“Strange,” pursued Gerald, “that a mere death-mask can mean so much to living men. There’s Fraser’s Roosevelt, and the Lincoln, and the Dante that used to be in everybody’s library, and—”
A silence fell between the two. Surely Mrs. Storms, the lady who was the limit, was far from their thoughts. The dinner, that masterpiece, had faded from the foreground.
“I never told you,” said Gerald, abruptly, “how I longed to make a death-mask of father, when he died there in London, away from you all. I wanted to preserve—and to show to you yourself, Stevedear!—the look of peace that came upon him. As a sculptor, I knew how, of course. Every kid studying sculpture has made casts—from life, anyway. But when mother saw what I was about, she trembled so violently I couldn’t go on, in the presence of her suffering. And I trembled, too. I’ve never told you about it, because I was ashamed of my weakness, or whatever it was! Well, since then, I’ve never even tried to make a death-mask! People send for me, of course, and I often go, when they seem to need a friendly presence. But it’s some moulder who does the work, not I. I can’t seem to bring myself—”
He set the cast on the table beside him, still conning its planes and shadows. Again the silence of understanding enveloped uncle and nephew, until Steven Grant said, as if in answer to a question, “Well, yes; it was much the same with me. I never made but one death-mask. Just one. There was no way out.”
“How was that?”
“It happened when I was younger than you are, so I couldn’t be expected to have much sense, could I? You trembled, because it was your father. I trembled, because it was the girl I’d loved, and in a sense, lost.”
“Oh, I could understand!” And Gerald, thinking of that most lovely lady with the glittering train, stretched out a sympathetic hand.
“A very beautiful girl she was, Anita Vaughn! The pride of our young circle. I made the mistake, if it was a mistake, of introducing my best friend to her. After that, I had no show whatever. They fell in love.”
“Hard luck, for you, anyway!”
“Yes, and a shock to my conceit, too. In a way, it was one of the sacrifices I made to art. I’d been moving Heaven and Hell to get that Emancipation group of mine well along. I didn’t want to ask Anita to marry me until I had proved my earning power, and that group would have settled things. Your gramper, as you know, didn’t think much of sculpture, and I was shy about asking him to shell out. So I waited and worked, and in the meantime,—ah, well, it was all simple enough. She preferred my friend to me, as well she might—”