The family began to discuss the details, and then checked themselves and begged Gerhardt’s pardon for criticizing. Of course, he said that their criticisms were exactly what he wanted and begged them to go on. The general’s wife said that in that case they would be glad to point out what seemed to them inaccuracies, but that he must not take their speeches as being criticisms upon his art at all. They found two inaccuracies; in the shape of the nose and the shape of the forehead. All were agreed that the forehead was wrong, but there was a lively dispute about the nose. Some of those present contended that the nose was nearly right—the others contended that it was distinctly wrong. The general’s wife knelt on the ottoman to get a clearer view of the bust, and the others stood about her—all talking at once. Finally, the general’s wife said, hesitatingly, with the mien of one who is afraid he is taking a liberty and asking too much, “If Mr. Gerhardt could see the general’s nose and forehead, himself, that would dispose of this dispute at once.” Finally, “The general is in the next room. Would Mr. Gerhardt mind going in there and making the correction himself?”
Things were indeed progressing handsomely!
Of course, Mr. Gerhardt lost no time in expressing his willingness.
While the controversy was going on concerning the nose and the forehead, Mrs. Fred Grant joined the group, and then, presently, each of the three ladies, in turn, disappeared for a few minutes, and came back with a handful of photographs and hand-painted miniatures of the general.
These pictures had been made in every quarter of the world. One of them had been painted in Japan. But, good as many of these pictures were, they were worthless as evidence, for the reason that they contradicted one another in every detail.
The photograph apparatus had lied as distinctly and as persistently as had the hands of the miniature-artists. No two noses were alike and no two foreheads were alike.
We stepped into the general’s room—all but General Badeau and Doctor Douglas.
The general was stretched out in a reclining chair with his feet supported upon an ordinary chair. He was muffled up in dressing gowns and afghans, with his black woolen skullcap on his head.
The ladies took the skullcap off and began to discuss his nose and his forehead, and they made him turn this way and that way and the other way, to get different views and profiles of his features. He took it all patiently and made no complaint. He allowed them to pull and haul him about, in their own affectionate fashion, without a murmur.
Mrs. Fred Grant, who is very beautiful and of the most gentle and loving character, was very active in this service, and very deft, with her graceful hands, in arranging and rearranging the general’s head for inspection, and repeatedly called attention to the handsome shape of his head—a thing which reminds me that Gerhardt had picked up an old plug hat of the general’s downstairs, and had remarked upon the perfect oval shape of the inside of it, this oval being so uniform that the wearer of the hat could never be able to know, by the feel of it, whether he had it right end in front or wrong end in front; whereas the average man’s head is broad at one end and narrow at the other.
The general’s wife placed him in various positions, none of which satisfied her, and finally she went to him and said: “Ulyss! Ulyss! Can’t you put your feet to the floor?” He did so at once and straightened himself up.
During all this time the general’s face wore a pleasant, contented, and I should say benignant, aspect, but he never opened his lips once. As had often been the case before, so now his silence gave ample room to guess at what was passing in his mind—and to take it out in guessing. I will remark, in passing, that the general’s hands were very thin, and they showed, far more than did his face, how his long siege of confinement and illness and insufficient food had wasted him. He was at this time suffering great and increasing pain from the cancer at the root of his tongue, but there was nothing ever discoverable in the expression of his face to betray this fact, as long as he was awake. When asleep, his face would take advantage of him and make revelations.
At the end of fifteen minutes, Gerhardt said he believed he could correct the defects now. So we went back to the other room.
Gerhardt went to work on the clay image, everybody standing round, observing and discussing with the greatest interest.
Presently the general astonished us by appearing there, clad in his wraps and supporting himself in a somewhat unsure way upon a cane. He sat down on the sofa and said he could sit there if it would be for the advantage of the artist.
But his wife would not allow that. She said that he might catch cold. She was for hurrying him back at once to his invalid chair. He succumbed and started back, but at the door he turned and said:
“Then can’t Mr. Gerhardt bring the clay in here and work?”
This was several hundred times better fortune than Gerhardt could have dreamed of. He removed his work to the general’s room at once. The general stretched himself out in his chair, but said that if that position would not do, he would sit up. Gerhardt said it would do very well indeed, especially if it were more comfortable to the sitter than any other would be.
The general watched Gerhardt’s swift and noiseless fingers for some time with manifest interest in his face, and no doubt this novelty was a valuable thing to one who had spent so many weeks that were tedious with sameness and unemphasized with change or diversion. By
