PAGE 8
The Sculptor’s Story
by
His influence was once more upon me.
In the silence–for it was some time before he spoke, and I was dumb–my accursed eye for detail had taken in the change in him. Yet I fancied I was not looking at him. I noted that he had aged–that this was one of the periods in him which I knew so well–when a passion for work was on him, and the fever and fervor of creation trained him down like a race-horse, all spirit and force. I noted that he still wore the velveteens and the broad hat and loose open collar of his student days.
Sitting on either side of the tomb he had built to enshrine her, on carved marble seats such as Tuscan poets sat on, in the old days, to sing to fair women, with our gaze focussed on the long white form between us–ah, between us indeed!–his voice broke the long silence.
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and the broad brim of his soft hat swept the marble floor with a gentle rhythmic swish, as it swung idly from his loosened grasp. I heard it as an accompaniment to his voice.
His eyes never once strayed from her face.
“You think you are to be pitied,” he said. “You are wrong! No one who has not sinned against another needs pity. I meant you no harm. Fate–my temperament, your immobility, the very gifts that have made me what I am were to blame–if blame there were. Every one of us must live out his life, according to his nature. I, as well as you!
“When, on this very spot where we last parted, you told me that you loved her, I swear to you, if need be, that I rejoiced. I was glad that she would have you to make the future smooth for her. Later I grew to envy you. It was for your safety, as well as mine and hers, that I decided to see neither of you again until she had been some time your wife. No word of love, no confidence of any kind, had ever passed between us. When I wrote you that I should not be here to see you married, and when not even your reproaches could move me, I had already engaged my passage on a sailing ship bound for the Azores. I had planned to put a long uncertain voyage between you and any possibility that I might mar your chances for happiness, for the nearer the day came, the more–in spite of myself–I resented it!
“My good intentions were thwarted by–Fate.
“For some reason, forgotten and unimportant, the Captain deferred lifting anchor for a whole week. I called myself unpretty names for thinking that I could not even see her without danger. I despised myself for the judgment that accused me of being such a scamp as to think I would do anything to rob her of the protection and safety you could give her, and I could not, and an egoist for being possessed with the idea that I could if I would.
“Suddenly I felt quite sure of myself.
“Yet I had meant to see her without being seen, when I hurried so unexpectedly down here on your wedding night. I fancied I only longed to see what a lovely bride she would make–she who as a child, a girl, a maiden, had been in your eyes the most exquisite creature you had ever known; she whom I had avoided for years, because I, of all men, could least afford to take a place in her life! I longed to see those eyes, still so pure, under her bridal veil.
“I came in secret! I saw her–and all prudence fled out of me, leaving but one instinct.
“Was it my fault that, alone, she fled from the house? That, with her veil thrown over her arm, she ran directly by me, like a sprite in the moonlight, to this spot?