THE YOUNG LADY IN BLUE

As my wife says, I am by nature unduly sensitive to beauty. You would

hardly expect this fault in a sculptor—you who perhaps judge all

sculptors from the war memorials you have seen. And with me, the worst

of it is, I am even more susceptible to color than to form. My long

acquaintance with form has put me on my guard against its wiles, and

my joy in beautiful shapes is forever enhanced by the free play of my

critical faculty. But in the presence of lovely color, I am unarmed,

weak-kneed. All I can do is to take pleasure in it, for I do not know

enough about it to be critical, in any satisfying way. This explains why

I fell, and fell far, for the young lady in blue. I admit that I would

not have done for Senator Bullwinkle just what I did for her.

Yet, when I first saw the young lady, she was not in blue, if you forget

for a moment her forget-me-not eyes. She was in deepest black, and, I

have reason to believe, the most expensive and fashionable black to be

had in New York. Gigi Arcangelo, my seldom-sinning super-assistant,

broke all the rules of the studio when he let her in, that bright May

afternoon. Gigi knew perfectly well that after a vexatious sitting from

Senator Bullwinkle (who, in order to keep awake while posing, always

had his speeches of a decade ago read aloud to him by my wife) I would

be in no mood for trifling with mere beauty. Gigi knew that I needed

three hours of uninterrupted work on my head of Christ, before I could

well show it to an enlightened Bishop; he knew that I was behind with my

Iowa figures; he knew that my bust of General Daly ought to have been

finished, boxed, and shipped a month before; he knew that my big clay

relief of the Spanker-Sampson children had developed a crack across the

nose of the middle boy, making him look more cross-eyed than he really

was, so that his likeness was wholly unfit for the inspection of a fond

and fabulously rich Middle-Western aunt, due to arrive on the Wednesday.

In short, Gigi knew that I was counting on this priceless afternoon, of

all the afternoons of my life, to justify, yes, to glorify, my career as

an artist. And to think that at such a time as this, he could show in

that girl, simply because, as he afterward explained, to do otherwise

would have been, for him, _impossibile_, she was _si bella, bella_! Gigi

shared my weakness, you observe; he too was pledged to beauty.

At arm’s length, he pushed up her card to me as I stood on my high

ladder. The name was a long one, beginning with _C_ and ending in

_en_—Chittenden, of course. I waved away the name and would have had

Gigi do likewise by the owner. Too late! She was already inside the

door. Grudgingly enough, I climbed down from my head of Christ, well

resolved to make short shrift of the girl and all her works. But even

before I reached the ground, I was somewhat disarmed, because, clad

wholly in black as she was, with the heavenly young radiance of her eyes

merging softly into the faint rosy radiance of her uplifted face and the

shadowed golden radiance of her hair, while the three radiances together

were enclosed within the black-rimmed, transparent circle of her veiled

hat, she was beyond any mortal doubt an engaging sight. I caught myself

saying, under my breath, “Oh, happy hat!” This struck me at the time

as an asinine remark, even when privately made, and I ascribed it to

the spring season. Looking back, I see that the observation was quite

correct. In reality, the girl was just a complex of radiances, bounded

by black; sweet and twenty, and in mourning.

Walking respectfully behind this glorious sad young person was a footman

who failed to supply the contrast of usefulness to beauty. He was not

even carrying the white oblong box which was evidently one of the

properties of this ill-timed visit. I saw with relief that it was too

narrow to contain a death-mask. Miss Chittenden held this box between

her hands as if it were a very precious thing; a fold of her veil had

been laid reverently around its corners. In her unconsciousness of self

and in her absorption in the business that occupied her, she seemed to

me a figure both sculptural and symbolic. Turned into stone, she would

have been a Pandora on an antique vase, or rather a Saint Cunegonde or

Saint Scholastica weathering the centuries on some mediæval portal. All

her motions had a kind of free and classic largeness mingled with their

high-heeled modernness; yet her attitude toward that box was, as I told

myself, purest Gothic.

As we undid the box together, Miss Chittenden explained that ever since

she had seen my statuette of a Dancer in the new Museum in her home town,

more than a year ago, she had longed above all things to possess a piece

of marble from my chisel, my own chisel; “the personal touch, you know!”

So (and here the forget-me-not eyes became more misty and the young voice

more vibrant) when her mother died, in April, she had had a cast made

from her mother’s hand, which to her was the most beautiful thing in the

world; and she hoped, oh, so much, that I would be willing to copy it for

her in marble. Done in the way I would do it, she was good enough to say,

it would be something really living—something she could have and love

forever and ever.

My dismay was complete. Indeed, copying plaster casts in marble was

not at all in my line. Right or wrong, I felt myself capable of higher

things. Apparently this Miss Chittenden was not only classic, mediæval,

and modern, but also quite Victorian, all in the same breath. For surely

it was a preposterous Victorian idea of hers to want a marble hand! As we

drew the cast from its wrappings, its fragile beauty moved me, I confess;

but I steeled myself, steadfastly considering how on earth, without

hurting the girl’s feelings, I could make her understand my point of view.

“The hand is perfection itself,” said I, in all honesty. “And,” I added,

glancing at her own hand, from which she had removed her ugly black

glove, the better to handle the cast, “it is very like your own, in

construction; I mean—”

“You mean my hand is built like hers, but it’s not so pretty—”

“Not so small, certainly!” I wondered whether this might vex her a bit,

on her Victorian side. But no, she seemed rather pleased than otherwise.

“I’m three inches taller than mother was,” she observed, cheerily. “Her

size hand wouldn’t have looked at all well, on me.”

Really this girl had some sense. Besides, she was quick to divine that

the commission she was offering me was not precisely attractive to me.

She seemed to search for the cause.

“You know,” she said, eagerly, “I wouldn’t want to hamper you in your

imagination! Oh, no, not that! I wouldn’t dream of asking you to copy

the cast just as it is. It would be all right if you put in a Bible

or something under the hand, and some lace around the wrist, or some

knitting-work and knitting-needles sticking out from the book. Mother

often left her knitting at a favorite passage, so that when I came to put

away her work at night, as I always did, I might guess what text it was

that interested her. We made a regular game of it. And” (here she flushed

and hesitated) “I’m perfectly willing and able to pay the going price for

any extras you put in. Only, I don’t really know much about such things.”

Her smile was wistful, rather than embarrassed; but in an instant, it had

widened into a boyish and wholly fascinating grin. “I don’t know whether

it shows on me or not, but this is the first time I’ve ever been East.

I suppose I’m not so—sophisticated and so on—as if I’d had a genuine

Eastern education, as mother had. Oh, but you don’t know what it is to

have first a Missouri uncle and then a Fifth Avenue aunt protecting you

to death, every step you take! I might have asked Auntie all about this

kind of thing, of course. She has lived in New York always, and knows the

ropes. You see, I’m staying with her until I go abroad in June. But, I

just didn’t want to talk with her about it. I’m my own mistress, now! The

moment I saw that Dancer of yours, I said to myself, ‘When I come into my

own money, I shall have that man carve a piece of marble for me, and do

something to elevate American art!’ And now the time is come.”

What I ought to have said then was this: “My dear young lady, if you

really want to advance your country’s art (and very laudable it is on

your part!) and if you insist that your heart’s desire is to be carried

out in marble, by my chisel, as you put it, why in the name of all that’s

young and gay and jubilant don’t you ask me to do you a dancer, or a

fountain figure, or a nymph, or a faun, or even a mantelpiece, with some

joyous caryatids?” But I didn’t say anything of the kind. Besides, a

horrid thought came to me that perhaps she might not understand caryatid,

or might get the word confused with hermaphrodite, as I have observed

that tourists returning from Italian galleries sometimes do, even when

duly instructed. Indeed, the forget-me-not eyes rested so lovingly on the

plaster cast that I hadn’t the heart to be coldly frank with her, and to

tell her that in a few years the marble hand she now wanted might seem

an encumbrance; something that for old sake’s sake she couldn’t bear to

tuck away in the attic, and yet something that one really couldn’t, if

one kept up with the times, put in a glass case on a library shelf, or on

one’s own dressing-table. Some of our sculptors might have managed it.

I can imagine that brute of a Schneider, for example, telling her that

there was nothing in it for her; that a “marple hant would be too pig

for a baber-wade, and too liddle for a lawn-tecoration.” He would be able

to suggest that the proper move for her to make would be to build a fine

large monument to her mother, with the hand “joost as a veature.” But

since I’m not Schneider, all I could say was, “This cast is beautiful,

indeed, but aren’t you afraid that when translated into marble, it will

no longer seem so lovely and so living to you?”

“Ah, but,” persisted the girl, “the marble of it is part of all I want!

All I want is mother’s hand, done by your hand.” She blushed, and so did

I.

“It’s very kind of you to want my work,” I stammered. “Really, it makes

me feel awfully grateful, and humble, too! But do you realize that very

few of our sculptors carve in marble the things they model in clay? The

custom is, to let some carver, generally an Italian, do most if not all

of the marble-carving, just as it’s the custom to have a bronze foundry

cast our bronze statues. You see,” I went on, warming to my task of

educating this bright being, “things are different now from what they

were in Cellini’s time, or Michael Angelo’s. In Renaissance days, a

sculptor could do the whole job from start to finish, if he wanted to,

but to-day, he can’t, and doesn’t want to. He saves himself for what

he fondly thinks is the imaginative and intellectual part. He models

in clay, of course, but there’s a lot besides that. There’s building

armatures, and making plaster casts, and so on; and he generally lets

Gigi do it.”

We glanced at Gigi, who, for the second time that afternoon, was sinning.

Gigi had not retired to his customary labors behind the burlap curtain,

but was standing near us, carving at a bit of plaster medallion,

ostensibly turning it this way and that to get a better light on it, but

in reality feasting his Latin eyes on Miss Chittenden’s beauty. And then

Gigi, usually a silent soul, did a strange thing. He began to talk, very

eagerly.

“The hand of the Signorina’s mother is truly beautiful.” (The Signorina

giggled, and then was shocked by her own levity. She told me afterward

that she couldn’t help laughing; she had felt as if Gigi were pouring

out a page from a foreign-language grammar all over her.) “In marble,”

continued Gigi, “the marble that grows in my part of the world, how very

fine it would be! I myself could well begin it, and the Signor could

finish it. You have seen the art of the Signor! Many sculptors cannot do

what the Signor can. It is the _morbidezza_! The others do not attain it.”

Miss Chittenden flashed upon Gigi a smile more dazzling than any she had

yet given to me. “Now as I understand it,” she cried, “he could rough

out your design and do the heavy work on it, and then you could take the

marble and finish it up, and give it the more—what-do-you-call-it?”

We all three laughed aloud at that, and while I was trying to explain to

the girl, as tactfully as possible, that after she had been abroad and

seen the works of art in many countries, she might not care for a marble

hand on a book, even with lace at the wrist, and with knitting-needles

sticking out of the book, Gigi returned to his den, from which one then

heard the sound of hard labor. I was finding it rather difficult to

convince Miss Chittenden that she was asking for what was obsolete, from

the world’s point of view, and impossible, from mine. I tried to dissuade

her by telling her that it would be only a fragment. With astounding

quickness she replied, “Oh, but that wouldn’t matter, would it? Lots

of those old part-gods in the Museum are only fragments, and yet the

teachers in the Art Department are always praising them up, just the

same!”

Before I could frame an answer to that, Gigi emerged, pushing before

him a little stand on which was a block of fine pink marble which I had

obtained years before, in peculiar circumstances. It was a piece I had

long been guarding for some future master-work of mine—something that

was to be absolutely original, yet wholly classic; one has such dreams.

And here was Gigi showing it to that girl! His admiration for her had

become so boundless that he opened up his heart to her in all the three

languages he could use. If the Signorina would deign, he would explain

to Mademoiselle that this was a little, little block of marble which his

own _cognato_ had stolen one night (knowing it to be a good action) from

the workshop of the marvellous Duomo which she herself would see when she

saw the most beautiful cathedral in all Italy! And his brother-in-law

had sold it to a great sculptor who was visiting Italy at that time, but

of course did not know it was stolen. (Gigi was lying a little, but his

lying blends so agreeably with his candor that I myself cannot always

distinguish one from the other.)

I saw that the blue-eyed girl was thoroughly enjoying Gigi. Though this

was before the day of the so-called Greenwich Village, I am sure that

Miss Chittenden thought that now at last, freed alike from her Missouri

uncle and her Fifth Avenue aunt, she was seeing Bohemia; perfectly

respectably too. If only a celebrated model or two had strayed in, her

happiness would have been complete. As it was, she garnered up Gigi’s

sayings with the same single-hearted attention she had given to my own.

He explained, in his party-colored way of speech, that this little

block was marvellously fine in grain; it was free from dark streaks,

too—he would stake the tomb of his fathers on that!—while its crowning

exquisiteness lay in its color, a pale surpassing pink as of earliest

dawn over Tuscany. There was no other marble in the world quite like it.

That was why his _cognato_ had been _obliged_ to steal it, for the sake

of art. If you had any taste at all, any love for the beautiful, you

would call it using, not stealing! And again, behold! While it was too

small for a head (except a _bambino’s_ head, and it was a little too long

for that, unless you wasted a great deal, and certainly it was more of a

sin to waste such marble than to steal it), it was just exactly the right

size for the dear hand of the Signorina’s mother, lying upon the open

book, or even on the closed book, with the knitting-needles protruding;

difficult, of course, but where there’s a wish, there’s a road—

I stared astounded at Gigi. In all the ten years he had worked for me, I

had never heard from him so many words at once. I could not dam the flood.

“_Ah, oui_,” he pursued, “_certamente_ Mademoiselle could have the lace

around the wrist, if she so wished, and—”

“No, Gigi,” I interposed firmly. “The lady _cannot_ have the lace. Not

_with_ the knitting-needles. At one or the other I draw the line.” Again,

we three laughed together. What was there about this dewy-eyed girl that

made us so natural and human? Was it the Missouri in her? Old Schneider

was from Missouri, but he never made me feel human. Was it her beauty?

Very likely, but at the time, I doubted it. One always _does_ doubt it,

at the time. The result was, as I have already confessed, I fell for the

girl in blue, as I was to call her in later days. I weakly told her that

if Gigi would rough out the hand and the book, in the pale pink marble, I

would be willing to finish it for her; yes, I added cynically, I would

put in all the _morbidezza_ the most exacting client could require. I

would charge her four hundred dollars for the completed work. It was a

high price, I told her. Others might do it for less; not I. And mind,

there were to be no knitting-needles and no lace, unless I should greatly

change my idea. She drooped visibly, not at the price, which seemed to

be of little moment to her, but at the loss of the homely details in

the work by which she hoped to elevate our art. To console her, I said

that I would probably design a bit of drapery to take the place of the

lace, but nothing fussy or obtrusive. I told her that she could have the

thing completed, on her return to New York, a year later. Just as she was

leaving the studio, to rouse the footman from his colored supplement in

the anteroom, where he had remained, doubtless under orders from Auntie,

I pulled myself together to contemplate the extent to which I had fallen.

Perhaps I could climb up again. Perhaps my high ideals in art were not

lost forever.

“Remember, Miss Chittenden,” said I, in what I hoped would be an

impressive manner, “remember this! If after you have visited galleries

and studios abroad, and seen the works of Rodin and Dampt and Donatello

and Bourdelle and Praxiteles and Maillol and a few others, remember, if

one year later, when you’ve had more observation of art, you should no

longer care to have this hand in marble, I for my part will call this

contract of ours null and void; and you may do the same.” It sounded

well, as I said it.

The blue-eyed one flashed back on me her friendly, all-conquering smile.

“I shall remember,” she said. “But you know, my name isn’t Chittenden,

at all. Never was, and never will be, I hope! In fact, I have other

plans—but no matter! You thought I was a chit, and so you called me

Chittenden—”

This bit of girlish reasoning struck me as being so straight from Sigmund

Freud that I was disconcerted. But she hastened to cover my confusion.

“It’s all right,” she laughed. “I didn’t want to take up your time by

correcting a perfectly reasonable mistake. And if you’d rather call me

Chittenden, pray do! But my name is really Clarenden, with Mariellen in

front. See!” She offered me another of her cards. Her face took on a look

of charming gravity as we shook hands. “Whatever happens,” she said, “I

know you will be very careful of the plaster cast. I know you understand

my feeling about it.”

The following April, Mariellen Clarenden wrote to me from Paris, to tell

me that I might expect her in my studio about the middle of May. She had

visited the Salon, she said, and had seen strange sights in the world of

art. Also, she had worked hard on her French; luckily, she added, she

had a good Missouri foundation. The closing sentence of her letter went

to my head a little. “_Mon Dieu_,” she wrote, “_Mon Dieu_, how great you

are—you and Auguste Rodin!” “_Mon Dieu_,” indeed! Was this girl becoming

sophisticated, like the others? Time would tell.

Early in the morning, on May 15th, I had a telephone message to the

effect that Miss Clarenden, according to promise, would revisit my studio

promptly at ten, if I would permit. As I have always been a collector

of coincidences, I noted with zest that May 15th was exactly one year

from the date of my absurd one-sided party-of-the-first-part contract

concerning the marble hand. I further noted, not without dismay, that

Senator Bullwinkle was to have his final sitting that very afternoon.

Still adding to my collection, I recalled that it had happened like that

the year before; Clarenden day had been Bullwinkle day, a day of mingled

sun and cloud.

Now that Bullwinkle bust had always been a vexation to my spirit,

partly because old Bullwinkle had so often played truant, instead of

giving me the necessary sittings. He was forever travelling about the

country for political purposes, or else attending the funerals of near

relatives. Sometimes I fancied that he would go to any lengths, no

matter how criminal, rather than face me from the sitter’s chair. The

commission, given to me by a group of Bullwinkle enthusiasts, was to be

handsomely paid, but was to be kept a profound secret from the world

until the finished bronze bust should be set in place as the crowning

ornament of the celebrated five-million-dollar Bullwinkle Building, at

that time under way. To me, there was something rather childish about

this pseudo-secrecy, openly kept up for nearly two years. But above

all, that bust bothered me because I myself had not yet mastered it.

As it stood there in the searching May light, I saw in its loose ends,

its uninteresting planes, its prosaic light-and-dark, its flabbiness

of brow and cheek, its dreary wastes of shirt bosom and lapel, only a

monument to my own incapacity to seize and reveal the characteristics

of my subject;—to tell in my clay all the news that was fit to print

about him, with just enough more to keep the spectator guessing. Lord,

how I had tried, and failed, to penetrate the Bullwinkle personality! At

first, I had privately laughed at the Senator as a ridiculous old card,

holding on to the present and yearning toward the future, but in reality,

living only on the past and its triumphs. Indeed, his middle years had

been a pageant of triumphs. Very soon, however, I found I was not getting

on with my work. The man worried me. I could not discover what there

was within him that had lifted him above the shoulders of the crowd.

I could not for the life of me isolate his own private germ of human

grandeur, and inoculate my clay with it. Yet I acknowledged grandeur in

him. It would be absurd to attribute to anything so blind as chance his

astounding command over human votes.

To be baffled by a Bullwinkle was a chastening lesson. I dreaded that

afternoon sitting. My wife was away, and there could be no readings from

the “Congressional Record.” What would that do to him? Would it bring

him out, or shut him in? To get a running start, I had pulled the bust

out into the fresh morning light, and like a dull child trying to find

his place in yesterday’s lesson, I was fumbling about on the pedestal,

the shirt-front, and the senatorial dewlaps, when a ring at my door and

voices in the anteroom warned me to slip a cover over this work of high

secrecy.

What a contrast to the various Bullwinkles of my career was the young

lady in blue, who now stood before me! This time, she was followed, not

by a mere footman, but by a young man wearing her colors in his tie and

his heart on his sleeve. There they were in their victorious springtide,

the suitor and the suited; for there could be no earthly doubt that

this young man was hers, and that the two were lovers forever. That was

evidently what was most of all in their minds, and I, for one, thought

they were right. Incredible as it would have seemed to me if I had not

been there, Miss Clarenden’s former radiancy was enhanced by her new

experiences, her bright garments. What an exquisite thrilling azure was

that of her veil as it fluttered against the discreet dark blue of her

costume! Maxfield Parrish should have been there to immortalize it. Yet I

did not regret his absence, at the time. There were all kinds of lovely

blue tones about her, and these tones in their very harmony conspired

together to make the blue of her eyes something beyond description

matchless and unforgettable. She was one of those girls who, whether they

put on a pinafore or a Paquin gown, manage to make mankind believe two

things: first, that they are more beautiful than ever, and next, that

what they have on does not look too expensive. There are a few such girls

left, I am told. The mere sight of her smoothed out my Bullwinkle worries.

She came to the point at once, taking advantage of a moment when her

cavalier’s manly attention was caught by the workings of an enlarging

machine in the corner; her Jack was an engineer, it appeared. She paused

an instant, then plunged in, somewhat breathlessly, as if she were not

quite sure of her ground.

“Jack and I,” she said,—“well, we think now that perhaps you were right

in what you told me a year ago. Yes, you were right! I was mistaken

when I thought I would be fully satisfied if I could have forever with

me the marble copy of mother’s hand, carved by your hand. Travel is so

broadening, isn’t it? And now, since I’ve seen all Italy and France”

(here she smiled widely at her own fatuity), “I’ve learned better, indeed

I have! And if you don’t mind, I’ll take away the plaster cast. I shall

want to keep it always, of course. But it’s nature, not art, that makes

me want to.”

I stood aghast. The girl was actually taking me at my word, and

repudiating the contract of yesteryear. What a change in a twelvemonth,

and, O Education, what crimes are committed in thy name! She saw me

looking about for her cast, and very gently begged me not to bother,

unless it was quite handy. Resisting an ironic impulse to tell her that

of course a plaster cast of a hand was always more or less handy, I

dusted off her confounded box, and gave it to her with what courtesy I

could muster. I remembered Gigi’s saying that to do otherwise would have

been _impossibile_, she was _si bella, bella_.

It chanced that not six feet away from the lady in blue, and behind a

little curtain adroitly arranged by Gigi, the marble hand was enshrined.

And strange as it will seem to you after all I have said, there was

something interesting about it, something that would compel your pleased

attention, even if you were an artist, or only a lover of art. Paul

Manship liked parts of it; and a painter friend of mine said—but no

matter about that now. Gigi had poured his whole Mediterranean soul into

his part of the work, and I had designed, as best I could, the open book

and the drapery. To be candid, I had taken real pleasure in finishing

the marble, with the desired _morbidezza_. I had enjoyed every stroke I

had given to that most beautiful stone, for Gigi had kept my tools in

exquisite condition all the time. He seemed to know just how I wanted

every tool to feel in my hand when I was modelling the marble. I longed

to show the girl what we had done for her. But how could I do that, after

all I had said to her, a year ago, and all she had said to me, to-day?

Was there not a certain sprightly finality in her remarks? With decision,

she took the box from my hands and entrusted it to her Jack.

“_Au voir_,” she sang to me, over her shoulder. “_Au plaisir de vous

voir!_ But I shall come again, if I may. Very soon, _n’est-ce-pas_?” The

good Missouri foundation was quite evident in her farewell address.

Naturally, I was nonplussed. Think of it, I, a rising—yes, you might say,

an arrived—young sculptor, in Manhattan, and she, a chit of a Chittenden

from Missouri! But my chagrin was as nothing to Gigi’s. For of course

I had not meant to pocket that money myself, just for a few hours’

pleasant work on a bit of pink marble. I was intending it as a sort of

well-earned present for Gigi, who has, you must know, a rather large

flock of kids to be shepherded up to the highest pastures of our American

democracy. There was one little fellow named Mario, the most gifted of

all, and he had been hard hit by infantile paralysis; we were planning

to use this money for his special education in art. And now the chit had

left us planted there, with nothing but a raw _n’est-ce-pas_ for our

pains. It served me right, I admit. But what of Gigi, and the lad Mario?

Why, Mario could model you a better rabbit out of yesterday’s chewing-gum

than Schneider could ever evolve from the fairest block of marble in

Milan Cathedral. That girl had talked of elevating American art; and here

she was, actively stifling American genius. I could not meet Gigi’s eye.

Perhaps, after all, there was no great contrast between the young lady in

blue and the Senator, except on the surface. The world was probably full

of chits and Bullwinkles.

That afternoon, the dreaded sitting began badly. The Senator missed my

wife and her ministrations. He was writing his memoirs, and wanted to

refresh his memory about his third tariff speech. His secretary was no

good as a reader, he complained, but my wife had seemed to have some

sense about her. He couldn’t understand why a woman of sense should want

to go gallivanting. His manner implied that it was wholly my fault that

my wife should prefer Bar Harbor realities to Little Rock recollections.

Half-peevishly and half-humorously, he writhed about in his chair, like

a bad little boy grown old. He did not like the cigar he had brought,

and scorned the best I could offer. He drove me to despair by presenting

square front view when I needed to verify dewlaps in profile; he brushed

off imaginary flies from his Roman nose, just as if my studying his nose

had made it itch. He attempted every grotesque perversity in the sitter’s

calendar, and even invented some original bedevilments of his own. He

turned his attention to my rendering of the details of his attire,

telling me that he had always _tried_ to tie his tie as tight as he could

get it, and that if I didn’t mind (indeed, I did mind!) he wanted to have

that third button of his waistcoat fastened up, if the dam’ thing was to

go down to posterity in imperishable bronze. Alas, my sitter was eluding

me again. His reality as a human being was hidden from me in a fog of

momentary misconduct.

Suddenly the Senator straightened. He was looking toward the corner where

a stricken Gigi was still hovering about our rejected collaborative

masterpiece, and contemplating the wreck of Mario’s future. “Where on

God’s footstool did you get that hand?” shouted the Senator, the big

W-shaped vein on his left temple swelling in his excitement.

“Gigi and I made it,” I replied, calmly accepting the fact that either

the Senator or I had at last gone crazy under the strain of the

Bullwinkle bust. The man had never before shown a spark of any interest

whatsoever in my works, whether clay or plaster, bronze or marble. I

wondered whether a strait-jacket would have been a good thing to include

in my studio equipment, but I was not quite sure which one of us needed

it the more, so bewildered was I by the change that had seized on the

Senator. He bounded from his chair, snatching the ground, one might say,

from under Gigi’s feet.

“That hand,” bellowed Mr. Bullwinkle, shaking his forefinger at me as

if I were his political opponent, “that hand is a fine thing! I tell

you, it’s a great thing! It’s the best thing you’ve got in your whole

shooting-gallery, and don’t you start in to deny it! I’d rather have

that one piece of alabaster marble than the whole of Westminster Abbey!”

To my amazement, the Senator stood at bay over the marble, as if it

were a prize to be defended against all comers. He fairly flamed with

intensity. I never saw a man more alive, more tingling with a sense of

being alive. For the first time, I could learn, from my own eyes and not

from historic hearsay, something of his power over his fellow-men. His

eyes looked large, his jowls turned taut, his upstanding hair, which

I had thought almost ridiculous, became sublime. He seemed a creature

expressly framed for the applause of listening senates. In a twinkling,

and when I least expected it, I saw more of the real man than I had found

out in all my passionate searching during those frustrate sittings. No

doubt, my searching had helped toward my present illuminated vision;

that vision was but the culmination, the happy ending, of my quest. Like

Childe Roland, I had been expecting too much, perhaps, from my Dark

Tower. What a fool I had been to suppose that the Senator’s germ of

greatness lay in some noble difference between himself and others! Why,

it was plain as day that his greatness lay, not in his difference from

the rest of the world, oh, no, not that; his greatness was mainly in his

rich, happy, sympathetic commonness. He was not so much a man above men,

as a man among men. My mistake was, I had been trying to win the Senator;

I should have let him try to win me, according to his bent and usage. So

I sprang back to my modelling, and let him be himself. It did not matter

to me, now, that he was striding, gesticulating, quivering; at heart, I

have always believed, with George de Forest Brush, that a model on the

move, and really alive, is far better to work from than one sitting still

as a sod.

And now, as I studied my man anew, I perceived all at once that a

dozen good dominating strokes rightly placed on my clay could turn it

from a mess to a masterpiece. I became two persons, as every artist

at times must. Each was sharply awake. One of these two was modelling

for dear life on that portrait, smiting the thing now here, now there;

unhasting, unresting; gathering up rich handfuls of all the released

individuality of greatness that I now saw radiating from a transfigured

Senatorial countenance, and compressing that individuality into clay

for the plaster-moulder’s sacrifice and the bronze-founder’s furnace.

The other man in me was listening amiably to a Bullwinkle speech of

self-revelation. I suppose that under my skin there was even a third

person, ironically reminding me that it was never _my_ hand that had

touched the button to switch all this new light on a stale matter. It was

another hand, a lady’s hand, a marble hand, too; and a hand rejected by

a chit. Such reminders drive a man to humility, even while he is winning

the game. For I _was_ winning; there could be no doubt of that, now.

“You young artist fellers,” the Senator was saying, vehemently, “of

course you all think of me as a tough old politician. So I am, and so I

want to be! But the mistake you make is, thinking I’m nothing else. That

young Mather that painted me was just the same. He made a swell portrait

of me, of course, red plush curtain and all;—I know enough not to deny

that. But he wasn’t so much interested in me as he was in his way of

painting me. And it shows in his work, sticks out all over!”

I took to heart this luminous bit of art-criticism while the Senator ran

on. “And I can tell you, young man, that this hand carries me back in

a way you don’t dream of. You don’t even guess at the sort of feeling

I have when I look at it and touch it! You’re incapable of knowing!

You’re not old enough or wise enough or kind enough, perhaps! You’re too

college-sure in your own way of feeling to care a continental about what

_I_ feel!”

I could not help seeing that some strong emotion had visited his heart.

But I thought he’d like it best if I didn’t say much; besides, I had my

work to do. The Bullwinkle Building must not lack its crowning touch

through any failure of mine to seize the supreme moment. So I calmly

swept my big tool alongside of the Senator’s clay face, half-erasing a

thousand fussy unnecessary markings from its map. My erstwhile sitter was

still hovering excitedly over the marble. He had nothing whatever to say

about _morbidezza_.

“Look here,” he exclaimed, turning upon me with a gesture of real

dignity, “you probably don’t see, or imagine you see, any resemblance

between this great paw of mine and that lovely lady’s hand! No, I

wouldn’t expect you to!”

Now I had often observed that the Senator’s hand was still handsome and

energetic. An unusual hand, I had thought, for a politician. It was

uninvaded either by chalky deposit on the knuckles, or fatty increment on

the fingers, or even by swollen veins on the back. Hence I was glad to

admit the likeness he saw; and weighing my words, while I laid in a good

strong dark under a resounding lock of hair he had just tossed up from

his forehead, I congratulated him on his artistic discernment. He shook

off the compliment with a growl, though I know he liked it.

“But what I want to know is,” he went on, “how the deuce did _you_ happen

to make this lovely thing? Is it for sale? What price, f.o.b., young

feller, what price?”

Gigi leaked out from his burlap. I could feel his eyes imploring me, for

Mario’s sake, to play my part as a man!

The Senator noted my hesitation. “Isn’t it for sale?”

“Upon my word,” I replied, intent on fixing the Bullwinkle nostril for

posterity, “I hardly know whether it’s for sale or not.” For the moment

I didn’t care, a happy issue out of the Bullwinkle bust being from every

point of view more important to me, just then, than all the marble hands

from here to Genoa.

“With the good help of Gigi here, I made the thing for a lady, who

doesn’t seem to want it, now it’s done. She’s been to Europe since she

ordered it, and she’s gotten herself educated, so she thinks, to higher

forms of art.” Perhaps I spoke a trifle bitterly.

“What’s her fool name?” The Senator was still enkindled. I was surprised

to see with what tenderness he was passing his fingers over the surface

of that marble;—and he shouting the while as if we were all at a caucus!

“Her name?” I hesitated, even then desiring to protect the name of

beauty, and to pardon the grotesque shabbiness of that girl’s act in

taking me at my word. “Let’s see. Oh, it was a Miss Chittenden, as I

remember it. Just a chit from Missouri.”

“Chittenden,” returned the Senator, with a puzzled air, “Chittenden?”

Then a great light broke upon him. “Chittenden nothing! It’s Clarenden,

that’s what it is. And if she told you anything else, she’s sailing under

false pretences. Just like her, too!”

“No, indeed,” I interposed, warmly, “I’m sure she wouldn’t do that—there

must be something she’d draw the line at. Come to think of it, Clarenden

_was_ the name she gave.”

“A long young dame,” pursued Bullwinkle, “blue eyes, you know, and a way

with her? Mariellen Clarenden?”

I nodded. The Senator leaped in triumph. He turned upon me with the

friendliest smile in the world. “What were you charging her?”

“Four hundred dollars. And I don’t sell it for a cent less to anybody.”

“Give you five hundred! Done!” The Senator snatched a checkbook and a

fountain pen from the region of that waistcoat button we had lately

wrangled over. I had no idea his motions could be so swift and so

majestic. Perhaps I might have stayed his hand, in some effete idea of

ethics, or professional etiquette; but Gigi’s inexorable eye was on me,

dangling Mario before my hesitating soul. I compromised by taking the

check, with vague thankfulness, and laying it on the table. I told myself

I would think it over. It might be that five hundred dollars was not too

much for a master-work, preferred above all Westminster Abbey.

“You wonder at me,” the Senator went on, with a guffaw that was like a

sob. “Well, then, sit up and wonder all you like. Sometimes I wonder

at myself. This hand—” he stroked the marble with the same sort of

reverence the girl had shown about that plaster cast. “Oh, hang it, boy,

we’re all human, even if you are studio-bred-and-broke, God help you,

and I’m from Missouri! Listen, kid. I had a sister, a twin sister. A

smart Aleck like you would probably say it sounds like opera-buff, or a

dime novel, but it’s just plain fact, right out of my own life. And I

was fonder of that girl than of any other human being that ever lived.

This necktie you’ve been fussing over because it’s too tight and hard,

you said;—well, it’s black, for her. And black _is_ tight and hard,

sometimes. Ah, well!” The Senator resolutely put away sadness, and again

stretched out his own fine capable hand.

“My sister had the prettiest little hand in the county. County! Her hand

was known all over the State, and many a young newspaper feller touched

it—on paper—in the old days. Foot, too!” He meditated a moment on his own

very good-looking shoes. “After she married Clarenden, the big railroad

man, we saw less of each other, of course, but we were chums to the last.

And the instant my eye lit on this lovely work, this masterpiece, though

I say it that shouldn’t, I knew there was something in it for me! I

didn’t quite know what, of course, until I found out that Mariellen was

mixed up in it, and then ’twas clear as day. Had you copy a plaster cast,

didn’t she?” He chuckled with pleasure in his perspicacity. “We Senators

know all about plaster casts and death-masks and that sort of thing.

Unless we want to miss a trick, we have ’em done to us, as soon as the

time comes. But what I don’t understand is why Mariellen got cold feet!

She’s a girl of some sense, I tell you, or was, until she got a hankering

for New York, and what she calls the higher things in art!”

The Senator’s last words mimicked to perfection both the girl and myself.

It was that kind of mimicry which creates good understanding, and leaves

a smile, not a sting. Oh, I could see how he, like the girl, captivated

mankind!

“Even now,” he continued, “she’s my favorite of the whole bunch, and

they’ve all of ’em got plenty of the Bullwinkle pep. Some face, that

girl, hey? Pretty ain’t the word!”

No, it wasn’t the word. But I couldn’t give any one word that would

really cover the case, I admitted.

“Mariellen gets the better of everybody. She even puts it over on a smart

artist like you. I’d like to take her across my knee! And before I’ve

finished with her, I shall make her feel like thirty cents about this

job. Gave the marble heart to my marble hand, did she? She’ll be wishing

she kept it, the moment she sees I’ve got it. But mark my words, it’ll

never be hers, until after I’ve taken the Big Subway for good and for

all. And if she tries to bamboozle me out of what I’ve bought and paid

for, I’ll—”

A peal of the bell and voices in the anteroom caused the speaker to

suspend sentence, and I slipped out to find, in eager converse with

Gigi, the young person from Missouri. Was the sky raining coincidences,

that day? With a gesture absurdly like her uncle’s, she was drawing from

that much-embroidered handbag of hers a checkbook not unlike his own

in general effect. Had Shakespeare been there, he would have indited a

sonnet to the checkbook of beauty, and its likeness to that of brains and

power.

“Of course,” said the young lady, giving me at once her charming smile

and her signed check, “I knew that _you_ knew, from what I said when

I went away from here this morning, that I meant to come back just as

soon as I could, to deliver the goods, and to get the goods.” What I

had seen of her uncle helped me to recognize a genuine emotion hiding

behind the flippancy of her words. I freely confess that if my wife or

my sister had said or done just what Miss Clarenden did, I would have

found it preposterous, alarming, in bad taste. But that girl had some

strange power to make one see at once that what she did was simple and

natural; the best thing in the circumstances, and therefore not foolish

or ill-bred.

“I know you’ll understand, the moment I explain: I’ve always said to

myself that the man who carved that Dancer would understand a lot. Well,

when I came here this morning, I simply couldn’t shake Jack. He stuck to

my skirts like a burr. You know we’re to be married in the autumn.” The

pink roses in her cheeks flamed into American Beauties for an instant,

and then became themselves again, in a way that I’ve often wished might

be managed on the stage.

“Jack has nothing in the world but what he earns. To be sure, he earns a

lot, being—no, no, not a plumber, but a very, very civil engineer.” Her

time-worn jests seemed dewy-fresh as they fell from her lips. Witty as

well as beautiful, I thought. Oh, I admit my weakness!

Miss Clarenden continued her explanation. “Very likely, though, we shall

have to economize, at first. And I didn’t want Jack to see me spend four

hundred dollars right off bang, the very day after we landed, even for

something I long for as I do for that marble hand; real art, too. You

see, Jack got awfully gloomy over that last dozen pairs of gloves I got

at the Bon Marché, the day before we sailed. Said he feared that at first

he couldn’t give me all I’d been accustomed to, and so on. And, honestly,

I was afraid that he’d be doing a bit of mental arithmetic right here in

your studio, and doing it wrong! Saying to himself that if twenty-four

kid gloves cost a hundred francs, why should one marble hand cost so many

hundred dollars, or something like that!” I saw that the tears were very

near those laughing eyes of hers, but she went bravely on. “Jack doesn’t

know much about art yet, but I’m going to explain it all to him, the

_morbidezza_ and everything. And I’m just crazy to see what you’ve done

for me.”

Her voice with its smiles and tears floated in to Senator Bullwinkle as I

led her toward the work of her hope. The marble was fairly heavy, but the

Senator was more than fairly strong, and in my absence, he had gathered

it up between his hands, and had sat down to muse upon it. In fact,

it lay across his knees, just where he had said he would like to take

Mariellen. I don’t know how, but he presently succeeded in making a place

for both. I think Mariellen helped him.

Of course it was the Senator who kept the masterpiece, the buccaneer in

him prizing it all the more when he learned from a grateful Gigi the

origin of the raw material. He tells me he doesn’t care a whoop whether

the work elevates American art or not; it elevates him. Mariellen admits

it’s better so, since the lad Mario is the gainer by the one hundred

dollars with which the Senator had built up the price. To clinch the

matter, she wanted, for Mario’s sake, to add her own check to her

uncle’s, her very first glance at that boy’s amazing sculpture in various

lowly substances having convinced her of the wisdom of such a step. But I

prevailed upon her to wait a year, at least; and that part does not come

into this tale, at all.

“Ah, well, there are more ways than one to elevate art, or anything else.

It’s up to Mario, now,” blithely remarked the young lady in blue.

“C’EST UNE TAUPE”

I feel sure that everybody, at least everybody who _is_ anybody, really

knows, in the bottom of his heart, just what a _taupe_ is. But in case

there should be any person with such weighty world affairs on his mind

that he could not possibly move them around to discover hidden among

them an insignificant matter like a _taupe_, I will say that a _taupe_

is a small furry thing that burrows in the ground. By no means an

unfashionable creature, I assure you! Its color is always modish. Its

skins, when collected by hundreds and thousands, go to make up what I am

informed are “among the most authoritative fur garments of the coming

season.” In short, a _taupe_ is a mole, all told.

Also, I am reasonably certain that most of us, if we should stop to

consider the subject, would understand perfectly the nature of a

_limace_. A slimy, limy _limace_! Its very name tells its story. It is

not exactly one of the “slithy toves” of the old song, but they may all

have had similar ancestors. And if you have guessed that a _limace_ is

a slug, poor thing,—a big slug, no more and no less,—you are entirely

right. So there you have the two characters, the mole, the slug; the

furry, fashionable _taupe_, the slippery yet sticky _limace_.

In the Bois de Meudon, on the most beautiful summer morning in the world,

a _limace_ was lying curled up like a thick brown half-moon on a bright

green leaf. In its sluggish way, it was coquetting with the sunbeams. The

_limace_ was in love with life, and at peace with all the earth. So were

the little Parisians who had come out from the city to make holiday. At

first there were not many of them; only M. Petitpot, the kind, red-eyed

mason of the rue Delambre; Mme. Petitpot with the baby, in his straw hat

built like a life-preserver; the good grandmother, not ashamed of her

white cap; and the boy Pierre Petitpot, in his newest black apron. There

were also the two doubly-opening baskets for the luncheon. M. Petitpot

himself carried the basket that had the bread and the salad, with the

two bottles of red wine slanted in, one at each end. But the grandmother

kept fast hold of the smaller basket, because that one contained a truly

magnificent roasted chicken, wrapped in a napkin. What an aroma, my

friends! A _déjeuner sur l’herbe_ was contemplated. Messrs. Manet and

Monet are not the only artists of the _déjeuner sur l’herbe_.

Presently other Parisians came, from various quarters of the city, and

from various businesses. All were seeking a little Sunday happiness in

the open. They were not really familiar with the secrets of the wood, as

you shall see. But they had curiosity and discernment, and these two,

keeping together, will go far toward finding knowledge. Unlike English

people, these French persons chatted with each other, without mistrust.

Also, they revealed the beauties of nature to each other. How dazzling

and glorious were the clouds that day! The grocer’s lady pointed out to

Mme. Petitpot that the good God must surely possess a giant egg-whip, to

be able to produce a _méringue_ as colossal and light as those masses of

cloud over there! And Mme. Petitpot had replied that eggs were better and

cheaper, now that it was June, but that her own egg-beater had a kink in

it, so that she was about to buy another.

Black-aproned Pierre was a pale bright-eyed child with a bulging

forehead, and hands that looked as if they wanted to play the piano or

something. Easy to see that he was predestined for the paths of learning.

_Per aspera ad astra_; the latter for Pierre, the former for his

parents. Even for this one holiday, they had not been able to separate

him from his new “Petit Atlas du Monde”; he hugged it so tightly that the

crimson cover had already stained his hands, freshly washed that very

morning. His delighted glance skipped like a bird from tree to bush. He

nodded his head in smiling ecstasy when the grocer’s lady expressed that

airy fantasy of hers as to the clouds.

But it was one of the later comers, a pink-sashed little girl from the

Montrouge quarter, who first saw the _limace_, and shouted aloud in

joyous fright. “What a droll of a beast! I beg of thee, Mamma, regard me

that!”

All the world pressed forward to inspect the _limace_. There were some

who even had the hardihood to touch the creature with little sticks.

“Hold, hold, my infant! _Faut pas la toucher!_ Perhaps it is a poisonous

one, _hein_? Demand of thy papa whether it is envenomed.”

By now, quite a little crowd had gathered. One would say, amateurs in

_limaçonnerie_! Papa, not knowing in the least whether it was envenomed

or otherwise, preferred not to make any statement before the other

Parisians, who, if the truth were discovered, were no better informed

than he himself as to the nature of the thing there. Strange as it may

seem, those Parisians were really less wise about the _limace_ than you

and I are, to-day! For not one of them really knew that all of them were

looking at a _limace_. But they one and all wanted to talk about it,

solo, fugue, and chorus; and they did not know how best to mention it.

Now it is absurd to keep on calling a thing _la chose_. So at last some

one asked aloud, as all had been asking within, “What is it that that is,

that that?”

Ah, if only M. J. Henri Fabre had been there, M. Fabre, the “insects’

Homer”! But M. Fabre was far away, and no one answered for him. There

was a pause. Parisians hate a pause. The day had begun so joyous, and

there they all were, pausing. Insupportable! A pretty lady with a

primrose-colored parasol said that if it were a serpent, now, she would

be able to tell you. She felt herself something of a connoisseur in

serpents; there had been a serpent at the last _pique-nique_ she had

attended. The gentleman on whose arm she was leaning said, with emotion,

“Ah, I can well believe that, Mademoiselle!” Then everybody laughed

a merry “_Hé, hé!_” But all this graceful _badinage_ brought them no

nearer to knowledge. Hence those who really thirsted for knowledge were

glad when the white-capped grandmother Petitpot, with proud beady eyes,

pushed forward pale little Pierre with his bulging forehead. In fine, our

Pierre, a child well instructed, could inform those ladies.

Appalling yet entrancing moment for black-aproned Pierre! He clasped his

thin little Atlas of the World against his stomach, and silently prayed

for knowledge to descend upon him from on high. Then he looked earnestly

down on the _limace_, to put himself _en rapport_ with the creature in

her underworld life.

A touch of rose pink bloomed a moment on his sallow cheek. “I think,” he

said, in his eager fluty voice of a born “teacher’s favorite,” “I think,

yes, I believe well!—_c’est une taupe_.” The very utterance of his faith

created in him a faith more abundant. He nodded his head sagely, even

boldly. “_Ah, oui, Madame, sans doute, c’est une taupe._”

Swiftly the words of the young scholar penetrated all the little groups

of Parisians. _Une taupe!_ Lady and gentleman, girl and boy, mason and

grocer, one after the other took up that goodly revelation. “_C’est une

taupe!_” Some repeated it a little sadly, as if it were a mistake, or

at least an indelicacy, on the part of the _taupe_ not to have been

something else. Others repeated it with exquisite gayety, as if a _taupe_

were the one object of joy the world had waited for, until then. Still

others repeated it without passion and without surprise, as if a _taupe_

were no more than should have been expected at such a time. But in one

way or another, they all repeated it. _C’est une taupe._ Even those

who had never had so much as a cornerwise glance at the _limace_ went

their ways, saying, with a fine discriminating wave of the hand, “_une

taupe_.” Indeed, not having seen the _limace_, they were naturally far

more confident than those who had really gone quite near to that brown

half-moon on the green leaf, and touched it with twigs. The distribution

of knowledge is a moving spectacle, is it not?

My friend who was beside me in that lovely wood, with the blue sky above

the waving branches, and with the flower-like children springing up from

the grass, and the autumn-leaf grandmothers walking abroad with baskets

for the _déjeuner_, suddenly asked me why I was laughing like that, and

the tears running down my cheeks.

“You do not know why!” I answered. “Oh, surely if you know anything

at all, you must know! It is because I can see, at this moment, this

same spectacle shaping itself everywhere on our planet; yes, from the

Arctic to the Antarctic, on Capricornus and on Cancer, and even in the

Equatorial belt where the lazy peoples live. Everywhere, everywhere

on this round globe of ours, there is a poor _limace_ among the green

leaves, and no one knows what she is; but everywhere there is a good

old grandmother, pushing forward a pale little Pierre with a bay-window

brow, to tell the world, ‘_C’est une taupe._’ And the world listens, and

repeats, and so becomes wise.”

My friend, a sadly literal person, objected. It couldn’t be like that,

among the Esquimaux, in their igloos. And I had all I could do to

prove that among the Esquimaux, in their igloos, it was not only just

like that, but more so. On the return boat for Paris, we were still

arguing the question. The beady-eyed little grandmother had already

helped to remove the life-preserving hat from the Petitpot baby. She

continued to guard her basket, which now held only an aroma, and, please

God, the _carcasse_ for the morrow’s soup. Black-aproned Pierre, with

an unrelenting grip upon his Atlas of the World, laid his sleepy,

knowledge-burdened head against her shoulder. Mme. Petitpot whispered

over that head into the grandmother’s ear, and the grandmother nodded and

smiled. The two were agreed that it was truly a miracle; in all that fine

company, the boy was the only one who knew. Surely there was a future for

this child, already so well instructed! And with what agreeable courtesy

he had said it, “_Madame, c’est une taupe!_”

The women smiled, yet there was something sad and lofty in their smiling.

For they knew that they were guarding between them a very precious

vessel, and they prayed for strength equal to the honored task. The

evening breeze freshened sweetly; and in case that fabled Gallic monster,

a _courant d’air_, might come stalking through the boat, the grandmother

spread a fold of her voluminous black skirt over Pierre’s bare knees.