"It makes me acutely suffer," he said, "to come into the workshop of the sculptor. Four years of enforced idleness – " Then he broke in abruptly and said, "You have apparently settled already in your mind – decided not to accept this work for us. I think you are determined not to meet us, Mr. Rainsford."
"The price," said Antony, leaning fully forward, his blue eyes, whose sight was unimpeded, fixed on Cedersholm, "must be great enough to buy me back my lost youth."
His companion laughed gently and said indulgently, "My dear Mr. Rainsford."
"To buy me back my loss of faith in men's honour, in human kindness, in justice, in woman's love."
"He is a true genius," Cedersholm thought to himself, "just a bit over the line of mental balance." And he almost envied Antony this frenzy, for he had always judged himself too sane to be a great artist.
"It must buy me back three years of bitter struggle, of degrading manual toil."
"My dear man," said the sculptor indulgently. "I think I understand you, but no material price could ever do what you ask. Money, unfortunately, has nothing to do with the past; it can take care of the future more or less, but the past is beyond repurchase, you know."
It was growing constantly darker. The corners of the studio were deep in shadows, and the forms of Antony's casts shone like spectres in their white clothes; the scaffoldings looked ghostly and spirit-like. Cedersholm sighed.
"Why have you come to me?" he heard Fairfax ask in his cutting tone, and he understood that for some reason or other this stranger was purposely impolite and unfriendly to him. He had not even found Fairfax's face familiar. There he sat before Antony, small, insignificant. How often he had crossed Tony's mind in some ugly dream when he had longed to crush him like a reptile. Now that he stood before him in flesh and blood it was astonishing to Fairfax to see how little real he was.
"I have been absent from France for six years," continued the Swede, and paused… And Antony knew he was going back in his mind over the past six years of his married life with Mary. "I returned to Paris this week, and wandered into the Salon and stood with a crowd before your bas-relief. I stood for quite half an hour there, I should think, and at least one hundred men and women passed and paused as I had paused. I listened to their comments. I saw your popularity and your power, and saw how you touched the mass by the real beauty of real emotion, by your expression of feeling in plastic art. This is not often achieved nowadays, Mr. Rainsford. Sculpture is the least emotional of all the arts; literature, painting, and music stir the emotions and bring our tears, but that calm, sublime marble, that cold stone awes us by its harmonious perfection. Before sculpture we are content to marvel and worship, and in the 'Open Door' you have made us do all this and made us weep. I do not doubt that amongst those people many had lost their own by death." He paused. It was so dark now that the two men saw each other's face indistinctly. In the shadows Cedersholm's form had softened; the shadows blurred him before Fairfax's eyes; his voice was intensely melancholy. "To every man and woman who has lost your bas-relief is profoundly appealing. Every one of us must go through that door. Your conception, Mr. Rainsford, and your execution are sublime."
Fairfax murmured something which Cedersholm did not make out. He paused a moment, apparently groping in thought as he groped with his weak eyes, and as Fairfax did not respond, he continued —
"You spoke just now of the price we must pay you, the price which you say must buy you back – what I judge you to mean by your progress, by these years of labour and education, by your apprenticeship to art, and, let me say, to life. My dear man, they have already purchased for you your present achievement, your present power. Everything we have, you know, must be paid for. Some things are paid for in coin, and others in flesh and blood and tears. To judge by what we know of the progress of the world in spiritual things and in art, it is the things that are purchased by this travail of the spirit that render eternal possessions, the eternal impressions. No man who has not suffered as you have apparently suffered, no man who has not walked upon thorns, could have produced the 'Open Door.' Do not degrade the value of your past life and the value of every hour of your agony. Why, it is above price." He paused … his voice shook. "It is the gift of God!"
Antony's hands were clasped lightly together; they had been holding each other with a grip of steel; now they relaxed a bit. He bowed his head a little from its proud hauteur, and said —
"You are right; you are right."
"Four years ago," continued the voice – Cedersholm had become to him now only a voice to which he listened in the darkness – "four years ago, if I had seen the 'Open Door,' I would have appreciated its art as I recognized the value of your figure which I bought at the Exposition, but I could not have understood it; its spiritual lesson would have been lost upon me. You do not know me," he continued, "and I can in no way especially interest you. But these six years of my life, especially the last two, have been my Garden of Gethsemane."
He stopped. Antony knew that he had taken out the silk handkerchief again and wiped his eyes. After a second, Cedersholm said —
"You must have lost some one very near you."
"My wife," said Antony Fairfax.
The other man put out his hand, and he touched Antony's closed hands.
"I have lost my wife as well; she died two years ago."
Cedersholm heard Antony's exclamation and felt him start violently.
"Your wife," he cried, "Mary … dead … dead?"
"Yes. Why do you exclaim like that?"
"Not Mary Faversham?"
"Mary Faversham-Cedersholm. Did you know her?"
With a supreme effort Antony controlled himself. His voice suffocated him.
Dead! He felt again the touch of her lips; he heard again her voice; he felt her arms around him as she held him in Windsor – "Tony, darling, go! It is too late."
Oh! the Open Door!
Cedersholm, in the agitation that his own words had produced in himself, and in his grief, did not notice that Fairfax murmured he had known Mrs. Cedersholm in Paris.
"My wife was very delicate," he said. "We travelled everywhere. She faded and my life stopped when she died. To-day, when I saw the 'Open Door,' it had a message for me that brought me the first solace." Again his hands sought Fairfax's. "Thank you, brother artist," he murmured; "you have suffered as I have. You understand."
From where he sat, Fairfax struck a match and lit the candle. Its pale light flickered up in the big dark room like a lily shining in a tomb. He said, with a great effort —
"I made a little bas-relief of Mrs. Cedersholm. Did she never speak of me?"
"Never," said Cedersholm thoughtfully. "She met so many people in France; she was so surrounded. She admired greatly the little figure I bought at the Exposition; it was always in our salon. We spoke of you as a coming power, but I do not recall that she ever mentioned having known you."
To Antony this was the greatest proof she could have given him of her love for him. That careful silence, the long silence, not once speaking his name. He had triumphed over Cedersholm. She had loved him. Cedersholm murmured —
"And you did that bas-relief – a head silhouetted against a lattice? It never left her room, but she never mentioned it to me although I greatly admired it. It Was a perfect likeness." Fairfax saw Cedersholm peer at him through the candle light. "Curious," he continued, "curious."
And Antony knew that Cedersholm would never forget his cry of "Mary – Mary dead!" And her silence regarding his existence and his name, and that silence and that cry would go together in the husband's memory.
The door of the studio was opened by Dearborn, who came in calling —
"Tony, Tony, old man."
Cedersholm rose, and Antony rose as well, putting out his hand, saying —
"I will undertake the work you speak of, if your committee will write me confirming your suggestion. And I leave the price to you, you know; you understand what such work is worth. I place myself in your hands."
Dearborn had come up to them. "Tony," said Dearborn, "what are you plotting in the dark with a single candle?"
Fairfax presented him. "Mr. Cedersholm, Robert Dearborn, the playwright, the author of 'All Roads Meet.'"
Dearborn shook the sculptor's hand lightly. He wondered how this must have been for his friend. He looked curiously from one to the other.
"'All Roads Meet,'" he quoted keenly. "Good name, don't you think? They all do meet somewhere" – he put his hand affectionately on Tony's shoulder – "even if it is only at the Open Door." Then he asked, partly smiling, "And the beautiful Mrs. Cedersholm, is she in Paris too?"
"My wife," said Cedersholm shortly, "died two years ago."
"Dead!" exclaimed Robert Dearborn in a low tone of regret, the tone of every man who regrets the passing of a lovely creature that they have admired. "Dead! I beg your pardon, I did not know. I am too heartily sorry."
He put out his kindly hand. Cedersholm scarcely touched it. He was excited, overwhelmed, and began to take his leave, to walk rapidly across the big room.
As the three men went together toward the door of the studio, Fairfax turned up an electric light. It shone brightly on them all, on Dearborn's grave, charming face, touched with the news of the death of the woman his friend had loved, on Cedersholm's almost livid face, on his thick glasses, and on Antony limping at his side. Cedersholm saw the limp, the unmistakable limp, the heavy boot, his stature, his beautiful head, and in spite of his infirmity he saw enough of his host to make him know him, to make him remember him, and his heart, which had begun to ache at Fairfax's cry of Mary, seemed to die within him. He remembered the man whom he had cheated out of his work and out of public acknowledgment. He knew now what Fairfax meant by the repurchase of his miserable youth. He had believed Antony Fairfax dead years ago. He had been told that he was dead. Now he limped beside him, powerful, clever, acknowledged, and moreover, there he stood beside him with memories that Cedersholm would never know, with memories that linked him with Mary Faversham-Cedersholm. In an unguarded moment that cry had escaped from the heart of a man who must have loved her. He thought of the bas-relief that hung always above her bed, and he thought of her silence, more eloquent now to him even than Antony's cry, and that silence and that cry would haunt him till the end, and the silence could never be broken now that she had gone through the Open Door.
Dearborn had not been with him all day until now. He had come up radiant to Tony, and putting his hand on his shoulder, said —
"My dear Tony, I had to come in to-day just to bring you a piece of news – to tell you a rumour, rather. The 'Open Door' has been bought by the Government. Your fame is made. I wanted to be the first to tell you. I went into the Embassy for a little while to hear them talk about you, and I can assure you that I did hear them. The ambassador himself told me this news is official. Every one will know to-morrow."
They talked together until the morning light came grey across the panes of the atelier, and the light was full of new creations, of new ideals of fame and life, of new ambitions and dreams for them both. Enthralled and inspired each by the other, the two artists talked and dreamed. Dearborn's new play was running into its two-hundredth performance. He was a rich man. Now Antony paused on the threshold of his studio, looking back into the deserted workroom filling with the April evening. In every corner, one by one, the visions rose and floated. They became new statues, new creations, indistinct and ethereal. Only the space, where the work that had been carried away to the Salon had once stood, was bare. As he shut the door he felt that he shut the door for ever upon his past, upon his young manhood and upon his youth.
CHAPTER II
In the early days of July he found himself once more alone in the empty studio, where he had worked for twelve months at the "Open Door."
The place where the huge marble had stood was empty; in its stead fame remained.
Looking back, it seemed now that his hardships had not been severe enough. Had success really come? Would it stay? Was he only the child of an hour? Could he sustain? He recalled the little statuettes which he had made out of the clay of the levee when he was a boy. He remembered his beautiful mother's praise —
"Why, Tony, they are extraordinary, my darling."
And the constant fever had run through his veins all his life. He had made his apprenticeship over theft and death. He said to himself —
"I shall sustain."
As he mused there, the praise he had received ringing in his ears, he entertained fame and saw the shadow of laurel on the floor, under the lamplight, where his marble had stood, long and white.
He had made warm friends and bound them to him. He loved the city and its beauties. His refinement and sense of taste had matured. Antony knew that in his soul he was unaltered, that he was marked by his past, and that the scars upon him were deep.
He was very much alone; there was no one with whom he could share his glory. Should he become the greatest living sculptor, to whom could he bring his honours, his joys?
For a long time Bella went with him in everything he did. His visions were banished by the vivid thought of her. When he came into his studio at twilight he would fancy he saw her sitting by the table.
She would lean there, not like a spirit-like woman under the shaded lamp, sewing at little children's garments … not like that! Nevertheless, Bella sat there as a woman who waits for a return, the charming figure, the charming head with its crown of dark hair, and the lovely, brilliantly coloured face. Now there was nothing spirit-like in Antony's picture.
Then again he would imagine that he saw her in the crowd before his bas-relief at the Salon; he would select some woman dressed in an unusually smart spring gown and call her Bella to himself, until he saw her turn.
Once indeed, there, on the edge of the crowd, leaning with her hands upon the handle of her parasol, he was sure he saw her. The pose of the body was charming, the turn of the head almost as haughty as his own mother's, but the slenderness and the magnetism were Bella's own.
Antony chose this woman upon whom to fix his attention, and he thought that when she would move the resemblance would be gone.
The young girl suddenly altered her pose, and Antony saw her fully; he saw the proud beautiful face, piquant, alluring, a trifle sad; the brilliant lips, the colour in the cheeks, like a snow-set peach, the wonderful eyes, could belong to but one woman.
Separated from her by a little concourse of people, Antony could only cry, "Bella!" to himself. He started eagerly toward the place where he had seen her, but she vanished as the mirage on the desert's face.
What had he seen? A real woman, or only a trick of resemblance?
It was real enough to make him search the newspapers and the hotel lists and the bankers. Now he could not think of her name without a mighty emotion. If that were Bella, she was too lovely to be true! She must be his, no matter at what price, no matter what her life might be.
A fortnight after he received in his mail a letter from America. The address, "Mr. Thomas Rainsford," was in a round full hand, a handsome hand; first he thought it a man's. He opened it with slight interest. The paper exhaled an intangible odour; it was not perfume, but a delicate scent which recalled to him, for some reason, or other, the smell of the vines around the veranda-trellis in New Orleans. He read —
"Mr. Thomas Rainsford.
"Dear Sir, —
"This will seem to be a very extraordinary letter, I know. I hardly know how to write such a letter. When I was in Paris a few weeks ago, I stood before the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have ever seen. I do not know that any one could do a more wonderful, a more deeply spiritual thing in clay or marble. But it is not what I think about it in that way, which is of interest. It cannot be of any interest to you, as you do not know me, nor is it for this that I am writing to you. Again, I do not know how to tell you.
"Where did you get your ideas for your statue? That is what I want to know. Years ago, a bas-relief, very much like yours – I should almost say identically yours – was made by my cousin, Antony Fairfax, in Albany. That bas-relief took the ten-thousand-dollar prize in Chicago. It was, unfortunately, destroyed in a fire, and no record of it was kept. My cousin is dead. For this reason I write to ask you where you got your inspiration for the 'Open Door.' It can be nothing to him that his beautiful work has been more beautifully done by a stranger, can do him no harm, but I want to know. Will you write me to the care of the Women's Art League, 5th Avenue, New York? Perhaps you will not deign to answer this letter. Do not think that I am making any reproach to you. It can be nothing to my cousin; he is dead but it would be a comfort to me. Once again, I hope you will let me hear from you.
"Yours faithfully,"Bella Carew."
The man reading in his studio looked at the signature, looked at the handwriting, held it before his eyes, to which the tears rushed. He pressed the faintly scented pages to his lips. Gallant little Bella … He stretched out his arms in the darkness, called to her across three thousand miles —
"Little cousin, please Heaven he can show you some day, Bella Carew."
It was at this time that he modelled his wonderful bust of Bella Carew.
When he finished the "Open Door," he said that he would not work for a year, that he was exhausted bodily and mentally; certainly he had lacked inspiration. But the afternoon of the day on which he had read this letter – this letter that opened for him a future – he set feverishly to work and modelled. He made a head of Bella which the critics have likened to the busts of Houdon, Carpeaux, and other masters. He modelled from memory, guided by his recollections of that picturesque face he had seen under the big hat on the outskirts of the crowd before his bas-relief. He modelled from memory, from imagination, with hope and new love, from old love too; told himself he had fallen in love with Bella the first night he had seen her, when she had comforted him about his heavy step.
Into the beautiful head and face he worked upon he put all his ideal of what a woman's face should be. He fell in love with his creation, in love with the clay that he moulded. Once more he had a companion in the studio from which had been removed his study for the tomb, and this represented a living woman. It seemed almost to become flesh and blood under his ardent hand. "Bella!" he called to her as he smoothed the lovely cheek and saw the peach bloom under it.
"Little cousin," he breathed, as he touched the hair along her neck, and remembered the wild, tangled forest that had fallen across his face when he carried her in his arms during their childish romps. "Honey child," he murmured as he modelled and moulded the youthful lines of the mouth and lips and stood yearning before them, all his heart and soul in his hands that made before his eyes a lovely woman. She became to him the very conception and expression of what he wanted his wife to be.
They say that men have fallen in love with that beautiful face of Bella Carew as modelled by Fairfax.
Arch and subtle, tender and provoking, distinguished, youthful, alluring, it is the most charming expression of young womanhood that an artist's hand could give to the world.
"Beloved," he murmured like a man half in sleep and half awakening, and he folded the lines of her bodice across her breast and fastened them there by a single rose.
With a sweep of her lovely hair, with an uplift of the corners of her beautiful lips, with the rose at her breast, Bella Carew will charm the artistic world so long as the clay endures.