The Adventures of a Modest Man. Chambers Robert William
I am educated." She even found courage to smile at him.
His answering smile covered both confusion and surprise; then perplexity etched a crease between his brows.
"That makes it rather harder for me" – he hesitated – "or easier; I don't know which."
"What makes it harder?" she asked.
"Your being – I don't know – different – from what I imagined – "
"Educated?"
"Y-yes – "
She laughed deliciously in her new-born confidence.
"What is it you wish to ask?"
"I'll tell you," he said. "I need a model – and I'm too poor to pay for one. I've pledged everything in my studio. A chance has come to me. It's only a chance, however. But I can't take it because I cannot afford a model."
There was a silence; then she inquired what he meant by a model. And he told her – not everything, not clearly.
"You mean that you wish me to sit for my portrait in marble?"
"There are two figures to be executed for the new Department of Peace in Washington," he explained, "and they are to be called 'Soul' and 'Body.' Six sculptors have been invited to compete. I am one. We have a year before us."
She remained silent.
"It is perfectly apparent, of course, that you are exquis – admirably fitted" – he stammered under her direct gaze, then went on; "I scarcely dared dream of such a model even if I had the means to afford – " He could get no further.
"Are you really poor?" she asked in gentle wonder.
"At present – yes."
"I never dreamed it," she said. "I thought – otherwise."
"Oh, it is nothing; some day things will come out right. Only – I have a chance now – if you – if you would help me… I could win with you; I know it. And if I do win – with your aid – I will double your present salary. And that is what I've come here to say. Is that fair?"
He waited, watching her intently. She had dropped her eyes, sitting there very silent at the foot of the tree, cradling the big straw hat in her lap.
"Whatever you decide to be fair – " he began again, but she looked up wistfully.
"I was not thinking of that," she said; "I was only – sorry."
"Sorry?"
"That you are poor."
He misunderstood her. "I know; I wish I could offer you something beside a chance – "
"Oh-h," she whispered, but so low that he heard only a long, indrawn breath.
She sat motionless, eyes on the grass. When again she lifted them their pure beauty held him.
"What is it you wish?" she asked. "That I should be your model for the – this prize which you desire to strive for?"
"Yes; for that."
"How can I? I work all day."
"I could use you at night and on Saturday afternoons, and all day Sunday. And – have you had your yearly vacation?"
She drew a quietly tired breath. "No," she said.
"Then – I will give you two hundred dollars extra for those ten days," he went on eagerly – so eagerly that he forgot the contingency on which hung any payment at all. As for her, payment was not even in her thoughts.
Through the deep, sweet content which came to her with the chance of serving him, ran an undercurrent of confused pain that he could so blindly misunderstand her. If she thought at all of the amazing possibility of such a fortune as he offered, she knew that she would not accept it from him. But this, and the pain of his misunderstanding, scarcely stirred the current of a strange, new happiness that flowed through every vein.
"Do you think I could really help you?"
"If you will." His voice trembled.
"Are you sure – quite sure? If you are – I will do what you wish."
He sprang up buoyant, transfigured.
"If I win it will be you!" he said. "Could you come into the studio a moment? I'll show you the two sketches I have made for 'Soul' and 'Body'."
On the prospect of a chance – the chance that had come at last – he was completely forgetting that she must be prepared to comprehend what he required of her; he forgot that she could know nothing of a sculptor's ways and methods of production. On the way to the studio, however, he tardily remembered, and it rather scared him.
"Do you know any painters or sculptors?" he asked, keeping impatient pace beside her.
"I know a woman who makes casts of hands and arms," she said shyly. "She stopped me in the street once and asked permission to cast my hands. Would you call her a sculptor?"
"N – well, perhaps she may be. We sculptors often use casts of the human body." He plunged into it more frankly: "You know, of course, that to become a sculptor or a painter, one has to model and paint from living people."
"Yes," she said, undisturbed.
"And," he continued, "it would be impossible for a sculptor to produce the beautiful marbles you have seen – er – around – unless he could pose a living model to copy from."
An unquiet little pulse began to beat in her breast; she looked up at him, but he was smiling so amiably that she smiled, too.
Mortally afraid of frightening her, he could not exactly estimate how much she divined of what was to be required of her.
He continued patiently: "Unless a student dissects he can never become a surgeon. It is the same with us; our inspiration and originality must be founded on a solid study of the human body. That is why we must always have before us as perfect a living model as we can find."
"Do – do you think – " she stopped, pink and confused.
"I think," he said, quietly impersonal, "that, speaking as a sculptor, you are as perfect and as beautiful a model as ever the old Greek masters saw, alive or in their dreams."
"I – did not – know it," she faltered, thrilling from head to foot.
They entered the corridor together. Her breath came faster as he unlocked his door and, turning up a lamp, invited her to enter.
At last in the magic world! And with him!
Figured tapestries hung from the golden mystery of the ceiling; ancient dyes glowed in the soft rugs under foot; the mellow light glimmered on dull foliations. She stood still, looking about her as in a trance.
"All this I will buy back again with your help," he said, laughingly; but his unsteady voice betrayed the tension to which he was keyed. A slow excitement was gaining on her, too.
"I will redeem all these things, never fear," he said, gayly.
"Oh – if you only can… It is too cruel to take such things from you."
The emotion in her eyes and voice surprised him for one troubled moment. Then the selfishness of the artist ignored all else save the work and the opportunity.
"You will help me, won't you?" he asked. "It is a promise?"
"Yes – I will."
"Is it a promise?"
"Yes," she said, wondering.
"Then please sit here. I will bring the sketches. They merely represent my first idea; they are done without a living model." He was off, lighting a match as he hastened. A tapestry fell back into place; she lifted her blue eyes to the faded figures of saints and seraphim stirring when the fabric moved.
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