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The Pot-Boiler: Part II · The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and other Stories

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Section twenty five of The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories by Edith
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Wharton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The pot Boiler,
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Part two Kate Aran was Stanwell's sitter, but the janitor had hardly filled the
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stove when she came in to say that she could not sit. Caspar had
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had a bad night. He was depressed and feverish, and in spite of
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his protests, she had resolved to fetch the doctor. Carer sat on her
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usually tranquil features, and Stanwell, as he offered to go for the doctor,
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wished he could have caught in his picture the wide gloom of her brow.
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There was always a kind of biblical breadth in the expression of her emotions,
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and to day she suggested a text from Isaiah. But you're not busy,
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she hesitated, in the full voice, which seemed tuned to a solemn
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rhetoric. I meant to be with you, but since that's off, I'm
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quite unemployed, she smiled interrogatively. I thought perhaps you had an order.
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I met mister Shepson rubbing his hands on the landing. Was he rubbing his
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hands? Well, it was not over me. He says that from the
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style of my pictures. He doesn't suppose I want to sell. She looked
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at him superbly. Well do you, he embraced his bleak walls in a
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circular gesture. Judge for yourself. Ah, but it's splendidly furnished with rejected
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pictures. You mean with ideals, she exclaimed, in a tone caught from
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her brother and which would have been irritating to Stanwell if it had not been
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moving. He gave a slight shrug and took up his hat. But she
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interposed to say that if it didn't make any difference, she would prefer to
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have him go and sit with poor Caspar while she ran for the doctor and
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did some household errands. By the way, Stanwell divined in her request the
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need for a brief respite from Caspar, and though he shivered at the thought
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of her facing the cold in the scant jacket which had been her only wear
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since he had known her, he let her go without a protest and betook
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himself to Arran's studio. He found the little sculptor dressed and roaming fretfully about
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the melancholy room in which he and his plastic offspring lodged together. In one
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corner, where Kate's chair and work table stood, a scrupulous order prevailed,
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but the rest of the apartment had the dreary, untidiness, the damp gray
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look which the worker in clay usually creates about him. In the center of
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this desert stood the shrouded image of Caspar's disappointment, the colossal rejected group,
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as to which his friends could seldom remember whether it represented Jove hurling a titan
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from Olympus, or science subjugating religion. Caspar was the sworn foe of religion,
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which he appeared to regard as indirectly connected with his inability to sell his
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statues. The sculptor was too ill to work, and Stanwell's appearance loosed the
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pent up springs of his talk. Hullo, what are you doing here?
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I thought Kate had gone over to sit to you. She wanted a little
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fresh air, I should say, enough of it came in through these windows.
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How like a woman when she's agreed to do a certain thing, to
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make up her mind at once that she's got to do another. They don't
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call it caprice. It's always duty. That's the humor of it. I'll
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be bound Kate alleged a pressing engagement. Sorry, she should waste your time.
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So, my dear fellow, here am I with plenty of it to
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burn. Look at my hand shake. I can't do a thing well,
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Luckily nobody wants me to. Posterity may suffer, but the present generation isn't
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worrying. The present generation wants to be carved in sugar candy or painted in
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maple syrup. It doesn't want to be told the truth about itself or about
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anything in the universe. The prophets have always lived in a garret, my
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dear fellow. Only the ravens don't always find out their address. Speaking of
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ravens, though, Kate told me she saw Old Shepson coming out of your
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place. I say, old man, you're not meditating an apostasy. You're
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not doing the kind of thing that Shepson would look at. Stanwell laughed.
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Oh, he looked at them, but only to confirm his reasons for rejecting
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them. Ah, that's right. He wanted to refresh his memory with their
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badness. But how on earth did he happen to have any doubts on the
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subject. I should as soon have thought of his coming in here. Stanwell
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winced at the analogy, but replied in Kaspar's key, Oh, he's not
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as sure of any of us as he is of you. The sculptor received
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this tribute with a joyous explative. By God, No, he's sure of
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me, as you say. He and his tribe know that I'll starve in
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my tracks sooner than make a concession, a single concession. A fellow came
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after me once to do an angel on a tombstone, an angel leaning against
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a broken column and looking as if it was waiting for the elevator, and
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wondering why in hall it didn't come. He said he wanted me to show
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that the deceased was pining to get to heaven, as she was his wife.
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I didn't dispute the proposition, but when I asked him what he understood
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by heaven, he grabbed his hat and walked out of the studio. He
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didn't wait for the elevator. Stanwell listened with a practiced smile. The story
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of the man who had come to order the angel was so familiar to Aaron's
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friends that its only interest consisted in waiting to see what variation he would give
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to the retort which had put the mourner to flight. It was generally supposed
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that this visit represented the sculptor's nearest approach to an order, and one of
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his fellow craftsmen had been heard to remark that, if Caspar had made the
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tombstone, the lady under it have tried harder than ever to get to Heaven.
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To Stanwell's present mood, however, there was something more than usually irritating
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in the gratuitous assumption that aaron had only to derogate from his altitude to have
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a press of purchasers at his door. Well, what did you gain by
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kicking your widower out? He objected? Why can't a man do two kinds
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of work, one to please himself and the other to boil a pot?
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Caspar stopped in his jerky walk, the stride of a tall man attempted with
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short legs. It sometimes appeared to Stanwell to symbolize his artistic endeavor. Why
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can't a man why can't he? You ask me that, Stanwell, he
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blazed out, Yes, And what's more, I'll answer you It isn't everybody
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who can adapt his art as he wants to. Caspar stood before him,
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gasping with incredulous scorn. Adapt his art as he wants to unhappy wretch,
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What lingo are you talking if you mean that it isn't every honest man who
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can be renegade. That's just what I do mean. He can't unless he's
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clever enough to see the other side. The deep groan with which Caspar met
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this kazuistry was cut short by a knock at the studio door, which thereupon
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opened to admit a small, dapperly dressed man with a silky mustache and mildly
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bulging eyes. Ah Mungold, exclaimed stanwell to cover the gloomy silence with which
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Aran received the newcomer, whereat the latter, with the air of a man
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who does not easily believe himself unwelcome, bestowed a sympathetic pressure on the sculptor's
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hand. My dear Chap, I've just met miss Oran, and she told
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me you were laid up with a bad cold, so I thought i'd pop
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in and cheer you up a little. He looked about him with a smile,
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evidently intended as the first act in his beneficcence program. Mister Mungold,
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freshly soaped and scented with a neat glaze of gentility, extending from his varnished
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boot tips to his glossy hat, looked like the flattered portrait of a common
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man, just such an idealized presentment as his own brush might have produced.
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As a rule, however, he devoted himself to the portrayal of the other
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sex, painting ladies in syrup, as Arrun said, with marshmallow children leaning
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against their knees. He was as quick as a dressmaker at catching new ideas,
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and the style of his pictures changed as rapidly as that of the fashion
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plates. One year, all his sitters were done on oval canvases with gauzy
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draperies and a background of clouds. The next they were seated under an immemorial
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elm, caressing enormous dogs, obviously constructed out of door mats. Whatever their
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occupation, they always looked straight out of the canvas, giving the impression that
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their eyes were fixed on an invisible camera. This gave rise to the rumor
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that Mungold did his portraits from photographs. It was even said that he had
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invented a way of transferring an enlarged photograph to the canvas, so that all
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that remained was to fill in the colors. If he heard of this charge,
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he took it calmly, but probably it had not reached the high spheres
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in which he moved and in which he was esteemed for painting pearls better and
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making unsuggestive children look lovelier than any of his fellow craftsmen. Mister Mungold in
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fact, deemed it a part of his professional duty to study his sitters in
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their home life. And as this life was chiefly led in the homes of
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others, he was too busy dining out and going to the opera to mingle
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much with his colleagues. But as no one is wholly consistent, mister Mungold
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had lately belied his ambitions by falling in love with Kate Aran, and with
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that gentle persistency which made him so wonderful in managing obstreperous infantile sitters, he
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had contrived to establish a precarious footing in her brother's studio. Part of his
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success was due to the fact that he could not easily think himself the object
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of a rebuff. If it seemed to hit him, he regarded it as
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deflected from its aim and brushed it aside with a discreet gesture. A touch
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of comedy was lent to the situation by the fact that till Kate Arran's coming,
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Mungold had always served as her brother's awful example. It was a mark
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of Aran's lack of humor that he persisted in regarding the little man as a
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conscious apostate, instead of perceiving that he painted as he could in a world
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which really looked to him like a vast confectioner's window. Stanwell had never quite
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divined how Mungold had won over the sister to whom her brother's prejudices were a
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religion, but he suspected the painter of having united a deep belief in Caspar's
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gifts with the occasional offer of opportune delicacies the port wine or game, which
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Kate had no other means of procuring for her patient. Stanwell, persuaded that
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Mungold would stick to his post till miss Arran's return, felt himself freed from
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his promise to the latter, and left the incongruous pair to themselves. There
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had been a time when it amused him to see Caspar submerge the painter in
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a torrent of turbid eloquence and to watch poor mungold sputtering under the rush of
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denunciation, yet emitting little bland phrases of assent, like a gentleman drowning correctly
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in gloves and eye glasses. But Stanwell was beginning to find less food for
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gaiety than for envy in the contemplation of his colleague. After all, Mungold
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held his ground. He did not go under spite of his manifest absurdity.
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He had succeeded in propitiating the sister, in making himself tolerated by the brother,
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and the fact that his success was due to the ability to purchase port,
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wine and game was not, in this case a mitigating circumstance. Stanwell
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knew that the Errands really preferred him to Mungold, but the knowledge only sharpened
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his envy of the latter, whose friendship could command visible tokens of expression,
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while poor Stanwells remained gloomily inarticulate. As he returned to his overpopulated studio and
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surveyed anew the pictures of which Shepson had not offered to believe him, he
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found himself wishing not for Mungold's lack of scruples, for he believed him to
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be the most scrupulous of men. But for that happy mean of talent which
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so completely satisfied the artistic requirements of the inartistic Mungold was not to be despised
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as an apostate. He was to be congratulated as a man whose aptitudes were
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exactly in line with the taste of the persons he liked to dine with.
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At this point in his meditations, Stanwell's eye fell on the portrait of Miss
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Gladys Glide. It was, really, as Shepson said, as good as
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amongold. Yet it could never be made to serve the same purpose, because
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it was the work of a man who knew it was bad art. That
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at least would have been Caspar Rand's contention, Poor Caspar, who produced as
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bad art in the service of the loftiest convictions. The distinction began to look
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like mere kazuistry. To Stanwell, he had never been very proud of his
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own adaptability. It had seemed to him to indicate the lack of an individual
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standpoint, and he had tried to counteract it by the cultivation of an aggressively
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personal style. But the cursed nac was in his fingers. He was always
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at the mercy of some other man's sensations. And there were moments when he
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blushed to remember that his grand father had spent a laborious lifetime in Rome,
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copying the old masters for a generation which lacked the facile resource of the camera.
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Now, however, it struck him that the ancestral versatility might be a
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useful inheritance in art. After all, the greatest of them did what they
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could. And if a man could do several things instead of one, why
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should he not profit by the multiplicity of his gifts. If one had two
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talents, why not serve two masters? End of Section twenty five