BITS OF CLAY
What a curious thing is a piece of clay, and, dear Lord, how willing it is, under our fingers! Look now, here is a bit of clay, no larger than a pullet’s egg, and no one knows what may come of it. Shall I mould you a few petals, with my thumb and forefinger, like this, and then shape up a closed golden heart, like that, and next fuss and fuse them all together, thus? You see, it is a rose! It has all the form a clay rose need ask, for the moment; if it had but color and perfume, it might be the rose of the world! However, I set no great store by it; I shall tear my rose in twain, to please you; and if you like, I will pinch up the lesser part into a bishop’s mitre, and the greater part into a churchly face, no feature lacking. Indeed, I will put in as many features as you suggest, though, of course, from the modern point of view, too few are better than too many.
Will you have Stephen Langton, or Thomas à Becket, or Saint Francis himself, God reward him, or would you prefer my dear old neighbor there across the street, Father Geronimo of theCarmelites? One is as easy as the other, when the clay is obedient. Or if by mischance you do not “love a priest and love a cowl and love a prophet of the soul,” I can easily transform my monk into—You would like to go back to that rose-of-the-world idea? Very well, we shall make the hood into a mantilla, thus, and the good priestly face into the flower-like countenance of a girl. The flower must have a stem, too, a well-rounded, slender stem; and the petal of her lower lip needs caressing. Surely you see that it is a girl; a señorita, signora, fräulein, mademoiselle, miss. A lady of any country; yes, perhaps even the gracious Madonna of all lands! What a curious thing is a piece of clay, and how willing it is under the fingers!
The boy Raymond Brooke had often seen and heard his father the sculptor do and say such things, while resting.
But—but—it was nevertheless a mistake of the boy Raymond, when, on finding a bit of clay in his hands, he looked about him with starry eyes, seeking something to adorn, with whatever he and his accomplice clay should create. And I hold it very strange, too, that on this bright June morning, with all the beautiful shapes still unsummonedfrom the deep, he could think of nothing better to mould into a fine symmetry than a pair of fierce moustaches and a goatee; and further, that he could discover no better use for these vain ornaments than to affix them neatly upon the countenance of the clay lady in his father’s studio, that noble new-made portrait of the venerable mistress of Highcourt.
Raymond was seven. Surely at this age, if ever, a child should show himself “un enfant déjà raisonnable.” The new governess had said so; she had added, in gentle despair, that without doubt it was different with the children of artists and the criminal classes. She was a puzzle-headed young creature from the devastated regions, and not yet hardened to life’s surprises. Her career among us had early been darkened by the discovery that the children of American artists have no real feeling for the relative pronoun, in French. And what, she passionately demanded of the elder Brooke girl, what would our noble French literature be, without its relative pronouns? She was in earnest, and looked very pretty and bright-eyed as she asked it. Raymond, poor Nordic, was fascinated by that slender dark streak above her upper lip. It seemed very firm and permanent,yet fragile and downy, too; he wondered whether, if you touched it, it would vanish. But Mademoiselle chose that moment to inquire of him, the youngest infant of the Brooke trio, whether he had the very smallest idea what a relative pronoun was, or even an ordinary pronoun, for example! Raymond was either unable or unwilling to throw light on the situation, and had fled toward the studio to escape his responsibilities. From Scylla to Charybdis, from French literature to American art! He was not thinking of his pronouns, either; he was thinking of that downy shadow. But this, I admit, scarcely excuses his grotesque conduct.
His father was not in the studio; the clay lady reigned supreme; a fine challenging old lady she was, drawing her breath with that superb kindliness the clay allows. The portrait was still, according to its creator, in the chrysalis stage. Later, it would be transformed into white plaster, and later yet, if luck held, it would issue, gleaming and triumphant, in spotless Carrara. The sculptor was by no means dissatisfied with that clay portrait; the world called it a speaking likeness. He himself found it a trace too masculine, perhaps; but that was inevitable, with a typeso full of high character. He was glad it was so, because he knew well enough that the marble would only too easily soften and spiritualize his interpretation of the old lady of Highcourt, with her white hair nobly tossed up from her candid brow.
She was a very beautiful old lady, truly; no one denied that; straight as an arrow and graceful as a palm, for all her seventy years; not fat, not lean; greatly given to charming clothes, too, and not particularly scandalized by our shocking modern custom of short skirts for all, especially grandmothers. You see her own feet were very shapely. And her profile was that of Cato’s daughter, softened by centuries. All the little wrinkles around her eyes were kind and smiling ones. No wonder those college girls had voted that the old lady of Highcourt should be immortalized in fair Carrara, at a fair price, and shrined in a niche in their stately new Library, her gift.
But Raymond, you remember, was only seven years high in his sandal shoon. His nose hardly reached to the top of the modelling-stand. He was forced to mount a box to carry out his decorative intentions. The little typewriter box would do. Now! A slender sausage of clay moustache on theleft of the lady’s mouth, another on the right; for the chin, a rather stouter lump. No compromises anywhere; swift work, and sure. Raymond stepped down from his box, and walked slowly backward, quite in his father’s manner, to study the effect. Alas, how brief is the delirium of design! Raymond’s flight of genius was over, and the result appalled him.
Indeed, it was rather remarkable, that transformation; and very curious is the power of a bit of clay, in willing fingers! That beautifully modelled countenance no longer suggested Madam Randolph of Highcourt; it had become the face of some Light-Horse Harry, some devil-may-care D’Arcy of the Guards. If that portrait had been scarce feminine enough before, what was it now, with those singular additions bristling from lips and chin? A warrior, no less. A moment ago, a lady; at present, a grenadier! An uninstructed observer, suddenly encountering that piece of family sculpture, might well ask, in his bewilderment, “But why does the noble Confederate officer wear a lace kerchief over his epaulets?”
Raymond himself could no longer endure the power of his own performance. He darted back toward his box, to annul his handiwork. Toolate! In his terror he heard a voice in the garden, near at hand; his father was talking with the old lady of Highcourt.
Having finished their excellent morning sitting (indeed, it was the last sitting that would be needed until marble-time should come), artist and model had strayed into the garden to see the Antonin Mercié phlox in all its glory; Raymond’s father made a specialty of that, in honor of M. Mercié, his old master in sculpture. The two had touched lightly on many topics,—phlox, M. Mercié, old masters, sculpture,—que sais-je?And now the old lady of Highcourt, with a new thrill in her voice, was speaking very earnestly about a projected portrait in bronze, a work the sculptor seemed unwilling to undertake. He said, with force, that he much preferred to work from life. In working from photographs, he couldn’t do justice to himself, or his subject, or his client. And the old lady was ruthlessly chaffing him because, in his Northern way, he was putting himself, the artist, first, and herself, the client, last. Her face beamed with mischief as she spoke. Beware of that old lady, she has her designs on the sculptor; she means, by hook or by crook, to make him do her bidding! She has managed many men,in her time; and always in her own way, so that they shall not perceive what is happening to them, until at last they have become the willing clay in her fingers.
However, Mr. Brooke was holding out bravely; I’ll say that for him. He had had previous experience in making bronze portraits of dear women’s dead fathers. He well knew that the odds were bitterly against any artist who should pledge himself to show forth Father, in his era of prosperity, just by imagining all things from a dim, lean profile of Father in his salad days. In short, according to Mr. Brooke, we were now in the nineteen-twenties; and back in the nineteen-tens, he had taken an oath, had Mr. Brooke, never again to interpret for the world, by means of the willing clay, just how a great man who died in the eighteen-eighties really looked in the eighteen-seventies, when all there was to go by was a wraithlike, looking-glassy daguerreotype of the eighteen-sixties. Yes, Madam, no matter how elegant the crimson velvet brocade that lined the little leather case! The old lady of Highcourt had plenty to say in answer to that; but long before she had begun to say it, the culprit Raymond, stricken by the lightning of his own genius, hadfled away, away on sandalled feet, to hide behind the tomato plants and the tall corn.
A great persuader, Madam Randolph! She refused to see herself as beaten. “I don’t ask you to promise me anything to-day. I only ask you to give this matter your prayerful consideration. And wouldn’t it be rather criminal on your part if you, a strong man, should allow me, a weak old lady, to degrade our American art by giving this commission to some one else, who would no doubt make a bigger mess of it than you will? Mr. Brooke, you don’t know how much I want to leave behind me, for those grandsons of mine, at least some inkling of what my honored father looked like in Civil War days!”
They were stepping into the studio. It was a high step, but the old lady was a high-stepper, and Mr. Brooke chuckled over her disdain of his helping hand. Suddenly his smile vanished. A look of incredulous horror engulfed it utterly. His precious handiwork had been profaned, Southern womanhood insulted!
“Good God, what devil has been here?” He himself groaned aloud the shameful answer, “That devil Raymond!”
It is hard to find a really neat thing to say atsuch moments; luckily actions speak louder than words. In wrathful haste, the sculptor strode forward to kick away Raymond’s box, and to tear off those bits of clay foully misplaced on the portrait of a lady.
But the dame of Highcourt, though in her seventies, had a longer and quicker sight than even Mr. Brooke himself; she had a larger experience in the misdeeds of the young; it was she, not the sculptor, who had spied those sandalled feet winging toward the tomato plants. And indeed she was a valiant little old person, whom life had trained to all sorts of ready readjustments. Long before Mr. Brooke had worked himself up to anywhere near the height of passion he fully intended to reach, Madam Randolph had viewed the situation by and large, and had resolved it into its elements. With a singular phrase, borrowed no doubt from her grandchildren, she pulled our sculptor down on his haunches, so to speak; she stayed his hand in midair.
“Cut it out, old dear,” she said soothingly, as if she were reining in her favorite thoroughbred. “And oh, won’t you please,please, stop, look, listen? Mr. Brooke, Mr. Brooke, can’t you see what it looks like? Dear sculptor-in-wrath, it’smy father, Dad to the life; it is, indeed, Captain Carteret! Ask any one who ever saw him. All it needs is the uniform!” And she brandished in triumph before Mr. Brooke the dim daguerreotype he had just refused to consider.
Well, what can we all do when events literally leap out of our hands, and shape themselves firmly, in defiance of our ethics and ultimatums? An old lady and a piece of clay are matters to be considered; they are curiously frail things under our fingers; we shall not shatter them unnecessarily. Mr. Brooke saw that Madam Randolph was right, in the main; and when she said, in a voice trembling between laughter and tears, “You will add years to my life if you do what I ask,” what could he do but yield? There were to be two portraits, then; that was settled. The lady’s would be in marble, the officer’s in bronze; Raymond’s genius for clay had arranged it. But Mr. Brooke, for all Madam Randolph’s challenging eyes, refused to model those moustaches in her presence.
“No doubt my boy Raymond might do it,” he said, with a slight acerbity. “He appears to have the soul of a barber.” He was still smarting a little from the profanation of his own sacredhandiwork; one did not expect a woman to understand how one felt about such things.
Who shall measure man’s ingratitude? Was Raymond ever congratulated upon his own small part in that day’s playlet? Not at all. Behind the tomato plants, in the cool of the evening, could be heard the lamentations of a small boy; and behind the small boy—but I make an end.
In his little white bed, a subdued Raymond sobbed out repentance, in long-drawn gusts. “Oh, mother dear, I didn’t mean to spoil father’s lovely lady, I didn’t, I didn’t!” His mother said to herself, in fine disdain of human decisions, “And this poor suffering child must not be told what a lucky thing for him his badness really is; he must not find out that his disgraceful act has put into our family coffers enough to earn him his new pony!” She marvelled at the complexities, nay, the complicities of parenthood. And Raymond, soon to be cast up safely into dreamland on the ebbing tide of remorse, repeated, in a diminuendo of infantine rhythms, “Mademoiselle ast me so verysuddinglysomething I couldn’t know—I only wanted to see how the lady would look, with whiskers—I made ’em just like Mr. Smith’s at the grocery-store—The clay felt so curious under my fingers—”