The new day was a marvel of sunshine. During the night, the snow had changed to rain; this in turn had given way to colder weather, and now myriads of jewels hung from enchanted apple trees. A white fairyland! The child clapped his hands with delight as his mother wrapped him warm in his various rabbit-skin garments, and gathered his curls up under a raccoon cap, and led him down the garden path to frolic with old Ajax in the clean snow. When she brought him in, he was glowing and sparkling with unearthly glee. She thought she had never dreamed of anything so beautiful. She wondered whether Joseph and Mary in the carpenter’s shop had ever punished Jesus for playing too long among the shavings, and what the Child had said. Probably something much more moving than “None done, papa.” But if so, she wondered how Mary could bear it.
Samuel’s elfin merriment quieted down in the warm room. No longer insubordinate, he allowed his mother to take him up on her lap, and to brush the tangled curls over a round stick, until they became orderly spirals once more. He had not yet learned that curls were effeminate; that battle was to be much later. He made no move to take up his carving, or to defend his past, reserving such discussions as these for a meeting with the masculine mind. All the afternoon he seemed a creature both isolate and expectant, darting to the window whenever a vagrom sleigh-bell tinkled in fairyland. Isolate and expectant! His mother wondered whether all artists were doomed to be so. Once she caught him up in her arms, and cried out to him in her childhood’s tongue, “O caro, caro, perché?” And Samuel passed his fingers over her forehead, and then over the Ganymede brooch, saying three words that his father had taught him in jest, but which he had learned in earnest, “Beau, bello, beau-ti-ful!” He loved those three words, and very often, apropos of nothing, he spoke them in his incredibly distinct way. But to-day his mother felt his aloofness; she knew that he was waiting for something, something not in her power to give.
The young carver was a privileged person in the shop where he worked. That day he could not fix his mind on those wooden models of wheel and shaft. He was unsatisfied about his child, and in the middle of the afternoon abruptly put away his tools and went home. Early as it was, Samuel was already waiting. The child had been listening for that step in the passage. There was something to be explained; the indignity of yesterday’s happening had not yet passed into forgetfulness. He took his unfinished cat in hand, and hitched his trousers higher. If last night’s encounter was to be repeated, he would not easily be separated from his defensive armor!
The father, coming in glowingly from the freshness of the winter day, was dazed by that militant figure and its immediate challenge, “None done, papa!” He hardly knew how to answer whatever demand was thereby made upon him. No parent relishes the rôle of Goliath! But love aided him. He warmed his hands at the blaze, and seizing the belligerent, tossed him high in the air many times, knowing that Samuel had never yet had enough of that sport. Then he sat down before the fire, the boy in his arms, and poured out a thousand foolish tendernesses over the seven spirals, and the shining ridgepole. The sensitive child caught the shadow of anxiety, even as it was vanishing from his father’s face. What sorrow was this? His own sorrows had been two: a work of art undone, a first whipping. His father was the one who gave, not took whippings; his father’s sorrow was therefore about the work of art. Ah, that was something he himself could well understand, and perhaps console; though the cat was unfinished, there was many another work not yet begun. He laid a valiant hand on his blue woollen chest, and declared, “Self make more!” Perhaps he saw a long vista of bright shapes clamoring to be carved for the comfort and delight of the world.
Hastily he slipped down from his father’s arms to his own place on the hearthrug, and brought out his little box of clean chips from beneath the sofa. A great company of living beings was hidden there, waiting, waiting in the wood. Samuel looked up, and announced with jubilation, “Self—make—all!” He pondered a moment on his next subject. The carving of a cat had ended in disaster; let us then attempt the dog, the friend of man, not the heartless watcher by his fire. The child passed a thumb over the knife-edge, as the elders do, then chose a block, and addressed himself to it. “Dog.” No more.
The parents looked at each other, understanding profoundly that Samuel was no longer a child of three. Overnight, he had become a boy in the fourth year of his age. In mingled joy and anxiety they perceived also that for a certainty their wish had been granted; there was an artist in the family. And an artist, they supposed, would have his isolations, and tremulous expectancies; his aspirations, too, and perhaps his anguish in high enterprises, “None done.” But joy alone radiated from Samuel and his shining spirals. From the sorrow of a dream never to be finished he had passed to the incalculable rapture of a vision newly begun. “Dog,” he murmured, “dog.” He knew that the creature was lying low there in the chip, just for the express purpose of being summoned forth by him, Samuel. In his abounding bliss he had time to bestow on his parents three words to describe what he was about to make; and he spoke these words as if they were three priceless jewels, “Beau—bello—beautiful!”
THE END