Meanwhile, my work with Phineas was going rather badly. I could not teach his aristocratic spirit to get down to brass tacks. His posing became worse instead of better. Before long, I found myself doing over again, every morning, from Apollos, all that I had bungled in doing, every afternoon, from Phineas. It occurred to me that perhaps I was too tired, in the afternoon, to do justice to Phineas, and that possibly Phineas’s pose was the more difficult one. However, when I changed about, things were still worse. I realized at last that my sprig of nobility was a hindrance rather than a help. What to do? I had promised him work through the summer. If I should pay him handsomely and discharge him, with his part of the bargain unfulfilled, I should write myself down an easy mark for models—a reputation no serious artist seeks. It would be complicity after the crime. Besides, Apollos might well become discontented, on beholding the rewards of the ungodly.
Toward the middle of the summer, the tension became too great. Precious as time was, with that ironclad contract haunting my dreams, I saw that perhaps I should gain, in the end, if I should leave my studio, for a double-size week-end, and go a-fishing from Friday to the following Tuesday. I was working in plastiline instead of clay, and I could safely leave my angels, without fear of their drying up on me as soon as my back was turned. The holiday might not hurt the boys, either. Apollos had stuck valiantly to his “pis-aller” job; perhaps Phineas would do better after a few days’ change; at any rate, I told myself, he couldn’t do worse. In that, however, I was mistaken.
II
By Thursday midnight, my motor had already borne me north two hundred miles from my studio and all its works. Some men sit by a brookside to think, but I go fishing to forget. I wanted an oblivious antidote against art and angels in art. But my respite was brief. Sunday night, on returning to the mountain inn at the head of the lake, carrying with me a gorgeous string of trout that I knew would win me the plaudits of all guests at Monday’s breakfast, I was confronted with a telegram.
Studio destroyed. Come as soon as you can.
Phineas Stickney
For a second, I had an hallucination; I saw also the words, “Angels in ashes. Contract ironclad.” But I waved that aside; and, I hardly know why, my utter dismay was soon followed by a sort of exhilaration, the exhilaration a fellow feels when he suddenly has to make a fresh start, and knows he has strength for it. No Sunday trains served those remote God-fearing parts; I must return as I came. A few years before, my hill and home had been struck by lightning, but no damage had been done, except to a drinking-glass and the cook’s Thursday afternoon corsets. Turning my motor’s nose homeward, I wondered whether the lightning had returned to finish a work thus timidly begun. More likely fire, though! Did Apollos smoke, after all? Or Phineas? My curiosity was almost equal to my consternation.
All night long, my runabout raced up hill and down dale, sometimes beside a moonlit brook, sometimes through clean, sweet forests, and again along dusty country roads with straggling farmhouses fast asleep, not even giving a dream to my troubles! Grateful guests at the inn had pressed upon me loaves in exchange for my fishes, and by way of a solitary breakfast among the morning mists, I disposed of an incredible number of sandwiches as well as all the hot coffee in my own miracle-bottle. I propitiated my engine for the last lap.
The day had not lost its freshness when I reached the foot of my hill, and strained my eyes for a glimpse of the disaster. To my surprise, the big barn studio, as far as I could judge from the road, was still intact. But it was in the back part that my angels were! And when I had at last finished rounding that interminable uphill bend over the roots of the elm trees, I saw that there was no longer any back part. There was only a pile of charred timbers.
At a little distance stood a metal garage, one of those ugly, useful structures that invite scoffing from all persons of taste. It was untouched by the fire. The door was open. I could see Phineas just within. Beyond Phineas, stretched out flat on those trestles I had been grumbling about for years because the carpenters never took them away, were my angels, uncovered, and looking, to the casual eye, as good as new. I was glad, then, that I knew how to thank God. And before long, I was glad, according to the custom of my tribe, to get a new light on my angels. Sculptors are like that. They would go through fire and water to get a new light, it seems.