The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and Other Stories

by Edith Wharton

  Stanwell laughed. “Oh, he looked at them—but only to confirm his reasons for rejecting them.”

  “Ha! ha! That’s right—he wanted to refresh his memory with their badness. But how on earth did he happen to have any doubts on the subject? I should as soon have thought of his coming in here!”

  Stanwell winced at the analogy, but replied in Caspar’s key: “Oh, he’s not as sure of any of us as he is of you!”

  The sculptor received this tribute with a joyous expletive. “By God, no, he’s sure of me, as you say! He and his tribe know that I’ll starve in my tracks sooner than make a concession—a single concession. A fellow came after me once to do an angel on a tombstone—an angel leaning against a broken column, and looking as if it was waiting for the elevator and wondering why in hell it didn’t come. He said he wanted me to show that the deceased was pining to get to heaven. As she was his wife I didn’t dispute the proposition, but when I asked him what he understood by heaven he grabbed his hat and walked out of the studio. He didn’t wait for the elevator.”

  Stanwell listened with a practised smile. The story of the man who had come to order the angel was so familiar to Arran’s friends that its only interest consisted in waiting to see what variation he would give to the retort which had put the mourner to flight. It was generally supposed that this visit represented the sculptor’s nearest approach to an order, and one of his fellow-craftsmen had been heard to remark that if Caspar had made the tombstone, the lady under it would have tried harder than ever to get to heaven. To Stanwell’s present mood, however, there was something more than usually irritating in the gratuitous assumption that Arran had only to derogate from his altitude to have a press of purchasers at his door.

  “Well—what did you gain by kicking your widower out?” he objected. “Why can’t a man do two kinds of work—one to please himself and the other to boil the pot?”

  Caspar stopped in his jerky walk—the stride of a tall man attempted with short legs (it sometimes appeared to Stanwell to symbolize his artistic endeavour).

  “Why can’t a man—why can’t he? You ask me that, Stanwell?” he blazed out.

  “Yes; and what’s more, I’ll answer you: it isn’t everybody who can adapt his art as he wants to!”

  Caspar stood before him, gasping with incredulous scorn. “Adapt his art? As he wants to? Unhappy wretch, what lingo are you talking? If you mean that it isn’t every honest man who can be a renegade—”

  “That’s just what I do mean: he can’t unless he’s clever enough to see the other side.”

  The deep groan with which Caspar met this casuistry was cut short by a knock at the studio door, which thereupon opened to admit a small dapperly-dressed man with a silky moustache and mildly-bulging eyes.

  “Ah, Mungold,” exclaimed Stanwell, to cover the gloomy silence with which Arran received the new-comer; whereat the latter, with the air of a man who does not easily believe himself unwelcome, bestowed a sympathetic pressure on the sculptor’s hand.

  “My dear chap, I’ve just met Miss Arran, and she told me you were laid up with a bad cold, so I thought I’d pop in and cheer you up a little.”

  He looked about him with a smile evidently intended as the first act in his beneficent programme.

  Mr. Mungold, freshly soaped and scented, with a neat glaze of gentility extending from his varnished boot-tips to his glossy hat, looked like the “flattered” portrait of a common man—just such an idealized presentment as his own brush might have produced. As a rule, however, he devoted himself to the portrayal of the other sex, painting ladies in syrup, as Arran said, with marsh-mallow children leaning against their knees. He was as quick as a dressmaker at catching new ideas, and the style of his pictures changed as rapidly as that of the fashion-plates. One year all his sitters were done on oval canvases, with gauzy draperies and a background of clouds; the next they were seated under an immemorial elm, caressing enormous dogs obviously constructed out of door-mats. Whatever their occupation they always looked straight out of the canvas, giving the impression that their eyes were fixed on an invisible camera. This gave rise to the rumour that Mungold “did” his portraits from photographs; it was even said that he had invented a way of transferring an enlarged photograph to the canvas, so that all that remained was to fill in the colours. If he heard of this charge he took it calmly, but probably it had not reached the high spheres in which he moved, and in which he was esteemed for painting pearls better, and making unsuggestive children look lovelier, than any of his fellow-craftsmen. Mr. Mungold, in fact, deemed it a part of his professional duty to study his sitters in their home-life; and as this life was chiefly led in the homes of others, he was too busy dining out and going to the opera to mingle much with his colleagues. But as no one is wholly consistent, Mr. Mungold had lately belied his ambitions by falling in love with Kate Arran; and with that gentle persistency which made him so wonderful in managing obstreperous infantile sitters, he had contrived to establish a precarious footing in her brother’s studio.

  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 humour 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 gifts with the occasional offer of opportune delicacies—the port-wine or game which Kate had no other means of procuring for her 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 turbid eloquence, and to watch poor Mungold sputtering under the rush of denunciation, 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 over-populated 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 wa
s 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 facile 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 the multiplicity of his 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 seven 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 affably inviting himself into the studio.

  “May I come and take a look around, my dear fellow? I have 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 very 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 is not looking her best—she is horribly tired. I am 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 him an order. Mrs. Archer Millington has built a new ballroom, as I daresay you may have seen in the papers, and she has 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, you understand. 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 is 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 is not used to being refused. I suppose I had 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 o’clock. We are to settle about the curtain before luncheon. My dear fellow, it has been a privilege to see your work. By the way, you have never done any modelling, 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 any 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 just 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 visitor turned on him the penetrating 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 complaint. 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 cheque 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 neighbouring restaurant. Caspar flourished insufferably on this regime: he began to strike the attitude of the recognized 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 obstinately to his convictions.

  “A man must believe in his star—look at Napoleon! It’s the dogged 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 tell them to. 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 to you 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 rumours 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 ballroom, 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 ballroom, and that the friendly artist’s praise could, therefore, not be taken as positive evidence of incapacity.