Everything she saw, the stripped floor, the white walls bare but for
some casts like the dismembered fragments of flawless blanched bodies,
the inclined plane of the wide skylight, bore an impalpable white dust
of dried clay. In a corner, enclosed in low boards, a stooped individual
with wood-soled shoes and a shovel was working a mass of clay over which
at intervals he sprinkled water, and at intervals halted to make pliable
lumps of a uniform size which he added to a pile wrapped in damp cloths.
There were a number of modeling stands with twisted wires grotesquely
resembling a child's line drawing of a human being; while a stand with
some modeling tools on its edge bore an upright figure shapeless in its
swathing of dampened cloths.
“The great moment,” Pleydon said again, in a vibrant tone. “But you know
nothing of all this,” he directly addressed Linda. “Neither, probably,
will you have heard of Simon Downige. He was born at Cottarsport, in
Massachusetts, about eighteen forty; and, after--in the support of his
hatred of any slavery--he fought through the Civil War, he came home
and found that his town stifled him. He didn't marry at once, as so many
returning soldiers did; instead he was wedded to a vision of freedom,
freedom of opinion, of spirit, worship--any kind of spaciousness
whatever. And, in the pursuit of that, he went West.
“He told them that he was going to find--but found was the word--a place
where men could live together in a purity of motives and air. No more,
you understand; he hadn't a personal fanatical belief to exploit
and attract the hysteria of women and insufficient men. He was not a
pathological messiah; but only Simon Downige, an individual who couldn't
comfortably breathe the lies and injustice and hypocrisy of the ordinary
community. No doubt he was unbalanced--his sensitiveness to a universal
condition would prove that. Normally people remain undisturbed by such
trivialities. If they didn't an end would come to one or the other, the
lies or the world.
“He traveled part way in a Conestoga wagon--a flight out of Egypt; they
were common then, slow canvas-covered processions with entire families
drawn by the mysterious magnetism of the West. Then, leaving even such
wayfarers, he walked, alone, until he came on a meadow by a little river
and a grove of trees, probably cottonwoods.... That was Simon Downige,
and that, too, was Hesperia. Yes, he was unbalanced--the old Greek
name for beautiful lands. It is a city now, successful and corruptly
administered--what always happens to such visions.
“It is necessary, Linda, as I've always told you, to understand the
whole motive behind a creation in permanent form. A son of Simon's--yes,
he finally married--a unique and very rich character, wife dead and no
children, commissioned a monument to the founder of Hesperia, in Ohio,
and of his fortune.
“They even have a civic body for the control of public building; and
they came East to approve my statue, or rather the clay sketch for it.
They were very solemn, and one, himself a sculptor, a graduate of the
Beaux Arts, ran a suggestive thumb over Simon and did incredible damage.
But, after a great deal of hesitation, and a description from
the sculptor of what he thought excellently appropriate for
such magnificence, they accepted my study. The present Downige,
really--though I understand there is another pretentious branch in
Hesperia--bullied them into it. He cursed the Beaux-Arts graduate with
the most brutal and satisfactory freedom--the tyranny of his money; the
crown, you see, of Simon's hope.”
He unwrapped one by one the wet cloths; and Linda, in an eagerness sharp
like anxiety, finally saw the statue, under life-size, of a seated man
with a rough stick and bundle at his feet. A limp hat was in his hand,
and, beneath a brow to which the hair was plastered by sweat, his eyes
gazed fixed and aspiring into a hidden dream perfectly created by his
desire. Here, she realized at last, she had a glimmer of the beauty, the
creative force, that animated Dodge Pleydon. Simon Downige's shoes were
clogged with mud, his entire body, she felt, ached with weariness; but
his gaze--nothing Linda discovered but shadows over two depressions--was
far away in the attainment of his place of justice and truth.
She found a stool and, careless of the film of dust, sat absorbed in the
figure. Pleydon again had lost all consciousness of their presence; he
stood, hands in pockets, his left foot slightly advanced, looking at his
work from under drawn brows. Arnaud spoke first:
“It's impertinent to congratulate you, Pleydon. You know what you've
done better than any one else could. You have all our admiration.” Linda
watched the tenderness with which the other covered Simon Downige's
vision in clay. Later, returning home after dinner, Arnaud speculated
about Pleydon's remarkable increase in power. “I had given him up,” he
went on; “I thought he was lost in those notorious debauches of esthetic
emotions. Does he still speak of loving you?”
“Yes,” Linda replied. “Are you annoyed by it?” He answered, “What
good if I were?” She considered him, turned in his chair to face
her, thoughtfully. “I haven't the slightest doubt of its quality,
however--all in that Hesperia of old Downige's. To love you, my dear
Linda, has certain well-defined resemblances to a calamity. If you ask
me if I object to what you do give him, my answer must shock the gods of
art. I would rather you didn't.”
“What is it, Arnaud?” she demanded. “I haven't the slightest idea. I
wish I had.”
“Platonic,” he told her shortly. “The term has been hopelessly ruined,
yet the sense, the truth, I am forced to believe, remains.”
“But you know how stupid I am and that I can't understand you.”
“The woman in whom a man sees God,” he proceeded irritably:
“'_La figlia della sua mente, l'amorosa, idea_.'”
“Oh,” she cried, wrung with a sharp obscure hurt. “I know that, I've
heard it before.” Her excitement faded at her absolute inability to
place the circumstances of her memory. The sound of the words vanished,
leaving no more than the familiar deep trouble, the disappointing
sensation of almost grasping--Linda was unable to think what.
“After all, you are my wife.” He had recovered his normal shy humor.
“I can prove it. You are the irreproachable mother of our unsurpassed
children. You have a hopeless vision--like this Simon's--of seeing me
polished and decently pressed; and I insist on your continuing with the
whole show.”
Her mind arbitrarily shifted to the thought of her father, who had
walked out of his house, left--yes--his family, without any intimation.
Then, erratically, it turned to Vigné, to Vigné and young Sandby with
his fresh cheeks and impending penniless years acquiring a comprehension
of the bond market. She said, “I wonder if she really likes Bailey?”
Arnaud's energy of dismay was laughable, “What criminal folly! They
haven't finished Mother Goose yet.”