Gingerly, for she was afraid the doll might fall all to pieces, she wrapped it up again and put it away until after lunch. She folded the piece of newspaper small and put it at the bottom of her handkerchief drawer.
She replied to Niall's surprised and joyful greeting that afternoon with a few breathless words and a troubled look. Without more preliminary she pulled the doll from her pocket and held it out to him.
“Why? What's the matter?” he asked, looking from her grief−stricken face to the little parcel. She had found him in the studio; he had cleared the bench and was busily at work on a few oddly shaped pieces of wood. “Look at it,” she said in a miserable voice. “I'm so dreadfully sorry. I never thought it might go like that. I had it in my cupboard. Can you mend it?”
He put down the tool he held in his hand, frowned and unwrapped the doll. She watched his face, hoping for a sign that he did not think the damage serious. He stared at the little figure with concentration; took off its dress and examined it narrowly, all over. He was so absorbed that Clare felt he had forgotten her; but at length, with an obvious effort, he wrenched his attention from the figure and his expression changed.
“Oh well...” he said. “I thought from your tragic note it was something much more serious. What's happened to that can't be helped. I told you it was a failure. I expected it to go like that. I'm only sorry because you liked it. But never mind. Look! I'm keeping my promise. I'm making you another one.”
He indicated the various small bits of wood, one of which, Clare saw, might be taken to represent very roughly the shape of a human torso. She was relieved at the lightness of his tone and his reassuring smile. She remembered well all that he had said about the doll's being no good, and yet she was mystified.
“Do you know why it's gone like that?” she asked. “Would it have been better to keep it in a different place? Or is it because it was a wrong piece of wood?”
“Why,” he answered, considering the question, “I don't think it would have made any difference where it was kept. Yes, I expect I chose a bad bit of wood.” He looked down at the materials he was working with now. “Though the working of it counts for a lot, too. All this is not so precise and mechanical as you might think. I've learnt by experience—by failures such as this—that if you want to create something you mustn't try to go against the nature of your material. Indeed, I'm not sure that it's right to call this a process of creation. After all, look at that little rectangular block of wood there: one of the arms I want for your figure already exists in that. It must, because it's going to come out of it. I didn't put it there; I didn't create it; all I shall do is free it from the surrounding matter. Then, with such art as I have, bring it into association with other parts existing in other blocks of wood and articulate and animate the whole—if I can. The whole figure exists independently of me: I only serve it, and I can only serve it as the nature of the material itself dictates. I can't force this material to take the shape I wish; I can only work with it if the stuff itself is willing. I say the figure exists before I lift a tool. Who's to say that the purpose—the purpose to move and take on life, or the appearance of life—doesn't exist also, independently of me? This dead stuff is not dead. I mean, not dead in the sense of being static and immutable. Not at all. It can change, as you've seen. It's my art to learn the hidden nature of this matter, to know what you might call its private intentions about the ways in which it will change, and then to follow them. They are complex and hidden ways. It's no wonder if I go wrong sometimes, is it?”
He ended what had seemed to Clare to be a piece of private reasoning or self−justification by looking at her with a rueful smile. “The life so short,” he said, “the craft so long to learn.”
He opened one of the plywood presses, which was stuffed with his tools, materials and sketch−books, and tossed the doll on to one of the shelves.
Clare picked up one of the pieces of wood from the bench. It was a heavy wood with an extremely close grain.
“I do hope this one goes right,” she said. “Couldn't you breathe on it, or something? Cast one of your spells on it to make it obedient? After all you can make human beings do what you want them to. Wood ought to be easier.”
“My dolls aren't all wood,” he said.
“Why? What else do you use?” she asked, surprised.
He grinned. “What the painter mixed his paints with: brains! The statues of Praxiteles weren't by any means made all of marble. I'd say there was as much of sweat and tears and the wind of sighs in them as there was of stone. There's flesh and blood and spirit in these things I make, and that's where I may go wrong.”
“I wish I could help,” said Clare. “I feel it's selfish to make you work so hard just to make a doll for me. Although I shall be proud to have it.”
He suddenly caught up an open sketch−book that lay on the bench. “Aha!” he exclaimed. “I told you the material must be willing and here its willingness appears! I've been struggling with a problem of anatomy here all morning and sighing for a model, and now, pat you come in answer to my prayer. Slip your mackintosh off and hop on that box and hold a pose for me for a few minutes and I'll get the thing right.”
Clare did as he bade her. He arranged her in the pose he wanted, and it seemed to her that her pretence of being subject by enchantment to his will became reality when her body and limbs were ordered by his hands. She dwelt on the pleasure she found in this physical obedience, and when he began to draw her, though she knew that she held the pose voluntarily, yet she was so aware of his power and his pleasure in thus possessing her that she could believe herself fixed there by his command, unable to move, even if she wished it, until he permitted her.
He was exacting. He gave her frequent rests but was determined to make the most of the unexpected opportunity and kept her posing until the light faded. By then he had made two drawings of her full figure and several studies of her head and hands and legs. She looked at them admiringly but with a pretence of criticism. “They'll do,” he said, with obvious satisfaction. “Not works of art, but accurate representation. That's what
I want, and I've never had a chance to draw you properly until today. How glad I am you came!”
“Ah, but it's unfair,” she said, “to make me pose when I'm wearing this old thing. I hadn't time to change.”
She had on her gym−tunic this day instead of the woollen jersey and dark grey skirt which she usually wore for her visits to Brackenbine. All Paston Hall girls held gym−tunics to be hideous; they wore them in the mornings because of the daily gym period and changed at luncheon−time into something which, within Miss Sperrod's regulations, might be made to look a little more becoming.
Niall was busy making tea from a kettle he had boiled on the studio fire. “Oh? Why?” he said. “What's wrong with it?”
Clare gave a snort. He laughed sympathetically, but while they sat drinking their tea beside his bench he cocked his head on one side and studied her anew, as if he had not been taking her dress into account earlier.
“I don't know,” he said. “I don't say the tunic as worn is beautiful, but the basic idea is good. A few slight changes could give it style. It could be made very attractive. How about this?”
He flicked over a page of his sketch−book and very rapidly drew a girl wearing a tunic. Clare watched, astonished at his speed and skill and delighted with the picture that grew before her eyes on the paper. The young girl he had drawn was lovely, and the modified tunic sat on her with the same free grace and neat lightness as the chiton on the girls of Lacedaemon.