CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTH.
As You Like It; i.--2.
Orin Stanton had been tolerably sure of getting the commission for the
_America_, and had been busily at work preparing his model for the
figure. By the time the decision of the committee was reached, his
study was practically complete, and only a day or two after he had been
officially notified that the choice had fallen upon him the public were
invited to his studio to view the statue.
Whatever else Orin might or might not be, he was undeniably energetic.
He missed no opportunities through neglect, and he never left undone
anything which was likely to tell for his own advantage. He had once
before called upon the world to admire his work on the completion of
his masterpiece, a figure called _Hop Scotch_, representing according
to Bently "a tenement-house girl having a fit on the sidewalk." He
therefore understood well enough the usual methods of managing these
affairs, and as the ladies who had taken him up felt bound to make a
point of patronizing the exhibition, the affair succeeded capitally.
Stanton had no regular studio in Boston, and had for this work secured
a room on the ground floor of a business building. The light, to be
sure, was not all that might have been desired, but it was abundant,
window screens were cheap and the sculptor not over sensitive to
subtile gradations of values. He made no attempt to decorate the room
for his exhibition, partly from a certain indifference to its bareness,
and partly from a native shrewdness which enabled him to feel both the
difficulty of doing this adequately, and the fact that the statue
appeared better as things were. There were a few benches, scantily
cushioned, two or three chairs, not all in perfect repair, with the
paraphernalia essential to his work. A few sketches in crayon and
pencil were pinned to the wall, and among them the artist had had the
fatuity to pin up a photograph of that most beautiful figure, the
_Winged Victory_ of Paionios.
The study for _America_, which was of colossal size, represented a
woman seated, leaning her left hand upon a rock. The right hand held
slightly uplifted a bunch of maize and tobacco plant; her head wore a
crown in which the architectural embattlements not uncommon in classic
headdresses had been curiously and wonderfully transformed into the
likeness of the domed capitol at Washington. The figure was completely
draped, only the head, the left hand and the right arm to the elbow
emerging from the voluminous folds in which it was wrapped, save that
the tip of one sandalled foot was visible, resting upon a ballot box.
Half covered by the hem of the robe were seen a tomahawk, an axe, a
printer's stick, a calumet, and various other emblems of American life,
civilized and barbarous.
A secret which Stanton did not impart to the public and which, with a
boldness allied to impudence, he trusted to their never discovering,
was the fact that his figure had been stolen bodily from an antique.
There exists in the museum of the Vatican a statuette representing a
work by Eutychides of Sikyon. Bas-reliefs of the same figure exist also
on certain coins of Antioch still extant. The figure represented the
city goddess _Tyche_ resting her foot upon the shoulder of the river
god _Orontes_, who seems to swim from beneath the rock upon which she
is seated. Stanton had a sketch of the statuette which he had made in
Rome, and from this he had modelled his _America_, replacing the god
_Orontes_ by a ballot-box, changing the accessories and adding as many
symbolical articles as he could crowd around the feet. He was not
wholly untroubled by an inward dread lest the source of his inspiration
should be discovered; but when he had been complimented by Peter Calvin
upon the marked originality of the design, he threw his fear to the
winds and delivered himself up to the enjoyment of receiving the
praises of his visitors.
There was a strange mixture of people present. Stanton had invited the
artists, members of the press, and all the people that he knew, whether
they knew him or not. Mrs. Frostwinch was there, Mrs. Staggchase, Elsie
Dimmont, and Ethel Mott; and although Mrs. Bodewin Ranger was not
actually present, she in a manner lent her countenance by sending her
carriage to the door to call for one of her friends. Fred Rangely was
present, talking in a satirical undertone to Miss Merrivale and viewing
the statue with a wicked look in his eye which boded little good to the
sculptor. Melissa Blake was there, rather overpowered by the crowd and
clinging tightly to the arm of her companion, a girl whose acquaintance
she had made in her boarding-house, and who was much given to an
affectation of profound culture as represented by attendance upon
stereopticon lectures and the exhibitions of the local art clubs.
"Oh, I should think," this young lady said to Melissa, in a simpering
rapture, "you'd be just too proud for anything, to know Mr. Stanton. It
must be too lovely to know a real sculptor."
"I don't know him so very well," returned the conscientious Melissa.
"But you really know him," persisted the other, "and he's been to call
on you. Isn't it funny how some men can make things just out of their
heads without anything to go by?"
Rangely, who was standing close by, caught the remark and secretly made
a grimace for the benefit of Miss Merrivale.
"That," said he in her ear, "is genuine Boston culture."
She laughed softly, not in the least knowing what to say. The statue
meant nothing whatever to her, and had the original of Eutychides been
placed by its side she would have been unable to understand that in
copying it Stanton had transformed its dignity into clumsiness, its
grace into vulgarity. Had she been at home in New York, she would have
said frankly that she neither knew nor cared anything about the
_America_; being in Boston, she had a superstitious feeling that such
frankness would be ill-judged, and she therefore contented herself with
non-committal laughter.
"How do you do, Miss Merrivale?" at this moment said a cheery voice
close by her.
She looked up to see the merry eyes and corn-colored beard of Chauncy
Wilson.
"I say, Fred," went on the doctor, confidentially, "don't you think
this thing is beastly rubbish? It looks like an old grandmother wrapped
up in her bedclothes. And what has she got that toy village on her head
for?"
"Oh, Doctor Wilson!" exclaimed Miss Merrivale, in a manner that might
mean reproval or amusement.
Miss Frances was having a very good time. Although Mrs. Staggchase had
been throwing her guest and Rangely together for motives of her own,
the result to Miss Merrivale had been as pleasing as if her hostess had
been purely disinterested. It is true, the time for her return to New
York drew near, but visions of the pleasure of imparting to her family
and friends the news of her engagement to the brilliant young novelist
did much to alleviate her regret at departing from Boston. She had a
pleasant consciousness that afternoon, of sharing in the attention
which Rangely received in public nowadays, especially since his novel
had been violently attacked in the _London Spectator_ and defended in
the _Saturday Review_. She noted the glances that were cast at him,
receiving their homage with a certain secret feeling of having a share
in it.
But bliss in this world is always transient, and at her happiest moment
Miss Merrivale looked up to perceive Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson bearing
down upon her. Mrs. Sampson was accompanied by the Hon. Tom Greenfield,
who both felt and looked utterly out of place; and who was dragged
along in the wake of his companion quite as much by his unwillingness
to be left to his own devices in a crowd of strangers, as by any
particular desire to follow her.
"My dear Frances," the widow said effusively, kissing Miss Merrivale on
both cheeks. "I am _so_ glad to see you. Really it is perfectly cruel
that you haven't been to see me. But then, I know," she ran on without
giving the other time to speak, "how busy you've been. I've seen your
name in the _Gossip_, and you've been everywhere."
"Yes, I have," returned Miss Merrivale, catching rather awkwardly at
the excuse supplied to her.
Chauncy Wilson laughed significantly. He never felt it necessary to
treat the widow with any especial respect.
"Mrs. Sampson passes the whole of Sunday forenoon committing the
society columns of the _Gossip_ to memory, and wishing her name was
there," he chuckled, with a jocoseness which seemed to that lady
extremely ill-timed.
But she kept her temper beautifully, long years of social struggle
having taught her at least this art of self-restraint.
"Dr. Wilson is nothing if not satirical," she returned, with a
conventional smile.
It would not have been displeasing to Miss Merrivale had the floor at
that particular instant opened and engulfed her former hostess. It
needs unusual breadth of mind to forgive those toward whom we have been
discourteous. On the other side of the statue, Frances saw Mrs.
Staggchase watching the encounter with a sort of quiet amusement. It
flashed across her mind that if she were to become Mrs. Rangely, and
live in Boston, it would be necessary to drop Mrs. Sampson from her
calling list, and the reflection instantly followed that the sooner the
process of breaking the acquaintance were begun the better. Her face
insensibly, hardened a little.
"Of course," she said, "one can't help being put into the _Gossip_, but
I should never think of reading it."
Mrs. Sampson understood that this was a snub, and her cheek flushed.
Wilson laughed maliciously.
"Oh, everybody reads the _Gossip_," Rangely interposed, good-naturedly
coming to the rescue; "although it's to the credit of humanity that
everybody has the grace to be ashamed of it."
There was a bustle and stir in the crowd as Tom Bently pushed his way
up to the group.
"By Jove, Rangely," he said, "have you got on to that statue? Do you
know what it's cribbed from?"
"No," returned Fred; "is it from anything in particular? I supposed it
was just a general steal from the antique, and Stanton appropriates
only to destroy."
"I don't know what it is," was Bently's reply, "but I know there's a
cut of it in a book I've got at the studio."
Rangely's eyes flashed.
"Good," said he, "I'll come round to-night and we'll look it up. I'm
going to do a notice of the _America_ for the _Observer_."
The two exchanged significant glances, laughing inwardly at the
discomfiture of the unfortunate sculptor.
"But don't you admire the figure?" asked Mrs. Sampson, eagerly seizing
an opportunity to get into the conversation.
"It's the kind of thing I should have liked when I was young," Bently
returned. "I was taught to like that sort of thing; but all the
preliminary rubbish that was plastered on to me when I was a youngster,
I have shed as a snake sheds its skin."
The movement in the crowd gave Miss Merrivale an excuse for changing
her position; and she improved the opportunity to turn away from the
widow until the latter could see little except her back. Mrs. Sampson
flushed angrily, but she covered her discomfiture, as well as she was
able, by turning her attention to the statue, and descanting upon its
beauties to Greenfield.
"How exquisitely dignified the drapery is," she remarked, "and so
beautifully modest."
"Big thing, ain't it," said the strident voice of Irons, close to her
ear. "I think we've hit something good this time. I'm really obliged to
you, Greenfield, for putting me up to vote for Stanton. I like a statue
with some meaning to it. Now just look at the significance of all those
emblems of American progress."
"Yes, it is very fine," admitted Greenfield, with a helpless air. "I'll
work it into a speech, sometime," he added, his face brightening with
the relief of having an idea; "there's the ballot-box at the bottom as
a foundation, and you work up through all the industries till you get
to the capitol, the centre of government, at the top."
"Hear! hear!" exclaimed the widow, clapping her hands very softly and
prettily; "really you must speak at the unveiling of the statue."
"Capital idea," exclaimed Irons, to whose gratitude for Greenfield's
aid in the railroad matter was added the politic forecast that he might
some time need his help again; "there's Hubbard over there now; I'll go
and ask him whether our committee chooses the orator."
He started to make his way through the crowd, followed by the admiring
looks of various young women who had been frankly listening to the
conversation, although they were strangers.
"Oh, isn't the statue just too lovely for anything," gushingly remarked
one of them, with startling originality; "it's so noble and--. And,
oh," she broke off suddenly, the light of a new discovery shining in
her face, "just see, girls, that's corn in her hand."
"Oh, yes, and cotton," responded her companion. "See, it really is
cotton, and something else."
"Yes, that must be maize," returned the other, oracularly; "it's all so
beautifully American."
The crowd moved and swayed and changed, until Ethel Mott stood close to
the _America_, with her back turned squarely upon the figure. She
evidently found more pleasure in looking at her companion than in
studying the work of the sculptor, which she had nominally come to see.
"I think it will be too cold, Thayer, to go out in the dog-cart," she
said, with one of those glances whose meaning not even a poet could put
into words.
"Oh, no," Kent answered. "I have a tremendously heavy rug, and you can
wrap up."
"Well," was her answer, "if it's pleasant, and the sun shines, and I
don't change my mind, and I feel like it, perhaps I'll go. At any rate
you may come round about ten o'clock."
Rangely was too far away to catch, amid the babble of the crowd, a
single word of this conversation, but he noted the looks which the pair
exchanged.
"Oh, do come along," a corpulent lady in the crowd observed to her
companion. "We've seen everybody here that we know, and I want to go
down to Winter Street and get some buttons for my grey dress. Miranda
wanted me to have them covered with the cloth, but I think steel ones
would be prettier."
"Yes, they say steel's going to be awfully fashionable this spring. Are
they going to put that statue up just as it is?"
"Oh, they bake it or paint it or something," was the lucid answer, as
the corpulent lady threw herself against Mr. Hubbard, nearly
annihilating him in her effort to clear a path through the crowd.
"I think, my dear," Hubbard observed to his wife, "unless you've
designs on my life insurance, you'd better take me out of this crowd."
"But we haven't seen the statue," she returned.
"I have," he retorted grimly, "and I assure you you haven't lost
anything. You'll see it enough when it's set up, and you'll go about
perjuring your soul by denying that I was ever on the committee."
"Hush," she said, "do be quiet; people will think you're cross because
you were overruled."
On the other side of the statue the sculptor had been receiving
congratulations all the afternoon, and now Mr. Calvin and Mrs.
Frostwinch chanced to approach him at the same time to take their leave.
"I am so glad to have seen the statue," was the latter's form of adieu,
"it is distinctly inspiring. Thank you so much."
He bowed awkwardly enough, stammering some unintelligible reply, and
the lady moved away with Mr. Calvin, who observed as the pair emerged
into the open air:
"It is such a relief to me that this statue has turned out so well.
There has really been a good deal of feeling and wire-pulling, and some
New York friends of mine will never forgive me that the commission was
not given to one of their men. I really feel as if the thing had been
made almost a personal matter."
"It must be a great satisfaction to you," his companion returned, "that
he has succeeded."
"It is," was Calvin's reply. "I meant to see Mr. Rangley and ask him to
say a good word in the _Observer,_ but everybody is so much pleased
that I think he may be trusted to be."
"Oh, he must be," she answered.
And as she spoke Tom Bently passed by, quietly smiling to himself.