The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and Other Stories

by Edith Wharton

  “Ah, but I didn’t do them—I kicked him out!” Caspar rejoined; and Stanwell could only plead that, even in the cause of art, one could hardly kick a lady.

  “Ah, that’s the worst of it. If the women get at you you’re lost. You’re young, you’re impressionable, you won’t mind my saying that you’re not built for a stoic, and hang it, they’ll coddle you, they’ll enervate you, they’ll sentimentalize you, they’ll make a Mungold of you!”

  “Ah, poor Mungold,” Stanwell laughed. “If he lived the life of an anchorite he couldn’t help painting pictures that would please Mrs. Millington.”

  “Whereas you could,” Kate interjected, raising her head from the ironing-board where, Sphinx-like, magnificent, she swung a splendid arm above her brother’s shirts.

  “Oh, well, perhaps I shan’t please her; perhaps I shall elevate her taste.”

  Caspar directed a groan to his sister. “That’s what they all think at first—Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. But inside the Dark Tower there’s the Venusberg. Oh, I don’t mean that you’ll be taken with truffles and plush footmen, like Mungold. But praise, my poor Ned—praise is a deadly drug! It’s the absinthe of the artist—and they’ll stupefy you with it. You’ll wallow in the mire of success.”

  Stanwell raised a protesting hand. “Really, for one order, you’re a little lurid!”

  “One? Haven’t you already had a dozen others?”

  “Only one other, so far—and I’m not sure I shall do that.”

  “Not sure—wavering already! That’s the way the mischief begins. If the women get a fad for you they’ll work you like a galley-slave. You’ll have to do your round of ‘copy’ every morning. What becomes of inspiration then? How are you going to loaf and invite the soul? Don’t barter your birthright for a mess of pottage! Oh, I understand the temptation—I know the taste of money and success. But look at me, Stanwell. You know how long I had to wait for recognition. Well, now it’s come to me I don’t mean to let it knock me off my feet. I don’t mean to let myself be overworked; I have already made it known that I will not be bullied into taking more orders than I can do full justice to. And my sister is with me, God bless her; Kate would rather go on ironing my shirts in a garret than see me prostitute my art!”

  Kate’s glance radiantly confirmed this declaration of independence, and Stanwell, with his evasive laugh, asked her if, meanwhile, she should object to his investing a part of his ill-gotten gains in theatre tickets for the party that evening.

  It appeared that Stanwell had also been paid in advance, and well paid; for he began to permit himself various mild distractions, in which he generally contrived to have the Arrans share. It seemed perfectly natural to Kate that Caspar’s friends should spend their money for his recreation, and by one of the most touching sophistries of her sex she thus reconciled herself to the anomaly of taking a little pleasure on her own account. Mungold was less often in the way, for she had never been able to forgive him for proposing that Caspar should do Mrs. Millington’s Cupids; and for a few radiant weeks Stanwell had the undisputed enjoyment of her pride in her brother’s achievement.

  Stanwell had “rushed through” Mrs. Millington’s portrait in time for the opening of her new ballroom; and it was perhaps in return for this favour that she consented to let the picture be exhibited at a big Portrait Show which was held in April for the benefit of a fashionable charity.

  In Mrs. Millington’s ballroom the picture had been seen and approved only by the distinguished few who had access to that social sanctuary; but on the walls of the exhibition it became a centre of comment and discussion. One of the immediate results of this publicity was a visit from Shepson, with two or three orders in his pocket, as he put it. He surveyed the studio with fresh disgust, asked Stanwell why he did not move, and was impressed rather than downcast on learning that the painter had not decided whether he would take any more orders that spring.

  “You might haf a studio at Newport,” he suggested. “It would be rather new to do your sitters out of doors, with the sea behind them—showing they had a blace on the gliffs!”

  The picture produced a different and less flattering effect on the critics. They gave it, indeed, more space than they had ever before accorded to the artist’s efforts, but their estimate seemed to confirm Caspar Arran’s forebodings, and Stanwell had perhaps never despised them so little as when he read their comments on his work. On the whole, however, neither praise nor blame disquieted him greatly. He was engrossed in the contemplation of Kate Arran’s happiness, and basking in the refracted warmth it shed about her. The doctor’s prognostications had come true. Caspar was putting on a pound a week, and had plunged into a fresh “creation” more symbolic and encumbering than the monument of which he had been so opportunely relieved. If there was any cloud on Stanwell’s enjoyment of life, it was caused by the discovery that success had quadrupled Caspar’s artistic energies. Meanwhile it was delightful to see Kate’s joy in her brother’s recovered capacity for work, and to listen to the axioms which, for Stanwell’s guidance, she deduced from the example of Caspar’s heroic pursuit of the ideal. There was nothing repellent in Kate’s borrowed didacticism, and if it sometimes bored Stanwell to hear her quote her brother, he was sure it would never bore him to be quoted by her himself; and there were moments when he felt he had nearly achieved that distinction.

  Caspar was not addicted to the visiting of art exhibitions. He took little interest in any productions save his own, and was moreover disposed to believe that good pictures, like clever criminals, are apt to go unhung. Stanwell therefore thought it unlikely that his portrait of Mrs. Millington would be seen by Kate, who was not given to independent explorations in the field of art; but one day, on entering the exhibition—which he had hitherto rather nervously shunned—he saw the Arrans at the end of the gallery in which the portrait hung. They were not looking at it, they were moving away from it, and to Stanwell’s quickened perceptions their attitude seemed almost that of flight. For a moment he thought of flying too; then a desperate resolve nerved him to meet them, and stemming the crowd, he made a circuit which brought him face to face with their retreat.

  The room in which they met was momentarily empty, and there was nothing to intervene between the shock of their interchanged glances. Caspar was flushed and bristling: his little body quivered like a machine from which the steam has just been turned off. Kate lifted a stricken glance. Stanwell read in it the reflexion of her brother’s tirade, but she held out her hand in silence.

  For a moment Caspar was silent too; then, with a terrible smile: “My dear fellow, I congratulate you; Mungold will have to look to his laurels,” he said.

  The shot delivered, he stalked away with his seven-league stride, and Kate moved tragically through the room in his wake.

  V

  SHEPSON took up his hat with a despairing gesture.

  “Vell, I gif you up—I gif you up!” he said.

  “Don’t—yet,” protested Stanwell from the divan.

  It was winter again, and though the janitor had not forgotten the fire, the studio gave no other evidence of its master’s increasing prosperity. If Stanwell spent his money it was not upon himself.

  He leaned back against the wall, his hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his lips, while Shepson paced the dirty floor or halted impatiently before an untouched canvas on the easel.

  “I tell you vat it is, Mr. Sdanwell, I can’t make you out!” he lamented. “Last vinter you got a sdart that vould have kept most men going for years. After making dat hit vith Mrs. Millington’s picture you could have bainted half the town. And here you are sitting on your divan and saying you can’t make up your mind to take another order. Vell, I can only say that if you take much longer to make it up, you’ll find some other chap has cut in and got your job. Mrs. Van Orley has been waiting since last August, and she dells me you haven’t even answered her letter.”

  “How could I? I didn’t know if I wanted to paint her.”


  “My goodness! Don’t you know if you vant three thousand tollars?”

  Stanwell surveyed his cigarette. “No, I’m not sure I do,” he said.

  Shepson flung out his hands. “Ask more den—but do it quick!” he exclaimed.

  Left to himself, Stanwell stood in silent contemplation of the canvas on which the dealer had riveted his reproachful gaze. It had been destined to reflect the opulent image of Mrs. Alpheus Van Orley, but some secret reluctance of Stanwell’s had stayed the execution of the task. He had painted two of Mrs. Millington’s friends in the spring, had been much praised and liberally paid for his work, and then, declining several recent orders to be executed at Newport, had surprised his friends by remaining quietly in town. It was not till August that he hired a little cottage on the New Jersey coast and invited the Arrans to visit him. They accepted the invitation, and the three had spent together six weeks of seashore idleness, during which Stanwell’s modest rafters shook with Caspar’s denunciations of his host’s venality, and the brightness of Kate’s gratitude was tempered by a tinge of reproach. But her grief over Stanwell’s apostasy could not efface the fact that he had offered her brother the means of escape from town, and Stanwell himself was consoled by the reflection that but for Mrs. Millington’s portrait he could not have performed even this trifling service for his friends.

  When the Arrans left him in September he went to pay a few visits in the country, and on his return, a month later, to the studio building he found that things had not gone well with Caspar. The little sculptor had caught cold, and the labour and expense of converting his gigantic offspring into marble seemed to hang heavily upon him. He and Kate were living in a damp company of amorphous clay monsters, unfinished witnesses to the creative frenzy which had seized him after the sale of his group; and the doctor had urged that his patient should be removed to warmer and drier lodgings. But to uproot Caspar was impossible, and his sister could only feed the stove, and swaddle him in mufflers and felt slippers.

  Stanwell found that during his absence Mungold had reappeared, fresh and rosy from a summer in Europe, and as prodigal as ever of the only form of attention which Kate could be counted on not to resent. The game and champagne reappeared with him, and he seemed as ready as Stanwell to lend a patient ear to Caspar’s homilies. But Stanwell could see that, even now, Kate had not forgiven him for the Cupids. Stanwell himself had spent the early winter months in idleness. The sight of his tools filled him with a strange repugnance, and he absented himself as much as possible from the studio. But Shepson’s visit roused him to the fact that he must decide on some definite course of action. If he wished to follow up his success of the previous spring he must refuse no more orders: he must not let Mrs. Van Orley slip away from him. He knew there were competitors enough ready to profit by his hesitations, and since his success was the result of a whim, a whim might undo it. With a sudden gesture of decision he caught up his hat and left the studio.

  On the landing he met Kate Arran. She too was going out, drawn forth by the sudden radiance of the January afternoon. She met him with a smile which seemed the answer to his uncertainties, and he asked abruptly if she had time to take a walk with him.

  Yes; for once she had time, for Mr. Mungold was sitting with Caspar, and had promised to remain till she came in. It mattered little to Stanwell that Mungold was with Caspar as long as he himself was with Kate; and he instantly soared to the suggestion that they should prolong the painter’s vigil by taking the “elevated” to the Park. In this too his companion acquiesced after a moment of surprise: she seemed in a consenting mood, and Stanwell augured well from the fact.

  The Park was clothed in the double glitter of snow and sunshine. They roamed the hard white alleys to a continuous tinkle of sleigh-bells, and Kate brightened with the exhilaration of the scene. It was not often that she permitted herself such an escape from routine, and in this new environment, which seemed to detach her from her daily setting, Stanwell had his first complete vision of her. To the girl also their unwonted isolation seemed to create a sense of fuller communion, for she began presently, as they reached the leafless solitude of the Ramble, to speak with sudden freedom of her brother. It appeared that the orders against which Caspar had so heroically steeled himself were slow in coming: he had received no commission since the sale of his group, and he was beginning to suffer from a reaction of discouragement. Oh, it was not the craving for popularity—Stanwell knew how far above that he stood. But it had been exquisite, yes, exquisite to him to find himself believed in, understood. He had fancied that the purchase of the group was the dawn of a tardy recognition—and now the darkness of indifference had set in again, no one spoke of him, no one wrote of him, no one cared.

  “If he were in good health it would not matter—he would throw off such weakness, he would live only for the joy of his work; but he is losing ground, his strength is failing, and he is so afraid there will not be time enough left—time enough for full recognition,” she explained.

  The quiver in her voice silenced Stanwell: he was afraid of echoing it with his own. At length he said: “Oh, more orders will come. Success is a gradual growth.”

  “Yes, real success,” she said, with a solemn note in which he caught—and forgave—a reflection on his own facile triumphs.

  “But when the orders do come,” she continued, “will he have strength to carry them out? Last winter the doctor thought he only needed work to set him up; now he talks of rest instead! He says we ought to go to a warm climate—but how can Caspar leave the group?”

  “Oh, hang the group—let him chuck the order!” cried Stanwell.

  She looked at him tragically. “The money is spent,” she said.

  He coloured to the roots of his hair. “But ill-health—ill-health excuses everything. If he goes away now he will come back good for twice the amount of work in the spring. A sculptor is not expected to deliver a statue on a given day, like a package of groceries! You must do as the doctor says—you must make him chuck everything and go.”

  They had reached a windless nook above the lake, and, pausing in the stress of their talk, she let herself sink on a bench beside the path. The movement encouraged him, and he seated himself at her side.

  “You must take him away at once,” he repeated urgently. “He must be made comfortable—you must both be free from worry. And I want you to let me manage it for you—”

  He broke off, silenced by her rising blush, her protesting murmur.

  “Oh, stop, please; let me explain. I’m not talking of lending you money; I’m talking of giving you—myself. The offer may be just as unacceptable, but it’s of a kind to which it’s customary to accord it a hearing. I should have made it a year ago—the first day I saw you, I believe!—but that, then, it wasn’t in my power to make things easier for you. But now, you know, I’ve had a little luck. Since I painted Mrs. Millington things have changed. I believe I can get as many orders as I choose—there are two or three people waiting now. What’s the use of it all, if it doesn’t bring me a little happiness? And the only happiness I know is the kind that you can give me.”

  He paused, suddenly losing the courage to look at her, so that her pained murmur was framed for him in a glittering vision of the frozen lake. He turned with a start and met the refusal in her eyes.

  “No—really no?” he repeated.

  She shook her head silently.

  “I could have helped you—I could have helped you!” he sighed.

  She flushed distressfully, but kept her eyes on his.

  “It’s just that—don’t you see?” she reproached him.

  “Just that—the fact that I could be of use to you?”

  “The fact that, as you say, things have changed since you painted Mrs. Millington. I haven’t seen the later portraits, but they tell me—”

  “Oh, they’re just as bad!” Stanwell jeered.

  “You’ve sold your talent, and you know it: that’s the dreadful part. You did it delib
erately,” she cried with passion.

  “Oh, deliberately,” he interjected.

  “And you’re not ashamed—you talk of going on.”

  “I’m not ashamed; I talk of going on.”

  She received this with a long shuddering sigh, and turned her eyes away from him.

  “Oh, why—why—why?” she lamented.

  It was on the tip of Stanwell’s tongue to answer, “That I might say to you what I am just saying now—” but he replied instead: “A man may paint bad pictures and be a decent fellow. Look at Mungold, after all!”

  The adjuration had an unexpected effect. Kate’s colour faded suddenly, and she sat motionless, with a stricken face.

  “There’s a difference—” she began at length abruptly; “the difference you’ve always insisted on. Mr. Mungold paints as well as he can. He has no idea that his pictures are—less good than they might be.”

  “Well—?”

  “So he can’t be accused of doing what he does for money—of sacrificing anything better.” She turned on him with troubled eyes. “It was you who made me understand that, when Caspar used to make fun of him.”

  Stanwell smiled. “I’m glad you still think me a better painter than Mungold. But isn’t it hard that for that very reason I should starve in a hole? If I painted badly enough you’d see no objection to my living at the Waldorf!”

  “Ah, don’t joke about it,” she murmured. “Don’t triumph in it.”