The Collected Stories of William Humphrey

by William Humphrey

  For years Rachel had wished for a supermarket in Redmond. When the baker first quit giving baker’s dozens, when the butcher began charging for marrow bones, she sighed, “If only there were a supermarket in town.” Finally a Universal Union was built. Rachel had been astonished to find that the prices there were still more than she could afford.

  But hope was always strong in Rachel. Before each shopping trip she convinced herself that this time she would find prices within her budget. Then she would come upon soup which had been nine cents a can last week and now was eleven. Other women begged her pardon, reached around her and took two, three, four cans of soup while she hesitated. Sometimes she felt she was the only woman in the world who had to watch her pennies.

  Today, however, at the Universal Union Rachel found day-old bread at half-price, a one-cent sale on soap, and a special on sugar—so many bargains that she decided to buy some little treat for James. He loved artichokes. She picked out two. As the clerk was putting them into a bag she said:

  “Oh, wait. That one is bruised.”

  The clerk said, “I’ll get you another instead.”

  “I suppose part of it is all right,” she hinted. “If I just took off the top leaves.”

  The clerk said nothing. He stood waiting. She was about to suggest he let her have it for half-price. Suddenly she imagined James watching her. She said hurriedly, “Never mind. Just give me the good one.”

  The clerk shrugged his shoulders. Rachel took the bag, wondering what she was going to do with one artichoke. The clerk picked up the bad one, looked at it, then, as Rachel was turning away, tossed it into the wastebasket.

  Rachel almost gasped. A perfectly good artichoke! Her next thought was of James. What if he knew she had haggled over something for him which a clerk considered fit for the trash!

  Standing there, Rachel could not help thinking that if she asked him, the clerk would probably give her that artichoke. James need never know. It was selfish of her to rob him of such pleasure merely to spare herself a little embarrassment.

  Rachel shook her head to get such thoughts out of her mind, and wheeled away her carriage to put herself out of range of temptation. She shuddered to think of serving James that artichoke, and him finding out. And she was convinced that with his fine taste he would know. She was even afraid he would be able to tell that she had had these thoughts.

  But Rachel could not worry or remain unhappy for long. She walked down the street enjoying the air and the early sunlight, and even seeing onions cheaper than she had just paid could not put her out of humor.

  Many of the shops were just opening. The blinds went up in the bakery and the door was opened to let the smell of fresh bread settle heavily on the street. Mrs. Burton, her hair in curlers, leaned out of the window of her apartment over the variety store and shook the breakfast crumbs out of a red-checked tablecloth. On the sidewalk in front of the hardware store the clerk was setting out spades and turning forks and flats of pale tomato plants. The sun moved from behind the spire of the church and lighted the new glass onyx front of the drugstore, and the china, the milk glass, and the brassware in the window of the antique shop.

  Suddenly from around a corner rolled a truck loaded with men in overalls. It pulled up in front of the old Redmond Inn. The men piled out and began unloading tool kits, while a fat man from the cab of the truck stood surveying the building with his hands on his hips. The men rummaged in their kits and came up with hammers, chisels and wrecking bars.

  A young man shinnied up a porch pole to the weather-beaten sign of the Inn, and motioning those below aside, raised his hammer. But the sound of a blow was heard while his hammer was still poised. The men turned to look up the street. The crew hired to demolish the old Putnam Tavern had beaten them to the job this morning.

  Soon, thought Rachel, all the old landmarks would be known only in pictures. In the early days there had been so many things in Redmond to paint. That was why it had been chosen as a colony. One of the most popular subjects was the Inn. James was perhaps the only painter in town who had never done a picture of it. Among the artists the saying was, you can alway sell a picture of the Inn. Rachel herself had painted it many times. It was ironical that all those pictures of the Inn and the Tavern and the old mill had brought so much money to Redmond that now it had no room for old unprofitable buildings and was tearing them down two or three at a time to make way for movie houses and tea rooms and ski-supply stores. It was becoming hard for Rachel to remember Redmond as it looked when she first came. And according to James a great deal of the charm was gone already when she got there.

  “Good morning, Rachel.”

  “Oh, good morning, John.”

  “Fine morning.”

  “It certainly is. How are Mary and the children?”

  “Fine, thanks. Just fine.”

  Rachel had not gone five steps when she recalled that she was not supposed to be friendly with John Daniels. What a nerve he had, saying Mary was fine! What could one trust? Rachel asked herself. John Daniels was known as a great family man—and all those years he had been beating his wife every Saturday night! Oh, it seemed that every day one discovered fresh wickedness in the world. And what she knew was only a fraction, even, of what went on in Redmond, for James protected her from the knowledge of so much more. It was for her peace of mind that he never told her about John Daniels until last week, though he had known it for years. James was so considerate. I, too, Rachel told herself, might have got a man who beat me. The more she lived and the more she saw of the world, the more sure she was that hers was the best man alive.

  “Rachel, you’re looking mighty cheerful this morning.” It was Martha Phillips.

  “Martha!” cried Rachel. “Just the person I was hoping to see. I’ve been dying to tell you what happened with James and me the other day.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve left him,” said Martha.

  “Martha!” said Rachel. “Now what I wanted to tell you was about a little misunderstanding we had the day before yesterday. It was in the morning. Then …”

  “You’re welcome to come to my place, Rachel. I’ve got an extra …”

  “Wait, let me finish. It was nothing important, you understand.”

  “Well,” said Martha, “just remember, if he ever …”

  “Let me finish, Martha. Listen. I don’t even remember what we disagreed over. The important thing is what happened in the afternoon. James said he knew he had been short-tempered with me lately, and asked me to forgive him. ‘Don’t say I haven’t,’ he said, ‘because I know I have.’ And he said that now at last he could tell me the reason.”

  Rachel paused to get her breath, then emphasizing each word, “He said that for the last six months he had been tormented with the fear that he loved another woman!”

  “What!” cried Martha. “Who?”

  “Wait, wait. Then he said, ‘Well, I know better now. I thought I was in love with Jane Borden,’ he said, ‘but now I realize it was only her money I was in love with.’”

  “Ah-hah,” said Martha. “And now that all of a sudden she hasn’t got any any more he knows it wasn’t love.”

  “Oh, Martha, imagine him living in that torment all that time! Not knowing how he felt, doubting himself at every turn, not wanting to hurt me.” Rachel’s eyes moistened, she was silent for a moment, then she sighed, “And when I think how it is with some couples.”

  “You have,” asked Martha, “some particular couple in mind?”

  “Martha, would you ever think to look at him that every Saturday night for the last ten years John Daniels has beaten Mary!”

  “What! John Daniels! Oh, Lord! Who ever told you that one?” cried Martha. “Why, if anything, Mary beats him!”

  Rachel was confused. She changed the subject. She said, “Martha, I’ve got a little laugh on James. I didn’t tell him, you understand, but I hadn’t noticed he was being short-tempered with me lately. Had you, Martha?”

  “Oh, Rachel,
Rachel,” Martha laughed, and went off down the street shaking her head.

  Rachel liked to spread her shopping over all the stores in town. It made her feel she was buying more. She spent ten cents here, twenty-five there, and thought that in so doing she kept a good name with each merchant. It was eleven o’clock by the time she finished. She started home.

  Rounding the curve in Main Street she was delighted to see James strolling into town. His migraine must have passed. She set down her packages and waved to him. He came on at the same pace. He sparkled in the sunshine, with his pink cheeks and his orange curls. “James Finley Ruggles,” said Rachel to herself.

  He was a big man with a slow stride. He wore red mustaches trained into a cheerful twirl. His tweed jacket was ancient; fuzzy and gray, it seemed to have sprouted a mold. The sleeves came down no further because they had grown frayed and been turned back more than once. His trousers had once been some other color, now they were more pale pink than anything else. Too short, they revealed Argyle socks of red and yellow.

  Gathering up her packages, Rachel hastened to meet him.

  “James,” she called, “I got an artichoke,” and fumbling in the bag as she walked, she found it and brought it out and bore it before her. “See?”

  “I never knew you liked them,” said James.

  She came to a stop. “It’s for you.”

  “All of it?”

  Rachel looked at it. It seemed to shrink.

  “With lung stew?” said James, clearing his throat.

  She had not thought of that. She looked again at the artichoke. Then she found James smiling tolerantly at her, as though having asked himself how she could be expected to know any better.

  She did not say how glad she was to see him up. James never liked to have it observed that he had got over an illness. Rachel was pleased with herself for having discovered this little quirk of his. She had a little hoard of such insights. She admired him for being complicated.

  James said there was a meeting of the Artists’ Association, and set off. Rachel hitched up her packages and followed, taking two steps to his one.

  Rachel thought that when they walked together they made quite a handsome pair. She thought she set James off well. She was dark as he was fair. Her eyes, set in slanted lids, were as intensely black as his were blue. Her hair, glossy black and straight, parted in the middle and gathered into a heavy bun, was the perfect complement to his mass of orange ringlets. It was with an eye to James’s clothes that she had made her low-cut flowing peasant blouse with its rich embroidery, and her long skirt of thick blue flannel.

  As she walked Rachel was trying to think of someone to talk to James about. He had standards so high that few people could come up to them. Rachel was aware that she had no standards at all; but for James she would have let herself like just anybody. So she mentioned names to him, hoping always to have luckily hit upon a person really worthy. She said cheerfully, “I saw Martha Phillips this morning, James.”

  He sighed. “Drunk as usual, I suppose.”

  “Drunk?” cried Rachel. “Why, I never knew Martha drank. Martha Phillips, James?”

  “Phillips, yes. That’s what she calls herself now.”

  “Now? What do you mean ‘now’? Why, I’ve known Martha Phillips for …”

  “Yes—many people have known Martha. Many people—and many places.”

  “Martha Phillips, James? Why …”

  “Well,” he said, “you’ve got to give the old girl credit. She’s managed to keep her many lives pretty well apart all these years. Not many people know about that old Mexico City business.”

  “Many lives?” gasped Rachel. “Old Mexico City business? Why, James, you simply take my breath away.”

  “So what did she have to say?” asked James. “If it’s fit to repeat.”

  “You’ve got me so confused I can’t remember. But she laughed when I told her about John Daniels.”

  “One is bound to laugh, Rachel, at anything about John Daniels. Exactly what do you mean?”

  “Why, Martha said if anything Mary beats him.”

  “You didn’t know that?” asked James.

  “But, James,” she cried. Her head was reeling. “You told me …”

  “Why, on Saturday nights you can hear them all over town. She ties him to a bedpost and beats him with a coathanger and shouts filthy names at him while he cries, ‘Harder! Harder!’”

  Rachel stood shaking her head and gasping.

  “If she didn’t satisfy him that way,” said James, “God knows what he’d be out doing.”

  “Really, James?” said Rachel. “Really?”

  James sighed. “Rachel,” he said, “do you have to believe every word I say?”

  “You mean it isn’t true?”

  “Of course it’s true,” he said.

  They walked on, Rachel still trying to think of someone worth mentioning to him, but afraid to mention anyone now.

  James was thinking about himself. He pictured himself walking into the Artists’ Association meeting. During the three months between these meetings he saw little of the other artists in town. Since the last one many things had happened. David Peterson had won five thousand dollars at the Carnegie International. The Cleveland Museum had paid two thousand dollars for one of Carl Robbins’s watercolors. Most everyone had had exhibitions.

  The faces of the people he was about to see came into his mind, and as they did he seated them one by one around a banquet table. It was a surprise party. On the walls of the room his pictures were hung in thick gold frames. A toast was proposed. To James Finley Ruggles! Everyone drank. Then the table fell quiet. A page boy entered and approached James, bearing a tray on which lay a book. The title was James Finley Ruggles: A Tribute. He looked around the table, remembering the struggle he had had, the years of working and waiting. Yet he felt no rancor toward these men, each of whom had been so slow in recognizing his superiority. A lump came into his throat. “Open it!” a shout went up. He read the table of contents: “My friend Jim Ruggles” by Pablo Picasso; “To JFR from H. Matisse: Greetings”; “James Finley Ruggles, the First Thirty Years” by the Staff of the Museum of Modern Art; “Ruggles and Cézanne” by Sheldon Cheney.…

  In the book was a biographical sketch.

  James Finley Ruggles, the fourth to bear that name, was born in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on the night of September 22, 1904. The doctor gave no hope for him. The nurse, not so easily discouraged, blew into the infant’s lungs time after time. That nurse blew the breath of life into American painting.

  The Finleys were descended from a charter member of the Harvard Corporation. They were a family of doctors and brokers, shippers and tea importers. General Isaiah Ruggles was with Washington at Valley Forge.

  To the public school teachers of Wellfleet the future artist seemed backward. He drew pictures on the pages of his arithmetic text. Plate 10 is a copy of a Raphael drawing that Ruggles made at the age of eight.

  His was the classic story of the misunderstood artist. His father insisted that he enter the family insurance firm, badly in need of new blood. James was sent to Bowdoin, where all the Ruggles had been educated.

  His legacy upon the death of his father in 1925, though not as large as he had expected, was enough to take him to Paris, where he studied for two years.

  Upon returning to this country he lived for a while in New York, then went to join the artists’ colony at Redmond. There he entered upon his Modified Fauve period, producing his first major works.

  In Redmond, fame and money came to the third-rate all about him while Ruggles struggled against poverty and neglect. The epoch-making Still Life with Pineapple was rejected by every major exhibition jury in the country. But though accustomed to ceremony and tradition, to ease and gracious living, Ruggles bore his poverty lightly. A gay and colorful figure, he brought to Redmond the charm and gallantry and the cultivation of his aristocratic background. His wit was legendary and—

  “James,”
said Rachel, “where are you going? Here we are.”

  His wife Rachel, née Ravich, was the eighth child of Solomon and Sarah Ravich, of Delancey Street and Brownsville, Brooklyn.

  The doors of the meeting hall were not yet open, so everyone was gathered in the gallery lounge to chat. A heavy layer of smoke hanging just above their heads rocked lazily each time the door was opened. People drifted from one group to another as though they, too, were stirred by the wind from the door. The talk rose and fell.

  How fat they were all becoming, thought James, how bourgeois. The men in double-breasted suits and suede shoes, the women with Florida suntans gave it the look of a convention of fashion buyers.

  The Ruggles stood while James singled out someone to approach. An aisle fell open revealing David Peterson at the end of the room. But before they could reach him they were stopped by Mary McCoy.

  “Mary, you’ve done something to your hair,” said James. She certainly had, and Rachel was alarmed at his drawing attention to it. “You always did have the prettiest head of hair in town, and now it’s even nicer.”

  The truth was, her hair was probably the least attractive of poor Mary’s features. It was James’s way with women always to flatter them where they most needed it. No harm was done if, on the side, it amused him to do it.

  “It’s a regular rat’s nest,” said Mary.

  “Well, of course,” said James, “you may be right. I’m no expert,” and having spied an opening to Douglas Fraleigh he left her to regret not leaving well enough alone. When he offered to flatter someone he did not like her to try to draw more out of him. Besides, he really enjoyed flattering only people who did not need it, who were indifferent to flattery.

  Douglas Fraleigh finished the story he was telling and left his listeners to laugh while he turned. “Oh, hello, Ruggles,” he said.

  “That’s a nice suit,” said James.

  Fraleigh thanked him, making little effort to suppress a smile over James’s garb. But it was lost on James. He was fascinated by Fraleigh’s suit. He reached out his hand and Fraleigh suffered him to finger the cloth of the lapel. It was soft, dark flannel, glowing brown with a tasteful light stripe. The sight and feel of fine cloth brought to James’s eyes a glossy, vacant look. As he fingered it he could feel the cloth upon his own skin. He was born for soft, luxurious fabrics.