The hour had passed when any one was likely to enter his shop. A few
rays of pale sunlight, straggling in through crevices of the door,
rested like a dying halo on the heads of the monumental figures grouped
around. Shadows, creeping upward from the ground, shrouded all else in
thin, penetrable half-gloom, through which the stark grey emblems of
mortality sent forth more solemn suggestions. A sudden sense of the
earthly tragedy overwhelmed him. The chisel and the hammer dropped from
his hands, and, resting his head on the block he had been carving, he
gave himself up to that mood of dim, distant reverie in which the soul
seems to soar and float far above the shock and din of the world's
disturbing nearness. On his all but oblivious ear, like the faint
washings of some remote sea, beat the waves of the city's tide-driven
life in the streets outside. The room itself seemed hushed to the awful
stillness of the high aerial spaces. Then all at once this stillness was
broken by a voice, low, clear, and tremulous, saying close to his ear--
"Are you the maker of gravestones?"
"That is my sad calling," he cried bitterly, starting up with
instinctive forebodings.
He saw before him a veiled figure. To support herself, she rested one
hand on the block he had been carving, while she pressed the other
against her heart, as though to stifle pain.
"Whose monument is this?"
"A neglected poet's who died not long ago. Soon, perhaps, I shall be
making one for an old soldier, and one for a holy man, whose soul, I
hear, is about to be dismissed."
"Are not some monuments sadder to make than others?"
"Ay, truly."
"What is the saddest you ever made?"
"The saddest monument I ever made was one for a poor mother who had lost
her only son. One day a woman came in who had no sooner entered than she
sat down and gave way to a passionate outburst of grief.
"'My good woman,' I said, 'why do you weep so bitterly?'
"'Do not call me good,' she moaned, and hid her face.
"I then perceived her fallen character. When she recovered self-control
she drew from her sinful bosom an old purse filled with coins of
different values.
"'Why do you give me this?' I asked.
"'It is to pay for a monument for my son,' she said, and the storm of
her grief swept over her again.
"I learned that for years she had toiled and starved to hoard up a sum
with which to build a monument to his memory, for he had never failed of
his duty to her after all others had cast her out. Certainly he had his
reward, not in the monument, but in the repentance which came to her
after his death. I have never seen such sorrow for evil as the memory of
his love wrought in her. For herself she desired only that the spot
where she should be buried might be unknown. This longing to be
forgotten has led me to believe that none desire to be remembered for
the evil that is in them, but only for some truth, or beauty, or
goodness by which they have linked their individual lives to the general
life of the race. Even the lying epitaphs in cemeteries prove how we
would fain have the dead arrayed on the side of right in the thoughts of
their survivors. This wretched mother and human outcast, believing
herself to have lost everything that makes it well to be remembered,
craved only the mercy of forgetfulness."
"And yet I think she died a Christian soul."
"You knew her, then?"
"I was with her in the last hours. She told me her story. She told me
also of you, and that you would accept nothing for the monument you were
at such care to make. It is perhaps for this reason that I have felt
some desire to see you, and that I am here now to speak with you of----"
A shudder passed over her.
"After all, that was not a sad, but a joyous monument to fashion," she
added abruptly.
"Ay, it was joyous. But to me the joyous and the sad are much allied in
the things of this life."
"And yet there might be one monument wholly sad, might there not?"
"There might be, but I know not whose it would be."
"If she you love should die, would not hers be so?"
"Until I love, and she I love is dead, I cannot know," said Nicholas,
smiling.
"What builds the most monuments?" she asked quickly, as though to
retreat from her levity.
"Pride builds many--splendid ones. Gratitude builds some, forgiveness
some, and pity some. But faith builds more than these, though often
poor, humble ones; and love!--love builds more than all things else
together."
"And what, of all things that monuments are built in memory of, is most
loved and soonest forgotten?" she asked, with intensity.
"Nay, I cannot tell that."
"Is it not a beautiful woman? This, you say, is the monument of a poet.
After the poet grows old, men love him for the songs he sang; they love
the old soldier for the battles he fought, and the preacher for his
remembered prayers. But a woman! Who loves her for the beauty she once
possessed, or rather regards her not with the more distaste? Is there in
history a figure so lonely and despised as that of the woman, who, once
the most beautiful in the world, crept back into her native land a
withered hag? Or, if a woman die while she is yet beautiful, how long is
she remembered? Her beauty is like heat and light--powerful only for
those who feel and see it."
But Nicholas had scarcely heard her. His eyes had become riveted upon
her hand, which rested on the marble, as white as though grown out of it
under the labours of his chisel.
"My lady," he said, with the deepest respect, "will you permit me to
look at your hand? I have carved many a one in marble, and studied many
a one in life; but never have I seen anything so beautiful as yours."
He took it with an artist's impetuosity and bent over it, laying its
palm against one of his own and stroking it softly with the other. The
blood leaped through his heart, and he suddenly lifted it to his lips.
"God only can make the hand beautiful," he said.
Displaced by her arm which he had upraised, the light fabric that had
concealed her figure parted on her bosom and slipped to the ground. His
eyes swept over the perfect shape that stood revealed. The veil still
concealed her face. The strangely mingled emotions that had been
deepening within him all this time now blended themselves in one
irrepressible wish.
"Will you permit me to see your face?"