The Adventures of a Modest Man

CHAPTER VI

SOUL AND BODY

As in a blessed vision, doubting the reality of it all, she sat looking upward until his step on some outer floor aroused her to the wondrous reality.

He came, holding two clay figures. The first was an exquisite winged shape, standing with delicate limbs parallel, arms extended, palms outward. The head was lifted a little, poised exquisitely on the perfect neck. Its loveliness thrilled her.

"Is it an angel?" she asked, innocently.

"No… I thought you understood – this is only a sketch I made. And this is the other." And he placed on a table the second figure, a smooth, youthful, sensuous shape, looking aside and down at her own white fingers playing with her hair.

"Is it Eve?" she inquired, wondering.

"These," he said slowly, "are the first two sketches, done without a model, for my two figures 'Soul' and 'Body'."

She looked at him, not comprehending.

"I – I must have a living model – for these," he stammered. "Didn't you understand? I want you to work from."

From brow to throat the scarlet stain deepened and spread. She turned, laid one small hand on the back of the chair, faltered, sank onto it, covering her face.

"I thought you understood," he repeated stupidly. "Forgive me – I thought you understood what sort of help I needed." He dropped on one knee beside her. "I am so sorry. Try to reason a little. You – you must know I meant no offense – that I never could wish to offend you. Look at me, please; I am not that sort of a man. Can't you realize how desperate I was – how I dared hazard the chance that you might help me?"

She rose, her face still covered.

"Can't you comprehend?" he pleaded, "that I meant no offense?"

"Y-yes. Let me go."

"Can you forgive me?"

"I – yes."

"And you cannot – help me?"

"H-help you?.. Oh, no, no, no!" She broke down, sobbing in the chair, her golden head buried in her arms.

Confused, miserable, he watched her. Already the old helpless feeling had come surging back, that there was to be no chance for him in the world, no hope of all he had dared to believe in, no future. Watching her he felt his own courage falling with her tears, his own will drooping as she drooped there – slender and white in her thin, black gown.

Again he spoke, for the moment forgetting himself.

"Don't cry, because there is nothing to cry about. You know I did not mean to hurt you; I know that you would help me if you could. Isn't it true?"

"Y-yes," she sobbed.

"It was only a sculptor who asked you, not a man at all. You understand what I mean? – only a poor devil of a sculptor, carried away by the glamour of a chance for better fortune that seemed to open before him for a moment. So you must not feel distressed or sensitive or ashamed – "

She sat up, wet eyed, cheeks aflame.

"I am thinking of you!" she cried, almost fiercely, "not of myself; and you don't understand! Do you think I would cry over myself? I – it is because I cannot help you!"

He found no words to answer as she rose and moved toward the door. She crossed the threshold, turned and looked at him. Then she entered her own doorway.

And the world went badly for her that night, and, after that, day and night, the world went badly.

Always the confusion of shame and dread returned to burn her; but that was the least; for in the long hours, lying amid the fragments of her shattered dreams, the knowledge that he needed her and that she could not respond, overwhelmed her.

The house, the corridor, her room became unendurable; she desired to go – anywhere – and try to forget. But she could not; she could not leave, she could not forget, she could not go to him and offer the only aid he desired, she could not forgive herself.

In vain, in vain, white with the agony of courage, she strove to teach herself that she was nothing, her body nothing, that the cost was nothing, compared to the terrible importance of his necessity. She knew in her heart that she could have died for him; but – but – her courage could go no further.

In terrible silence she walked her room, thinking of him as one in peril, as one ruined for lack of the aid she withheld. Sometimes she passed hours on her knees, tearless, wordless; sometimes sheerest fear set her creeping to the door to peer out, dreading lest his closed door concealed a tragedy.

And always, burning like twin gray flames before her eyes, she saw the figures he had made, 'Soul' and 'Body.' Every detail remained clear; their terrible beauty haunted her. Night after night, rigid on her bed's edge, she stretched her bared, white arms, staring at them, then flung them hopelessly across her eyes, whispering, "I cannot – O God – I cannot – even for him."

And there came a day – a Saturday – when the silence of the house, of her room, the silence in her soul, became insupportable.

All day she walked in the icy, roaring streets, driving herself forward toward the phantom of forgetfulness which fled before her like her shadow. And at the edge of noon she found herself – where she knew she must come one day – seeking the woman who made plaster casts of hands and arms and shapely feet.

For a little while they talked together. The woman surprised, smiling sometimes, but always very gentle; the girl flushed, stammering, distressed in forming her naïve questions.

Yes, it could be done; it had been done. But it was a long process; it must be executed in sections, then set together limb by limb, for there were many difficulties – and it was not pleasant to endure, even sometimes painful.

"I do not mind the pain," said the girl. "Will it scar me?"

"No, not that… But, another thing; it would be expensive."

"I have my vacation money, and a little more." She named the sum timidly.

Yes, it was enough. And when could she come for the first casts to be taken?

She was ready now.

A little later, turning a lovely, flushed face over her bare shoulder: "One figure stood like this," and, after a pause, "the other this way… If you make them from me, can a sculptor work from life casts such as these?"

A sculptor could.

About dusk she crept home, trembling in every nerve. Her vacation had begun.

She had been promoted to a position as expert lace buyer, which permitted larger liberty. From choice she had taken no vacation during the summer. Now her vacation, which she requested for December, lasted ten days; and at the end of it her last penny had been spent, but in a manner so wonderful, so strange, that no maid ever dreamed such things might be.

And on the last evening of it, which was Christmas Eve, she knelt, crying, before two pedestals from which rose her body and soul as white as death.

An hour later the snowy twins stood in his empty studio, swathed in their corpse-white winding-sheets – unstained cerements, sealing beneath their folds her dead pride, dead hope – all that was delicate and intimate and subtle and sweet – slain and in cerements, for his sake.

And now she must go before he returned. Her small trunk was ready; her small account settled. With strangely weak and unsteady hands she stood before the glass knotting her veil.

Since that night together last summer she had not spoken to him, merely returning his low greeting in the corridor with a silent little inclination of her head. But, although she had had no speech with him, she had learned that he was teaching at the League now, and she knew his hours and his movements well enough to time her own by them.

He was not due for another hour; she looked out into the snowy darkness, drawing on her gloves and buttoning the scant fur collar close about her throat.

The old janitor came to say good-by.

"An' God be with you, miss, this Christmas Eve" – taking the coin irresolutely, but pocketing it for fear of hurting her.

His fingers, numbed and aged, fumbling in the pocket encountered another object.

"Musha, thin, I'm afther forgettin' phwat I'm here f'r to tell ye, miss," he rambled on. "Misther Landon wishes ye f'r to know that he do be lavin' the house" – the old man moistened his lips in an effort to remember with all the elegance required of him – "an' Misther Landon is wishful f'r to say a genteel good luck to ye, miss."

The girl shook her head.

"Tell Mr. Landon good-by for me, Patrick. Say – from me – God bless him… Will you remember?.. And a – a happy Christmas."

"I will, Miss."

She touched her eyes with her handkerchief hastily, and held out her hand to the old man.

"I think that is all," she whispered.

She was mistaken; the janitor was holding out a note to her.

"In case ye found it onconvaynient f'r to see Misther Landon, I was to projooce the letter, Miss."

She took it; a shiver passed over her.

When the old man had shambled off down the passage she reëntered her room, held the envelope a moment close under the lighted lamp, then nervously tore it wide.

"You will read this in case you refuse to say good-by to me. But I only wanted to offer you a little gift at Christmastide – not in reparation, for I meant no injury – but in deepest respect for you. And so I ask you once more to wait for me. Will you?"

Minute after minute she sat there, dumb, confused, nerves at the breaking point, her heart and soul crying out for him. Then the memory of what was awaiting him in his studio choked her with fright. She sprang to her feet, and at the same moment the outer gate clanged.

Terror froze her; then she remembered that it was too early for him; it must be the expressman for her trunk. And she went to the door and opened it.

"Oh-h!" she breathed, shrinking back; but Landon had seen his letter in her hand, and he followed her into the room.

He was paler than she: his voice was failing him, too, as he laid his gift on the bare table – only a little book, prettily bound.

"Will you take it?" he asked in a colorless voice; but she could not answer, could not move.

"I wish you a happy Christmas," he whispered. "Good-by."

She strove to meet his eyes, strove to speak, lifted her slim hand to stay him. It fell, strength spent, in both of his.

Suddenly Time went all wrong, reeling off centuries in seconds. And through the endless interstellar space that stretched between her world and his she heard his voice bridging it: "I love you – I love you dearly… Once more I am the beggar – a beggar at Christmastide, asking your mercy – asking more, your love. Dear, is it plain this time? Is all clear, dearest among women?"

She looked up into his eyes; his hands tightened over hers.

"Can you love me?" he said.

"Yes," answered her eyes and the fragrant mouth assented, quivering under his lips.

Then, without will or effort of her own, from very far away, her voice stole back to her faintly.

"Is all this true? I have dreamed so long – so long – of loving you – "

He drew her closer; she laid both hands against his coat and hid her face between them.

He whispered:

"It was your unselfishness, your sweetness, and —you– all of you – yes – your beauty – the loveliness of you, too! I could not put it from me; I knew that night that I loved you – and to-day they said you were going – so I came with my Christmas gift – the sorry, sorry gift – myself – "

"Ah!" she whispered, clinging closer. "And what of my gift – my twin gifts – there, in your studio! Oh, you don't know, you don't know – "

"Dearest!"

"No – you can never know how much easier it had been for me to die than to love – as I have loved a man this day."

"Confound you, Williams," I said, blinking.

But he did not hear me, sitting there in a literary revery, mentally repolishing the carefully considered paragraphs with which he had just regaled me.

"Williams?"

"What?"

"So – they're living in Normandy."

"Who?"

"Jim Landon and that girl, dammit!" I said, crossly.

"Yes – oh, yes, of course. Children – bunches of 'em – and all that."

"Williams?"

"What?"

"Was she so pretty?"

"Certainly," he said, absently. "Don't bother me now; I've got an idea for another story."

CHAPTER VII

THE BITER, THE BITTEN, AND THE UN-BITTEN

"Mais tout le monde," began the chasseur of the Hôtel des Michetons – "mais, monsieur, tout le grand monde – "

"Exactly," said I, complacently. "Le grand monde means the great world; and," I added, "the world is a planet of no unusual magnitude, inhabited by bipeds whose entire existence is passed in attempting to get something for nothing."

The chasseur of the Hôtel des Michetons bowed, doubtfully.

"You request me," I continued, "not to forget you when I go away. Why should I not forget you? Are you historical, are you antique, are you rococo, are you a Rosacrucian?"

The chasseur, amiably perplexed, twirled his gold-banded cap between his fingers.

"Have you," I asked, "ever done one solitary thing for me besides touching your expensive cap?"

The chasseur touched his cap, smiled, and hopefully held out his large empty hand.

"Go to the devil," I said gently; "it is not for what you have done but for what you have not done that I give you this silver piece," and I paid the tribute which I despised myself for paying. Still, his gay smile and prompt salute are certainly worth something to see, but what their precise value may be you can only determine when, on returning to New York, you hear a gripman curse a woman for crossing the sacred tracks of the Metropolitan Street Railroad Company. So, with my daughter Dulcima and my daughter Alida, and with a wagon-load of baggage, I left the gorgeously gilded Hôtel des Michetons – for these three reasons:

Number one: it was full of Americans.

Number two: that entire section of Paris resembled a slice of the Waldorf-Astoria.

Number three: I wanted to be rid of the New York Herald. Surely somewhere in Paris there existed French newspapers, French people, and French speech. I meant to discover them or write and complain to the Outlook.

The new hotel I had selected was called the Hôtel de l'Univers. I had noticed it while wandering out of the Luxembourg Gardens. It appeared to be a well situated, modest, clean hotel, and not only thoroughly respectable – which the great gilded Hôtel des Michetons was not – but also typically and thoroughly French. So I took an apartment on the first floor and laid my plans to dine out every evening with my daughters.

They were naturally not favourably impressed with the Hôtel de l'Univers, but I insisted on trying it for a week, desiring that my daughters should have at least a brief experience in a typical French hotel.

On the third day of our stay my daughters asked me why the guests at the Hôtel de l'Univers all appeared to be afflicted in one way or another. I myself had noticed that many of the guests wore court-plaster on hands and faces, and some even had their hands bandaged in slings.

I thought, too, that the passers-by in the street eyed the modest hotel with an interest somewhat out of proportion to its importance. But I set that down to French alertness and inbred curiosity, and dismissed the subject from my mind. The hotel was pretty clean and highly respectable. Titled names were not wanting among the guests, and the perfect courtesy of the proprietor, his servants, and of the guests was most refreshing after the carelessness and bad manners of the crowds at the Hôtel des Michetons.

"Can it be possible?" said Alida, as we three strolled out of our hotel into the Boulevard St. Michel.

"What?" I asked.

"That we are in the Latin Quarter? Why this boulevard is beautiful, and I had always pictured the Latin Quarter as very dreadful."

"It's the inhabitants that are dreadful," said I with a shudder as a black-eyed young girl, in passing, gave me an amused and exceedingly saucy smile.

The "Quarter!" It is beautiful – one of the most beautiful portions of Paris. The Luxembourg Gardens are the centre and heart of the Latin Quarter – these ancient gardens, with their groves of swaying chestnuts all in bloom, quaint weather-beaten statues in a grim semicircle looking out over the flowering almonds on the terrace to the great blue basin of the fountain where toy yachts battle with waves almost an inch high.

Here the big drab-colored pigeons strut and coo in the sunshine, here the carp splash in the mossy fountain of Marie de Medici, here come the nursemaids with their squalling charges, to sit on the marble benches and coquette with the red-trousered soldiers, who are the proper and natural prey of all nursemaids in all climes.