The Collected Stories of William Humphrey (16 page)

“Dave!” cried James. “I thought it was you. Well, this is luck. Hello! Haven't seen you since the big news. Congratulations.” He nudged Rachel.

“Yes! Congratulations!” she said.

“Yes, indeed,” said James. “The Carnegie International! How does it feel to be world-famous?”

Peterson wound his watch, smiled uncomfortably and crossed and recrossed his legs, trying, as James knew, to keep his eyes off James for fear of bringing attention to his clothes.

“It must have come like a bolt from the blue,” James went on, growing louder.

Peterson smiled agreeably. But he did not think it had come quite that unexpectedly, to him or to the world.

“Well, well, well,” said James. “Old David Peterson! And I knew him when. Who would ever have thought it?”

People were beginning to turn to look. Peterson grew still more uncomfortable.

“I suppose the money's spent by now,” said James. He gave a hearty laugh that made Peterson squirm. “That's not a question,” he added hurriedly. “I'm not prying.” He slapped Peterson's knee. “But you understand that, of course, Dave.” He was sickening himself with his loud, back-slapping familiarity. “Well, all things come to him who waits.”

Peterson obviously felt that he had hardly waited all
that
long. He was not so old. “How has your work been coming, James?” he asked.

“Oh! Don't ask after
my
work!”

“Don't be modest,” said Peterson. “I'm sure you've been doing fine work, as always.”

This was sincere. David Peterson had always admired James Ruggles' painting, and had put in a good word for it in places where he knew it could never be popular, even in places where he was not likely to make himself more popular by praising it. But James would never know that. James did not mind giving praise, but he hated to receive it. It never occurred to him that praise could be sincere.

He smiled, but such a savage smile that Peterson drew back, wounded. He felt he deserved some credit for being one of the very few men in Redmond who appreciated James's work.

“It must be hard now,” said James, “for you to remember the days when we …”

David Peterson remembered all too well the days when he resembled James Ruggles. He did not like to be reminded and he curled his lips to say something cutting. Then he felt ashamed. He had risen and he had a lot to be thankful for. His face relaxed. James followed all these feelings of Peterson's and he foresaw his next. The man was about to take pity on him, to offer to pull strings. James began to twitch. He stuttered, trying to find something to say quickly. “Well, how's—ah!—hmm—well, where are you—Oh! there's the chairman!” he almost shouted, and breathed a sigh of relief.

The chairman pounded the table with his gavel and when the crowd became quiet he announced that a letter had been received from the trustees of the Walter Fielding estate offering to the Redmond Gallery a fund of three thousand dollars annually to be awarded to the winners of the Redmond Exhibition.

There had never been any selection of winners in the annual exhibition. It had been simply a time to show one's work, with no jury, no prizes, no awards. The rule of the Gallery from the day of its founding had been to show everything. Anyone who lived in Redmond and who had ever painted a picture could hang it in the annual exhibition.

Now, if the Redmond Gallery wanted to accept the fund from the Fielding estate a jury would have to be chosen. It should have been done long ago, said the chairman. For, said he, the Redmond Gallery had come to have a responsibility to the country, indeed, to the world, and could not afford to hang pictures that brought laughter and ridicule to it. He threw the matter open to the floor. Two or three men got up to voice their approval. Someone put it in the form of a motion. It was quickly seconded.

“Further discussion?” asked the chairman.

“Mr. Chairman.” This voice was deeper, more authoritative than the others. Everyone turned. James was on his feet, his arms folded across his chest. The chairman's eyes grew wide with apprehension. An embarrassed silence fell on the audience and people looked avertedly at one another.

“Mr. Chairman,” said James, then turned his gaze upon the crowd. “Friends and fellow artists. At the risk of repeating what many of you have heard me say too often already—” He paused to allow them to chuckle. The silence was intense. “Well, anyway, let me say that it is indeed time that the Redmond Gallery came of age.”

A man from the audience tiptoed up to the chairman and drew him close, and as he whispered in his ear they both watched James from the corners of their eyes.

“The walls of this gallery are sacred space,” James said. “I have observed with alarm the increasing amount of that space given over in past exhibitions to the work of—well, let us speak frankly—to the ‘work' of amateurs and dabblers.”

While catching his breath James observed Sam Morris nodding in agreement.

“It begins to seem,” said James, “that everyone thinks he is a painter.”

The silence was broken by a snigger unmistakably ironical.

“The walls of the Redmond Gallery,” James was becoming passionate now, “are being taken over by retired schoolteachers, superannuated bank clerks and unemployed schizophrenics.”

He gave a laugh, which fell upon the silence with a dying ring, like a coin dropped on a counter.

“Now I have nothing against these classes of people,” he said. “Some of my best friends, you know. But I hardly think their daubs deserve to hang alongside the work of serious painters, men who have given their lives to painting. There must always be room in the Redmond Gallery for painters of different persuasions, but the painters of Redmond have suffered enough laughter and ridicule and indignity by hanging alongside the dabblings of amateurs and neurotics! And so, ladies and gentlemen, I wholeheartedly endorse the recommendation to elect a jury, and I am sure you will all follow me in supporting this much-needed reform.”

Conscious of the silence, which he took for a hushed admiration, he closed on a rising note, then lowered his gaze to the audience to receive their smiles of approval. Instead, he saw upon their faces looks of uneasiness, and embarrassment, blank stares. His smile began to give way to confusion. The silence deepened. He brought his eyes to focus upon the faces nearer him. As he stared at them and one by one they turned their eyes from him, his confusion changed to dismay. An impatient coughing, a nervous shuffling of feet, a general stir broke in upon him. His own voice hung in the room, mocking him. “The painters of Redmond have suffered enough laughter and ridicule and indignity.” Each word stung him like a lash. He was the one they wanted out! What a fool he had made of himself. He forced himself to face the audience once more. All at once there passed from face to face a frown of indignation. It had come over them that he was to blame for not having sensed their feelings without exposing them to this embarrassment.

Then he suffered the most crushing realization of all. He was not special, a solitary martyr, but only one of many they wanted out. They lumped him with all the undesirables. He raised his elbows and let them fall against his sides. He lowered himself into his chair.

“You were wonderful, James!” Rachel whispered.

When the meeting was over they left quietly and unobserved. A little way outside the Gallery James stopped and turned. “Give me those packages!” he said. “Are you trying to make me look like a fool?” Rachel handed them over and again fell two steps behind. In this way they trudged up Main Street, around the curve and down through town. When they passed the last house Rachel came up and took the packages, fell back two steps, and they walked on home.

The Ruggles had lived in each of the six shanties one passed in going to the one they lived in now. They were built for chicken houses. When the artists began coming to Redmond in the 1920s an enterprising native turned them into homes. Twenty-odd more were scattered in the woods behind the road but only three were inhabited now with any regularity, one by a trapper, one by a hermit and one by the Ruggles. When one house began decaying faster than Rachel could repair it the Ruggles moved to another. They had been living in number seven for about a year.

Whenever they moved Rachel got a bucket of paint and spent weeks prettying the place. To James it seemed she could take pride in anything. She transplanted the rose bush and lined the path to the door with colored stones. She straightened the palings of the fence and gave it a coat of whitewash, while James groaned and begged her to let him enjoy his poverty, his discomfort, instead of trying so vainly to hide it.

On opening the door one was not in the hall or the living room or the kitchen—he was in the house. The bedroom and the studio were meagerly set off with screens; the kitchen and the living room and the dining room flowed into each other. Yet nothing seemed cramped or incongruous or makeshift. One was struck by the repose of the room, the balance of light and dark, the pleasing arrangement of rich colors. Light from the windows was directed to fall upon old-looking, rare-looking things. Softly glowing, suggestive objects rested in the shadow of the corners. It was like stepping inside a Vermeer.

But the Hepplewhite chair was a fake. One had been disturbed by it on first coming in. It was handsome, though, genuine or not, so handsome that one stole further glances at it—whereupon he realized that it was never meant to pass for a Hepplewhite. It was the Ruggles improvement on the Hepplewhite design. Then there was that small hanging glowing on one wall—it turned out to be a scrap of cloth. Still, what beautiful cloth, and who else would have dared hang it there?

When one had decided that nothing was what it seemed he found that the Persian prayer rug hanging on another wall was thick, rich, old but unfaded—genuine. The plates hanging over the mantel, then—were they genuine Spode? And the Steuben glass? But by this time one no longer cared whether the things were authentic. They were real. And the realest thing was the care and taste with which they had been assembled.

Sooner or later, if one strolled about the room, he saw through a back window the outhouse, painted Chinese red, set at the edge of the woods.

It was in that bright red outhouse, ten days after the gallery meeting, that James sat thinking, “What if I were to send a picture of mine—say,
Still Life with Plaster Bust
—to Matisse? One look, and he'd see to it that I didn't stay in Redmond any longer. Or, send one to him and one to Picasso at the same time, and let them fight over the credit for discovering me.”

Rachel called him in to lunch.

While he sat at the table waiting to be served he talked half to himself, half aloud. “Of course the man who would really appreciate my work is Matisse. Hmmm. What is there to lose? A package comes from America. He opens it. He is annoyed at my presumption. But he takes one look at the picture. Suppose he didn't like it?” This James asked himself, though he did not believe for a moment that it was possible. “Well, he would send it back.” He thought about that for a moment, then decided that he could trust Matisse; he would send it back. “So what is there to lose?”

“Yes, what is there to lose?” asked Rachel. She was beside him, setting a plate of stew before him. “I heard you, James, and I think it's a perfectly wonderful idea. Why didn't you think of it before?”

The light died out of James's eyes. The hand with which he had been reflectively stroking his chin fell and he said, “For Christ's sake, Rachel! How can you be so childish!”

They ate silently. After lunch Rachel thought of a way to cheer him up. She said, “James, why don't we invite the David Petersons over this evening. It's been so long since I've had any company.” Rachel always took upon herself any longing for company.

“What!” he roared. “Invite people to this!” He waved an open palm around the room.

Rachel ran to straighten a doily under a lamp, then the lamp shade, then a picture on the wall.

“Oh, Lord!” James moaned.

Rachel darted her eyes around the room, trying to find what else offended him. She stooped and smoothed out the rug, she adjusted a chair.

“Oh, oh, oh,” James moaned.

Rachel gave up. She stood in the center of the room, her arms hanging helplessly. James gave her such a look. “You think I'm complaining about your housekeeping!” He rolled his eyes beseechingly. Then he began an elaborate exercise of self-control. “I must be charitable,” he said. “I must keep in mind your background. How could you be expected to know what's wrong here? Even this is better than anything you ever knew. In fact, I expect you think you've risen quite a ways in the world. And indeed you have, you have.”

So now, instead of the room, Rachel tried to straighten herself. She smoothed her hips, patted her bosom, her hair.

“Guests!” he cried. “What do you know about entertaining? You'd serve them lung stew, I suppose. But first a
vorspice
—a little
lox
maybe? Jesus! When I think of my Aunt Patience Summerfield! James Russell Lowell called her the most charming hostess in the state of Massachusetts. Not that you ever heard of him. There was a woman who knew how to entertain. What would she say to see me today? No wonder I can't get anywhere in the world! Suppose I ever did make a name for myself—could I invite anyone to this? I don't know where I get the courage to keep trying. Guests! You!”

Rachel's anguish during these harangues was not for herself but for him. She knew how tormented and disheartened he was to make him say these things. She knew James did not care one way or another about Jews. He had invented his anti-Semitism to lacerate himself.

And that was what he was doing as he tried to look scornfully at her black hair and broad cheekbones and slanted eyes. But upon her heavy breasts and wide hips his eyes began to soften, to linger. They came to rest upon her great firm thighs.