Robert Chambers - The Adventures of a Modest Man

"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.

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.