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
