Money Magic: A Novel

by Hamlin Garland

  CHAPTER XVIII

  BERTHA'S PORTRAIT IS DISCUSSED

  Joe Moss was delighted with the Haneys, for they talked of their nativeWest as people should talk. They were as absolute in their convictionsas a Kentuckian. For them there was no other "God's country," and as itwas his latest dream to go West and "do a big thing on a cliff orsomething" he put off every other engagement to enjoy their racy speech.He said at the first sitting: "I've had an idea of working theThorwaldsen trick: find some fine site out there, some wall of rockclose to the railway, and hew out a monster grizzly or mountain lion.The railway could then advertise it, you see; trains could stop there'five minutes to permit a view of Moss's Lion'; they could use a cut ofit on all their folders. If there was a spring near by they couldadvertise the water and bottle it, a picture of my lion on the label.Ah, it is a fine scheme!"

  "'Tis so," said Haney. "I wonder nobody thought of it before."

  "It takes a Yankee, after all, to plan new suspender buttons," thesculptor replied. And all the time he talked his hands were dabbling,his thumbs gouging, his dibble cutting and smoothing.

  Haney watched him with amused glance. "Sure, I didn't know ye went at itso. I thought ye chipped each picture out o' stone." And when theprocess of molding in plaster was explained to him, he said: "'Tis likeMcArdle's trade entirely. He takes a rise in the world since I know he'san artist like yourself."

  "What is his 'line'?"

  "Pattern-maker for a stove foundry."

  Moss beamed. "Just what I'd like to be if they'd only pay a little morewages and furnish a better place to work."

  Bertha never knew when he was in earnest, so habitually mocking was histone. But she grew towards a perception of his ideal, and dimlyapprehended in him a mind far beyond any she had ever known. Mrs. Moss,almost as reticent as Mrs. Haney herself, came and went about the studiobrightly, briskly, keeping vigilant eye on her husband's mail,moistening his "mud ladies," and defending him from inopportune callers,insistent beggars, and wandering models. Bertha, though sitting with thestolid patience of a Mississippi clam-fisher, was thinking at expressspeed. Her mind was of that highly developed type where a hint sets inmotion a score of related cognitions, and a word here and there inMoss's rambling remarks instructed her like a flash of light. She was atschool, in a high sense, and improving her time. The sketch wasexpanding into a carefully studied portrait bust and Moss was happy.

  One day a fellow-artist came in casually, and they both squinted,measured, and compared the portrait and herself with the calm absorptionof a couple of prize-pig committeemen at a cattle-show. "You see, thisline is shorter," the stranger said, almost laying his finger onBertha's neck. "Not so straight, as you've got it. That's a fine line--"

  "I know it is!"

  "And you don't want to spoil it. I don't like your fad for cutting downthe bust. The neck is nothing but a connecting link between the head andthe bust. Now here you have a charming and youthful head and face--letthe neck at least suggest the woman below."

  "Oh yes, that's good logic, provided you're after that. But what I wanthere is spring-time--just a fresh, alert, lovely fragment. This pureline must be kept free from any earthiness."

  "I suppose you know what you want; I won't say you don't. But if I werepainting her, I'd get that sweeping line there that ends by suggestingthe summer."

  They talked disjointedly, elliptically, and of course mainly of theclay; and yet Bertha grew each moment more clearly aware that theyconsidered her not merely interesting but beautiful, and this was a mostmomentous and developing assurance. She had hoped to be called"good-looking," but no one thus far (excepting Ben Fordyce) had evercalled her beautiful; and these judgments on the part of Joe Moss andhis brother artist were made the more moving by reason of theirprecision of knowledge and their professional candor. They spoke asfreely in discussion of her charm as if she were deaf and dumb.

  The painter, who had been introduced in a careless way as "Mr. Humiston,of New York," turned to Bertha at last, and, assuming the ordinarypoliteness of a human being, said: "I'd like to make a study of you,too, Mrs. Haney, if you'll permit. I can bring my canvas in here andwork with Joe, so that it needn't be any trouble to you."

  Bertha, her wealth still new upon her, had no suspicion of the motivesof those who addressed her, was deeply flattered by this request, and asMoss made no objection, she consented.

  The only thing that troubled Moss was her growing tendency to lapse intotroubled thought. "Remember, now, you're the crocus, the first violet,or something like that--not the last rose of summer. Don't think, don'tdroop! There, that's right! What have you to think or droop about? Whenyou're as old and blase as Humiston there, you'll have a right to ponderthe mysteries, but not now. You and I are young, thank God!"

  Humiston was dabbling at his small canvas swiftly, lightly, as unmovedby his fellow-artist as if his voice were the wind in the casement. Hewas a tall, sickly looking man with grizzled hair, and pale, deeplylined face. He was fresh from Paris with a small exhibition of hispictures, which were very advanced, as Mrs. Moss privately explained toBertha. "And he's rather bitter against Americans because they don'tappreciate his work. But Joe asks: 'Why should they?' They'reundemocratic--little high-keyed 'precious' bits; pictures for otherartists, not real paintings, or they are unacceptable otherwise. He's awonderful technician, though, and he'll make an exquisite sketch ofyou."

  The Western girl-wife was completely fascinated by this small, dusky,dim, and richly colored heart of the fierce and terrible city whosematerial bulk alone is known to the world. To go from the crash and roarof the savage streets into this studio was like climbing from the levelof the water in the Black Canon to the sunlit, grassy peaks where theIndian pink blossoms in silence. She was of the aspiring nature. She hadcommonly played with children older than herself. She had read books shecould not understand. She had always reached upward, and here she foundherself surrounded by men and women who excited her imagination asCongdon had done. They helped her forget the doubt of herself and herfuture, which was gnawing almost ceaselessly in her brain, and she wassorry when Moss said to her: "Come in once more, to-morrow, and see medo the real sculptor's act. No, don't look at it" (he flung a cloth overhis work); "you may look at it to-morrow."

  "May I see my picture?" she asked of Humiston.

  He turned the easel towards her without a word.

  "Good work!" cried Moss.

  Mrs. Moss came from her dark corner. "I knew you'd do somethingexquisite."

  Bertha looked at it in silence. It was as lovely in color as a flower, adream-girl, not Bertha Haney. And at last she said: "It's fine, but itisn't me."

  Humiston broke forth almost violently. "Of course it isn't you; it's theway you look to me. I never paint people as they look to themselves norto their friends. I am painting my impression of you."

  "Do you really see me like that?" she both asked and exclaimed. And atthe moment she was more moving than she had ever been before, andHumiston, in a voice of anguish, cried:

  "My God, why didn't I do her like that?" And he fell to coughing soviolently that Bertha shuddered.

  Moss defended himself. "I couldn't do her in _all_ her fine poses," hecomplained. "I had to select. Why didn't you do her that way yourself?"

  The painter put his short-hand sketch away with a sigh. "If you ventureas far as New York, I hope you and the Captain will visit my studio," hesaid.

  With no suspicion of being passed from hand to hand, she promised tosend him her address, and said: "I'd like to see the pictures you havehere."

  Moss became abusive. "Now see here, Jerry, I can't let you take Mrs.Haney to that show of yours. I'll go myself to point out their weakpoints."

  "I know their weak points a bloody sight better than you do," answeredHumiston, readily.

  "If you do you don't speak of 'em."

  "Why should I? You don't call out the defects of your 'hardware,' doyou?"

  Mrs. Moss interposed. "That's just what he does do, and it hu
rts trade.I think I'll take Mrs. Haney over to see the pictures myself."

  Humiston brightened. "Very well; but you must all lunch with me. You'reabout the only civilized people I know in this crazy town, and I needyou."

  "No," said Bertha. "It's our treat. You all come over and eat with us."

  Haney, who had been keeping in the background, now came forward. "Isecond that motion," he heartily said. "We don't get a chance every dayto feed a bunch of artists."

  "You can have that pleasure any day here," said Moss. "Our noses arealways over the bars, waiting."

  When she emerged from the gallery an hour later Bertha enjoyed anexalted sense of having been carried through some upper, serener world,where business, politics, and fashion had little place. It was "only adip," as Mrs. Moss said--just to show the way; but it set the girl'sbrain astir with half-formed, disconnected aspirations. Only as shere-entered the hotel (the centre of obsequious servants) did she becomeagain the wife of Marshall Haney, and Mrs. Moss, noting the eagerattention of the waiters, was amazed and delighted at the look of calmcommand which came over the girl's face.

  "Art is fine and sweet as a side issue," said Julia to her husband, asthey were going in, "but money makes the porters jump."

  Bertha, composed and serious, seated her guests at a table which hadbeen reserved for her near a window and charmingly decorated withflowers. She put Moss at her left hand and Humiston at her right, and asthe Eastern man settled into place, he said: "Really, now, this isn't sobad." His experienced eye had noted the swift flocking of the waiters,and with cynical amusement he commented upon it. "These people must_smell_ of money!" and in his heart acknowledged that he and Moss werenot so very different from the servitors, after all. "They're out fortens, we're after thousands; that's the main point of difference."

  Bertha, once the cutlets were served, was able to give attention to thetalk--Humiston's talk (he was celebrated as a monologist), for he hadresumed the discussion into which he and Moss had fallen. "I don'tbelieve in helping people to study art. I don't believe in charity. Thisinterfering with the laws of the universe that kill off the crippled andthe weakly is pure sentimentalism that will fill the world withdeformed, diseased, and incapable persons."

  "You're a vile reactionary!" cried Moss.

  "I am not--I'm for the future. I want to see the world full of beauty."

  "Physical beauty?"

  "Yes, physical beauty. I want to see vice and crime and crooked limbsand low brows die out--not perpetuated. I believe in educating thepeople to the lovely in line and color."

  As he pursued this line of inexorable argument Bertha looked at him inwonder. Did he mean what he said? His burning eyes seemed sincere--andyet he did not fail to accept a second helping of the mushrooms. Therewas power in the man. He pushed the walls of her intellectual world verywide apart. He came from a strange, chaotic region--from a land whereordinary modes and motives seemed lost or perverted. He took a delightin shocking them all. Morality was a convention--a hypocritic agreementon the part of the few to reserve freedom to themselves at the expenseof the many. "Art is impossible to little people, to those who starvethe big side of their nature, for fear of Mrs. Grundy. Look at the realpeople--Rachel, Wagner, Turner, Bernhardt, and a thousand others. Werethey bound by the marriage laws? What will these crowds of tiny men andpetty women do who come from the country parlors and corn-shocks of theWest? They will puddle around a little while, paint and muddle a fewpetty things, then marry and go back to the ironing-board and the furrowwhere they belong. What's the matter with American art? It's too cursednormal, that's what. It's too neat and sweet and restrained--no license,no "go" to it. What's the matter with you, to be personal?"

  "Too well balanced."

  "Precisely. You _talk_ like a man of power, but model like a cursedniggling prude. You're bitten with the new madness. You're the Bryan ofart. 'The dear people' is your cry. Damn the people! They don't know agood thing when they see it. Why consider the millions? Consider thefew, those who have the taste and the dollars. That's the way all thebig men of the past had to do. Look at Rubens and Michael Angelo andTitian--all the big bunch; they were all frank, gross feeders, lovers ofbeauty, defiant of conventions."

  He had forgotten where he sat, but he was not neglecting his hostess. Hetook a satanic satisfaction in seeing her lovely eyes widen and glow ashe went on. Subtly flattering her by including her among the very fewwho could understand his ideals, he seemed to draw her apart to hisside--appealing to her for support against the coarse and foolish hostsrepresented by the Mosses, while Marshall Haney sat in a kind of stupor,his eyes alone speaking, as if to ask: "What the divil is the little manwith the cough so hot about?"

  Moss, accustomed to Humiston's savage diatribes, roared out objectionsor laughed him to scorn, while Mrs. Moss tried her best to turn the madartist's mind upon more suitable subjects. He had been deeply hurt andfinancially distressed by the failure of his exhibits in Pittsburg andChicago, and was now taking it out on his friends. His passion, hisbitter, vengeful cry against the ignorant masses of the world wassomething Bertha had read about, but never felt; but she quivered nowwith the half-disclosed fury of the disappointed austere soul.

  Could it be possible that this savage man, so worn and ill, had paintedthose dim, vague pictures of flower-like girls whose limbs were involvedin blossoming vines?

  He concluded at last: "The only place in the world to-day for an artistis Paris. In no other city can he live his own life in frank fulness,and find patrons who see the subtlest meaning of a line."

  Bertha was tired of all this--mentally weary and confused; and she feltvery grateful to Mrs. Moss, who came to the rescue the moment Humistonpaused.

  "There, Mrs. Haney, that is the end of Professor Jerry Spoopendyke'slecture on the undesirability of America as a place of residence--_forhim_. Of course, he don't mind selling his pictures just to enlightenour night of ignorance, but as for going to Sunday-school or keeping thedecalogue, that's our job."

  Humiston had the grace to smile. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Haney, I havebeen a fool. But that monkey over there--Joe Moss--provoked me with hisaccursed heresies about the democracy of art. Art has no democracy, anddemocracy will never have an art--"

  "There, there!" warned Moss, "you said all that before."

  The painter wrenched himself away and turned to Bertha. "You _are_coming to New York, Mrs. Haney?"

  "I don't know," she said. "We may."

  "If you do, don't fail to let me know. I would like to see you."

  "All right," said Bertha, "I'll send you a line." And her frank smilemade him sorry to say good-bye even for the day.

  As Mart was going up the elevator he sighed and said: "It takes allkinds of people to make up a world--Mr. Hummockstone is wan of thet'others. He has a grouch agin the universe. Sure but he's been housin'a gnawin' serpent. How 'twill all end I dunno."

  When alone in her room, Bertha's mind again reverted to Ben Fordyce. Asshe compared him with Humiston, he seemed handsomer and more boyishlyfrank than ever. What did Joe Moss mean by calling Mr. Humiston "blase."She had seen that word in novels and it always meant something wicked.How could this weary, sick man be wicked? She pitied him and wished tohelp him. "Why should he take so much interest in me? He don't have to.Of course the Mosses are nice to me on Congdon's account, but why doesthis great artist want me to come to his studio in New York? He talkspoor, so maybe he wants me to buy some of his pictures." That her moneywas a lure for wasps she did not yet realize. That the waiters andclerks buzzed round her because she was rich, she knew; but that thesemen, who talked of beauty and the higher life, could flatter her withattentions with a base motive was incredible.

  She was shrewd as her Yankee forbears, but she was also an idealist, andthese artist folk now seemed to her the highest types she had ever knownor was likely to know. She felt the mystery and the power in Humiston'spersonality, and his bitter and rebellious, almost blasphemous, wordswere counterpoised by his paintings, which she
acknowledged to bebeautiful--too beautiful for her to comprehend. He looked like a man ofsorrow and weary of battle, and she longed to know more about him. Whenhe was not fierce he was melancholy; evidently his life had been afailure. "Why shouldn't I buy some of his pictures?" she asked herself.

  Hitherto the answer to any such question had been, "Can we afford it?"but now another and deeper query came in answer, like an echo: "Is itright to spend Mart Haney's money? I am only his trained nurse, not hiswife," and she now knew that she could not be his wife. She shrank fromthe weight of his hand, and each day made clearer the wide spaces ofyears, of family, of ideals, which lay between them. The kiss BenFordyce had pressed upon her lips had brought this revelation. But ofthis she was not yet aware; she was only conscious of a growing dread ofthe future. Her duties as his nurse were lightening. Lucius, indeed, nowtook many of her tasks upon himself, and she no longer helped him withhis shoes or coat, and, what was still more significant, she could notcalmly think of going back to these wifely services.

  She dwelt treacherously on Haney's own admission: that she had been in asense entrapped. He had believed himself a dying man at the time, andshe had been too excited, too exalted by the lurid romance of the sceneto be clear about anything save the wish and the will to save him; andnow she knew that at bottom of all her willingness to serve him lay theconsciousness that he was on his death-bed. Afterwards he had been toher only a big-hearted, generous friend, in need of love andcompanionship. This understanding had made it easy for her to preparehis meals, to help him, as a nurse would help him, to dress and undress.She had lost all of the fear and much of the admiration in which sheused to greet him as he swung into the office of her little hotel. Hehad become to her an invalid, a child to be jollied and humored, and yetrespected; for no one could have been kinder or more scrupulously justthan he. And it was the recollection of all his acts of self-sacrificeand loving patience which gave her assurance that he would never requireobedience, though he might sue for it.

  Her danger lay in herself. "If he _does_ ask me to be his realwife--then I must either agree or leave. It won't be right for me totake all these benefits unless--"

  And with this thought, the big house in the Springs, the sleek horses,their shining carriages, the auto-car, her dresses, the service of thebig hotel, and the consideration her husband's money gave to her, allassumed a new and corrupting lustre. She was growing accustomed toluxury and the thought of giving it up made her shiver like one whofaces a plunge into a dark night and an icy river. Besides, hersacrifice would involve others. Her mother, her brother, were alreadyroundly ensnared in Mart's bounty.

  Her head was aching with it all, when a comforting thought came to her.It was not necessary to decide it at that moment, and with a sigh ofrelief she threw it aside and sat down to write a letter to her mother.

  "I ought to have written before, but I've been jumped right into themiddle of things here. The letters Frank Congdon gave me took me into anartistic bunch about as gay and queer as Frank is, but they've beenmighty nice to me. I've been setting for my bust to Mr. Moss, who is asculptor. He has a big studio clear on the top of one of the tallestblocks here and has some dandy lamps and things. I've bought some tobring back. I met a Mr. Humiston there from New York, and he made asketch of me--wants me to see his studio in New York. I don't knowwhether I'll go on or let Mart go with Lucius. Lucius is all right--Idon't see how I got on without him. He knows everything. I wish I hadhalf the education he's got. He's up on all the society ways and puts meon. For instance, he told me the nice thing would be to give a dinner tothis artist push and to the people that Dorothy give me a letter to, andI'm going to do it. Lucius will look out for the whole thing. You shouldsee the way the waiters tend. I reckon Lucius has told 'em we're made ofmoney. I'm afraid we're getting spoilt, Muzz. It would be pretty toughto go back to the hotel now, wouldn't it?

  "We went to see Mart's sister, Fanny. Her house was a sight. It wasclean enough, but littered--well, litter is no name for it--but she's agood old thing and so is McArdle. He sat and looked at us the whole timelike a turkey blind in one eye--never said a word the whole time but'pass the p-taties.' I liked him though. He's a kind of sculptor,too--makes patterns for all these little acorns and leaves anddo-funnies on stoves. They've got forty-'leven children and need helpand I'm perfectly willing Mart should help 'em. We're looking up housesnow. He's going to buy a place for 'em on the west side. Wednesday nightI went to see the Doctor Brents, Dorothy's friends. They had adinner--very nice, but they all kind o' sat 'round and waited for us toperform. I guess they thought we were mountain lions. But they didn'tmake much out o' me. They was one chap there with goggles who looked atMart like an undertaker. He's a scientific doctor--one of these fellersthat invent new ways of doing things. His name is Halliday. I liked Dr.Brent pretty well--but Mrs. Brent only so-so. The doctor wants to'dagnose' Mart's case--says it won't cost a cent. We all went to a showat night and the Captain was just about petered to a point. He's betterthough. The lower altitude helps his circulation. I guess his heart _is_affected. He's afraid now he won't ever be able to go back to the mines.He wants to slide on to New York and see his father and wants me togo--but I'd rather come home--I'm homesick for the hills. They're niceto me here--but I want to see the old Peak once more. Tell" (here shewrote "Ben" and blotted it) "tell Mr. Fordyce that we're all right andto keep us posted every day. We see by the papers that the mine-ownersare going to throw the unions out of business. If they try that they'llbe war again. We'll be home soon--or at least I will. I'm gettinghome-sicker every minute as I write."

  She added a postscript. "Don't show my letters to _any one_. I wish I'd'a' had a little more schooling."