same manner, and dug nearly the whole ground in a systematic way,
leaving until the last a small alcove near the mouth of the cave,
because I found very few tesseræ anywhere in the strong daylight.
Everything which was not a simple, uninteresting piece of stone or shell
I stowed away in a bag and carried to my studio. In a few Sundays I had
a peck or more of tesseræ, a quarter of them glass ones, and a great
many bits of twisted glass rod and small pieces of glass vessels. One
day the spade turned out, among other things, several small pieces of
brown, porous substance which looked in the dim light like decayed wood.
I put them in the bag with the rest, to be examined at my leisure at
home. The next morning, when I came to turn out the collection gathered
the day before, these curious pieces fell out with the rest, and
immediately attracted my attention. In the strong light of day, I saw at
once what they were. They were the decayed phalanges of a human hand.
The story of Tedesco and Rubina was always in my mind; and I compared
the bones with my own fingers, and found them to be without doubt the
bones of an adult, and probably of a man.
I could scarcely wait for the next Sunday to arrive, but I did not dare
to risk the descent of the cliff on a week-day lest I should be seen by
the fishermen. When at last I did reach the cave again, I went at my
work with vigor, continuing my search in the place where I left off the
previous week. In a short time I unearthed several more bones similar
to those I already had, but, although I thoroughly examined every cubic
foot of earth which I had not previously dug over, I found no more of
the skeleton.
In my studio that evening I arranged the little bones as well as I could
in the positions they had occupied in the human hand. As far as I could
make out, I had the thumb, the first and third fingers and one joint of
the second, three of the bones of the hand, and one of the wrist-bones.
There could be no question but these had once belonged to a human hand,
and to the right hand, too. There was no means of knowing how long ago
the person had died, neither could there be any possible way of
identifying these human relics. The possession of the grewsome little
objects seemed to set my imagination on fire. After going to bed at
night I often worked myself into a state of disagreeable nervous tension
by meditating on the history of the sculptor, and revolving in my mind
the theories I had formed of the mystery of his life and the manner of
his death. For some reason the old woman had never told me where his
studio had been, and it never occurred to me to ask her until the
thought suddenly came during one of these night-hours of wakefulness.
When I put the question to her the next afternoon, she replied, simply:
“This studio was his, _signor padrone_.”
The poor old soul had been living her life over again, day after day, as
she sat knitting and looking out to sea, her imagination quickened and
her memory refreshed by the surroundings which in many decades had
scarcely changed at all.
This information gave a new stimulus to my thoughts, and I lay awake and
pondered and surmised more than ever. There seemed to be something
hidden away in my own consciousness, which was endeavoring to work its
way into recognition. It would almost come in range of my mental vision,
and then would lose itself again, just as some well-known name will
coquettishly elude the grasp of the memory. While lying awake in a real
agony of thought, a vague feeling would enter my mind for an instant,
that I had only to interpret what I already knew, and the mystery of my
imagination would be clear to me. Then I would revolve and revolve again
all the details of the story, but the fugitive idea always escaped me.
With that discouraging persistence which is utterly beyond our control,
whenever great anxiety weighs upon our minds, I would repeat, again and
again, the same series of arguments and the same line of theories until
at last, utterly worn out, I would go to sleep. It was quite
inexplicable that I should think so much about a sculptor of whom I had
never heard, except from Tedesco’s Rubina, and who died long before I
was born; but, in spite of my reason, I could not rid myself of the
vague consciousness that there was something I was unwittingly hiding
from myself.
One warm night in summer I sat up quite late writing letters, and then,
thinking I should go to sleep at once on account of my fatigue, went to
bed. But sleep came only after some hours, and even then not until I had
stood for a long time looking out of the window on the moonlit houses
below, with my bare feet on the cold stone floor. The first thought that
came to my head, as I awoke the next morning, was about that marble head
I had seen in Rome a year before. The dark page of my mind became
illuminated in an instant. I did not need to summon Lisa to note the
resemblance of her face to the marble one which had so fascinated me,
for I was familiar enough with her features to require no aid to my
memory. Besides, I had a fairly accurate study of her head on my easel,
and I compared the face on the canvas with the marble one which I now
remembered so vividly. There was the identical contour of the cheeks and
forehead, with the hyper-delicate chin; the nose, the mouth, the eyes,
each repeated the forms of the marble bust. It was the color alone that
gave the painting its modern aspect, and it had been, I now saw, my
preoccupation with the color which had prevented my observing the
resemblance before. The only thing my portrait lacked, as a
representation of the model from whom the marble was made, was that
fascinating expression of girlhood, which, I was obliged to confess to
myself, I had not succeeded in catching.
Full of my discovery, I wrote at once to the authorities in Rome, asking
for a history of the fragment.
In a few days I received the not unexpected information that it had been
given by the Naples Museum in exchange for another piece of antique
sculpture. I hurried across to Naples and interviewed the authorities
there, requesting precise statements about the bust, on the plea that I
was interested in the particular period of art which it represented. In
the list of objects of antiquity excavated in the summer of 18--, I
found this entry, under the head of Capri:
“Female head with ivy wreath in hair--Marble--Broken off at neck--No
other fragments discovered. Mem.: This probably belonged to a statue of
a sea-nymph, as it was found in a grotto with the remains of mosaic
pavement and ceiling.”
In return for this information I gave the authorities my sincere
thanks, but not my secret.
Three years later I met my two artist friends in New York. Like all who
have torn themselves away from the enchanting influences of Italy, we
reviewed with delight every incident of our sojourn there, not
forgetting the visit to the museum in Rome. Two plaster copies of the
head had been made, and the mould then broken.
In each of the studios the plaster head occupied the place of honor, and
its owner exhausted the choicest terms of art phraseology in its praise.
Foolish fellows, they could not escape from the potent spell of its
bewitching expression, and, burdened with the weight of the sentimental
secret, each of them took occasion, privately and with great hesitation
and shamefacedness, to confess to me that he had stolen away, while we
were together in the museum in Rome, to kiss the marble lips of the
fascinating fragment.
To each of them I made the same remark:
“My dear fellow, if you were so foolish as to fall in love with a marble
head, and a fragment at that, what would you have done in my place? I
was intimately acquainted with the model who sat for it!”
MEDUSA’S HEAD
Henry Seymour fancied he was a realist. Indeed, he was very much annoyed
when his work was described by an art critic as idealistic, or when he
was alluded to in the art columns as “a rising young artist quite out of
place in the realistic circle to which he affects to belong.” But the
bias of mind which prevented him from recognizing the real qualities in
his own productions, equally hindered him from accomplishing what was
his present highest ambition--an accurate and realistic imitation of
nature. In common with the large majority of the young artists of the
day, he studied two or three years in Europe, notably in Paris, where he
learned to believe, or fancied he believed, that the most hopeful
tendency of modern art consisted in the elimination of all idea and all
sentiment from the motive of a picture, and the glorification of the
naturalistic and, if I may say so, earthly qualities of the model.
After his return from the ateliers of Paris, Seymour divided his time
between the apotheosis of rags and squalor and the delineation of the
features of the New York banker, broker, or insurance president, with an
occasional excursion into the field of female portraiture, which was
opened to him through the large and influential circle of friends and
acquaintances of his family. His efforts in this direction frequently
resulted in popular and artistic success, and after a season or two
gained for him a profitable and exceedingly agreeable line of sitters. A
strange jumble of millionaires, bootblacks, society ladies, and
beggar-women covered the canvases that encumbered his studio. The
portraits went away in their turn, but the pictures, after brief
absences at exhibitions, remained his own property, testifying to the
practical worthlessness of the encouragement of his comrades, who would
sniff at his portraits of ladies and gentlemen, and prostrate themselves
before his studies of gutter-snipe. It must be understood that no one of
his artistic clique disapproved of his painting society portraits, for
they had all adopted some means of gaining a livelihood outside of the
special line of art which they, in their mistaken zeal, believed to be
the only true and worthy one. Most of his comrades taught in the art
schools of the city; some of the more fortunate ones conducted highly
profitable private classes, where, at an enormously extravagant price
per season, they actively stimulated and encouraged the artistic
illusions of wealthy young ladies, and helped them to acquire a
superficial and dangerous facility, which, for a future mistress of a
house, is the most useless accomplishment imaginable.
Seymour was of an energetic and enterprising turn of mind, and if it had
not been for his unwavering devotion to his artistic creed, he would
have speedily made a wide reputation for himself as a painter with an
original and charming talent. But accident of situation had exposed him
to the contagion of realism, and the fever which seized him in Paris was
now kept alive, in a milder form to be sure, by association with the
young painters in New York, who had been abroad the same time as
himself. After two seasons at home he found his studio too small and
inconvenient, and he turned a stable in the spacious back yard of his
father’s house, on one of the cross streets near Fifth Avenue, into a
fine studio, with a side and top light, and transported thither his
easels, his bric-à-brac, and the lares and penates of his Bohemian
quarters. The new studio was entered by a _porte-cochère_ at one side of
the house, and was therefore as isolated and private as if it stood in
the centre of an acre of ground.
Among the sitters who came to him in his new studio was Miss Margaret
Van Hoorn, the only daughter of a well-known wealthy man, who had a
stalwart pride in his Knickerbocker origin, and boasted generations of
opulent Van Hoorns before him. Miss Van Hoorn was not an ordinary
society belle, but an intelligent, capable, sensible girl, and a
favorite no less for the charm of her personal character than for a
distinguished type of face and figure, which would stimulate the
ambition of the most worn and weary portrait-painter.
Here, then, was Seymour’s golden opportunity. He recognized it, and
began to make the most of it by starting to paint a portrait of the
young lady in a party dress. It had hitherto been his custom to deny to
his sitters the privilege of watching his work in its various stages,
but he was unable to refuse Miss Van Hoorn’s request that she might be
permitted to see the portrait in progress. Her desire to watch his work
was excusable, because she had already taken lessons in painting, and
had some little knowledge of technique. After the first sitting was over
she occupied the divan under the large window, and chatted cheerfully an
hour or more, thus initiating an intimacy which grew rapidly as the
sittings went on. The painter, as long as he had his palette on his
thumb, looked upon his sitter as a sort of automaton, watched the pure
lines of her neck and arms with no conscious feeling except that of keen
anxiety to reproduce their grace, and studied the mobile turn of the
lips and the varying curve of the eyelids with a single-minded desire to
catch something of their charm and fix it on the canvas.
But soon another element crept insensibly into the relation between
sitter and painter, and long before it was recognized by either of them,
became a potent factor in the growing problem. Miss Van Hoorn first
began to question Seymour about his artistic creed, then showed an
interest in his early life, thus encouraging the artist to talk about
himself. She grew bold in criticising his work, and even modestly
declared her disapproval of the confusion of his studio, and
occasionally gave to the arrangement of the objects a few of those
skilful feminine touches which add an indefinable charm to any interior.
The artist, in his turn, suggested books for her to read, frequently
joined her in the box at the Metropolitan Opera-house, accompanied her
to picture exhibitions, and even advised her as to the color and style
of dress most suited to her complexion and figure. They were all the
while under the protection of that unwritten social law which grants a
certain brief license to sitter and painter, which, like the freedom of
a picnic or an excursion party, usually lasts no longer than the
conditions which make this freedom innocent and desirable.
“Mr. Seymour,” said the sitter one day, “why don’t you paint an ideal
subject, something classical or poetical?”
“I’m a realist, Miss Van Hoorn, and I have come to the conclusion, since
I began your portrait, that I had better stick to copper pots and
cabbages.”
“But no one cares for copper pots and cabbages, even if the former do
have the sheen of burnished gold, and the latter sparkle with dew-drop
jewels. I think every painter ought to paint something more than the
surface of things.”
“How about Vollon and--”
“You know,” she interrupted, “I am not far enough along, as you call it,
to appreciate the wild combinations of color and the hodge-podge of
splashes and dashes affected by the modern school. I have tried to
acquire this taste under your tuition, but I cannot do it. I shall
always believe in the verdict of past centuries, that good art has its
reason in the immortalization of the beautiful.”
“But there’s Terburg--” he began.
“Raphael,” she interrupted.
“Van der Meer de Delft,” he suggested.
“Botticelli,” she argued, and so the conversation went on, and at last
ended, as discussions on religion, politics, and art always do, in each
declaring unwavering adherence to original views.
Excursions to the art galleries and to the Metropolitan Museum were
often the result of these little flutters; but although neither the
artist nor the sitter would confess to the least disturbance of artistic
faith, Seymour actually began, before he knew why, to select an ideal
subject. Several motives from classical poetry, from mythology, and from
modern writers came to his mind, and he was unable to decide, nor did
he know that he really cared to fix on any one of them. Meanwhile the
sittings continued, and the portrait approached completion. Suddenly one
day a compromise suggested itself to the painter, how or why he never
knew, and he quietly remarked, “Miss Van Hoorn, I am going to paint a
Medusa’s head.”
“Horrid,” she said, frankly. “I hate snakes.”
Seymour was somewhat discouraged by her impulsive disapproval of his
subject, but, nevertheless, warmly defended his choice, and was all the
more eloquent, perhaps, because he felt that she had recognized his
ingenious compromise between idealism and realism. He insisted that the
proportions of her face had suggested the subject to him, and was so
serious in his assertion that she was in this degree responsible for his
choice of motive, that she finally yielded to his eager solicitation,
and consented to sit for the eyes and mouth of the Medusa’s head.
The same afternoon he went down-town to a shop near the docks, where
all kinds of birds, animals, and reptiles were sold alive--a sort of
depot, in fact, for the dime museums and small menageries--and bought a
box of a dozen moccasin snakes recently arrived from the South. He
selected this variety on account of the venomous appearance of the small
heads, the repulsive thickness of the bodies, and the richness of color
of the mottled scales, intending to make a close study of all the
characteristics of this variety of the serpent. He could in this way
heighten the contrast which he proposed to make between the calm beauty
of the woman’s face and the repulsiveness of the serpent locks. He
ordered the box to be sent to his studio the same afternoon, and spent
that evening in blocking out on the canvas a charcoal sketch of the head
he had in his mind.
The following day was Sunday, and during the night a severe cold wave,
accompanied by a blizzard of unusual severity, began to sweep over the
city. Early on Monday morning the artist went around into the studio,
and was surprised to find that the snow had blown in through the
ventilator, and that the temperature was very low, notwithstanding the
fact that a fire had been kept up all the time in the great magazine
stove. His first thought was for the snakes, and, by no means certain
that they were not already frozen, he moved the box near the fire,
closed the ventilators in the roof of the studio, opened the dampers in
the stove, and shook the grate, so as to start the fire more briskly.
It was the last day Miss Van Hoorn could come, because she was about to
accompany her family to Florida for a few weeks, and in order to sit a
little for the picture she had promised to come earlier than usual.
Seymour, like all who were not obliged to brave the blizzard on that now
memorable Monday, had no idea of the severity of the storm which was
raging, and was not surprised, therefore, at the appearance of his
sitter shortly after nine o’clock. She was accompanied, as usual, by her
maid and by her pug-dog. Miss Van Hoorn never looked more charming than
she did at that moment, for her cheeks were ruddy with the cold, and her
eyes sparkled with the excitement of the drive.
“Do you know,” she said, “we came very near not getting here. The drifts
were so high that John was scarcely able to get the horses through the
street; and as for the cold, I never felt anything like it. There now, I
do believe I have left my opera cloak at home, and you must finish the
drapery to-day. You’ll have to run back and bring it,” she added,
turning to her maid. “I don’t think the storm is as bad as it was; the
wind does not sound so loud, at any rate.”
The maid courageously set out on her walk, but before she crossed the
avenue was blown down, half smothered with the snow and half frozen, and
was finally rescued by a policeman, who carried her into the basement of
the nearest house, where she was obliged to remain the larger part of
the day.
Meanwhile the artist and his sitter sat for a long time beside the fire,
expecting the return of the maid at every moment. Almost the first
thing Miss Van Hoorn noticed was the box of snakes, and, although she
was horrified and disgusted at the first sight of them, soon began to
look at them with interest, because the artist was so enthusiastic about
the use he proposed to make of them, and so full of the picture he had
begun. The glass in front of the box was slightly clouded by vapor
condensed by the change in temperature, and in order to examine more
closely the beautiful colors of the scales, Seymour took out the glass,
placed it on top of the box, and went to get a paint-rag to wipe off the
vapor. The moccasins made no sign of life.
Miss Van Hoorn was very much interested in the charcoal sketch of the
head, criticised it frankly and freely, and they both grew quite
absorbed in the changes the artist rapidly made in the proportions of
the face. The loud striking of the antique clock soon reminded them,
however, that the hour for the sitting was long past, and that the
portrait was of more present importance than the embryonic picture.
The artist was shortly busy with his painting, and the sitter, now well
accustomed to the pose, endeavored to facilitate the progress of the
work by remaining as quiet as possible. The silence of the studio was
broken only by the stertorous breathing of the pug, asleep on the
Turkish carpet in front of the stove, and by the rattle of the sleet
against the large window.
Suddenly the shrill yelps of the dog startled them from their
preoccupation. On the carpet, near the stove, one of the moccasins was
coiled, ready to strike the pug, who, in an agony of terror, could not
move a foot, but only uttered wild and piercing shrieks.
“Never mind; I’ll soon settle him,” said Seymour; and he rushed at the
snake with his maul-stick. But before he could cross the room, the
moccasin had struck his victim; and as the artist shattered his slender
stick at the first blow, he saw that the box was empty, and that the
other snakes were wriggling around the studio.
Miss Van Hoorn was transfixed with horror, but she neither shrieked nor
fainted, although she looked as if she would swoon before Seymour could
reach her. The pair were fairly surrounded by the reptiles before the
artist had time to think of another weapon.
The only thing to do in the emergency occurred to both of them at the
same instant, and in a much shorter time than it takes to tell it Miss
Van Hoorn was safely perched on the solid crossbar of the French easel,
four feet or more from the ground; and the painter, who had hastily
thrown the portrait on the floor, face upward, was standing on the
shelf.
Knowing the venomous character of the moccasin, Seymour was not eager
for a fight with the snakes, particularly since he was without a weapon.
It was impossible to reach the trophy of Turkish yataghans on the
farther wall of the studio without encountering at least two of the
reptiles, and after a moment’s consideration he climbed up and sat down
beside Miss Van Hoorn, _tête-à-tête_ fashion, and, like herself, put
his arm around the upright piece between them.
Neither one of them spoke for a moment; and then he, overcome with
remorse at his carelessness, and trembling at the possible result of the
adventure, exclaimed, in a tone of despair, “Here’s a situation!”
This commonplace remark did not carry with it a hint of a satisfactory
solution of the difficulty, and he felt this the moment he had uttered
it. Miss Van Hoorn made no reply, but with pale cheeks and frightened
eyes sat silent, clinging almost convulsively to her support.
“We can easily bring the people by shouting,” suggested her companion.
“No, no!” she half gasped. “What a ridiculous position to be found in!
Indeed, I--I--Are you sure the neighbors cannot see through the window?”
“Of course they can’t; it’s corrugated glass. But then, after all, if
any one should come, the moccasins might bite them, and we should be no
better off.”
The snakes became more and more active.
[Illustration: “MISS VAN HOORN WAS SAFELY PERCHED ON THE SOLID
CROSSBAR.”]
The pug lay in his last death-agonies, and as he struggled on the
carpet, almost under their feet, the soft fingers of the young lady
instinctively found their way to the firm, muscular hand of the artist,
and closed around it with a confiding pressure, as if she recognized in
him her sole protector in this danger, and had great need of his
sympathy and support.
If the truth must be told, her sweet unconsciousness was not shared by
her companion, for he felt a distinct sense of satisfaction at the touch
of her hand, and this sensation fully dominated for a moment the complex
feeling of relief at escape from recent imminent danger and of great
present perplexity, uncertainty, and fear.
They were now fairly besieged; and although no harm could come to them
in their present position, it was by no means comfortable to sit perched
on a narrow oak bar, and it was impossible to tell how or when they
would be delivered from their enemy.