Collected Stories

by Willa Cather

  One morning when MacMaster was seated before the Marriage of Phædra, James entered on his usual round of dusting.

  “I’ve ’eard from Lydy Elling by the post, sir,” he remarked, “an’ she’s give h’orders to ’ave the ’ouse put in readiness. I doubt she’ll be ’ere by Thursday or Friday next.”

  “She spends most of her time abroad?” queried MacMaster; on the subject of Lady Treffinger James consistently maintained a very delicate reserve.

  “Well, you could ’ardly say she does that, sir. She finds the ’ouse a bit dull, I daresay, so durin’ the season she stops mostly with Lydy Mary Percy, at Grosvenor Square. Lydy Mary’s a h’only sister.” After a few moments he continued, speaking in jerks governed by the rigour of his dusting: “Honly this morning I come upon this scarf-pin,” exhibiting a very striking instance of that article, “an’ I recalled as ’ow Sir ’Ugh give it me when ’e was a-courting of Lydy Elling. Blowed if I ever see a man go in for a ’oman like ’im! ’e was that gone, sir. ’e never went in on anythink so ’ard before nor since, till ’e went in on the Marriage there—though ’e mostly went in on things pretty keen, ’ad the measles when ’e was thirty, strong as cholera, an’ come close to dyin’ of ’em. ’e wasn’t strong for Lydy Elling’s set; they was a bit too stiff for ’im. A free an’ easy gentleman, ’e was; ’e liked ’is dinner with a few friends an’ them jolly, but ’e wasn’t much on what you might call big affairs. But once ’e went in for Lydy Elling, ’e broke ’imself to new paces. He give away ’is rings an’ pins, an’ the tylor’s man an’ the ’abberdasher’s man was at ’is rooms continual. ’e got ’imself put up for a club in Piccadilly; ’e starved ’imself thin, an worrited ’imself white, an’ ironed ’imself out, an’ drawed ’imself tight as a bow string. It was a good job ’e come a winner, or I don’t know w’at’d ’a been to pay.”

  The next week, in consequence of an invitation from Lady Ellen Treffinger, MacMaster went one afternoon to take tea with her. He was shown into the garden that lay between the residence and the studio, where the tea-table was set under a gnarled pear tree. Lady Ellen rose as he approached—he was astonished to note how tall she was—and greeted him graciously, saying that she already knew him through her sister. MacMaster felt a certain satisfaction in her; in her reassuring poise and repose, in the charming modulations of her voice and the indolent reserve of her full, almond eyes. He was even delighted to find her face so inscrutable, though it chilled his own warmth and made the open frankness he had wished to permit himself impossible. It was a long face, narrow at the chin, very delicately featured, yet steeled by an impassive mask of self-control. It was behind just such finely cut, close-sealed faces, MacMaster reflected, that nature sometimes hid astonishing secrets. But in spite of this suggestion of hardness, he felt that the unerring taste that Treffinger had always shown in larger matters had not deserted him when he came to the choosing of a wife, and he admitted that he could not himself have selected a woman who looked more as Treffinger’s wife should look.

  While he was explaining the purpose of his frequent visits to the studio, she heard him with courteous interest. “I have read, I think, everything that has been published on Sir Hugh Treffinger’s work, and it seems to me that there is much left to be said,” he concluded.

  “I believe they are rather inadequate,” she remarked vaguely. She hesitated a moment, absently fingering the ribbons of her gown, then continued, without raising her eyes; “I hope you will not think me too exacting if I ask to see the proofs of such chapters of your work as have to do with Sir Hugh’s personal life. I have always asked that privilege.”

  MacMaster hastily assured her as to this, adding, “I mean to touch on only such facts in his personal life as have to do directly with his work—such as his monkish education under Ghillini.”

  “I see your meaning, I think,” said Lady Ellen, looking at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

  When MacMaster stopped at the studio on leaving the house, he stood for some time before Treffinger’s one portrait of himself; that brigand of a picture, with its full throat and square head; the short upper lip blackened by the close-clipped moustache, the wiry hair tossed down over the forehead, the strong white teeth set hard on a short pipe stem. He could well understand what manifold tortures the mere grain of the man’s strong red and brown flesh might have inflicted upon a woman like Lady Ellen. He could conjecture, too, Treffinger’s impotent revolt against that very repose which had so dazzled him when it first defied his daring; and how once possessed of it, his first instinct had been to crush it, since he could not melt it.

  Toward the close of the season, Lady Ellen Treffinger left town. MacMaster’s work was progressing rapidly, and he and James wore away the days in their peculiar relation, which by this time had much of friendliness. Excepting for the regular visits of a Jewish picture dealer, there were few intrusions upon their solitude. Occasionally, a party of Americans rang at the little door in the garden wall, but usually they departed speedily for the Moorish hall and tinkling fountain of the great show studio of London, not far away.

  This Jew, an Austrian by birth, who had a large business in Melbourne, Australia, was a man of considerable discrimination, and at once selected the Marriage of Phædra as the object of his especial interest. When, upon his first visit, Lichtenstein had declared the picture one of the things done for time, MacMaster had rather warmed toward him and had talked to him very freely. Later, however, the man’s repulsive personality and innate vulgarity so wore upon him that, the more genuine the Jew’s appreciation, the more he resented it and the more base he somehow felt it to be. It annoyed him to see Lichtenstein walking up and down before the picture, shaking his head and blinking his watery eyes over his nose-glasses, ejaculating: “Dot is a chem, a chem! It is wordt to gome den dousant miles for such a bainting, eh? To make Eurobe abbreciate such a work of ardt it is necessary to take it away while she is napping. She has never abbreciated until she has lost, but,” knowingly, “she will buy back.”

  James had, from the first, felt such a distrust of the man that he would never leave him alone in the studio for a moment. When Lichtenstein insisted upon having Lady Ellen Treffinger’s address, James rose to the point of insolence. “It ay’nt no use to give it, noway. Lydy Treffinger never had nothink to do with dealers.” MacMaster quietly repented his rash confidences, fearing that he might indirectly cause Lady Ellen annoyance from this merciless speculator, and he recalled with chagrin that Lichtenstein had extorted from him, little by little, pretty much the entire plan of his book, and especially the place in it which the Marriage of Phædra was to occupy.

  By this time the first chapters of MacMaster’s book were in the hands of his publisher, and his visits to the studio were necessarily less frequent. The greater part of his time was now employed with the engravers who were to reproduce such of Treffinger’s pictures as he intended to use as illustrations.

  He returned to his hotel late one evening after a long and vexing day at the engravers, to find James in his room, seated on his steamer trunk by the window, with the outline of a great square draped in sheets resting against his knee.

  “Why, James, what’s up?” he cried in astonishment, glancing enquiringly at the sheeted object.

  “Aynt you seen the pypers, sir?” jerked out the man.

  “No, now I think of it, I haven’t even looked at a paper. I’ve been at the engravers’ plant all day. I haven’t seen anything.”

  James drew a copy of the Times from his pocket and handed it to him, pointing with a tragic finger to a paragraph in the social column. It was merely the announcement of Lady Ellen Treffinger’s engagement to Captain Alexander Gresham.

  “Well, what of it, my man? That surely is her privilege.”

  James took the paper, turned to another page, and silently pointed to a paragraph in the art notes which stated that Lady Treffinger had presented to the X— gallery the entire collection of paintings and sketches now in her
late husband’s studio, with the exception of his unfinished picture, the Marriage of Phædra, which she had sold for a large sum to an Australian dealer who had come to London purposely to secure some of Treffinger’s paintings.

  MacMaster pursed up his lips and sat down, his overcoat still on. “Well, James, this is something of a—something of a jolt, eh? It never occurred to me she’d really do it.”

  “Lord, you don’t know ’er, sir,” said James bitterly, still staring at the floor in an attitude of abandoned dejection.

  MacMaster started up in a flash of enlightenment, “What on earth have you got there, James? It’s not—surely it’s not—”

  “Yes, it is, sir,” broke in the man excitedly. “It’s the Marriage itself. It aynt a-going to H’australia, no’ow!”

  “But man, what are you going to do with it? It’s Lichtenstein’s property now, as it seems.”

  “It aynt, sir, that it aynt. No, by Gawd it aynt!” shouted James, breaking into a choking fury. He controlled himself with an effort and added supplicatingly: “Oh, sir, you aynt a-going to see it go to H’australia, w’ere they send convic’s?” He unpinned and flung aside the sheets as though to let Phædra plead for herself.

  MacMaster sat down again and looked sadly at the doomed masterpiece. The notion of James having carried it across London that night rather appealed to his fancy. There was certainly a flavour about such a high-handed proceeding. “However did you get it here?’ he queried.

  “I got a four-wheeler and come over direct, sir. Good job I ’appened to ’ave the chaynge about me.”

  “You came up High Street, up Piccadilly, through the Haymarket and Trafalgar Square, and into the Strand?” queried MacMaster with a relish.

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir,” assented James with surprise.

  MacMaster laughed delightedly. “It was a beautiful idea, James, but I’m afraid we can’t carry it any further.”

  “I was thinkin’ as ’ow it would be a rare chance to get you to take the Marriage over to Paris for a year or two, sir, until the thing blows over?” suggested James blandly.

  “I’m afraid that’s out of the question, James. I haven’t the right stuff in me for a pirate, or even a vulgar smuggler, I’m afraid.” MacMaster found it surprisingly difficult to say this, and he busied himself with the lamp as he said it. He heard James’s hand fall heavily on the trunk top, and he discovered that he very much disliked sinking in the man’s estimation.

  “Well, sir,” remarked James in a more formal tone, after a protracted silence; “then there’s nothink for it but as ’ow I’ll ’ave to make way with it myself.”

  “And how about your character, James? The evidence would be heavy against you, and even if Lady Treffinger didn’t prosecute, you’d be done for.”

  “Blow my character!—your pardon, sir,” cried James, starting to his feet. “W’at do I want of a character? I’ll chuck the ’ole thing, and damned lively, too. The shop’s to be sold out, an’ my place is gone any’ow. I’m a-going to enlist, or try the gold-fields. I’ve lived too long with h’artists; I’d never give satisfaction in livery now. You know ’ow it is yourself, sir; there aynt no life like it, no’ow.”

  For a moment MacMaster was almost equal to abetting James in his theft. He reflected that pictures had been white-washed, or hidden in the crypts of churches, or under the floors of palaces from meaner motives, and to save them from a fate less ignominious. But presently, with a sigh, he shook his head.

  “No, James, it won’t do at all. It has been tried over and over again, ever since the world has been a-going and pictures a-making. It was tried in Florence and in Venice, but the pictures were always carried away in the end. You see the difficulty is that, although Treffinger told you what was not to be done with the picture, he did not say definitely what was to be done with it. Do you think Lady Treffinger really understands that he did not want it to be sold?”

  “Well, sir, it was like this, sir,” said James resuming his seat on the trunk and again resting the picture against his knee. “My memory is as clear as glass about it. After Sir ’Ugh got up from ’is first stroke, ’e took a fresh start at the Marriage. Before that ’e ’ad been working at it only at night for awhile back; the Legend was the big picture then, an’ was under the north light w’ere ’e worked of a morning. But one day ’e bid me take the Legend down an’ put the Marriage in its place, an’ ’e says, dashin’ on ’is jacket, ‘Jymes, this is a start for the finish, this time.’

  “From that on ’e worked at the night picture in the mornin’—a thing contrary to ’is custom. The Marriage went wrong, and wrong—an’ Sir ’Ugh a-gettin’ seedier an’ seedier every day. ’e tried models an’ models, an’ smudged an’ pynted out on account of ’er face goin’ wrong in the shadow. Sometimes ’e layed it on the colours, an’ swore at me an’ things general. He got that discouraged about ’imself that on ’is low days ’e used to say to me: ‘Jymes, remember one thing; if anythink ’appens to me, the Marriage is not to go out of ’ere unfinished. It’s worth the lot of ’em, my boy, an’ it’s not a-going to go shabby for lack of pains.’ ’e said things to that effect repeated.

  “He was workin’ at the picture the last day, before ’e went to ’is club. ’e kept the carriage waitin’ near an hour while ’e put on a stroke an’ then drawed back to look at it, an’ then put on another, careful like. After ’e ’ad ’is gloves on, ’e come back an’ took away the brushes I was startin’ to clean, an’ put in another touch or two. ‘It’s a-comin’ Jymes,’ ’e says, ‘by gad if it aynt.’ An’ with that ’e goes out. It was cruel sudden, w’at come after.

  “That night I was lookin’ to ’is clothes at the ’ouse when they brought ’im ’ome. He was conscious, but w’en I ran down-stairs for to ’elp lift ’im up, I knowed ’e was a finished man. After we got ’im into bed, ’e kept looking restless at me and then at Lydy Elling and a-jerkin’ of ’is ’and. Finally ’e quite raised it an’ shot ’is thumb out towards the wall. ‘He wants water; ring Jymes,’ says Lydy Elling, placid. But I knowed ’e was pointin’ to the shop.

  “ ‘Lydy Treffinger,’ says I, bold, ‘he’s pointin’ to the studio. He means about the Marriage; ’e told me to-day as ’ow ’e never wanted it sold unfinished. Is that it, Sir ’Ugh?’

  “He smiled an’ nodded slight an’ closed ’is eyes. ‘Thank you, Jymes,’ says Lydy Elling, placid. Then ’e opened ’is eyes an’ looked long and ’ard at Lydy Elling.

  “ ‘Of course I’ll try to do as you’d wish about the pictures, ’Ugh, if that’s w’at’s troublin’ you,’ she says quiet. With that ’e closed ’is eyes and ’e never opened ’em. He died unconscious at four that mornin’.

  “You see, sir, Lydy Elling was always cruel ’ard on the Marriage. From the first it went wrong, an’ Sir ’Ugh was out of temper pretty constant. She came into the studio one day and looked at the picture an’ asked ’im why ’e didn’t throw it up an’ quit a-worriting ’imself. He answered sharp, an’ with that she said as ’ow she didn’t see w’at there was to make such a row about, no’ow. She spoke ’er mind about that picture, free; an’ Sir ’Ugh swore ’ot an’ let a ’andful of brushes fly at ’is study, an’ Lydy Elling picked up ’er skirts careful an’ chill, an’ drifted out of the studio with ’er eyes calm and ’er chin ’igh. If there was one thing Lydy Elling ’ad no comprehension of, it was the usefulness of swearin’. So the Marriage was a sore thing between ’em. She is uncommon calm, but uncommon bitter, is Lydy Elling. She’s never come a-near the studio since that day she went out ’oldin’ up of ’er skirts. W’en ’er friends goes over she excuses ’erself along o’ the strain. Strain—Gawd!” James ground his wrath short in his teeth.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, James, and it’s our only hope. I’ll see Lady Ellen to-morrow. The Times says she returned today. You take the picture back to its place, and I’ll do what I can for it. If anything is done to save it, it must be done through Lady Ellen Treffinger herself; that mu
ch is clear. I can’t think that she fully understands the situation. If she did, you know, she really couldn’t have any motive—” He stopped suddenly. Somehow, in the dusky lamplight her small, close-sealed face came ominously back to him. He rubbed his forehead and knitted his brows thoughtfully. After a moment he shook his head and went on: “I am positive that nothing can be gained by high-handed methods, James. Captain Gresham is one of the most popular men in London, and his friends would tear up Treffinger’s bones if he were annoyed by any scandal of our making—and this scheme you propose would inevitably result in scandal. Lady Ellen has, of course, every legal right to sell the picture. Treffinger made considerable inroads upon her estate, and, as she is about to marry a man without income, she doubtless feels that she has a right to replenish her patrimony.”

  He found James amenable, though doggedly sceptical. He went down into the street, called a carriage, and saw James and his burden into it. Standing in the doorway, he watched the carriage roll away through the drizzling mist, weave in and out among the wet, black vehicles and darting cab lights, until it was swallowed up in the glare and confusion of the Strand. “It is rather a fine touch of irony,” he reflected, “that he, who is so out of it, should be the one to really care. Poor Treffinger,” he murmured as, with a rather spiritless smile, he turned back into his hotel. “Poor Treffinger; sic transit gloria.”

  The next afternoon MacMaster kept his promise. When he arrived at Lady Mary Percy’s house he saw preparations for a function of some sort, but he went resolutely up the steps, telling the footman that his business was urgent. Lady Ellen came down alone, excusing her sister. She was dressed for receiving, and MacMaster had never seen her so beautiful. The colour in her cheeks sent a softening glow over her small delicately cut features.

  MacMaster apologized for his intrusion and came unflinchingly to the object of his call. He had come, he said, not only to offer her his warmest congratulations, but to express his regret that a great work of art was to leave England.