, can’t you see what it looks
like? Dear sculptor-in-wrath, it’s my father, Dad to the life; it is,
indeed, Captain Carteret! Ask any one who ever saw him. All it needs is
the uniform!” And she brandished in triumph before Mr. Brooke the dim
daguerreotype he had just refused to consider.
Well, what can we all do when events literally leap out of our hands, and
shape themselves firmly, in defiance of our ethics and ultimatums? An old
lady and a piece of clay are matters to be considered; they are curiously
frail things under our fingers; we shall not shatter them unnecessarily.
Mr. Brooke saw that Madam Randolph was right, in the main; and when she
said, in a voice trembling between laughter and tears, “You will add
years to my life if you do what I ask,” what could he do but yield? There
were to be two portraits, then; that was settled. The lady’s would be in
marble, the officer’s in bronze; Raymond’s genius for clay had arranged
it. But Mr. Brooke, for all Madam Randolph’s challenging eyes, refused to
model those moustaches in her presence.
“No doubt my boy Raymond might do it,” he said, with a slight acerbity.
“He appears to have the soul of a barber.” He was still smarting a little
from the profanation of his own sacred handiwork; one did not expect a
woman to understand how one felt about such things.
Who shall measure man’s ingratitude? Was Raymond ever congratulated upon
his own small part in that day’s playlet? Not at all. Behind the tomato
plants, in the cool of the evening, could be heard the lamentations of a
small boy; and behind the small boy—but I make an end.
In his little white bed, a subdued Raymond sobbed out repentance, in
long-drawn gusts. “Oh, mother dear, I didn’t mean to spoil father’s
lovely lady, I didn’t, I didn’t!” His mother said to herself, in fine
disdain of human decisions, “And this poor suffering child must not be
told what a lucky thing for him his badness really is; he must not find
out that his disgraceful act has put into our family coffers enough to
earn him his new pony!” She marvelled at the complexities, nay, the
complicities of parenthood. And Raymond, soon to be cast up safely into
dreamland on the ebbing tide of remorse, repeated, in a diminuendo of
infantine rhythms, “Mademoiselle ast me so very _suddingly_ something
I couldn’t know—I only wanted to see how the lady would look, with
whiskers—I made ’em just like Mr. Smith’s at the grocery-store—The clay
felt so curious under my fingers—”