The little dinner was a masterpiece. From hail to farewell, there had
been no falling-off in quality; the crystal chalices of liquid topaz
that heralded the feast (or shall I say plainly, the cocktail-glasses?)
were not more graciously cut than the quips of the final speech of
congratulation. Guests, viands, vintages, and starry flowers had been
chosen by the law of hospitality wedded to the spirit of beauty. The
purse they had between them was not unduly large, but it had been
joyously and wisely spent.
It was an artist’s dinner given by an uncle to a nephew, a dinner in
honor of an honor. Twenty years before, Steven Grant had received the
coveted Gold Medal for Sculpture; to-day, a like mark of distinction
had been awarded to his favorite nephew, Gerald Weldon. Steven was a
bachelor, and nephews counted. What more natural than a dinner of reunion
and rejoicing?
There were ladies present; and some of them had satisfied alike their
decorative and their hero-worshipping instincts by sending in advance
to the house of their host two lengths of wide ribbon of cloth-of-gold,
with a command that both host and guest of honor should use them to bind
about their necks the beautifully sculptured tokens of their greatness.
Very ample and splendid is that famous gold medal. A little weighty for
festal wearing, indeed; but to refuse would have been churlish, and uncle
and nephew had adjusted their adornments with the air of men who do not
mean to dodge any part of the day’s work. Having done that, they promptly
forgot the big bright plaques on their chests, except when playfully
reminded of them by the lady who had conceived the idea, and who basked
gladly in the thought of her originality.
It was indeed an evening to remember; but, just like an evening to
forget, it had to come to an end. The last and loveliest lady, revealing
the exact amount of lacy stocking demanded by fashion, had with Gerald’s
aid tucked up her slender glittering trail within her glass coach; the
last and most uninteresting gentleman had been sped clubward. Uncle and
nephew went up the broad stairs to talk it all over in Steven Grant’s
den, a great orderly panelled room always very dear to young Gerald.
Steven Grant’s main studio, being a sculptor’s, was naturally doomed
to the basement of his house. The second-floor den was not precisely a
studio, though works of art had been created there. It was a room not
quite like a library, yet with plenty of space for books, and books
for the space; a room that was a bit larger than a smoking-room, and
rather less elegant than a drawing-room; comfortable chairs abounded
and cheerful tones prevailed, evidently in complete amity with a pair
of dim, priceless tapestries that seemed to know all and pardon all in
both furniture and folk. It was a room in which old memories and new
conveniences were happy together; a bachelor had somehow managed it so.
As years went by, Steven Grant became increasingly glad that the McKim,
Mead and White panelling of the late eighties had piously respected the
delicate acanthus cornice of the early forties. He often said that he was
the only artist in New York whose career had begun and would end under
the same roof.
You would have taken uncle and nephew for a pair of brothers, one silvery
and one golden. Evening dress and the bright decorations emphasized the
resemblance. Both men were tall, slender, clean-shaven. Steven Grant
carried his sixty years lightly, as artists often do, while Gerald at
thirty sometimes showed a seriousness in accord with his honors rather
than with his years. His forehead was already higher than his uncle’s;
both men chuckled over that, but naturally Uncle Steve’s chuckle was
heartier. Gerald slouched a little, after the custom of his generation;
this made him seem more _blasé_ than he really was. Steven Grant was
straight as a pine tree; this gave him a challenging look that people
liked. The ties of blood and their pursuits bound the two together in a
harmony that would scarcely have borne out the theories of Shaw, Samuel
Butler, and other dispraisers of the Family.
That night, they were like a pair of girls in their wish to live the
dinner over again, with the added joy of uncensored comment. “We’ll get
our golden halters off,” said Uncle Steve, “and browse at our ease.”
“Wasn’t Mrs. Storms the limit?” laughed Gerald. “Talk about the immodesty
of our maidens! Strikes me, Uncle Steve, your generation is fully as mad
as ours.”
“Don’t judge all dowagers by one,” urged the other, turning on the light.
Gerald stopped short in the midst of a jesting answer, forgetting both
maidens and dowagers as he suddenly saw over his uncle’s familiar hearth
something he had never seen there before; the cast of a beautiful head,
palely tinted.
“Why, Uncle Steve,” he cried, “you have it too, that face called
Forgiveness!”
“Is that its name?” asked Steven Grant quietly.
“I don’t really know, but it’s the only name I’ve heard given to it. I
never saw any cast of it till yesterday, coming home from my trip West.
I had an hour before my train left, so I ran in to take a look at the
Museum. Say, those Middle-Westerners are alive, all right! Priceless,
that Museum! And just as I was leaving, my eyes fell on this wonderful,
wonderful thing. Seeing it was the big adventure of my whole trip. Its
beauty has haunted me ever since.”
“Take down my copy, if you like,” said Grant.
“Oh, how exquisitely you’ve colored it, Stevedear! No one can beat you in
such things. You’ve brought out every beauty, somehow. And it suggests
both dawn and twilight.” Gerald passed his fingers with appreciative
tenderness over the broad brow of the face called Forgiveness, and went
on, with animation.
“At the Museum, there was a nice old cabinet-maker, German type, fitting
a frame for their cast. Recent addition, it seems. He looked intelligent,
so I asked him what it was. He said he didn’t know exactly; it hadn’t
been ‘catalocked’ yet. But a poet friend of his had said it ought to be
called the Rose of Pardon. Then he told me, musingly, that it made him
think of the Virgin at Nuremberg.”
“That might well be,” observed Uncle Steve, pushing over the matches.
“Well, then, next a little Italian girl came along, with her sketch-book.
She saw my interest, and showed me the astonishingly good pencil sketch
she had made from the cast. So I asked her what it was, where it was
from. She said she didn’t know; she understood that it was called
Forgiveness. Then she looked me all over to see what manner of man I was,
and shyly said that to her it was very beautiful, like the Madonna at
Perugia.”
“I can see what she meant, of course.”
“But that isn’t the half, dearie! Just then a French painter, evidently a
Friday lecturer or something of the sort, came in with a class of young
boys. Lord, how they burbled, all over the place! One of the kids asked
him the question that was trembling on my lips, and he answered that he
wasn’t sure, but that he believed the cast was called Forgiveness. It was
rather touching to hear him repeat very reverently, in his pronounced
‘Parrhisian’ accent, ‘Forgive us our trespasses.’ The boys felt it, too,
and they were very quiet for a moment. Then the Frenchman, with a bright
glance at me (guessing no doubt that I too was an artist), added that for
him, it was like the Virgin of the Visitation, so miraculously saved out
of the destruction at Reims.”
“It seems to me more beautiful than that, even,” interposed the elder
man, “but I can understand his feeling.”
“Exactly! And then, last of all, a real live American art student came
hustling up, just the kind you see here at the League, only more so.
He, too, said the face was called Forgiveness, adding briskly, ‘Perfect
American type, don’t you think? Beats Gibson, what?’”
“They were all more or less right, you thought?” Steven Grant’s eyes were
fixed curiously on Gerald’s face, still bent over the cast.
Gerald looked up. “Yes, they were right, each in his own way. You know,
Stevedear, it all reminded me, in a beautifully wrong-side-out fashion,
of the different witnesses in Poe’s murder story, you remember?”
“You mean the one where men of different nationalities all hear an ape
chattering in the dark, and not knowing in the least what it is, each one
is sure it’s some language not his own?”
“That’s right! The Frenchman, who doesn’t know Spanish, says it’s
Spanish, the Englishman, who doesn’t understand German, says it’s German,
while the Italian, who doesn’t know English, feels sure it’s English, and
so on. But those people at the Museum were all so splendidly different
from that! Each one wanted to guard and to claim for his own race the
heritage of beauty breathing from the mask. The German, the little
Italian girl, the French painter, the American art student—they were
all alike in this. They found in that cast Nuremberg, Perugia, Reims,
Chicago!”
“‘Beats Gibson, what?’” mocked Steven Grant.
“Do you think it’s a cast from nature?” asked Gerald, still intent on the
face. “Perhaps a death-mask?”
The other nodded. “Without doubt, a death-mask.”
“But there’s nothing of the sharpness of death about it, is there? It
seems a face unprofaned by earthly suffering.”
Again Steven Grant gazed at his nephew, as if waiting for the eyes of
young manhood to see more.
“Strange,” pursued Gerald, “that a mere death-mask can mean so much to
living men. There’s Fraser’s Roosevelt, and the Lincoln, and the Dante
that used to be in everybody’s library, and—”
A silence fell between the two. Surely Mrs. Storms, the lady who was the
limit, was far from their thoughts. The dinner, that masterpiece, had
faded from the foreground.
“I never told you,” said Gerald, abruptly, “how I longed to make a
death-mask of father, when he died there in London, away from you all. I
wanted to preserve—and to show to you yourself, Stevedear!—the look of
peace that came upon him. As a sculptor, I knew how, of course. Every
kid studying sculpture has made casts—from life, anyway. But when mother
saw what I was about, she trembled so violently I couldn’t go on, in
the presence of her suffering. And _I_ trembled, too. I’ve never told
you about it, because I was ashamed of my weakness, or whatever it was!
Well, since then, I’ve never even _tried_ to make a death-mask! People
send for me, of course, and I often go, when they seem to need a friendly
presence. But it’s some moulder who does the work, not I. I can’t seem to
bring myself—”
He set the cast on the table beside him, still conning its planes and
shadows. Again the silence of understanding enveloped uncle and nephew,
until Steven Grant said, as if in answer to a question, “Well, yes; it
was much the same with me. I never made but one death-mask. Just one.
There was no way out.”
“How was that?”
“It happened when I was younger than you are, so I couldn’t be expected
to have much sense, could I? You trembled, because it was your father. I
trembled, because it was the girl I’d loved, and in a sense, lost.”
“Oh, I could understand!” And Gerald, thinking of that most lovely lady
with the glittering train, stretched out a sympathetic hand.
“A very beautiful girl she was, Anita Vaughn! The pride of our young
circle. I made the mistake, if it was a mistake, of introducing my best
friend to her. After that, I had no show whatever. They fell in love.”
“Hard luck, for you, anyway!”
“Yes, and a shock to my conceit, too. In a way, it was one of the
sacrifices I made to art. I’d been moving Heaven and Hell to get that
Emancipation group of mine well along. I didn’t want to ask Anita to
marry me until I had proved my earning power, and that group would
have settled things. Your gramper, as you know, didn’t think much of
sculpture, and I was shy about asking him to shell out. So I waited and
worked, and in the meantime,—ah, well, it was all simple enough. She
preferred my friend to me, as well she might—”
“I don’t know about that,” bristled Gerald.
“No, you don’t, but I do. You see, it was Janvier.”
The younger man started. “Not Janvier, the famous Dr. Janvier!”
“Yes, _the_ Dr. Janvier. And no finer fellow ever lived. I’ve been
thankful ever since that I didn’t let his luck in love stand between us
as friends. Oh, of course, I sulked in my studio a few weeks, and took
on a deep cynicism about life and love. But nobody seemed to notice my
airs, so I gave ’em up, and picked out the prettiest wedding-present I
could find for Anita.”
“And of course you had your work—”
“Indeed I had! My career was very much on my mind, those days!” He smiled
at young ambition, and dexterously flicked a lengthened cigar ash into
the fireplace. “But I suffered, too, don’t think I didn’t suffer! And
strange as you may find it, that pair comforted me. To be sure, it never
works out so, in books; but it was so, with us. The Janviers had me with
them often, after their marriage. As I look back on it, I see that it was
all far more beautiful than I could know, then. They were rare souls,
both.”
“Did Janvier’s fame come early in life?”
“Yes, but he was too busy and quixotic to take much note of it. I first
met him when I was making my studies for that confounded Emancipation
group, and we became friends at once, because of my subject. He was
interested in the welfare of the negroes, and gave up a lot of his time
to charitable work among them. He used to bring me different types of
colored men as models; I’ve often told you how I studied thirty-five
different darkies for those reliefs on the pedestal. In our leisure,
when we had it, Janvier and I would discuss racial traits, and so on.”
“New Yorker?”
“Yes, but of Canadian ancestry. His father was one of the early lumber
kings, and left him a lot of money; otherwise, he couldn’t have given
so much unpaid service among the negroes. I never knew a human being so
frantically possessed with the idea of justice for all the world.”
“His wife sympathized?”
“Oh, Lord, yes! Whatever he did was perfect in her sight. Strange, too,
because she was a Louisiana girl, whose family had lost their all through
the Civil War. And of course her ideas about the negro race were not in
the least like his. How could they be? Ah, well, Anita Janvier, my lost
Anita Vaughn, was certainly a shining example of that motto there, under
your feet!”
Gerald picked up the bellows from the hearthrug, and studied its carven
legend, as he had often done when a child. “‘_Amor Omnia Vincit._’ Love
conquers all.”
“Love surely had his hands full, in her case. Just fancy the prejudices
Anita Janvier had to overcome, before she could enter into her husband’s
work as she did! She told me once, with that wonderful smile of hers,
that she was glad she had been brought up on a plantation, because
understanding negroes so much better than Dr. Janvier could, she could
save him from the sort of mistakes most Northerners made.”
“Did she win out?” laughed Gerald.
Steven Grant did not answer directly, but continued in musing
recollection.
“Franklin Janvier had a house and office in Tenth Street, just a few
doors from my studio here. We saw each other constantly, and kept in
touch with each other’s work. I was surprised, however, when he took
on, as office assistant, a young surgeon just graduated from a foreign
school, a man who looked like a Spaniard, but who had a trace, oh, a mere
trace, of negro blood. Pleasant fellow, too; very gifted and modest, and
with an attachment for Janvier that amounted to idolatry, all told. A
doctor born, Janvier said. His grandfather was a noted English surgeon
who came out to the West Indies in the old days. Well, Charles Richmond
was a fixture in Frank’s office before Anita came to live in the big
Tenth Street house. She accepted him just as simply as she accepted all
the rest of her new life. But she told her husband, very frankly, that
Dr. Richmond’s strain of the darker blood, however negligible for us
Northerners, was perfectly evident to any one brought up among negroes.”
“Southerners often say such things,” said Gerald, “but I never know quite
all they mean, do you?”
“We tried to make her explain. It was a little of everything; just
this and that; hair, lips, nails, palms, of course! And a certain
indescribable smooth fullness under the skin, a rounder build of the
eyeball, a more springing curve of the lashes, and so on. Janvier was
even then getting together the data for that famous book of his on
‘Ethnic Details,’ and he used to encourage Anita in such observations,
and check them up. One couldn’t help admiring her astonishing acuteness
and probity. The three of us would often compare notes about young
Richmond, but never with malicious intent, I assure you. And though Anita
always treated him with the respect she knew was due him, it sometimes
fell short of what he longed for.”
“The Moor was haughty, then?”
“Haughty enough, but by no means a Moor, any more than you are. His eyes
were blue, and really lighter than yours, my boy. With a queer shine
in them, sometimes! I was sorry for him, and so was Anita. But Janvier,
with his obsession about equality and justice, sturdily refused to see
that there was anything to be sorry about, except our nasty human point
of view. He gave a lot of the care of his colored patients to Richmond,
who did nobly by them, too. Only, by some mysterious instinct, they
always recognized _him_ as one of _them_. And it hurt him, clean through
and through. How that boy suffered! He had real genius, we knew. And I
suppose this helped Janvier to put up with Richmond’s occasional frantic
outbursts against his fate. We used to call them his cyclones of the
soul, not dreaming that a similar expression was to be invented long
afterward. These storms of passion always left him crumpled up into
nothingness before Janvier, Anita, even myself! I tell you, Gerald, the
man’s agonies were atrocious. He had a kind of gallant courage, too, for
all his self-abasement; you would be pretty dull, if you couldn’t see
the sublimity of it. After every outbreak, and the subsequent surrender,
he would painfully pick up the pieces of himself, and put them together
again in a dazed sort of way, and next day devote himself to his work,
more single-mindedly than ever. Janvier was his chosen pattern and
example, in that.”
“But perhaps the poor chap worked _too_ hard,” suggested Gerald.
“Exactly! And there’s where Janvier and I were wrong, not to have known
it. Anita, with a far finer vision than we had, often warned us that the
bent bow was strung too tight. But we couldn’t see it so; men are blind,
sometimes, in the heat and burden of the day. Richmond was six feet tall,
and broad in proportion. A magnificent physique! That’s what we went by.
We laughed at Anita’s fears—accused her of plantation-coddling. And there
was a lot to be done, too, that year after the Janviers were married.
It was a horrible winter, disease stalking everywhere, especially among
the ‘coloreds.’ Both Janvier and Richmond were overworked. You would
have thought that the sort of office Janvier had, with so many colored
patients, would have hurt his practice. Not a bit of it. People felt a
trust in him. Children always took to him, and he was very successful, as
you know, in children’s diseases.
“It happened that in the following spring, Janvier was suddenly called
to Toronto to see his mother, who had but a few days to live. He asked
me to look after things a little, in his absence. Of course, I said I
would, but I told him, half-laughingly, that I hoped to goodness Charles
Richmond wouldn’t treat me to a cyclone of the soul; and if he did, I
should turn the hose on him. Janvier looked rather troubled, but said he
didn’t expect anything of the sort. In fact, a storm had occurred only
the day before, and another such tempest wouldn’t be due for a long time.
It struck me that if I’d been in Frank’s place, I would have been worried
about leaving Anita. Very likely, Frank _was_ worried, for he had tried
to persuade her to visit her sister while he was away. But the girl was
tremendously interested in some sick little pickaninnies she was helping
both doctors to pull out of various croups and itises, and she felt that
those children needed her. And, anyway, Frank would be back in a few
days.”
A new tone had crept into the sculptor’s voice, and Gerald guessed that
his uncle was about to speak of things hitherto untold. “Poor Stevedear,”
he thought, with a thrill of loving sympathy, “he’s come to the place
where the novels always have a row of asterisks, or something.”
“And,” continued the other steadily, “Franklin Janvier did come back,
summoned by a telegram I sent him, telling him that Richmond had
committed suicide. He had shot himself at the Tenth Street house. More
than that, Anita had seen it all, and was prostrated by the shock. She
had often warned us that Richmond’s end might be madness. We had laughed
at her, and now—Well, no use dwelling on that part now, this evening of
your happiness, Gerald! It’s enough to tell you that Janvier went through
the hell of seeing his young wife’s mind give way completely, from the
shock. Specialists came, and after a while they held out a distinct hope
that a few months might bring a change for the better. She regained
something of her former sweetness, but it was evident that most of the
time her mind was a blank. Once, in one of her rare outbursts, she cried
out that her soul was snared in a web, not of her own weaving. You can
imagine what Janvier felt, hearing this truth from her lips.
“The young couple had looked forward happily to the birth of children;
but now, in extreme anguish of spirit, Frank Janvier told me that it
was not worth the price; nothing could be worth the price his wife was
paying. But he didn’t give up hope. The doctors still believed that the
coming of the child might end forever the terrible shadow. Anita was
naturally an unusually well-balanced person. It was part of her charm,
the kind of sweet steadiness she had. I know Janvier counted on it to
save her, in the end. So it was with very great eagerness that we all
awaited the arrival of the Janvier heir.
“By tacit agreement, I stopped going to the Tenth Street house, but
Janvier came often to my studio. He seemed to cling to me in his trouble,
and I wanted to help him, of course. He kept himself in hand, pluckily
enough; but sometimes, in unguarded moments, the suffering that showed
itself in his face was horrible to see. So summer and autumn passed, and
winter came.
“One bitter December night as I was reading in this very room, a
messenger brought me a note from Janvier, begging me to come to him at
once. He had, as I already knew, passed through two days of alternate
hope and despair. And now, so the note told me, both wife and child had
died. Anita’s face had taken on a look of exquisite beauty, the look of
her wedding-day. He wanted me to make the mask that would preserve it.
You know how I must have felt.”
“Oh, Stevedear!”
“I felt I couldn’t do it! But I had a studio-man who was an expert in
casting, and I roused him from his bed to go with me to Janvier’s. Poor
Giuseppe had been up several nights with his youngest child. It happened
that Dr. Janvier, who had a helping hand for every workman in the
quarter, had been taking care of Giuseppe’s boy, right in the midst of
his own troubles; and Giuseppe was glad enough to do anything he could
for _il Signor Dottore_.
“Well, I won’t tell you about that bedside, and Frank’s silent anguish;
you know well enough about such scenes—The room was large and lofty, not
unlike this. At the far end was an alcove, curtained off; and behind the
drapery I could discern a light, and a cradle; but we did not speak of
those things. There was no attendant. Anita’s old nurse, Loretta, who was
a kind of mother to us all, was sleeping in the next chamber, worn out
with labor and sorrow. And the others, those terrible, necessary others
that you and I can never get used to, were not to appear until the morrow.
“It was like Janvier not to waken Loretta. He himself brought water and
towels. Giuseppe was just about to mix his first plaster when a knock
was heard. Janvier stepped out, but soon returned to tell Giuseppe, very
gravely, that little Emilio was once more in agony, and that both of
them must go at once, in the hope of saving the child’s life. You see
Janvier had made some important studies in children’s lung troubles, and
had worked out some successful methods that he didn’t yet dare trust to
others, without supervision.”
“You mean to say he and Giuseppe left you there?”
“It was the only thing to do, wasn’t it? If Janvier could bear his part,
why shouldn’t I bear mine? I knew it might be hours before he would leave
Giuseppe’s child. And I knew, too, that the exalted loveliness of that
dead face might vanish at any moment; such looks do not stay long among
us. Janvier’s quiet putting aside of his own feelings showed me what to
do. I steeled myself and made the mould. I don’t mind telling you, a cold
sweat broke out all over me; but dreading it was really much harder to
bear than doing it. There was something in the still beauty of the girl’s
face that strengthened me; I seemed to see and feel this loveliness even
while I was veiling it under layers of plaster. And when I had taken
the mould away, and the face was revealed again, no less peaceful than
before, and quite unprofaned by my work, I felt a kind of consolation.
My part of the work had been rightly done, for all my trembling; and
Giuseppe could easily make the cast itself, in my studio.
“A long time, as it seemed to me, I sat there by the bed, watching that
beloved face. I wondered whether the same radiant peace shone from the
face of the dead child. I knew Anita would wish to have me look at her
child; I owed it to her memory.
“I parted the alcove curtains, and turning up the light, I lifted the
delicate little linen sheet that covered the cradle. What I saw I have
never yet spoken of to any one, not even to Janvier; perhaps least of all
to Janvier, Janvier with his great dream of justice! I know that what I
say is safe with you, Gerald? You promise? The little face, exquisitely
fashioned and peaceful, indeed, was unmistakably one of those darker
blossoms on the tree of life. The darker strain! And it was far more
clearly marked than in Richmond.”
Gerald recoiled in horror. “Richmond—”
“Yes! In one hideous, backward-looking lightning-flash, I saw just what
had been Anita’s fate. I saw her long months of mental eclipse, following
the attack of a madman. I had often noted her not unkindly meant attitude
of racial superiority toward the frantically sensitive Richmond; and I
understood just how a mere glance or word of hers had whipped to the
surface the one black drop in his high-strung, overwrought frame, driving
him to an unspeakable betrayal. No wonder he had killed himself. No
wonder the proud, blameless girl had cried aloud to her husband, out of
the abyss of darkened reason, that she was caught and crushed in a web
not of her own weaving!”
“I suppose,” hesitated Gerald, “there was never any doubt of Richmond’s
crime?”
“None whatever. There was even a witness! As a matter of fact, poor
faithful Loretta, who worshipped Anita, and followed her like a shadow,
had been working in the room next to the office, when she heard Richmond
talking to Mrs. Janvier, in a crazy, shrieking way, about a prescription.
His tone was so strange and threatening that she was terrified for her
mistress, and rushed toward the office. The door was slammed violently
in her face, and locked. She beat on the panels, and screamed, but help
came too late.”
The level voice faltered a moment, then continued: “My first impulse was
to escape from the room, anywhere, anywhere, out of the horror of it. But
Anita’s face with its majestic calm held me there; that, and the example
of Janvier’s fortitude. And, well, life must be lived! There might be
something I could do for Janvier, or Giuseppe, for that matter, on their
return. Once again I went to the alcove, this time carrying a lighted
candle, to be doubly sure of a dreadful thing. The tiny bronze face with
closed eyes implored only peace—a shadow praying to return to its rest
among shadows.
“Until gray morning, I waited in that still house for Janvier. I did not
know what I should do or say; I only knew that I knew what were better
left unknown, perhaps. But how small my own distresses seemed when he
came in, and shed the light of his indomitable spirit over that place of
sorrows! He seemed a creature emerging out of the wreck of all his own
hopes, supported out of chaos solely by his will to re-create hope in the
world.
“‘Giuseppe’s boy will live, I think,’ he said, simply. ‘We’ve brought
him through the crisis. Thank you, Steven, for giving me the chance to
save him. I could not have left Anita unless you had stayed. Poor Loretta
was tired beyond endurance, and I had sent away the trained nurse. She
was worn out, too.’
“I wrung his hand. ‘I loved Anita,’ I sobbed out, weakly enough.
“‘I know, I know,’ he said. And then a great light came to me. I saw that
it wouldn’t be necessary for me, then or at any other time, to debate
passionately with myself whether or not I should speak to him of what I
had learned. The largeness of his grief sheltered all my anxieties. His
arm around my shoulder, we stood together looking down upon the face
of a much loved and deeply wronged woman. In life, it had been a face
to delight in; a face with loyal blue eyes under upraised dark lashes,
a delicate straight nose, and lips vividly curved like the petals of a
rose. In death, with the eyes forever shadowed, the flower-like coloring
effaced, its beauty of form was enhanced. But more than this, a spiritual
significance, not previously apprehended by us, shone through the pale
clay. We both of us felt it. Janvier did well to have such loveliness
preserved.
“That was the only mould I have ever made from a human face. Giuseppe
made two casts, one for Janvier, one for me. Janvier’s was destroyed in
that fire you’ve heard about.”
“And is your copy still in existence?” Half involuntarily, Gerald took up
the cast called Forgiveness.
“Yes,” replied the elder man, “it is in your hands now.”
The other laid his lips reverently on the smooth brow of the face which
had reminded the German of the Nuremberg Virgin; the face which the
Frenchman had thought French, the Italian girl Italian, and the American
boy American.
“That cast, which you say is now called Forgiveness, has been enshrined
in this room, behind the corner tapestry there, for more than a
generation. It is older than you are. After Janvier died, I told myself
it was not right to hide so much beauty from the world. But it wasn’t
until after the Armistice that I mustered up courage to have three
plaster copies made. And it was only last week that I sent a copy to each
of our three largest art schools.”
“And you gave the casts the name, Forgiveness?”
“Ah, no, I left them nameless! But I must tell you a strange thing about
that, too. At the time when I made the mould, we young artists were very
much under the spell of Omar Khayyám’s fuzzy, fezzy philosophy; yes,
quite entangled in the obscurantist beauty of the Vine! Fitzgerald’s
verses and our own Vedder’s drawings were a cult with us. _I_ couldn’t
forgive as greatly as Janvier did. My wrong was less, and my pardoning
power was less. And whenever I thought of the whole dreadful business,
one of the Fitzgerald quatrains would ring in my ears; the one that ends
“‘For all the sin with which the face of man
Is blackened, Man’s forgiveness give—and take!’
“We thought it a sublime blasphemy in those days, but in these modern,
higher-keyed times, no doubt it sounds tame enough. Anyway, it haunted
me horribly; and to get rid of it, I carved it one rainy afternoon, in
fine close letters like slanting rain, all around the outer edge of my
cast. But times change, and we change. Thirty-five years later, when I
looked the cast over, before giving it to the moulder to make the copies
from, I knew that those lines no longer expressed what was in my heart. I
had outgrown them. I knew that a better inscription would be, ‘Forgive
us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ But I
decided to have no inscription whatever, and to let the cast carry its
own message of beauty. So, with a file, and very carefully, as I thought,
I erased every word of that inscription like the slanting rain. Again and
again I passed my fingers over it, until I was sure it was gone. Still,
I suppose I must have left some breath of that word, Forgiveness, which
the students at the Museum discovered. Though for the life of me, I can’t
find a trace of it!”
He took up a magnifying-glass, and passed it to Gerald, who peered
through it intently, all along the rim of the cast.
“No word here,” said Gerald. He passed his fingers around the circling
edge, as if, after all, a sculptor’s fingers were more to be trusted than
a glass. “No, there’s nothing, really! The face must have told its own
name. But tell me, Stevedear, if you don’t mind,—did you yourself really
forgive, in the end?”
Steven Grant smiled, and replaced the cast above his hearth-fire. Before
answering, he rumpled Gerald’s hair, exposing the too high forehead.
“Your question, my boy, makes me think of Mrs. Storms. Because, like that
lady, it is not exactly a wrong ’un, but still, it comes very near the
danger line.”
And Gerald knew it was time to turn from the past to the present, and
to talk of the dinner, that masterpiece. Besides, as Steven Grant had
guessed, the younger sculptor was longing to speak of his own Anita,
that most beautiful lady whose shining train he had hovered over, at
the door of the glass coach. The elder man rejoiced with all his heart
that there was no Emancipation group to thwart his nephew’s happiness.
In honor of Gerald’s Anita, he was loyally ready to shout with the best,
“Long live the Queen!” But he did not say to himself, sorrowfully, of the
earlier Anita, “The Queen is dead.” He saw in his mind the face called
Forgiveness. He listened to the German cabinet-maker, the French painter,
the Italian girl, the American student. There were others, too, coming
and going in the Museum; and what they said of the face made him think of
life, not death.