The May afternoon, all sunshine and sparkle, had a wine to make young
hope spring from old graves and age forget its years, and youth mad with
its handicaps; a day to inspire passion, talent, desire, and to make
even goodness take new wings.
With the crowd of interested and curious, Antony Fairfax entered Central
Park through the Seventy-second Street gate. Lines of carriages extended
far into Fifth Avenue, and he walked along by the side of a smart
victoria where a pretty woman sat under her sunshade and smiled on the
world and spring. Fairfax saw that she was young and worldly, and
thought for some time of his mother, of women he might have known, and
when the victoria passed him, caught the lady's glance as her look
wandered over the crowd. A May-day party of school children spread over
the lawn at his left, the pole's bright streamers fluttering in the
breeze. The children danced gaily, too small to care for the unveiling
of statues or for ancient Egypt. The bright scene and the day's gladness
struck Antony harsh as a glare in weakened eyes. He was gloomy and
sardonic, his heart beating out of tune, his genial nature had been
turned to gall.
The Mall was roped off, and at an extempore gate a man in uniform
received the cards of admission. Fairfax remembered the day he had
endeavoured to enter the Field Palace and his failure.
"I'm a mechanic," he said hastily to the gateman, "one of Mr.
Cedersholm's workmen."
The man pushed him through, and he went in with a group of students from
Columbia College.
In a corner of the Mall, on the site he had indicated to the little
cousins, rose a white object covered by a sheeting, which fell to the
ground. Among the two hundred persons gathered were people of
distinction. There was to be speech-making. Fairfax did not know this or
who the speakers were to be. All that he knew or cared was that at three
o'clock of this Saturday his Beasts--his four primitive creatures--were
to be unveiled. He wore his workday clothes, his Pride had led him to
make the arrogant display of his contempt of the class he had deserted.
His hat was pushed back on his blond head. His blue eyes sparkled and he
thrust his disfigured hands into his pockets to keep them quiet. The
lady beside whose carriage he had stood came into the roped-off
enclosure, and found a place opposite Fairfax. Once more her eyes fell
on the workman's handsome face. He looked out of harmony with the people
who had gathered to see the unveiling of Mr. Cedersholm's pedestal.
For the speakers, a desk and platform had been arranged, draped with an
American flag. Antony listened coldly to the first address, a _resume_
of the dynasty in whose dim years the Abydos Sphinx was hewn, and the
Egyptologist's learning, the dust he stirred of golden tombs, and the
perfumes of the times that he evoked, were lost to the up-state engineer
who only gazed on the veiled monument.
His look, however, returned to the desk, when Cedersholm took the place,
and Fairfax, from the sole of his lame foot to his fair head, grew cold.
His bronze beasts were not more hard and cold in their metallic bodies,
nor was the Sphinx more petrified. Cedersholm had aged, and seemed to
Fairfax to have warped and shrunk and to stand little more than a
pitiful suit of clothes with a _boutonniere_ in the lapel of the
pepper-and-salt coat. There was nothing impressive about the sleek grey
head, though his single eye-glass gave him distinction. The Columbia
student next to Fairfax, pushed by the crowd, touched Antony Fairfax's
great form and felt as though he had touched a colossus.
Cedersholm spoke on art, on the sublimity of plastic expression. He
spoke rapidly and cleverly. His audience interrupted him by gratifying
whispers of "Bravo, bravo," and the gentle tapping of hands. He was
clearly a favourite, a great citizen, a great New Yorker, and a great
man. Directly opposite the desk was a delegation from the Century Club,
Cedersholm's friends all around him. To Fairfax, they were only brutes,
black and white creatures, no more--mummers in a farce. Cedersholm did
not speak of his own work. With much delicacy he confined his address to
the past. And his adulation of antiquity showed him to be a real artist,
and he spoke with love of the relics of the perfect age. In closing he
said--
"Warm as may be our inspirations, great as may be any modern genius,
ardent as may be our labour, let each artist look at the Abydos Sphinx
and know that the climax has been attained. We can never touch the
antique perfection again."
Glancing as he did from face to face, Cedersholm turned toward the
Columbia students who adored him and whose professor in art he was.
Searching the young faces for sympathy, he caught sight of Fairfax. He
remembered who he was, their eyes met. Cedersholm drank a glass of water
at his hand, bowed to his audience, and stepped down. He moved briskly,
his head a little bent, crossed the enclosure, and joined the lady whom
Fairfax had observed.
"That," Fairfax heard one of his neighbours say, "is Mr. Cedersholm's
fiancee, Mrs. Faversham."
Fairfax raised his eyes to the statue. There was a slight commotion as
the workmen ranged the ropes. Then, very gracefully, evidently proud as
a queen, the lady, followed by Mr. Cedersholm, went up to the pedestal,
took the ropes in her gloved hands, and there was a flutter and the
conventional covering slipped and fell to the earth. There was an
exclamation, a murmur, the released voices murmured their praise,
Cedersholm was surrounded. Fairfax, immovable, stood and gazed.
The pedestal was of shell-pink marble, carved in delicate bas-relief.
Many of the drawings Antony had made. Isis with her cap of Upper and
Lower Egypt, Hathor with the eternal oblation--the Sphinx.... God and
the Immortals alone knew who had made it.
On its great, impassive face, on its ponderous body, there was no
signature, no name. Under the four corners, between Sphinx and pedestal,
crouched four bronze creatures, their forms and bodies visible between
the stones of the pink pedestal and the soft blue of the Egyptian
granite. The bold, severe modelling, their curious primitive conception,
the life and realism of the creatures were poignant in their suggestion
of power. The colour of the bronze was beautiful, would be more
beautiful still as the years went on. The beasts supported the Egyptian
monument. They rested between the pedestal and the Sphinx; they were the
support and they were his. They seemed, to the man who had made them,
beautiful indeed. Forgetting his outrage and his revenge, in the artist,
Fairfax listened timidly, eagerly, for some word to be murmured in the
crowd, some praise for his Beasts.
He heard many.
The students at his side were enthusiastic, they had made studies from
the moulds; moulds of the Beasts were already in the Metropolitan
Museum. The young critics were lavish, profuse. They compared the
creatures with the productions of the Ancients.
"Cedersholm is a magician, he is one of the greatest men of his
time...."
The man in working clothes smiled, but his expression was gentler than
it had been hitherto. He lifted his soft hat and ran his fingers through
his blond hair and remained bareheaded in the May air that blew about
him; his fascinated eyes were fastened on the Abydos Sphinx, magnetized
by the calm, inscrutable melancholy, by the serene indifference. The
stony eyes were fixed on the vistas of the new world, the crude Western
continent, as they had been fixed for centuries on the sands of the
pathless desert, on the shifting sands that relentlessly effaced
footsteps of artist and Pharaoh, dynasty and race.
Who knew who had made this wonder?
How small and puny Cedersholm seemed in his pepper-and-salt suit, his
_boutonniere_ and single eye-glass, his trembling heart. His heart
trembled, but only Fairfax knew it; he felt that he held it between his
hands. "He must have thought I was dead," he reflected. "What difference
did it make," Fairfax thought, "whether or not the Egyptian who had hewn
the Sphinx had murdered another man for stealing his renown? After four
thousand years, all the footsteps were effaced." His heart grew
somewhat lighter, and between himself and the unknown sculptor there
seemed a bond of union.
The students and the master had drifted away. Cedersholm was in the
midst of his friends. Fairfax would not have put out his hand to take
his laurel. His spirit and soul had gone into communion with a greater
sculptor of the Sphinx, the unknown Egyptian. Standing apart from the
crowd where Cedersholm was being congratulated, Fairfax remarked the
lady again, and that she stood alone as was he. She seemed pensive,
turning her lace parasol between her hands, her eyes on the ground. The
young man supposed her to be dreaming of her lover's greatness. He
recalled the day, two years ago, when with Bella and Gardiner he had
come up before the opening in the earth prepared for the pedestal.
"Wait, wait, my hearties!" he had said.
Well, one of them had gone on, impatient, to the unveiling of greater
wonders, and Antony had come to his unclaimed festival alone....