The Doll Maker

6

It was so delightful a thing to be in love. The symbols Clare used to herself and to Niall to describe her feelings, the fictions she played with for her pleasure and his, came to be a little more real to her than the bricks and mortar of Paston Hall and the people they housed. What she called the spell within which she lived was indeed a real thing: it made much that had been hidden before visible to her, and at the same time it clad her with a cloak, not perhaps of invisibility, but of unremarkability. She ceased even to be surprised that her connection with Brackenbine aroused so little interest in the school. The Sixth Form knew of it, but they appeared to accept it as something settled; she had no prying questions to counter. Miss Geary recovered from her cold, but she did not resume her walks to escort Clare back from Brackenbine gates in the afternoons, and Miss Sperrod seemed not to give the perils of that half−mile of lonely walk another thought. No one mentioned Niall's return to her: it seemed not to have become known. Clare would never have thought it possible before that she should enjoy such freedom at Paston Hall, but now it seemed a natural and inevitable part of the immensely greater freedom on which she had entered with Niall.

It moved her profoundly to see that he also had the same need to be near her. She found, to her delight, that in the weeks following the puppet−show very often Mrs. Sterne would have made a fire in the great drawing−room instead of in the dining−room in the afternoons; and Niall would be there, deep in a chair, pretending to read, but in reality listening to her and watching her, and heightening for her all the sweet enjoyment of those afternoons. Sometimes his mother would vainly urge him to go away and not distract Clare, and Clare knew from the meaning mock−seriousness of her tone then that his mother was aware of what was between them. Sometimes now, too, she caught Mrs. Sterne looking at Niall with a kind of warning watchfulness, and she herself would occasionally look up to meet eyes full of a sad compassion. There were little manoeuvrings, too, to prevent Niall and Clare being very long alone together—small acts and hints that told Clare plainly that Mrs. Sterne was discreetly chaperoning her. Clare laughed to herself. She knew Niall far better now, she was convinced, than his mother did. She felt boundlessly safe with him.

One result of Niall's presence at their lessons was that less Latin was done than formerly. But Clare's education advanced in other ways. Niall would often have his sketchbook with him, and Clare, stealing a glance at him, would see his pencil busy. By and by, at tea−time, she would ask to see what he had done and would find a page or two covered with little studies of herself. To her they seemed works of high professional skill and her exclamations of admiration would lead on to protests from him and comments from his mother until the afternoon became an artclass, or at least a lecture on drawing by Mrs. Sterne.

With what seemed to Clare a curious touch of jealousy she would dismiss Niall's sketches and show her own paintings. Sometimes the Latin lesson would frankly go by the board. Mrs. Sterne would interrupt Niall with a disparaging criticism before he had well begun to sketch Clare; an argument would develop and they would all go up to the studio and turn over books of reproductions and bring out old canvases of Mrs. Sterne's. “You mustn't admire our work too much,” Mrs. Sterne said. “Niall's stuff is bad. He merely does what a ten−and−sixpenny camera can do better. Study the great painters—the good painters. I am no real artist either,

I think. Perhaps my bent was for decoration: I should have painted flowers on china and designed patterns for fabrics.”

But Clare was not convinced. Mrs. Sterne had painted Anne Otterel and discovered a beauty in her that Clare, well as she had known the living woman, had missed. The loveliness of that eager and awakened face moved Clare with such strange emotions now that she could not bear to look upon it long.

There were other paintings of Mrs. Sterne's that the now recognised at once: the original designs of Niall's puppets. There were many studies of horses that he must have used, and there were paintings of handsome gentlemen in cocked−hats and full−skirted coats, and young ladies in elaborate rich gowns or luxurious furs, with jewels on their bosoms and in their hair; girls, too, in boyish riding costumes, and boys splendidly attired in the satins and velvets and gold lace of royal courts of former ages. There were many studies and sketches for historical costumes—a whole theatrical wardrobe for the puppet company; and Clare, even with her small knowledge, could see how much that was rich and gorgeous had been extracted from the great painters to robe Niall's little figures.

Niall, looking over Clare's shoulder at these drawings, sighed.

“My mother does her part perfectly. But in my department, how mockingly execution still parodies design!”

Clare stopped herself just in time from reminding him how perfectly he had created an illusion the other night. Instead she said she would like to see some more of his puppets.

He smiled. “All in good time. I've been lazy. I must make some more. Mother, you must design apparel more splendid yet to dress the best of all my puppets—the one I'm going to make for Clare.”

His mother did not answer. Niall showed Clare drawers full of scraps of rich and pretty materials that his mother had collected and many tiny costumes begun and left unfinished. Mrs. Sterne seemed less interested than he.

“You'll have to make the next yourself,” she said to Niall brusquely and with a note of rebuff that Clare would not have expected from her. “It's such fine work,” she explained to Clare. “It tires me now. Perhaps one loses enthusiasm and wonders whether the result is worth the labour—or whether that kind of result ought to be achieved at all.”

“Oh, but surely, to make something so beautiful and original...” Clare began.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Sterne. “If beauty were the only law and the passion to create were not in some sense a sin of pride, it might be so.” Her smile puzzled Clare by seeming too sad for the toys they were discussing, and her tone too grave. “If beauty were right as well as truth it might be all we need to know. The pity of it is, we understand our errors, or our sins, only when it's too late to rectify them.” She had turned to Niall. “But at least we can cease. We can go our ways and sin no more. I don't think I shall make anything ever again.”

Mornings and evenings at Paston Hall Clare spent diligently at her books. She had no study of her own—Paston Hall was not big enough for that; but all the forenoon, when the Sixth Form were in class, she might have the Prefects Room to herself. She settled down there one morning about three weeks after the beginning of term with a whole day's programme of study before her. She was not going to Brackenbine that afternoon. Mrs. Sterne had told her the previous day that she would have to go into Pentabridge and would be late back. Niall had given Clare a look that plainly invited her to come all the same; but, dearly as she would have loved it, to go there openly in daylight when Mrs. Sterne might be known to be away was too great a risk.

It was a cold, wet morning, and Clare was annoyed to see that the Prefects' Room fire had gone out. The rule was that the fire was not lighted in that room until evening; by persistent agitation Clare had got the rule changed in principle, but in practice it needed constant vigilance on her part to see that the maids did make the fire in the mornings. She put down her books and went to the housekeeper's room where, after some argument, she obtained a promise that a maid would come along and relight the fire. With that she returned and buried herself in Victor Hugo.

The maid came after long delay and spent an even longer time incompetently stuffing bits of newspaper and not very dry sticks between the bars of the grate. Clare was too used to the Paston Hall system to interfere, though she could have made the fire anew herself in half the time. At last, and as it were in spite of the maid's teasings and potterings, a little flame established itself on the heap of coal−dust with some promise of permanency. Irritated by the girl's snuffling and exasperatingly slow tearing of sheets of newspaper, Clare told her to go and leave it alone.

The fire burned up slowly and Clare accomplished a couple of hours' solid work on her French Romantics. She yawned then and stretched and got up to spend a few minutes by the fire before changing to another subject. The maid had done her job in a slatternly fashion, scattering bits of burnt stick and paper all over the hearth and leaving her unused newspapers strewn on the hearthrug. Clare gathered them up and dropped them behind the coal−box. A torn half−sheet of the Pentabridge Independent fluttered loose, and as Clare picked it up again her eye fell on a photograph that she recognised.

That was her first thought; then she realised that she must be mistaken. There was no caption under the photograph, only a paragraph which the maid had torn raggedly across. Clare read:

“It is with deep regret that we report the death from Infantile Paralysis of Margaret Raines, seventeen−year−old daughter of Mr and Mrs. George Raines of White House, Highwood Road, Pentabridge, who was admitted to Pentabridge Infirmary in a critical condition last Thursday night. Margaret was one of the most promising pupils who have ever attended Pentabridge High School. She not only had a brilliant record in schoolwork and examinations but had a lively interest in the wider field of out−of−school activities. She was an enthusiastic student of Nature and made a special hobby of bird−watching, being a junior member of the Pentabridge and District Natural History Society before which she read a paper which was highly commended by Sir Edward Porter, the Chairman, last spring. Miss Lancing, the Sixth Form mistress of the High School, in expressing the staff's deep sorrow at the tragic news of Margaret's passing, said, 'We all felt that Margaret was destined for a brilliant career. She was highly gifted in many directions. While she was popular in the school and a good mixer, there were fewer people who knew the more sensitive side of her character. She read much and had a fervent love of Nature which led her on many solitary rambles in the woods and fields and inspired her to write reflective poetry full of delicate observation....'”

The rest of the paragraph had gone to rekindle the Prefects' Room fire. Clare looked at the date of the paper and found it to be the previous June.

She had never heard of Margaret Raines before. The people of Pentabridge might have been dwellers in Patagonia for all the contact Paston Hall girls had with them. And yet, she was convinced she knew the face. Even in the blurred newspaper reproduction it was a pretty face. It was framed in fair hair done in two long plaits coiled over the ears. The collar of a white blouse appeared above a school gym−tunic: a Pentabridge High School girl—Clare could not possibly have known her. She might conceivably have caught a glimpse of her if she had been one of the High School girls whom she occasionally no−iced cycling past Paston Hall gates, but her conviction was that this was a face she had dwelt on, not merely glimpsed.

She stared at the photograph and then, suddenly, she had it. She folded the torn sheet hurriedly and flew with it through the school and upstairs to her room. For some time now she had not taken the Christmas−tree doll out of its tissue paper, but she had no doubts about it: the picture and the doll were twin sisters. She snatched the little parcel from the back of her cupboard shelf and unwrapped it. Then she sat abruptly down on her bed with a gasp of dismay.

She was certain that the doll had been undamaged when she last looked at it a week, no, nearer a fortnight ago. She had taken immense care of it. Now it was ruined. Her first suspicion, rushing in with indignation, was that someone in sheer mischief and malice had stolen into her room and gashed and hacked the figure; but that was too wild a suspicion: there could be no one with so crooked a mind at Paston Hall. Then she began to examine the doll more carefully and concluded at length that the damage was the result of some natural action. Chiefly it seemed that the wood had split into many small fissures along the grain; the fine joints had opened into crevices and the paint had come off in flakes. The dress was quite undamaged. Clare could not understand how the wood could so deteriorate in so short a time. There were no hot−water pipes near her cupboard, or, indeed, anywhere in the room. The walls were quite dry; nothing else in the cupboard was spoiled: her tennis racket had been stored there all winter on the same shelf and there was not the slightest trace of warping or splitting on that or its press.

She came near to tears at the disaster and blamed herself bitterly for not having looked at the doll every day to make sure it was all right. If she had noticed when first the wood began to split she could have taken it to Niall and he would perhaps have been able to stop it. And yet, how could she have suspected that it might split? It was the wood of the little trees and he had said he used that because it was so durable. There was nothing she could do now but take it to Niall and tell him just where it had been kept and ask him what had happened and if he could mend it. She must take it this very afternoon. Even though Mrs. Sterne was not at home, she must run the risk; she could not wait another day.

When her distress had abated a little by taking this decision she recalled why she had come to look at the doll now. She opened the piece of newspaper out and laid it and the doll on the bed. In spite of the damage to the figure's face she thought her impression was confirmed. She twisted the doll's long hair loosely into plaits and coiled them to resemble the hair of the girl in the photograph. The likeness was there: she had not been mistaken.

She pored and puzzled over the two things so long that the end−of−school bell caught her still in her bedroom and she was roused from her speculations by the surging rumour of noise from classes set free.

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.

“Ah yes,” said Clare, grudgingly conceding his point. “But I can't imagine Spare−the−Rod approving of a tunic like that! And anyway, you'd have to have the figure for it. That's not me you've drawn. It's more like...”

She picked the book up and moved to the lamp, which Niall had lit, to see the drawing better. It has been on the tip of her tongue to say the name of the girl he had drawn, and in the very instant of recognising her, the name had gone. She had certainly never known any girl exactly like this drawing—and yet there was a teasing resemblance to some good−looking young girl with short curly hair and shapely limbs whom she knew quite well; she was convinced that in another minute the errant name would return to her. While she hesitated he put out his hand and took the book from her and laid it, closed, on the bench. He took her hand and began to talk of something else and she lost the chance to pin the elusive likeness down.

Yet it still teased her, and this time, when she was leaving Brackenbine, she did not lose herself wholly in the delight of his arms and kisses. She pondered while he fondled her hair and stroked her ear where the little sign of his masterdom still remained. It was difficult to frame what she felt she must ask, and when she did find the words it seemed to her quite a different question from the one she had been trying to answer when she looked at the drawing under the lamp.

“Do you always make your puppets from a model?” she asked. “I mean, from drawings of an actual person— like drawing me this afternoon?”

“Why yes,” he said, as if not quite understanding why the question seemed important to her. “A living model's best, but not so easy to get. Sometimes I use photos instead.”

“Photos?” she exclaimed, grasping with relief at something she yet could not clearly define. “Photos in the papers?”

He gave a short laugh. “Yes. Photos in the papers if I find a suitable one. Why?”

“Oh,” she said, looking up, aware of a curious lightness, as if a burden were lifted from her mind. “Oh, I don't know why I wanted to know. Will my doll be like me when it's finished? A sort of portrait?”

“It could be, my beloved,” he said, kissing her. “It will be, in fact, because I shall have your image in my mind all the time I'm making it. It will be more than like you. It will be you. You are constantly in my mind and heart and you will enter into the wood through these hands of mine.”

She laid her head against his shoulder.

“You must make a puppet for yourself, too, then,” she said. “Perhaps then they would be lovers like you and me and they could go together into the enchanted country where we can't go in reality. Ah yes, you must do that, and then, through them, we can join the others in the Captain's park and go to the revels in the Castle.”

He pressed her eagerly to him, binding her with his arms and forcing back her head with an assured dominance.

“I will! I will!” he whispered. “I'll not fail with you!”