The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

by Edith Wharton

  Part of his success was due to the fact that he could not easily think himself the object of a rebuff. If it seemed to hit him he regarded it as deflected from its aim, and brushed it aside with a discreet gesture. A touch of comedy was lent to the situation by the fact that, till Kate Arran’s coming, Mungold had always served as her brother’s Awful Example. It was a mark of Arran’s lack of humor that he persisted in regarding the little man as a conscious apostate, instead of perceiving that he painted as he could, in a world which really looked to him like a vast confectioner’s window. Stanwell had never quite divined how Mungold had won over the sister, to whom her brother’s prejudices were a religion; but he suspected the painter of having united a deep belief in Caspar’s genius with the occasional offer of opportune delicacies—the port-wine or game which Kate had no other means of procuring for the patient.

  Stanwell, persuaded that Mungold would stick to his post till Miss Arran’s return, felt himself freed from his promise to the latter and left the incongruous pair to themselves. There had been a time when it amused him to see Caspar submerge the painter in a torrent of denunciatory eloquence, and to watch poor Mungold sputtering under its rush, yet emitting little bland phrases of assent, like a gentleman drowning correctly, in gloves and eye-glasses. But Stanwell was beginning to find less food for gaiety than for envy in the contemplation of his colleague. After all, Mungold held his ground, he did not go under. Spite of his manifest absurdity he had succeeded in propitiating the sister, in making himself tolerated by the brother; and the fact that his success was due to the ability to purchase port-wine and game was not in this case a mitigating circumstance. Stanwell knew that the Arrans really preferred him to Mungold, but the knowledge only sharpened his envy of the latter, whose friendship could command visible tokens of expression, while poor Stanwell’s remained gloomily inarticulate. As he returned to his overpopulated studio and surveyed anew the pictures of which Shepson had not offered to relieve him, he found himself wishing, not for Mungold’s lack of scruples, for he believed him to be the most scrupulous of men, but for that happy mean of talent which so completely satisfied the artistic requirements of the inartistic. Mungold was not to be despised as an apostate—he was to be congratulated as a man whose aptitudes were exactly in line with the taste of the persons he liked to dine with.

  At this point in his meditations, Stanwell’s eye fell on the portrait of Miss Gladys Glyde. It was really, as Shepson said, as good as a Mungold; yet it could never be made to serve the same purpose, because it was the work of a man who knew it was bad art. That at least would have been Caspar Arran’s contention—poor Caspar, who produced as bad art in the service of the loftiest convictions! The distinction began to look like mere casuistry to Stanwell. He had never been very proud of his own adaptability. It had seemed to him to indicate the lack of an individual standpoint, and he had tried to counteract it by the cultivation of an aggressively personal style. But the cursed knack was in his fingers—he was always at the mercy of some other man’s sensations, and there were moments when he blushed to remember that his grandfather had spent a laborious life-time in Rome, copying the Old Masters for a generation which lacked the resource of the camera. Now, however, it struck him that the ancestral versatility might be a useful inheritance. In art, after all, the greatest of them did what they could; and if a man could do several things instead of one, why should he not profit by his multiplicity of gifts? If one had two talents why not serve two masters?

  III

  Stanwell, while seeing Caspar through the attack which had been the cause of his sister’s arrival, had struck up a friendship with the young doctor who climbed the patient’s six flights with unremitting fidelity. The two, since then, had continued to exchange confidences regarding the sculptor’s health, and Stanwell, anxious to waylay the doctor after his visit, left the studio door ajar, and went out when he heard a sound of leave-taking across the landing. But it appeared that the doctor had just come, and that it was Mungold who was making his adieux.

  The latter at once assumed that Stanwell had been on the alert for him, and met the supposed advance by inviting himself into the studio.

  “May I come and take a look around, my dear fellow? I’ve been meaning to drop in for an age—” Mungold always spoke with a girlish emphasis and effusiveness— “but I have been so busy getting up Mrs. Van Orley’s tableaux—English eighteenth century portraits, you know—that really, what with that and my sittings, I’ve hardly had time to think. And then you know you owe me about a dozen visits! But you’re a savage—you don’t pay visits. You stay here and piocher—which is wiser, as the results prove. Ah, you’re strong—immensely strong!” He paused in the middle of the studio, glancing about a little apprehensively, as though he thought the stored energy of the pictures might result in an explosion. “Very original—very striking—ah, Miss Arran! A powerful head; but—excuse the suggestion—isn’t there just the least little lack of sweetness? You don’t think she has the sweet type? Perhaps not—but could she be so lovely if she were not intensely feminine? Just at present, though, she’s not looking her best—she is horribly tired. I’m afraid there is very little money left—and poor dear Caspar is so impossible: he won’t hear of a loan. Otherwise I should be most happy—. But I came just now to propose a piece of work—in fact to give an order. Mrs. Archer Millington has built a new ball-room, as I daresay you may have seen in the papers, and she’s been kind enough to ask me for some hints—oh, merely as a friend: I don’t presume to do more than advise. But her decorator wants to do something with Cupids—something light and playful. And so I ventured to say that I knew a very clever sculptor—well, I do believe Caspar has talent—latent talent, you know—and at any rate a job of that sort would be a big lift for him. At least I thought he would regard it so; but you should have heard him when I showed him the decorator’s sketch. He asked me what the Cupids were to be done in—lard? And if I thought he had had his training at a confectioner’s? And I don’t know what more besides—but he worked himself up to such a degree that he brought on a frightful fit of coughing, and Miss Arran, I’m afraid, was rather annoyed with me when she came in, though I’m sure an order from Mrs. Archer Millington is not a thing that would annoy most people!”

  Mr. Mungold paused, breathless with the rehearsal of his wrongs, and Stanwell said with a smile: “You know poor Caspar’s terribly stiff on the purity of the artist’s aim.”

  “The artist’s aim?” Mr. Mungold stared. “What is the artist’s aim but to please—isn’t that the purpose of all true art? But his theories are so extravagant. I really don’t know what I shall say to Mrs. Millington—she’s not used to being refused. I suppose I’d better put it on the ground of ill-health.” The artist glanced at his handsome repeater. “Dear me, I promised to be at Mrs. Van Orley’s before twelve. We’re to settle about the curtain before luncheon. My dear fellow, it’s been a privilege to see your work. By the way, you have never done any modeling, I suppose? You’re so extraordinarily versatile—I didn’t know whether you might care to undertake the Cupids yourself.”

  Stanwell had to wait a long time for the doctor; and when the latter came out he looked grave. Worse? No, he couldn’t say that Caspar was worse—but then he wasn’t better. There was nothing mortal the matter, but the question was how long he could hold out. It was the kind of case where there is no use in drugs—he had merely scribbled a prescription to quiet Miss Arran.

  “It’s the cold, I suppose,” Stanwell groaned. “He ought to be shipped off to Florida.”

  The doctor made a negative gesture. “Florida be hanged! What he wants is to sell his group. That would set him up quicker than sitting on the equator.”

  “Sell his group?” Stanwell echoed. “But he’s so indifferent to recognition—he believes in himself so thoroughly. I thought at first he would be hard hit when the Exhibition Committee refused it, but he seems to regard that as another proof of its superiority.”

  His visit
or turned on him the keen eye of the confessor. “Indifferent to recognition? He’s eating his heart out for it. Can’t you see that all that talk is just so much whistling to keep his courage up? The name of his disease is failure—and I can’t write the prescription that will cure that. But if somebody would come along and take a fancy to those two naked parties who are breaking each other’s heads we’d have Mr. Caspar putting on a pound a day.”

  The truth of this diagnosis became suddenly vivid to Stanwell. How dull of him not to have seen before that it was not cold or privation which was killing Caspar—not anxiety for his sister’s future, nor the ache of watching her daily struggle—but simply the cankering thought that he might die before he had made himself known! It was his vanity that was starving to death, and all Mungold’s hampers could not appease that hunger. Stanwell was not shocked by the discovery—he was only the more sorry for the little man, who was, after all, denied that solace of self-sufficiency which his talk so noisily proclaimed. His lot seemed hard enough when Stanwell had pictured him as buoyed up by the scorn of public opinion—it became tragic if he was denied that support. The artist wondered if Kate had guessed her brother’s secret, or if she were still the dupe of his stoicism. Stanwell was sure that the sculptor would take no one into his confidence, and least of all his sister, whose faith in his artistic independence was the chief prop of that tottering pose. Kate’s penetration was not great, and Stanwell recalled the incredulous smile with which she had heard him defend poor Mungold’s “sincerity” against Caspar’s assaults; but she had the insight of the heart, and where her brother’s happiness was concerned she might have seen deeper than any of them. It was this last consideration which took the strongest hold on Stanwell—he felt Caspar’s sufferings chiefly through the thought of his sister’s possible disillusionment.

  IV

  Within three months two events had set the studio building talking. Stanwell had painted a full-length portrait of Mrs. Archer Millington, and Caspar Arran had received an order to execute his group in marble.

  The name of the sculptor’s patron had not been divulged. The order came through Shepson, who explained that an American customer living abroad, having seen a photograph of the group in one of the papers, had at once cabled home to secure it. He intended to bestow it on a public building in America, and not wishing to advertise his munificence, had preferred that even the sculptor should remain ignorant of his name. The group bought by an enlightened compatriot for the adornment of a civic building in his native land! There could hardly be a more complete vindication of unappreciated genius, and Caspar made the most of the argument. He was not exultant, he was sublimely magnanimous. He had always said that he could afford to await the Verdict of Posterity, and his unknown patron’s act clearly shadowed forth that impressive decision. Happily it also found expression in a check which it would have taken more philosophy to await. The group was paid for in advance, and Kate’s joy in her brother’s recognition was deliciously mingled with the thrill of ordering him some new clothes, and coaxing him out to dine succulently at a neighboring restaurant. Caspar flourished insufferably on this régime: he began to strike the attitude of the Great Master, who gives advice and encouragement to the struggling neophyte. He held himself up as an example of the reward of disinterestedness, of the triumph of the artist who clings doggedly to his ideals.

  “A man must believe in his star—look at Napoleon! It’s the trust in one’s convictions that tells—it always ends by forcing the public into line. Only be sure you make no concessions—don’t give in to any of their humbug! An artist who listens to the critics is ruined—they never have any use for the poor devils who do what they’re told. Run after fame and she’ll keep you running, but stay in your own corner and do your own work, and by George sir, she’ll come crawling up on her hands and knees and ask to have her likeness done!”

  These exhortations were chiefly directed to Stanwell, partly because the inmates of the other studios were apt to elude them, partly also because the rumors concerning Stanwell’s portrait of Mrs. Millington had begun to disquiet the sculptor. At first he had taken a condescending interest in the fact of his friend’s receiving an order, and had admonished him not to lose the chance of “showing up” his sitter and her environment. It was a splendid opportunity for a fellow with a “message” to be introduced into the tents of the Philistine, and Stanwell was charged to drive a long sharp nail into the enemy’s skull. But presently Arran began to suspect that the portrait was not as comminatory as he could have wished. Mungold, the most kindly of rivals, let drop a word of injudicious praise: the picture, he said, promised to be delightfully “in keeping” with the decorations of the ball-room, and the lady’s gown harmonized exquisitely with the window-curtains. Stanwell, called to account by his monitor, reminded the latter that he himself had been selected by Mungold to do the Cupids for Mrs. Millington’s ball-room, and that the friendly artist’s praise could, therefore, not be taken as positive evidence of incapacity.

  “Ah, but I didn’t do them—I kicked him out!” Caspar rejoined; and Stanwell could only plead that, even in the cause of art, one could hardly kick a lady.

  “Ah, that’s the worst of it. If the women get at you you’re lost. You’re young, you’re impressionable, you won’t mind my saying that you’re not built for a Stoic, and hang it, they’ll coddle you, they’ll enervate you, they’ll sentimentalize you, they’ll make a Mungold of you!”

  “Poor Mungold,” Stanwell laughed. “If he lived the life of an anchorite he couldn’t help painting pictures that would please Mrs. Millington.”

  “Whereas you could,” Kate interjected, raising her head from the ironing-board where, Sphinx-like, magnificent, she swung a splendid arm above her brother’s shirts.

  “Oh, well, perhaps I shan’t please her; perhaps I shall elevate her taste.”

  Caspar directed a groan to his sister. “That’s what they all think at first—Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. But inside the Dark Tower there’s the Venusberg. Oh, I don’t mean that you’ll be taken with truffles and plush footmen, like Mungold. But praise, my poor Ned—praise is a deadly drug! It’s the absinthe of the artist—and they’ll stupefy you with it. You’ll wallow in the mire of success.”

  Stanwell raised a protesting hand. “Really, for one order you’re a little lurid!”

  “One? Haven’t you already had a dozen others?”

  “Only one other, so far—and I’m not sure I shall do that.”

  “Not sure—wavering already! That’s the way the mischief begins. If the women get a fad for you they’ll work you like a galley-slave. You’ll have to do your round of ‘copy’ every morning. What becomes of inspiration then? How are you going to loaf and invite the soul? Don’t barter your birthright for a mess of pottage! Oh, I understand the temptation—I know the taste of money and success. But look at me, Stanwell. You know how long I had to wait for recognition. Well, now it’s come to me I don’t mean to let it knock me off my feet. I don’t mean to let myself be overworked; I’ve already made it known that I will not be bullied into taking more orders than I can do full justice to. And my sister is with me, God bless her; Kate would rather go on ironing my shirts in a garret than see me prostitute my art!”

  Kate’s radiant glance confirmed this declaration of independence, and Stanwell, with his evasive laugh, asked her if, meanwhile, she should object to his investing a part of his ill-gotten gains in theater tickets for the party that evening.

  It appeared that Stanwell had also been paid in advance, and well paid; for he began to permit himself various mild distractions, in which he generally contrived to have the Arrans share. It seemed perfectly natural to Kate that Caspar’s friends should spend their money for his recreation, and by one of the most touching sophistries of her sex she thus reconciled herself to taking a little pleasure on her own account. Mungold was less often in the way, for she had never been able to forgive him for proposing that Caspar should do Mrs. Mill
ington’s Cupids; and for a few happy weeks Stanwell had the undisputed enjoyment of her pride in her brother’s achievement.

  Stanwell had “rushed” through Mrs. Millington’s portrait in time for the opening of her new ball-room; and it was perhaps in return for this favor that she consented to let the picture be exhibited at a big Portrait Show which was held in April for the benefit of a fashionable charity.

  In Mrs. Millington’s ball-room the picture had been seen and approved only by the distinguished few who had access to that social sanctuary; but on the walls of the exhibition it became a center of comment and discussion. One of the immediate results of this publicity was a visit from Shepson, with two or three orders in his pocket, as he put it. He surveyed the studio with fresh disgust, asked Stanwell why he did not move, and was impressed rather than downcast on learning that the painter had not decided whether he would take any more orders that spring.