I
The studio faced north, looking out over a dismal reach of roofs and
chimneys, and rusty fire-escapes hung with heterogeneous garments. A
crust of dirty snow covered the level surfaces, and a December sky with
more snow in it lowered over them.
The room was bare and gaunt, with blotched walls and a stained uneven
floor. On a divan lay a pile of "properties"--limp draperies, an
Algerian scarf, a moth-eaten fan of peacock feathers. The janitor had
forgotten to fill the coal-scuttle over-night, and the cast-iron stove
projected its cold flanks into the room like a black iceberg. Ned
Stanwell, who had just added his hat and great-coat to the
miscellaneous heap on the divan, turned from the empty stove with a
shiver.
"By Jove, this is a little too much like the last act of _Boheme_," he
said, slipping into his coat again after a vain glance at the
coal-scuttle. Much solitude, and a lively habit of mind, had bred in
him the habit of audible soliloquy, and having flung a shout for the
janitor down the seven flights dividing the studio from the basement,
he turned back, picking up the thread of his monologue. "Exactly like
_Boheme_, really--that crack in the wall is much more like a
stage-crack than a real one--just the sort of crack Mungold would paint
if he were doing a Humble Interior."
Mungold, the fashionable portrait-painter of the hour, was the
favourite object of the younger men's irony.
"It only needs Kate Arran to be borne in dying," Stanwell continued
with a laugh. "Much more likely to be poor little Caspar, though," he
concluded.
His neighbour across the landing--the little sculptor, Caspar Arran,
humorously called "Gasper" on account of his bronchial asthma--had
lately been joined by a sister, Kate Arran, a strapping girl, fresh
from the country, who had installed herself in the little room off her
brother's studio, keeping house for him with a chafing-dish and a
coffee-machine, to the mirth and envy of the other young men in the
building.
Poor little Gasper had been very bad all the autumn, and it was
surmised that his sister's presence, which he spoke of growlingly, as a
troublesome necessity devolved on him by the inopportune death of an
aunt, was really an indication of his failing ability to take care of
himself. Kate Arran took his complaints with unfailing good-humour,
darned his socks, brushed his clothes, fed him with steaming broths and
foaming milk-punches, and listened with reverential assent to his
interminable disquisitions on art. Every one in the house was sorry for
little Gasper, and the other fellows liked him all the more because it
was so impossible to like his sculpture; but his talk was a bore, and
when his colleagues ran in to see him they were apt to keep a hand on
the door-knob and to plead a pressing engagement. At least they had
been till Kate came; but now they began to show a disposition to enter
and sit down. Caspar, who was no fool, perceived the change, and
perhaps detected its cause; at any rate, he showed no special
gratification at the increased cordiality of his friends, and Kate, who
followed him in everything, took this as a sign that guests were to be
discouraged.
There was one exception, however: Ned Stanwell, who was deplorably
good-natured, had always lent a patient ear to Caspar, and he now
reaped his reward by being taken into Kate's favour. Before she had
been a month in the building they were on confidential terms as to
Caspar's health, and lately Stanwell had penetrated farther, even to
the inmost recesses of her anxiety about her brother's career. Caspar
had recently had a bad blow in the refusal of his _magnum opus_--a vast
allegorical group--by the Commissioners of the Minneapolis Exhibition.
He took the rejection with Promethean irony, proclaimed it as the
clinching proof of his ability, and abounded in reasons why, even in an
age of such crass artistic ignorance, a refusal so egregious must react
to the advantage of its object. But his sister's indignation, if as
glowing, was a shade less hopeful. Of course Caspar was going to
succeed--she knew it was only a question of time--but she paled at the
word and turned imploring eyes on Stanwell. _Was there time enough?_ It
was the one element in the combination that she could not count on; and
Stanwell, reddening under her look of interrogation, and cursing his
own glaring robustness, would affirm that of course, of course, of
course, by everything that was holy there was time enough--with the
mental reservation that there wouldn't be, even if poor Caspar lived to
be a hundred.
"Vos that you yelling for the shanitor, Mr. Sdanwell?" inquired an
affable voice through the doorway; and Stanwell, turning with a laugh,
confronted the squat figure of a middle-aged man in an expensive fur
coat, who looked as if his face secreted the oil which he used on his
hair.
"Hullo, Shepson--I should say I was yelling. Did you ever feel such an
atmosphere? That fool has forgotten to light the stove. Come in, but
for heaven's sake don't take off your coat."
Mr. Shepson glanced about the studio with a look which seemed to say
that, where so much else was lacking, the absence of a fire hardly
added to the general sense of destitution.
"Vell, you ain't as vell fixed as Mr. Mungold--ever been to his studio,
Mr. Sdanwell? De most ex_quis_ite blush hangings, and a gas-fire,
choost as natural--"
"Oh, hang it, Shepson, do you call _that_ a studio? It's like a
manicure's parlour--or a beauty-doctor's. By George," broke off
Stanwell, "and that's just what he is!"
"A peauty-doctor?"
"Yes--oh, well, you wouldn't see," murmured Stanwell, mentally storing
his epigram for more appreciative ears. "But you didn't come just to
make me envious of Mungold's studio, did you?" And he pushed forward a
chair for his visitor.
The latter, however, declined it with an affable motion. "Of gourse
not, of gourse not--but Mr. Mungold is a sensible man. He makes a lot
of money, you know."
"Is that what you came to tell me?" said Stanwell, still humorously.
"My gootness, no--I was downstairs looking at Holbrook's sdained class,
and I shoost thought I'd sdep up a minute and take a beep at your vork."
"Much obliged, I'm sure--especially as I assume that you don't want any
of it." Try as he would, Stanwell could not keep a note of eagerness
from his voice. Mr. Shepson caught the note, and eyed him shrewdly
through gold-rimmed glasses.
"Vell, vell, vell--I'm not prepared to commit myself. Shoost let me
take a look round, vill you?"
"With the greatest pleasure--and I'll give another shout for the coal."
Stanwell went out on the landing, and Mr. Shepson, left to himself,
began a meditative progress about the room. On an easel facing the
improvised dais stood a canvas on which a young woman's head had been
blocked in. It was just in that happy state of semi-evocation when a
picture seems to detach itself from the grossness of its medium and
live a wondrous moment in the actual; and the quality of the head in
question--a vigorous dusky youthfulness, a kind of virgin majesty--lent
itself to this illusion of vitality. Stanwell, who had re-entered the
studio, could not help drawing a sharp breath as he saw the
picture-dealer pausing with tilted head before this portrait: it
seemed, at one moment, so impossible that he should not be struck with
it, at the next so incredible that he should be.
Shepson cocked his parrot-eye at the canvas with a desultory "Vat's
dat?" which sent a twinge through the young man.
"That? Oh--a sketch of a young lady," stammered Stanwell, flushing at
the imbecility of his reply. "It's Miss Arran, you know," he added,
"the sister of my neighbour here, the sculptor."
"Sgulpture? There's no market for modern sgulpture except tombstones,"
said Shepson disparagingly, passing on as if he included the sister's
portrait in his condemnation of her brother's trade.
Stanwell smiled, but more at himself than Shepson. How could he ever
have supposed that the gross fool would see anything in his sketch of
Kate Arran? He stood aside, straining after detachment, while the
dealer continued his round of exploration, waddling up to the canvases
on the walls, prodding with his stick at those stacked in corners,
prying and peering sideways like a great bird rummaging for seed. He
seemed to find little nutriment in the course of his search, for the
sounds he emitted expressed a weary distaste for misdirected effort,
and he completed his round without having thought it worth while to
draw a single canvas from its obscurity.
As his visits always had the same result, Stanwell was reduced to
wondering why he had come again; but Shepson was not the man to indulge
in vague roamings through the field of art, and it was safe to conclude
that his purpose would in due course reveal itself. His tour brought
him at length face to face with the painter, where he paused, clasping
his plump gloved hands behind his back, and shaking an admonitory head.
"Gleffer--very gleffer, of course--I suppose you'll let me know when
you want to sell anything?"
"Let you know?" gasped Stanwell, to whom the room grew so glowingly hot
that he thought for a moment the janitor must have made up the fire.
Shepson gave a dry laugh. "Vell, it doesn't sdrike me that you want to
now--doing this kind of thing, you know!" And he swept a comprehensive
hand about the studio.
"Ah," said Stanwell, who could not keep a note of flatness out of his
laugh.
"See here, Mr. Sdanwell, vot do you do it for? If you do it for
yourself and the other fellows, vell and good--only don't ask me round.
I sell pictures, I don't theorize about them. Ven you vant to sell,
gome to me with what my gustomers vant. You can do it--you're smart
enough. You can do most anything. Vere's dat bortrait of Gladys Glyde
dat you showed at the Fake Club last autumn? Dat little thing in de
Romney sdyle? Dat vas a little shem, now," exclaimed Mr. Shepson, whose
pronunciation became increasingly Semitic in moments of excitement.
Stanwell stared. Called upon a few months previously to contribute to
an exhibition of skits on well-known artists, he had used the
photograph of a favourite music-hall "star" as the basis of a picture
in the pseudo-historical style affected by the popular
portrait-painters of the day.
"That thing?" he said contemptuously. "How on earth did you happen to
see it?"
"I see everything," returned the dealer with an oracular smile. "If
you've got it here let me look at it, please."
It cost Stanwell a few minutes' search to unearth his skit--a clever
blending of dash and sentimentality, in just the right proportion to
create the impression of a powerful brush subdued to mildness by the
charms of the sitter. Stanwell had thrown it off in a burst of
imitative frenzy, beginning for the mere joy of the satire, but
gradually fascinated by the problem of producing the requisite mingling
of attributes. He was surprised now to see how well he had caught the
note, and Shepson's face reflected his approval.
"By George! Dat's something like," the dealer ejaculated.
"Like what? Like Mungold?" Stanwell laughed.
"Like business! Like a big order for a bortrait, Mr. Sdanwell--dat's
what it's like!" cried Shepson, swinging round on him.