Money Magic Part 29

The painter, who had been introduced in a careless way as "Mr. Humiston, of New York," turned to Bertha at last, and, a.s.suming the ordinary politeness of a human being, said: "I'd like to make a study of you, too, Mrs. Haney, if you'll permit. I can bring my canvas in here and work with Joe, so that it needn't be any trouble to you."

Bertha, her wealth still new upon her, had no suspicion of the motives of those who addressed her, was deeply flattered by this request, and as Moss made no objection, she consented.

The only thing that troubled Moss was her growing tendency to lapse into troubled thought. "Remember, now, you're the crocus, the first violet, or something like that--not the last rose of summer. Don't think, don't droop! There, that's right! What have you to think or droop about? When you're as old and blase as Humiston there, you'll have a right to ponder the mysteries, but not now. You and I are young, thank G.o.d!"

Humiston was dabbling at his small canvas swiftly, lightly, as unmoved by his fellow-artist as if his voice were the wind in the cas.e.m.e.nt. He was a tall, sickly looking man with grizzled hair, and pale, deeply lined face. He was fresh from Paris with a small exhibition of his pictures, which were very advanced, as Mrs. Moss privately explained to Bertha. "And he's rather bitter against Americans because they don't appreciate his work. But Joe asks: 'Why should they?' They're undemocratic--little high-keyed 'precious' bits; pictures for other artists, not real paintings, or they are unacceptable otherwise. He's a wonderful technician, though, and he'll make an exquisite sketch of you."

The Western girl-wife was completely fascinated by this small, dusky, dim, and richly colored heart of the fierce and terrible city whose material bulk alone is known to the world. To go from the crash and roar of the savage streets into this studio was like climbing from the level of the water in the Black Canon to the sunlit, gra.s.sy peaks where the Indian pink blossoms in silence. She was of the aspiring nature. She had commonly played with children older than herself. She had read books she could not understand. She had always reached upward, and here she found herself surrounded by men and women who excited her imagination as Congdon had done. They helped her forget the doubt of herself and her future, which was gnawing almost ceaselessly in her brain, and she was sorry when Moss said to her: "Come in once more, to-morrow, and see me do the real sculptor's act. No, don't look at it" (he flung a cloth over his work); "you may look at it to-morrow."

"May I see my picture?" she asked of Humiston.

He turned the easel towards her without a word.

"Good work!" cried Moss.

Mrs. Moss came from her dark corner. "I knew you'd do something exquisite."

Bertha looked at it in silence. It was as lovely in color as a flower, a dream-girl, not Bertha Haney. And at last she said: "It's fine, but it isn't me."

Humiston broke forth almost violently. "Of course it isn't you; it's the way you look to me. I never paint people as they look to themselves nor to their friends. I am painting my impression of you."

"Do you really see me like that?" she both asked and exclaimed. And at the moment she was more moving than she had ever been before, and Humiston, in a voice of anguish, cried:

"My G.o.d, why didn't I do her like that?" And he fell to coughing so violently that Bertha shuddered.

Moss defended himself. "I couldn't do her in _all_ her fine poses," he complained. "I had to select. Why didn't you do her that way yourself?"

The painter put his short-hand sketch away with a sigh. "If you venture as far as New York, I hope you and the Captain will visit my studio," he said.

With no suspicion of being pa.s.sed from hand to hand, she promised to send him her address, and said: "I'd like to see the pictures you have here."

Moss became abusive. "Now see here, Jerry, I can't let you take Mrs.

Haney to that show of yours. I'll go myself to point out their weak points."

"I know their weak points a b.l.o.o.d.y sight better than you do," answered Humiston, readily.

"If you do you don't speak of 'em."

"Why should I? You don't call out the defects of your 'hardware,' do you?"

Mrs. Moss interposed. "That's just what he does do, and it hurts trade.

I think I'll take Mrs. Haney over to see the pictures myself."

Humiston brightened. "Very well; but you must all lunch with me. You're about the only civilized people I know in this crazy town, and I need you."

"No," said Bertha. "It's our treat. You all come over and eat with us."

Haney, who had been keeping in the background, now came forward. "I second that motion," he heartily said. "We don't get a chance every day to feed a bunch of artists."

"You can have that pleasure any day here," said Moss. "Our noses are always over the bars, waiting."

When she emerged from the gallery an hour later Bertha enjoyed an exalted sense of having been carried through some upper, serener world, where business, politics, and fashion had little place. It was "only a dip," as Mrs. Moss said--just to show the way; but it set the girl's brain astir with half-formed, disconnected aspirations. Only as she re-entered the hotel (the centre of obsequious servants) did she become again the wife of Marshall Haney, and Mrs. Moss, noting the eager attention of the waiters, was amazed and delighted at the look of calm command which came over the girl's face.

"Art is fine and sweet as a side issue," said Julia to her husband, as they were going in, "but money makes the porters jump."

Bertha, composed and serious, seated her guests at a table which had been reserved for her near a window and charmingly decorated with flowers. She put Moss at her left hand and Humiston at her right, and as the Eastern man settled into place, he said: "Really, now, this isn't so bad." His experienced eye had noted the swift flocking of the waiters, and with cynical amus.e.m.e.nt he commented upon it. "These people must _smell_ of money!" and in his heart acknowledged that he and Moss were not so very different from the servitors, after all. "They're out for tens, we're after thousands; that's the main point of difference."

Bertha, once the cutlets were served, was able to give attention to the talk--Humiston's talk (he was celebrated as a monologist), for he had resumed the discussion into which he and Moss had fallen. "I don't believe in helping people to study art. I don't believe in charity. This interfering with the laws of the universe that kill off the crippled and the weakly is pure sentimentalism that will fill the world with deformed, diseased, and incapable persons."

"You're a vile reactionary!" cried Moss.

"I am not--I'm for the future. I want to see the world full of beauty."

"Physical beauty?"

"Yes, physical beauty. I want to see vice and crime and crooked limbs and low brows die out--not perpetuated. I believe in educating the people to the lovely in line and color."

As he pursued this line of inexorable argument Bertha looked at him in wonder. Did he mean what he said? His burning eyes seemed sincere--and yet he did not fail to accept a second helping of the mushrooms. There was power in the man. He pushed the walls of her intellectual world very wide apart. He came from a strange, chaotic region--from a land where ordinary modes and motives seemed lost or perverted. He took a delight in shocking them all. Morality was a convention--a hypocritic agreement on the part of the few to reserve freedom to themselves at the expense of the many. "Art is impossible to little people, to those who starve the big side of their nature, for fear of Mrs. Grundy. Look at the real people--Rachel, Wagner, Turner, Bernhardt, and a thousand others. Were they bound by the marriage laws? What will these crowds of tiny men and petty women do who come from the country parlors and corn-shocks of the West? They will puddle around a little while, paint and muddle a few petty things, then marry and go back to the ironing-board and the furrow where they belong. What's the matter with American art? It's too cursed normal, that's what. It's too neat and sweet and restrained--no license, no "go" to it. What's the matter with you, to be personal?"

"Too well balanced."

"Precisely. You _talk_ like a man of power, but model like a cursed niggling prude. You're bitten with the new madness. You're the Bryan of art. 'The dear people' is your cry. d.a.m.n the people! They don't know a good thing when they see it. Why consider the millions? Consider the few, those who have the taste and the dollars. That's the way all the big men of the past had to do. Look at Rubens and Michael Angelo and t.i.tian--all the big bunch; they were all frank, gross feeders, lovers of beauty, defiant of conventions."

He had forgotten where he sat, but he was not neglecting his hostess. He took a satanic satisfaction in seeing her lovely eyes widen and glow as he went on. Subtly flattering her by including her among the very few who could understand his ideals, he seemed to draw her apart to his side--appealing to her for support against the coa.r.s.e and foolish hosts represented by the Mosses, while Marshall Haney sat in a kind of stupor, his eyes alone speaking, as if to ask: "What the divil is the little man with the cough so hot about?"

Moss, accustomed to Humiston's savage diatribes, roared out objections or laughed him to scorn, while Mrs. Moss tried her best to turn the mad artist's mind upon more suitable subjects. He had been deeply hurt and financially distressed by the failure of his exhibits in Pittsburg and Chicago, and was now taking it out on his friends. His pa.s.sion, his bitter, vengeful cry against the ignorant ma.s.ses of the world was something Bertha had read about, but never felt; but she quivered now with the half-disclosed fury of the disappointed austere soul.

Could it be possible that this savage man, so worn and ill, had painted those dim, vague pictures of flower-like girls whose limbs were involved in blossoming vines?

He concluded at last: "The only place in the world to-day for an artist is Paris. In no other city can he live his own life in frank fulness, and find patrons who see the subtlest meaning of a line."

Bertha was tired of all this--mentally weary and confused; and she felt very grateful to Mrs. Moss, who came to the rescue the moment Humiston paused.

"There, Mrs. Haney, that is the end of Professor Jerry Sp.o.o.pend.y.k.e's lecture on the undesirability of America as a place of residence--_for him_. Of course, he don't mind selling his pictures just to enlighten our night of ignorance, but as for going to Sunday-school or keeping the decalogue, that's our job."

Humiston had the grace to smile. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Haney, I have been a fool. But that monkey over there--Joe Moss--provoked me with his accursed heresies about the democracy of art. Art has no democracy, and democracy will never have an art--"

"There, there!" warned Moss, "you said all that before."

The painter wrenched himself away and turned to Bertha. "You _are_ coming to New York, Mrs. Haney?"

"I don't know," she said. "We may."

"If you do, don't fail to let me know. I would like to see you."

"All right," said Bertha, "I'll send you a line." And her frank smile made him sorry to say good-bye even for the day.

As Mart was going up the elevator he sighed and said: "It takes all kinds of people to make up a world--Mr. Hummockstone is wan of the t'others. He has a grouch agin the universe. Sure but he's been housin'