Part 12

“Yes, but of Canadian ancestry. His father was one of the early lumber kings, and left him a lot of money; otherwise, he couldn’t have given so much unpaid service among the negroes. I never knew a human being so frantically possessed with the idea of justice for all the world.”

“His wife sympathized?”

“Oh, Lord, yes! Whatever he did was perfect in her sight. Strange, too, because she was a Louisiana girl, whose family had lost their all through the Civil War. And of course her ideas about the negro race were not in the least like his. How could they be? Ah, well, Anita Janvier, my lost Anita Vaughn, was certainly a shining example of that motto there, under your feet!”

Gerald picked up the bellows from the hearthrug, and studied its carven legend, as he had often done when a child. “‘_Amor Omnia Vincit._’ Love conquers all.”

“Love surely had his hands full, in her case. Just fancy the prejudices Anita Janvier had to overcome, before she could enter into her husband’s work as she did! She told me once, with that wonderful smile of hers, that she was glad she had been brought up on a plantation, because understanding negroes so much better than Dr. Janvier could, she could save him from the sort of mistakes most Northerners made.”

“Did she win out?” laughed Gerald.

Steven Grant did not answer directly, but continued in musing recollection.

“Franklin Janvier had a house and office in Tenth Street, just a few doors from my studio here. We saw each other constantly, and kept in touch with each other’s work. I was surprised, however, when he took on, as office assistant, a young surgeon just graduated from a foreign school, a man who looked like a Spaniard, but who had a trace, oh, a mere trace, of negro blood. Pleasant fellow, too; very gifted and modest, and with an attachment for Janvier that amounted to idolatry, all told. A doctor born, Janvier said. His grandfather was a noted English surgeon who came out to the West Indies in the old days. Well, Charles Richmond was a fixture in Frank’s office before Anita came to live in the big Tenth Street house. She accepted him just as simply as she accepted all the rest of her new life. But she told her husband, very frankly, that Dr. Richmond’s strain of the darker blood, however negligible for us Northerners, was perfectly evident to any one brought up among negroes.”

“Southerners often say such things,” said Gerald, “but I never know quite all they mean, do you?”

“We tried to make her explain. It was a little of everything; just this and that; hair, lips, nails, palms, of course! And a certain indescribable smooth fullness under the skin, a rounder build of the eyeball, a more springing curve of the lashes, and so on. Janvier was even then getting together the data for that famous book of his on ‘Ethnic Details,’ and he used to encourage Anita in such observations, and check them up. One couldn’t help admiring her astonishing acuteness and probity. The three of us would often compare notes about young Richmond, but never with malicious intent, I assure you. And though Anita always treated him with the respect she knew was due him, it sometimes fell short of what he longed for.”

“The Moor was haughty, then?”

“Haughty enough, but by no means a Moor, any more than you are. His eyes were blue, and really lighter than yours, my boy. With a queer shine in them, sometimes! I was sorry for him, and so was Anita. But Janvier, with his obsession about equality and justice, sturdily refused to see that there was anything to be sorry about, except our nasty human point of view. He gave a lot of the care of his colored patients to Richmond, who did nobly by them, too. Only, by some mysterious instinct, they always recognized _him_ as one of _them_. And it hurt him, clean through and through. How that boy suffered! He had real genius, we knew. And I suppose this helped Janvier to put up with Richmond’s occasional frantic outbursts against his fate. We used to call them his cyclones of the soul, not dreaming that a similar expression was to be invented long afterward. These storms of passion always left him crumpled up into nothingness before Janvier, Anita, even myself! I tell you, Gerald, the man’s agonies were atrocious. He had a kind of gallant courage, too, for all his self-abasement; you would be pretty dull, if you couldn’t see the sublimity of it. After every outbreak, and the subsequent surrender, he would painfully pick up the pieces of himself, and put them together again in a dazed sort of way, and next day devote himself to his work, more single-mindedly than ever. Janvier was his chosen pattern and example, in that.”

“But perhaps the poor chap worked _too_ hard,” suggested Gerald.

“Exactly! And there’s where Janvier and I were wrong, not to have known it. Anita, with a far finer vision than we had, often warned us that the bent bow was strung too tight. But we couldn’t see it so; men are blind, sometimes, in the heat and burden of the day. Richmond was six feet tall, and broad in proportion. A magnificent physique! That’s what we went by. We laughed at Anita’s fears—accused her of plantation-coddling. And there was a lot to be done, too, that year after the Janviers were married. It was a horrible winter, disease stalking everywhere, especially among the ‘coloreds.’ Both Janvier and Richmond were overworked. You would have thought that the sort of office Janvier had, with so many colored patients, would have hurt his practice. Not a bit of it. People felt a trust in him. Children always took to him, and he was very successful, as you know, in children’s diseases.

“It happened that in the following spring, Janvier was suddenly called to Toronto to see his mother, who had but a few days to live. He asked me to look after things a little, in his absence. Of course, I said I would, but I told him, half-laughingly, that I hoped to goodness Charles Richmond wouldn’t treat me to a cyclone of the soul; and if he did, I should turn the hose on him. Janvier looked rather troubled, but said he didn’t expect anything of the sort. In fact, a storm had occurred only the day before, and another such tempest wouldn’t be due for a long time. It struck me that if I’d been in Frank’s place, I would have been worried about leaving Anita. Very likely, Frank _was_ worried, for he had tried to persuade her to visit her sister while he was away. But the girl was tremendously interested in some sick little pickaninnies she was helping both doctors to pull out of various croups and itises, and she felt that those children needed her. And, anyway, Frank would be back in a few days.”

A new tone had crept into the sculptor’s voice, and Gerald guessed that his uncle was about to speak of things hitherto untold. “Poor Stevedear,” he thought, with a thrill of loving sympathy, “he’s come to the place where the novels always have a row of asterisks, or something.”

“And,” continued the other steadily, “Franklin Janvier did come back, summoned by a telegram I sent him, telling him that Richmond had committed suicide. He had shot himself at the Tenth Street house. More than that, Anita had seen it all, and was prostrated by the shock. She had often warned us that Richmond’s end might be madness. We had laughed at her, and now—Well, no use dwelling on that part now, this evening of your happiness, Gerald! It’s enough to tell you that Janvier went through the hell of seeing his young wife’s mind give way completely, from the shock. Specialists came, and after a while they held out a distinct hope that a few months might bring a change for the better. She regained something of her former sweetness, but it was evident that most of the time her mind was a blank. Once, in one of her rare outbursts, she cried out that her soul was snared in a web, not of her own weaving. You can imagine what Janvier felt, hearing this truth from her lips.

“The young couple had looked forward happily to the birth of children; but now, in extreme anguish of spirit, Frank Janvier told me that it was not worth the price; nothing could be worth the price his wife was paying. But he didn’t give up hope. The doctors still believed that the coming of the child might end forever the terrible shadow. Anita was naturally an unusually well-balanced person. It was part of her charm, the kind of sweet steadiness she had. I know Janvier counted on it to save her, in the end. So it was with very great eagerness that we all awaited the arrival of the Janvier heir.

“By tacit agreement, I stopped going to the Tenth Street house, but Janvier came often to my studio. He seemed to cling to me in his trouble, and I wanted to help him, of course. He kept himself in hand, pluckily enough; but sometimes, in unguarded moments, the suffering that showed itself in his face was horrible to see. So summer and autumn passed, and winter came.

“One bitter December night as I was reading in this very room, a messenger brought me a note from Janvier, begging me to come to him at once. He had, as I already knew, passed through two days of alternate hope and despair. And now, so the note told me, both wife and child had died. Anita’s face had taken on a look of exquisite beauty, the look of her wedding-day. He wanted me to make the mask that would preserve it. You know how I must have felt.”

“Oh, Stevedear!”

“I felt I couldn’t do it! But I had a studio-man who was an expert in casting, and I roused him from his bed to go with me to Janvier’s. Poor Giuseppe had been up several nights with his youngest child. It happened that Dr. Janvier, who had a helping hand for every workman in the quarter, had been taking care of Giuseppe’s boy, right in the midst of his own troubles; and Giuseppe was glad enough to do anything he could for _il Signor Dottore_.

“Well, I won’t tell you about that bedside, and Frank’s silent anguish; you know well enough about such scenes—The room was large and lofty, not unlike this. At the far end was an alcove, curtained off; and behind the drapery I could discern a light, and a cradle; but we did not speak of those things. There was no attendant. Anita’s old nurse, Loretta, who was a kind of mother to us all, was sleeping in the next chamber, worn out with labor and sorrow. And the others, those terrible, necessary others that you and I can never get used to, were not to appear until the morrow.

“It was like Janvier not to waken Loretta. He himself brought water and towels. Giuseppe was just about to mix his first plaster when a knock was heard. Janvier stepped out, but soon returned to tell Giuseppe, very gravely, that little Emilio was once more in agony, and that both of them must go at once, in the hope of saving the child’s life. You see Janvier had made some important studies in children’s lung troubles, and had worked out some successful methods that he didn’t yet dare trust to others, without supervision.”

“You mean to say he and Giuseppe left you there?”

“It was the only thing to do, wasn’t it? If Janvier could bear his part, why shouldn’t I bear mine? I knew it might be hours before he would leave Giuseppe’s child. And I knew, too, that the exalted loveliness of that dead face might vanish at any moment; such looks do not stay long among us. Janvier’s quiet putting aside of his own feelings showed me what to do. I steeled myself and made the mould. I don’t mind telling you, a cold sweat broke out all over me; but dreading it was really much harder to bear than doing it. There was something in the still beauty of the girl’s face that strengthened me; I seemed to see and feel this loveliness even while I was veiling it under layers of plaster. And when I had taken the mould away, and the face was revealed again, no less peaceful than before, and quite unprofaned by my work, I felt a kind of consolation. My part of the work had been rightly done, for all my trembling; and Giuseppe could easily make the cast itself, in my studio.

“A long time, as it seemed to me, I sat there by the bed, watching that beloved face. I wondered whether the same radiant peace shone from the face of the dead child. I knew Anita would wish to have me look at her child; I owed it to her memory.

“I parted the alcove curtains, and turning up the light, I lifted the delicate little linen sheet that covered the cradle. What I saw I have never yet spoken of to any one, not even to Janvier; perhaps least of all to Janvier, Janvier with his great dream of justice! I know that what I say is safe with you, Gerald? You promise? The little face, exquisitely fashioned and peaceful, indeed, was unmistakably one of those darker blossoms on the tree of life. The darker strain! And it was far more clearly marked than in Richmond.”

Gerald recoiled in horror. “Richmond—”

“Yes! In one hideous, backward-looking lightning-flash, I saw just what had been Anita’s fate. I saw her long months of mental eclipse, following the attack of a madman. I had often noted her not unkindly meant attitude of racial superiority toward the frantically sensitive Richmond; and I understood just how a mere glance or word of hers had whipped to the surface the one black drop in his high-strung, overwrought frame, driving him to an unspeakable betrayal. No wonder he had killed himself. No wonder the proud, blameless girl had cried aloud to her husband, out of the abyss of darkened reason, that she was caught and crushed in a web not of her own weaving!”

“I suppose,” hesitated Gerald, “there was never any doubt of Richmond’s crime?”

“None whatever. There was even a witness! As a matter of fact, poor faithful Loretta, who worshipped Anita, and followed her like a shadow, had been working in the room next to the office, when she heard Richmond talking to Mrs. Janvier, in a crazy, shrieking way, about a prescription. His tone was so strange and threatening that she was terrified for her mistress, and rushed toward the office. The door was slammed violently in her face, and locked. She beat on the panels, and screamed, but help came too late.”

The level voice faltered a moment, then continued: “My first impulse was to escape from the room, anywhere, anywhere, out of the horror of it. But Anita’s face with its majestic calm held me there; that, and the example of Janvier’s fortitude. And, well, life must be lived! There might be something I could do for Janvier, or Giuseppe, for that matter, on their return. Once again I went to the alcove, this time carrying a lighted candle, to be doubly sure of a dreadful thing. The tiny bronze face with closed eyes implored only peace—a shadow praying to return to its rest among shadows.

“Until gray morning, I waited in that still house for Janvier. I did not know what I should do or say; I only knew that I knew what were better left unknown, perhaps. But how small my own distresses seemed when he came in, and shed the light of his indomitable spirit over that place of sorrows! He seemed a creature emerging out of the wreck of all his own hopes, supported out of chaos solely by his will to re-create hope in the world.

“‘Giuseppe’s boy will live, I think,’ he said, simply. ‘We’ve brought him through the crisis. Thank you, Steven, for giving me the chance to save him. I could not have left Anita unless you had stayed. Poor Loretta was tired beyond endurance, and I had sent away the trained nurse. She was worn out, too.’

“I wrung his hand. ‘I loved Anita,’ I sobbed out, weakly enough.

“‘I know, I know,’ he said. And then a great light came to me. I saw that it wouldn’t be necessary for me, then or at any other time, to debate passionately with myself whether or not I should speak to him of what I had learned. The largeness of his grief sheltered all my anxieties. His arm around my shoulder, we stood together looking down upon the face of a much loved and deeply wronged woman. In life, it had been a face to delight in; a face with loyal blue eyes under upraised dark lashes, a delicate straight nose, and lips vividly curved like the petals of a rose. In death, with the eyes forever shadowed, the flower-like coloring effaced, its beauty of form was enhanced. But more than this, a spiritual significance, not previously apprehended by us, shone through the pale clay. We both of us felt it. Janvier did well to have such loveliness preserved.

“That was the only mould I have ever made from a human face. Giuseppe made two casts, one for Janvier, one for me. Janvier’s was destroyed in that fire you’ve heard about.”

“And is your copy still in existence?” Half involuntarily, Gerald took up the cast called Forgiveness.

“Yes,” replied the elder man, “it is in your hands now.”

The other laid his lips reverently on the smooth brow of the face which had reminded the German of the Nuremberg Virgin; the face which the Frenchman had thought French, the Italian girl Italian, and the American boy American.

“That cast, which you say is now called Forgiveness, has been enshrined in this room, behind the corner tapestry there, for more than a generation. It is older than you are. After Janvier died, I told myself it was not right to hide so much beauty from the world. But it wasn’t until after the Armistice that I mustered up courage to have three plaster copies made. And it was only last week that I sent a copy to each of our three largest art schools.”

“And you gave the casts the name, Forgiveness?”

“Ah, no, I left them nameless! But I must tell you a strange thing about that, too. At the time when I made the mould, we young artists were very much under the spell of Omar Khayyám’s fuzzy, fezzy philosophy; yes, quite entangled in the obscurantist beauty of the Vine! Fitzgerald’s verses and our own Vedder’s drawings were a cult with us. _I_ couldn’t forgive as greatly as Janvier did. My wrong was less, and my pardoning power was less. And whenever I thought of the whole dreadful business, one of the Fitzgerald quatrains would ring in my ears; the one that ends

“‘For all the sin with which the face of man Is blackened, Man’s forgiveness give—and take!’

“We thought it a sublime blasphemy in those days, but in these modern, higher-keyed times, no doubt it sounds tame enough. Anyway, it haunted me horribly; and to get rid of it, I carved it one rainy afternoon, in fine close letters like slanting rain, all around the outer edge of my cast. But times change, and we change. Thirty-five years later, when I looked the cast over, before giving it to the moulder to make the copies from, I knew that those lines no longer expressed what was in my heart. I had outgrown them. I knew that a better inscription would be, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ But I decided to have no inscription whatever, and to let the cast carry its own message of beauty. So, with a file, and very carefully, as I thought, I erased every word of that inscription like the slanting rain. Again and again I passed my fingers over it, until I was sure it was gone. Still, I suppose I must have left some breath of that word, Forgiveness, which the students at the Museum discovered. Though for the life of me, I can’t find a trace of it!”

He took up a magnifying-glass, and passed it to Gerald, who peered through it intently, all along the rim of the cast.

“No word here,” said Gerald. He passed his fingers around the circling edge, as if, after all, a sculptor’s fingers were more to be trusted than a glass. “No, there’s nothing, really! The face must have told its own name. But tell me, Stevedear, if you don’t mind,—did you yourself really forgive, in the end?”

Steven Grant smiled, and replaced the cast above his hearth-fire. Before answering, he rumpled Gerald’s hair, exposing the too high forehead.

“Your question, my boy, makes me think of Mrs. Storms. Because, like that lady, it is not exactly a wrong ’un, but still, it comes very near the danger line.”

And Gerald knew it was time to turn from the past to the present, and to talk of the dinner, that masterpiece. Besides, as Steven Grant had guessed, the younger sculptor was longing to speak of his own Anita, that most beautiful lady whose shining train he had hovered over, at the door of the glass coach. The elder man rejoiced with all his heart that there was no Emancipation group to thwart his nephew’s happiness. In honor of Gerald’s Anita, he was loyally ready to shout with the best, “Long live the Queen!” But he did not say to himself, sorrowfully, of the earlier Anita, “The Queen is dead.” He saw in his mind the face called Forgiveness. He listened to the German cabinet-maker, the French painter, the Italian girl, the American student. There were others, too, coming and going in the Museum; and what they said of the face made him think of life, not death.

THE ARTIST’S BIRTHDAY

One winter evening, in a snugly built little stone cottage near the northern border of Vermont, a young family of three had gathered beside a glowing hearth and a cheerful lamp to enjoy an hour of that contentment which is most deeply felt when the fire is bright, the curtain closely drawn, and a storm is raging without. It was the birthday of the child Samuel. He was three years old, and as a birthday indulgence, he was to sit up until seven o’clock, and carve things with the jack-knife that his father, himself a carver of renown, had brought him as a birthday gift. This was by no means his first adventure with a knife. For a year or more he had managed a knife, at first feebly, but later with an astonishing ease. His father was proud of the infant Phidias, and even his mother had ceased to be terror-stricken at the conjunction of child and knife. The motions of the boy Samuel were happy and accurate. At the present hour, such gestures as his would be called eurhythmic, or something of that sort; even in those days of preposterous precocity, he was regarded with wonder.