The Collected Stories of William Humphrey

by William Humphrey

  There came to his mind the image of himself in the rags in which he stood. James had suffered at being Bohemian when everyone in Redmond was. Now that he was the only one he suffered intensely.

  Douglas Fraleigh gave a twitch, a cough. James recovered himself to see one of Fraleigh’s knees twitching with impatience inside his trousers. There was a tolerant, bemused smile on Fraleigh’s lips.

  James drew himself up, proud of his rags. He had known the best. He would rather know the worst than this tawdry in-between. Thank God he didn’t look like Fraleigh and the rest of these parvenus! He promised himself to dress even more outrageously from now on. He was the only one in the room you would have known for an artist. And what suits he would have someday! So tasteful, of such elegant simplicity.

  “Nice,” he said with a gesture at Fraleigh’s suit. “Just be careful not to let it get wet.”

  James drifted about. Time was running out and here he had alienated somebody, when he had meant to do just the opposite. He could not settle on the one person most worth his efforts.

  It was growing hot in the room and the restraint wearing off. The little groups were dissolving, melting together, and the conversation becoming general. It took a while for these people to warm up to each other. No doubt they had all known each other too well in their days of communal poverty and Bohemianism. More than one was resentful that to those close to him he was not as legendary as he had become to the world at large.

  They had had too many things in common ever to trust one another. Too many women, for example, such as Bertha Wallace. Bertha had posed for them all, and been the mistress of many of them. She was still far from unattractive. But Bertha was resentful of the men who had painted all those famous pictures of her, and who wanted to paint her no longer. Now that the Redmond Inn was being torn down she needed a place to live. She felt it was up to the painters she had helped make famous to find one for her. She must have been drinking heavily all morning and now as she circulated among them she had worked herself up into the conviction, never far from her at any time, that they owed her not only a roof but a living as well. “Where would you be,” she demanded of Carl Robbins, hanging on to his lapel and thrusting her face up into his, “I’d just like to know where you’d be if it wasn’t for Portrait of Bertha, Bertha in a Yellow Gown, Bertha Reclining”?

  “You’re right, Bertha, you’re right,” Carl Robbins tried to quiet her. He looked about him for help, and all the men who owed Bertha just as much, or as little, as he did, turned away and became suddenly absorbed in their conversations.

  James found himself being vigorously shaken by the hand of Sam Morris.

  Morris was the town doctor. But he refused to let anyone call him Doctor. “The name is plain Sam,” he insisted. When Morris came to Redmond a few years back he painted only on Sundays. Now, the joke went, he was a Sunday doctor. At first a timid man, impressed into silence by his slavish respect for the artists, he had grown more and more talkative until now he started babbling the minute he stepped up and never let the other person say a word. He had been brought to this by one of the great disillusionments of his life. He had read all the great critics, subscribed to all the art magazines and read each from cover to cover, knew more about the history of Impressionism than any man alive—only to find that the artists never mentioned these things, but insisted on telling him of their migraines, the traces of albumen in their urine, their varicose veins. Now he had come to be suspicious that when they praised his painting they were only working their way around to wheedling some medical advice.

  No one praised his art more extravagantly than James Ruggles, nor did Ruggles ever seem to have an ache or a pain. His other reason for liking Ruggles was that he looked like an artist.

  “You’re busy I know,” he said, “but you must take just an hour someday to let me show you what I’ve been doing lately. I flatter myself that my late work is not without some sign of your influence. It’s in the way you handle three-dimensionality.”

  As he talked he kept admiring James’s clothes with one eye. One could tell he was thinking that but for his wife he, too, would let himself go like that, be really unconventional, really look like an artist. James could not help feeling somewhat flattered, but not enough to overcome his annoyance. James hated anyone who painted, but he hated more someone who spent only part-time at it. Moreover, he considered it a pitiful spectacle, a man who was a member of a solid respectable profession taking up painting.

  When Morris finally left him the first person James saw was Max Aronson. Aronson stood to one side, neglected, a sad-faced, nervous little man with his hands to his mouth, gnawing a fingernail. He beamed when he saw James approaching.

  “That was quite a spread you got in Life, Max,” said James.

  “Did you like it? The color reproductions were good, didn’t you think?”

  James said he thought they were.

  “You really liked it, then?”

  This little man, one of the most famous painters in the country, did not distinguish among the people who praised him. He lived on praise. Now, praise was the thing that came easiest to James Ruggles’s lips. He liked to be amiable that way. But he thought everybody understood that it was to be taken for amiability and nothing more. To find somebody taking his flattery seriously shocked him. He was not giving out art criticism when he praised you. He was being a likable fellow.

  “You really liked it, huh, James?” Max implored. “Tell me the truth now. I’d like to know what you really think.”

  James could not bear the sight of such naked hunger for praise. “I liked it,” he said, tugging at his mustache. “You understand, of course, that I’d say so whether I thought it or not.”

  Max laughed, trying to make a joke of it.

  The doors of the meeting hall were thrown open.

  Scanning the room, James found the seat next to David Peterson empty. He grabbed Rachel’s arm, and apologizing in advance as he pushed people aside, elbowed his way down the aisle. A man was just stepping into the row where Peterson sat. James got behind Rachel and shoved her into the man. Rachel blushed and began stammering apologies. The man glared, then gave a strained smile and stepped aside to let her enter. She started to, but James laid a hand on her arm. With a smile at the gentleman and a nod of thanks, he went in first and walked serenely down to the seat beside Peterson. Rachel followed, upsetting the hats of the ladies in the next row down as she smiled apologies back to the gentleman on the aisle.

  “Dave!” cried James. “I thought it was you. Well, this is luck. Hello! Haven’t seen you since the big news. Congratulations.” He nudged Rachel.

  “Yes! Congratulations!” she said.

  “Yes, indeed,” said James. “The Carnegie International! How does it feel to be world-famous?”

  Peterson wound his watch, smiled uncomfortably and crossed and recrossed his legs, trying, as James knew, to keep his eyes off James for fear of bringing attention to his clothes.

  “It must have come like a bolt from the blue,” James went on, growing louder.

  Peterson smiled agreeably. But he did not think it had come quite that unexpectedly, to him or to the world.

  “Well, well, well,” said James. “Old David Peterson! And I knew him when. Who would ever have thought it?”

  People were beginning to turn to look. Peterson grew still more uncomfortable.

  “I suppose the money’s spent by now,” said James. He gave a hearty laugh that made Peterson squirm. “That’s not a question,” he added hurriedly. “I’m not prying.” He slapped Peterson’s knee. “But you understand that, of course, Dave.” He was sickening himself with his loud, back-slapping familiarity. “Well, all things come to him who waits.”

  Peterson obviously felt that he had hardly waited all that long. He was not so old. “How has your work been coming, James?” he asked.

  “Oh! Don’t ask after my work!”

  “Don’t be modest,” said Peterson. “I’m sure you’
ve been doing fine work, as always.”

  This was sincere. David Peterson had always admired James Ruggles’ painting, and had put in a good word for it in places where he knew it could never be popular, even in places where he was not likely to make himself more popular by praising it. But James would never know that. James did not mind giving praise, but he hated to receive it. It never occurred to him that praise could be sincere.

  He smiled, but such a savage smile that Peterson drew back, wounded. He felt he deserved some credit for being one of the very few men in Redmond who appreciated James’s work.

  “It must be hard now,” said James, “for you to remember the days when we …”

  David Peterson remembered all too well the days when he resembled James Ruggles. He did not like to be reminded and he curled his lips to say something cutting. Then he felt ashamed. He had risen and he had a lot to be thankful for. His face relaxed. James followed all these feelings of Peterson’s and he foresaw his next. The man was about to take pity on him, to offer to pull strings. James began to twitch. He stuttered, trying to find something to say quickly. “Well, how’s—ah!—hmm—well, where are you—Oh! there’s the chairman!” he almost shouted, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  The chairman pounded the table with his gavel and when the crowd became quiet he announced that a letter had been received from the trustees of the Walter Fielding estate offering to the Redmond Gallery a fund of three thousand dollars annually to be awarded to the winners of the Redmond Exhibition.

  There had never been any selection of winners in the annual exhibition. It had been simply a time to show one’s work, with no jury, no prizes, no awards. The rule of the Gallery from the day of its founding had been to show everything. Anyone who lived in Redmond and who had ever painted a picture could hang it in the annual exhibition.

  Now, if the Redmond Gallery wanted to accept the fund from the Fielding estate a jury would have to be chosen. It should have been done long ago, said the chairman. For, said he, the Redmond Gallery had come to have a responsibility to the country, indeed, to the world, and could not afford to hang pictures that brought laughter and ridicule to it. He threw the matter open to the floor. Two or three men got up to voice their approval. Someone put it in the form of a motion. It was quickly seconded.

  “Further discussion?” asked the chairman.

  “Mr. Chairman.” This voice was deeper, more authoritative than the others. Everyone turned. James was on his feet, his arms folded across his chest. The chairman’s eyes grew wide with apprehension. An embarrassed silence fell on the audience and people looked avertedly at one another.

  “Mr. Chairman,” said James, then turned his gaze upon the crowd. “Friends and fellow artists. At the risk of repeating what many of you have heard me say too often already—” He paused to allow them to chuckle. The silence was intense. “Well, anyway, let me say that it is indeed time that the Redmond Gallery came of age.”

  A man from the audience tiptoed up to the chairman and drew him close, and as he whispered in his ear they both watched James from the corners of their eyes.

  “The walls of this gallery are sacred space,” James said. “I have observed with alarm the increasing amount of that space given over in past exhibitions to the work of—well, let us speak frankly—to the ‘work’ of amateurs and dabblers.”

  While catching his breath James observed Sam Morris nodding in agreement.

  “It begins to seem,” said James, “that everyone thinks he is a painter.”

  The silence was broken by a snigger unmistakably ironical.

  “The walls of the Redmond Gallery,” James was becoming passionate now, “are being taken over by retired schoolteachers, superannuated bank clerks and unemployed schizophrenics.”

  He gave a laugh, which fell upon the silence with a dying ring, like a coin dropped on a counter.

  “Now I have nothing against these classes of people,” he said. “Some of my best friends, you know. But I hardly think their daubs deserve to hang alongside the work of serious painters, men who have given their lives to painting. There must always be room in the Redmond Gallery for painters of different persuasions, but the painters of Redmond have suffered enough laughter and ridicule and indignity by hanging alongside the dabblings of amateurs and neurotics! And so, ladies and gentlemen, I wholeheartedly endorse the recommendation to elect a jury, and I am sure you will all follow me in supporting this much-needed reform.”

  Conscious of the silence, which he took for a hushed admiration, he closed on a rising note, then lowered his gaze to the audience to receive their smiles of approval. Instead, he saw upon their faces looks of uneasiness, and embarrassment, blank stares. His smile began to give way to confusion. The silence deepened. He brought his eyes to focus upon the faces nearer him. As he stared at them and one by one they turned their eyes from him, his confusion changed to dismay. An impatient coughing, a nervous shuffling of feet, a general stir broke in upon him. His own voice hung in the room, mocking him. “The painters of Redmond have suffered enough laughter and ridicule and indignity.” Each word stung him like a lash. He was the one they wanted out! What a fool he had made of himself. He forced himself to face the audience once more. All at once there passed from face to face a frown of indignation. It had come over them that he was to blame for not having sensed their feelings without exposing them to this embarrassment.

  Then he suffered the most crushing realization of all. He was not special, a solitary martyr, but only one of many they wanted out. They lumped him with all the undesirables. He raised his elbows and let them fall against his sides. He lowered himself into his chair.

  “You were wonderful, James!” Rachel whispered.

  When the meeting was over they left quietly and unobserved. A little way outside the Gallery James stopped and turned. “Give me those packages!” he said. “Are you trying to make me look like a fool?” Rachel handed them over and again fell two steps behind. In this way they trudged up Main Street, around the curve and down through town. When they passed the last house Rachel came up and took the packages, fell back two steps, and they walked on home.

  The Ruggles had lived in each of the six shanties one passed in going to the one they lived in now. They were built for chicken houses. When the artists began coming to Redmond in the 1920s an enterprising native turned them into homes. Twenty-odd more were scattered in the woods behind the road but only three were inhabited now with any regularity, one by a trapper, one by a hermit and one by the Ruggles. When one house began decaying faster than Rachel could repair it the Ruggles moved to another. They had been living in number seven for about a year.

  Whenever they moved Rachel got a bucket of paint and spent weeks prettying the place. To James it seemed she could take pride in anything. She transplanted the rose bush and lined the path to the door with colored stones. She straightened the palings of the fence and gave it a coat of whitewash, while James groaned and begged her to let him enjoy his poverty, his discomfort, instead of trying so vainly to hide it.

  On opening the door one was not in the hall or the living room or the kitchen—he was in the house. The bedroom and the studio were meagerly set off with screens; the kitchen and the living room and the dining room flowed into each other. Yet nothing seemed cramped or incongruous or makeshift. One was struck by the repose of the room, the balance of light and dark, the pleasing arrangement of rich colors. Light from the windows was directed to fall upon old-looking, rare-looking things. Softly glowing, suggestive objects rested in the shadow of the corners. It was like stepping inside a Vermeer.

  But the Hepplewhite chair was a fake. One had been disturbed by it on first coming in. It was handsome, though, genuine or not, so handsome that one stole further glances at it—whereupon he realized that it was never meant to pass for a Hepplewhite. It was the Ruggles improvement on the Hepplewhite design. Then there was that small hanging glowing on one wall—it turned out to be a scrap of cloth. Still, what beautiful clot
h, and who else would have dared hang it there?

  When one had decided that nothing was what it seemed he found that the Persian prayer rug hanging on another wall was thick, rich, old but unfaded—genuine. The plates hanging over the mantel, then—were they genuine Spode? And the Steuben glass? But by this time one no longer cared whether the things were authentic. They were real. And the realest thing was the care and taste with which they had been assembled.

  Sooner or later, if one strolled about the room, he saw through a back window the outhouse, painted Chinese red, set at the edge of the woods.

  It was in that bright red outhouse, ten days after the gallery meeting, that James sat thinking, “What if I were to send a picture of mine—say, Still Life with Plaster Bust—to Matisse? One look, and he’d see to it that I didn’t stay in Redmond any longer. Or, send one to him and one to Picasso at the same time, and let them fight over the credit for discovering me.”

  Rachel called him in to lunch.

  While he sat at the table waiting to be served he talked half to himself, half aloud. “Of course the man who would really appreciate my work is Matisse. Hmmm. What is there to lose? A package comes from America. He opens it. He is annoyed at my presumption. But he takes one look at the picture. Suppose he didn’t like it?” This James asked himself, though he did not believe for a moment that it was possible. “Well, he would send it back.” He thought about that for a moment, then decided that he could trust Matisse; he would send it back. “So what is there to lose?”

  “Yes, what is there to lose?” asked Rachel. She was beside him, setting a plate of stew before him. “I heard you, James, and I think it’s a perfectly wonderful idea. Why didn’t you think of it before?”

  The light died out of James’s eyes. The hand with which he had been reflectively stroking his chin fell and he said, “For Christ’s sake, Rachel! How can you be so childish!”