Part 5

To be baffled by a Bullwinkle was a chastening lesson. I dreaded that afternoon sitting. My wife was away, and there could be no readings from the “Congressional Record.” What would that do to him? Would it bring him out, or shut him in? To get a running start, I had pulled the bust out into the fresh morning light, and like a dull child trying to find his place in yesterday’s lesson, I was fumbling about on the pedestal, the shirt-front, and the senatorial dewlaps, when a ring at my door and voices in the anteroom warned me to slip a cover over this work of high secrecy.

What a contrast to the various Bullwinkles of my career was the young lady in blue, who now stood before me! This time, she was followed, not by a mere footman, but by a young man wearing her colors in his tie and his heart on his sleeve. There they were in their victorious springtide, the suitor and the suited; for there could be no earthly doubt that this young man was hers, and that the two were lovers forever. That was evidently what was most of all in their minds, and I, for one, thought they were right. Incredible as it would have seemed to me if I had not been there, Miss Clarenden’s former radiancy was enhanced by her new experiences, her bright garments. What an exquisite thrilling azure was that of her veil as it fluttered against the discreet dark blue of her costume! Maxfield Parrish should have been there to immortalize it. Yet I did not regret his absence, at the time. There were all kinds of lovely blue tones about her, and these tones in their very harmony conspired together to make the blue of her eyes something beyond description matchless and unforgettable. She was one of those girls who, whether they put on a pinafore or a Paquin gown, manage to make mankind believe two things: first, that they are more beautiful than ever, and next, that what they have on does not look too expensive. There are a few such girls left, I am told. The mere sight of her smoothed out my Bullwinkle worries.

She came to the point at once, taking advantage of a moment when her cavalier’s manly attention was caught by the workings of an enlarging machine in the corner; her Jack was an engineer, it appeared. She paused an instant, then plunged in, somewhat breathlessly, as if she were not quite sure of her ground.

“Jack and I,” she said,—“well, we think now that perhaps you were right in what you told me a year ago. Yes, you were right! I was mistaken when I thought I would be fully satisfied if I could have forever with me the marble copy of mother’s hand, carved by your hand. Travel is so broadening, isn’t it? And now, since I’ve seen all Italy and France” (here she smiled widely at her own fatuity), “I’ve learned better, indeed I have! And if you don’t mind, I’ll take away the plaster cast. I shall want to keep it always, of course. But it’s nature, not art, that makes me want to.”

I stood aghast. The girl was actually taking me at my word, and repudiating the contract of yesteryear. What a change in a twelvemonth, and, O Education, what crimes are committed in thy name! She saw me looking about for her cast, and very gently begged me not to bother, unless it was quite handy. Resisting an ironic impulse to tell her that of course a plaster cast of a hand was always more or less handy, I dusted off her confounded box, and gave it to her with what courtesy I could muster. I remembered Gigi’s saying that to do otherwise would have been _impossibile_, she was _si bella, bella_.

It chanced that not six feet away from the lady in blue, and behind a little curtain adroitly arranged by Gigi, the marble hand was enshrined. And strange as it will seem to you after all I have said, there was something interesting about it, something that would compel your pleased attention, even if you were an artist, or only a lover of art. Paul Manship liked parts of it; and a painter friend of mine said—but no matter about that now. Gigi had poured his whole Mediterranean soul into his part of the work, and I had designed, as best I could, the open book and the drapery. To be candid, I had taken real pleasure in finishing the marble, with the desired _morbidezza_. I had enjoyed every stroke I had given to that most beautiful stone, for Gigi had kept my tools in exquisite condition all the time. He seemed to know just how I wanted every tool to feel in my hand when I was modelling the marble. I longed to show the girl what we had done for her. But how could I do that, after all I had said to her, a year ago, and all she had said to me, to-day? Was there not a certain sprightly finality in her remarks? With decision, she took the box from my hands and entrusted it to her Jack.

“_Au voir_,” she sang to me, over her shoulder. “_Au plaisir de vous voir!_ But I shall come again, if I may. Very soon, _n’est-ce-pas_?” The good Missouri foundation was quite evident in her farewell address.

Naturally, I was nonplussed. Think of it, I, a rising—yes, you might say, an arrived—young sculptor, in Manhattan, and she, a chit of a Chittenden from Missouri! But my chagrin was as nothing to Gigi’s. For of course I had not meant to pocket that money myself, just for a few hours’ pleasant work on a bit of pink marble. I was intending it as a sort of well-earned present for Gigi, who has, you must know, a rather large flock of kids to be shepherded up to the highest pastures of our American democracy. There was one little fellow named Mario, the most gifted of all, and he had been hard hit by infantile paralysis; we were planning to use this money for his special education in art. And now the chit had left us planted there, with nothing but a raw _n’est-ce-pas_ for our pains. It served me right, I admit. But what of Gigi, and the lad Mario? Why, Mario could model you a better rabbit out of yesterday’s chewing-gum than Schneider could ever evolve from the fairest block of marble in Milan Cathedral. That girl had talked of elevating American art; and here she was, actively stifling American genius. I could not meet Gigi’s eye. Perhaps, after all, there was no great contrast between the young lady in blue and the Senator, except on the surface. The world was probably full of chits and Bullwinkles.

That afternoon, the dreaded sitting began badly. The Senator missed my wife and her ministrations. He was writing his memoirs, and wanted to refresh his memory about his third tariff speech. His secretary was no good as a reader, he complained, but my wife had seemed to have some sense about her. He couldn’t understand why a woman of sense should want to go gallivanting. His manner implied that it was wholly my fault that my wife should prefer Bar Harbor realities to Little Rock recollections. Half-peevishly and half-humorously, he writhed about in his chair, like a bad little boy grown old. He did not like the cigar he had brought, and scorned the best I could offer. He drove me to despair by presenting square front view when I needed to verify dewlaps in profile; he brushed off imaginary flies from his Roman nose, just as if my studying his nose had made it itch. He attempted every grotesque perversity in the sitter’s calendar, and even invented some original bedevilments of his own. He turned his attention to my rendering of the details of his attire, telling me that he had always _tried_ to tie his tie as tight as he could get it, and that if I didn’t mind (indeed, I did mind!) he wanted to have that third button of his waistcoat fastened up, if the dam’ thing was to go down to posterity in imperishable bronze. Alas, my sitter was eluding me again. His reality as a human being was hidden from me in a fog of momentary misconduct.

Suddenly the Senator straightened. He was looking toward the corner where a stricken Gigi was still hovering about our rejected collaborative masterpiece, and contemplating the wreck of Mario’s future. “Where on God’s footstool did you get that hand?” shouted the Senator, the big W-shaped vein on his left temple swelling in his excitement.

“Gigi and I made it,” I replied, calmly accepting the fact that either the Senator or I had at last gone crazy under the strain of the Bullwinkle bust. The man had never before shown a spark of any interest whatsoever in my works, whether clay or plaster, bronze or marble. I wondered whether a strait-jacket would have been a good thing to include in my studio equipment, but I was not quite sure which one of us needed it the more, so bewildered was I by the change that had seized on the Senator. He bounded from his chair, snatching the ground, one might say, from under Gigi’s feet.

“That hand,” bellowed Mr. Bullwinkle, shaking his forefinger at me as if I were his political opponent, “that hand is a fine thing! I tell you, it’s a great thing! It’s the best thing you’ve got in your whole shooting-gallery, and don’t you start in to deny it! I’d rather have that one piece of alabaster marble than the whole of Westminster Abbey!”

To my amazement, the Senator stood at bay over the marble, as if it were a prize to be defended against all comers. He fairly flamed with intensity. I never saw a man more alive, more tingling with a sense of being alive. For the first time, I could learn, from my own eyes and not from historic hearsay, something of his power over his fellow-men. His eyes looked large, his jowls turned taut, his upstanding hair, which I had thought almost ridiculous, became sublime. He seemed a creature expressly framed for the applause of listening senates. In a twinkling, and when I least expected it, I saw more of the real man than I had found out in all my passionate searching during those frustrate sittings. No doubt, my searching had helped toward my present illuminated vision; that vision was but the culmination, the happy ending, of my quest. Like Childe Roland, I had been expecting too much, perhaps, from my Dark Tower. What a fool I had been to suppose that the Senator’s germ of greatness lay in some noble difference between himself and others! Why, it was plain as day that his greatness lay, not in his difference from the rest of the world, oh, no, not that; his greatness was mainly in his rich, happy, sympathetic commonness. He was not so much a man above men, as a man among men. My mistake was, I had been trying to win the Senator; I should have let him try to win me, according to his bent and usage. So I sprang back to my modelling, and let him be himself. It did not matter to me, now, that he was striding, gesticulating, quivering; at heart, I have always believed, with George de Forest Brush, that a model on the move, and really alive, is far better to work from than one sitting still as a sod.

And now, as I studied my man anew, I perceived all at once that a dozen good dominating strokes rightly placed on my clay could turn it from a mess to a masterpiece. I became two persons, as every artist at times must. Each was sharply awake. One of these two was modelling for dear life on that portrait, smiting the thing now here, now there; unhasting, unresting; gathering up rich handfuls of all the released individuality of greatness that I now saw radiating from a transfigured Senatorial countenance, and compressing that individuality into clay for the plaster-moulder’s sacrifice and the bronze-founder’s furnace. The other man in me was listening amiably to a Bullwinkle speech of self-revelation. I suppose that under my skin there was even a third person, ironically reminding me that it was never _my_ hand that had touched the button to switch all this new light on a stale matter. It was another hand, a lady’s hand, a marble hand, too; and a hand rejected by a chit. Such reminders drive a man to humility, even while he is winning the game. For I _was_ winning; there could be no doubt of that, now.

“You young artist fellers,” the Senator was saying, vehemently, “of course you all think of me as a tough old politician. So I am, and so I want to be! But the mistake you make is, thinking I’m nothing else. That young Mather that painted me was just the same. He made a swell portrait of me, of course, red plush curtain and all;—I know enough not to deny that. But he wasn’t so much interested in me as he was in his way of painting me. And it shows in his work, sticks out all over!”

I took to heart this luminous bit of art-criticism while the Senator ran on. “And I can tell you, young man, that this hand carries me back in a way you don’t dream of. You don’t even guess at the sort of feeling I have when I look at it and touch it! You’re incapable of knowing! You’re not old enough or wise enough or kind enough, perhaps! You’re too college-sure in your own way of feeling to care a continental about what _I_ feel!”

I could not help seeing that some strong emotion had visited his heart. But I thought he’d like it best if I didn’t say much; besides, I had my work to do. The Bullwinkle Building must not lack its crowning touch through any failure of mine to seize the supreme moment. So I calmly swept my big tool alongside of the Senator’s clay face, half-erasing a thousand fussy unnecessary markings from its map. My erstwhile sitter was still hovering excitedly over the marble. He had nothing whatever to say about _morbidezza_.

“Look here,” he exclaimed, turning upon me with a gesture of real dignity, “you probably don’t see, or imagine you see, any resemblance between this great paw of mine and that lovely lady’s hand! No, I wouldn’t expect you to!”

Now I had often observed that the Senator’s hand was still handsome and energetic. An unusual hand, I had thought, for a politician. It was uninvaded either by chalky deposit on the knuckles, or fatty increment on the fingers, or even by swollen veins on the back. Hence I was glad to admit the likeness he saw; and weighing my words, while I laid in a good strong dark under a resounding lock of hair he had just tossed up from his forehead, I congratulated him on his artistic discernment. He shook off the compliment with a growl, though I know he liked it.

“But what I want to know is,” he went on, “how the deuce did _you_ happen to make this lovely thing? Is it for sale? What price, f.o.b., young feller, what price?”

Gigi leaked out from his burlap. I could feel his eyes imploring me, for Mario’s sake, to play my part as a man!

The Senator noted my hesitation. “Isn’t it for sale?”

“Upon my word,” I replied, intent on fixing the Bullwinkle nostril for posterity, “I hardly know whether it’s for sale or not.” For the moment I didn’t care, a happy issue out of the Bullwinkle bust being from every point of view more important to me, just then, than all the marble hands from here to Genoa.

“With the good help of Gigi here, I made the thing for a lady, who doesn’t seem to want it, now it’s done. She’s been to Europe since she ordered it, and she’s gotten herself educated, so she thinks, to higher forms of art.” Perhaps I spoke a trifle bitterly.

“What’s her fool name?” The Senator was still enkindled. I was surprised to see with what tenderness he was passing his fingers over the surface of that marble;—and he shouting the while as if we were all at a caucus!

“Her name?” I hesitated, even then desiring to protect the name of beauty, and to pardon the grotesque shabbiness of that girl’s act in taking me at my word. “Let’s see. Oh, it was a Miss Chittenden, as I remember it. Just a chit from Missouri.”

“Chittenden,” returned the Senator, with a puzzled air, “Chittenden?” Then a great light broke upon him. “Chittenden nothing! It’s Clarenden, that’s what it is. And if she told you anything else, she’s sailing under false pretences. Just like her, too!”

“No, indeed,” I interposed, warmly, “I’m sure she wouldn’t do that—there must be something she’d draw the line at. Come to think of it, Clarenden _was_ the name she gave.”

“A long young dame,” pursued Bullwinkle, “blue eyes, you know, and a way with her? Mariellen Clarenden?”

I nodded. The Senator leaped in triumph. He turned upon me with the friendliest smile in the world. “What were you charging her?”

“Four hundred dollars. And I don’t sell it for a cent less to anybody.”

“Give you five hundred! Done!” The Senator snatched a checkbook and a fountain pen from the region of that waistcoat button we had lately wrangled over. I had no idea his motions could be so swift and so majestic. Perhaps I might have stayed his hand, in some effete idea of ethics, or professional etiquette; but Gigi’s inexorable eye was on me, dangling Mario before my hesitating soul. I compromised by taking the check, with vague thankfulness, and laying it on the table. I told myself I would think it over. It might be that five hundred dollars was not too much for a master-work, preferred above all Westminster Abbey.

“You wonder at me,” the Senator went on, with a guffaw that was like a sob. “Well, then, sit up and wonder all you like. Sometimes I wonder at myself. This hand—” he stroked the marble with the same sort of reverence the girl had shown about that plaster cast. “Oh, hang it, boy, we’re all human, even if you are studio-bred-and-broke, God help you, and I’m from Missouri! Listen, kid. I had a sister, a twin sister. A smart Aleck like you would probably say it sounds like opera-buff, or a dime novel, but it’s just plain fact, right out of my own life. And I was fonder of that girl than of any other human being that ever lived. This necktie you’ve been fussing over because it’s too tight and hard, you said;—well, it’s black, for her. And black _is_ tight and hard, sometimes. Ah, well!” The Senator resolutely put away sadness, and again stretched out his own fine capable hand.

“My sister had the prettiest little hand in the county. County! Her hand was known all over the State, and many a young newspaper feller touched it—on paper—in the old days. Foot, too!” He meditated a moment on his own very good-looking shoes. “After she married Clarenden, the big railroad man, we saw less of each other, of course, but we were chums to the last. And the instant my eye lit on this lovely work, this masterpiece, though I say it that shouldn’t, I knew there was something in it for me! I didn’t quite know what, of course, until I found out that Mariellen was mixed up in it, and then ’twas clear as day. Had you copy a plaster cast, didn’t she?” He chuckled with pleasure in his perspicacity. “We Senators know all about plaster casts and death-masks and that sort of thing. Unless we want to miss a trick, we have ’em done to us, as soon as the time comes. But what I don’t understand is why Mariellen got cold feet! She’s a girl of some sense, I tell you, or was, until she got a hankering for New York, and what she calls the higher things in art!”

The Senator’s last words mimicked to perfection both the girl and myself. It was that kind of mimicry which creates good understanding, and leaves a smile, not a sting. Oh, I could see how he, like the girl, captivated mankind!

“Even now,” he continued, “she’s my favorite of the whole bunch, and they’ve all of ’em got plenty of the Bullwinkle pep. Some face, that girl, hey? Pretty ain’t the word!”

No, it wasn’t the word. But I couldn’t give any one word that would really cover the case, I admitted.

“Mariellen gets the better of everybody. She even puts it over on a smart artist like you. I’d like to take her across my knee! And before I’ve finished with her, I shall make her feel like thirty cents about this job. Gave the marble heart to my marble hand, did she? She’ll be wishing she kept it, the moment she sees I’ve got it. But mark my words, it’ll never be hers, until after I’ve taken the Big Subway for good and for all. And if she tries to bamboozle me out of what I’ve bought and paid for, I’ll—”

A peal of the bell and voices in the anteroom caused the speaker to suspend sentence, and I slipped out to find, in eager converse with Gigi, the young person from Missouri. Was the sky raining coincidences, that day? With a gesture absurdly like her uncle’s, she was drawing from that much-embroidered handbag of hers a checkbook not unlike his own in general effect. Had Shakespeare been there, he would have indited a sonnet to the checkbook of beauty, and its likeness to that of brains and power.

“Of course,” said the young lady, giving me at once her charming smile and her signed check, “I knew that _you_ knew, from what I said when I went away from here this morning, that I meant to come back just as soon as I could, to deliver the goods, and to get the goods.” What I had seen of her uncle helped me to recognize a genuine emotion hiding behind the flippancy of her words. I freely confess that if my wife or my sister had said or done just what Miss Clarenden did, I would have found it preposterous, alarming, in bad taste. But that girl had some strange power to make one see at once that what she did was simple and natural; the best thing in the circumstances, and therefore not foolish or ill-bred.

“I know you’ll understand, the moment I explain: I’ve always said to myself that the man who carved that Dancer would understand a lot. Well, when I came here this morning, I simply couldn’t shake Jack. He stuck to my skirts like a burr. You know we’re to be married in the autumn.” The pink roses in her cheeks flamed into American Beauties for an instant, and then became themselves again, in a way that I’ve often wished might be managed on the stage.

“Jack has nothing in the world but what he earns. To be sure, he earns a lot, being—no, no, not a plumber, but a very, very civil engineer.” Her time-worn jests seemed dewy-fresh as they fell from her lips. Witty as well as beautiful, I thought. Oh, I admit my weakness!