I
IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING.
I Henry IV.; v.--I.
When Arthur Fenton, the most outspoken of all that band of protesting
spirits who had been so well known in artistic Boston as the Pagans,
married Edith Caldwell, there had been in his mind a purpose, secret
but well defined, to turn to his own account his wife's connection with
the Philistine art patrons of the town. Miss Caldwell was a niece of
Peter Calvin, a wealthy and well-meaning man against whom but two grave
charges could be made,--that he supposed the growth of art in this
country to depend largely upon his patronage, and that he could never
be persuaded not to take himself seriously. Mr. Calvin was regarded by
Philistine circles in Boston as a sort of re-incarnation of Apollo,
clothed upon with modern enlightenment, and properly arrayed in
respectable raiment. Had it been pointed out that to make this theory
probable it was necessary to conceive of the god as having undergone
mentally much the same metamorphosis as that which had transformed his
flowing vestments into trousers, his admirers would have received the
remark as highly complimentary to Mr. Peter Calvin. To assume identity
between their idol and Apollo would be immensely flattering to the son
of Latona.
Fenton understood perfectly the weight and extent of Calvin's
influence, yet, in determining to profit by it, he did not in the least
deceive himself as to the nature of his own course.
"Honesty," he afterward confessed to his friend Helen Greyson, who
scorned him for the admission, "is doubtless a charming thing for
digestive purposes, but it is a luxury too expensive for me. The gods
in this country bid for shams, and shams I purpose giving them."
So well did he carry out his intention, that in a few years he came to
be the fashionable portrait-painter of the town; the artist to whom
people went who rated the worth of a picture by the amount they were
required to pay for it, and the reputation of the painter in
conventional circles; the man to whom a Boston society woman inevitably
turned when she wished the likeness of her charms preserved on canvas,
and when no foreigner was for the moment in vogue and on hand.
The steps by which Fenton attained to this proud eminence were obvious
enough. In the first place, he persuaded Mr. Calvin to sit to him. Mr.
Calvin always sat to the portrait painters whom he endorsed. This was a
sort of official recognition, and the results, as seen in the
needlessly numerous likenesses of the gentleman which adorned his
Beacon Hill mansion, would have afforded a cynic some amusement, and
not a little food for reflection. Once launched under distinguished
patronage, Fenton was clever enough to make his way. He really was able
to paint well when he chose, a fact which was, on the whole, of less
importance in his artistic career than were the adroitness of his
address, and his ready and persuasive sympathy. The qualifications of a
fashionable doctor, a fashionable clergyman, and a fashionable
portrait-painter are much the same; it is only in the man-milliner that
skill is demanded in addition to the art of pleasing.
As usually happens in such a case, Fenton's old friends avoided him, or
found themselves left in the distance by his rapid strides toward fame
and fortune. Then such of them as still came in contact with him made
his acquaintance in a new character, and learned to accept him as a
wholly different man from the one they had supposed themselves to know
in the days when he was never weary of pouring forth tirades against
the Philistinism he had now embraced. They admired the skill with which
he painted stuffs and gowns, but among themselves they agreed that the
old-time vigor and sincerity were painfully lacking in his work; and if
they grumbled sometimes at the prices he got, it is only just to
believe that it was seldom with any real willingness to pay, in the
sacrifice of convictions and ideals, the equivalent which he had given
for his popularity.
Fenton was one morning painting, in his luxuriously appointed studio,
the portrait of a man who was in the prime of life, and over whom
vulgar prosperity had, in forming him, left everywhere her finger marks
plainly to be seen. He was tall and robust, with light eyes and blonde
whiskers, and a general air of insisting upon his immense superiority
to all the world. That he secretly felt some doubts of the perfection
of his social knowledge, there were indications in his manner, but on
the whole the complacency of a portly bank account overcame all
misgivings of this sort. His character might have been easily inferred
from the manner in which he now set his broad shoulders expansively
back in the armchair in which he was posing, and regarded the artist
with a patronizing air of condescending to be wonderfully entertained
by his conversation.
"You are the frankest fellow I ever saw," he said, smiling broadly.
"Oh, frank," Fenton responded; "I am too frank. It will be the ruin of
me sooner or later. It all comes of being born with a habit of being
too honest with myself."
"Honesty with yourself is generally held up as a cardinal virtue."
"Nonsense. A man is a fool who is too frank with himself; he is always
sure to end by being too frank with everybody else, just from mere
habit."
Mr. Irons smiled more broadly still. He by no means followed all
Fenton's vagaries of thought, but they tickled his mental cuticle
agreeably. The artist had the name of being a clever talker, and with
such a listener this was more than half the battle. The men who can
distinguish the real quality of talk are few and far to seek; most
people receive what is said as wit and wisdom, or the reverse, simply
because they are assured it is the one or the other; and Alfred Irons
was of the majority in this.
Fenton painted in silence a moment, inwardly possessed of a desire to
caricature, or even to paint in all its ugliness, the vulgar mouth upon
which he was working. The desire, however, was not sufficiently strong
to restrain him from the judicious flattery of cleverly softening and
refining the coarse lips, and he was conscious of a faint amusement at
the incongruity between his thought and his action.
"And there is the added disadvantage," he continued the conversation as
he glanced up and saw that his sitter's face was quickly, in the
silence, falling into a heavy repose, "that frankness begets frankness.
My sitters are always telling me things which I do not want to know,
just because I am so beastly outspoken and sympathetic."
"You must have an excellent chance to get pointers," responded the
sitter, his pale eyes kindling with animation. "You've painted two or
three men this winter that could have put you up to a good thing."
"That isn't the sort of line chat takes in a studio," Fenton returned,
with a slight shrug. "It isn't business that men talk in a studio. That
would be too incongruous."
Irons sneered and laughed, with an air of consequence and superiority.
"I don't suppose many of you artist fellows would make much of a fist
at business," he observed.
"Modern business," laughed the other, amused by his own epigram, "is
chiefly the art of transposing one's debts. The thing to learn is how
to pass the burden of your obligations from one man's shoulders to
those of another often enough so that nobody who has them gets tired
out, and drops them with a crash."
His sitter grinned appreciatively.
"And they don't tell you how to do this?"
"Oh, no. The things my sitters tell me about are of a very different
sort. They make to me confidences they want to get rid of; things you'd
rather not hear. Heavens! I have all I can do to keep some men from
treating me like a priest and confessing all their sins to me."
Mr. Irons regarded the artist closely, with a curious narrowing of the
eyes.
"That must give you a hold over a good many of them," he said. "I shall
be careful what I say."
Fenton laughed, with a delightful sense of superiority. It amused him
that his sitter should be betraying his nature at the very moment when
he fancied himself particularly on his guard.
"You certainly have no crimes on your conscience that interfere with
your digestion," was his reply; "but in any case, you may make yourself
easy; I am not a blackmailer by profession."
"Oh, I didn't mean that," Mr. Irons answered, easily; "only of course
you are a man who has his living to make. Every painter has to depend
on his wits, and when you come in contact with men of another class
professionally it would be natural enough to suppose you would take
advantage of it."
The "lady's finger" in Fenton's cheek stood out white amid the sudden
red, and his eyes flashed.
"Of course a sitter," he said in an even voice, which had somehow lost
all its smooth sweetness, "is in a manner my guest, and the fact that
his class was not up to mine, or that he wasn't a gentleman even,
wouldn't excuse my taking advantage of him."
The other flushed in his turn. He felt the keenness of the retort, but
he was not dexterous enough to parry it, and he took refuge in coarse
bullying.
"Come, now, Fenton," he cried with a short, explosive laugh, "you talk
like a gentleman."
But the artist, knowing himself to have the better of the other, and
not unmindful, moreover, of the fact that to offend Alfred Irons might
mean a serious loss to his own pocket, declined to take offence.
"Of course," he answered lightly, and with the air of one who
appreciates an intended jest so subtile that only cleverness would have
comprehended it, "that is one of the advantages I have always found in
being one. I think I needn't keep you tied down to that chair any
longer to-day. Come here and see how you think we are getting on."
And the sitter forgot quickly that he had been on the very verge of a
quarrel.