A Capillary Crime, and Other Stories

by Francis Davis Millet

“But there’s Terburg—” he began.

“Raphael,” she interrupted.

“Van der Meer de Delft,” he suggested.

“Botticelli,” she argued, and so the conversation went on, and at last ended, as discussions on religion, politics, and art always do, in each declaring unwavering adherence to original views.

Excursions to the art galleries and to the Metropolitan Museum were often the result of these little flutters; but although neither the artist nor the sitter would confess to the least disturbance of artistic faith, Seymour actually began, before he knew why, to select an ideal subject. Several motives from classical poetry, from mythology, and from modern writers came to his mind, and he was unable to decide, nor did he know that he really cared to fix on any one of them. Meanwhile the sittings continued, and the portrait approached completion. Suddenly one day a compromise suggested itself to the painter, how or why he never knew, and he quietly remarked, “Miss Van Hoorn, I am going to paint a Medusa’s head.”

“Horrid,” she said, frankly. “I hate snakes.”

Seymour was somewhat discouraged by her impulsive disapproval of his subject, but, nevertheless, warmly defended his choice, and was all the more eloquent, perhaps, because he felt that she had recognized his ingenious compromise between idealism and realism. He insisted that the proportions of her face had suggested the subject to him, and was so serious in his assertion that she was in this degree responsible for his choice of motive, that she finally yielded to his eager solicitation, and consented to sit for the eyes and mouth of the Medusa’s head.

The same afternoon he went down-town to a shop near the docks, where all kinds of birds, animals, and reptiles were sold alive—a sort of depot, in fact, for the dime museums and small menageries—and bought a box of a dozen moccasin snakes recently arrived from the South. He selected this variety on account of the venomous appearance of the small heads, the repulsive thickness of the bodies, and the richness of color of the mottled scales, intending to make a close study of all the characteristics of this variety of the serpent. He could in this way heighten the contrast which he proposed to make between the calm beauty of the woman’s face and the repulsiveness of the serpent locks. He ordered the box to be sent to his studio the same afternoon, and spent that evening in blocking out on the canvas a charcoal sketch of the head he had in his mind.

The following day was Sunday, and during the night a severe cold wave, accompanied by a blizzard of unusual severity, began to sweep over the city. Early on Monday morning the artist went around into the studio, and was surprised to find that the snow had blown in through the ventilator, and that the temperature was very low, notwithstanding the fact that a fire had been kept up all the time in the great magazine stove. His first thought was for the snakes, and, by no means certain that they were not already frozen, he moved the box near the fire, closed the ventilators in the roof of the studio, opened the dampers in the stove, and shook the grate, so as to start the fire more briskly.

It was the last day Miss Van Hoorn could come, because she was about to accompany her family to Florida for a few weeks, and in order to sit a little for the picture she had promised to come earlier than usual.