Crucial Instances by Edith Wharton

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On the way home she asked when he meant to see Mrs. Davant.

His answer surprised her. "Does she know we're here?"

"Not unless you've sent her word," said Claudia, with a touch of harmless
irony.

"That's all right, then," he returned simply. "I want to wait and look
about a day or two longer. She'd want us to go sight-seeing with her; and
I'd rather get my impressions alone."

The next two days were hampered by the necessity of eluding Mrs. Davant.
Claudia, under different circumstances, would have scrupled to share in
this somewhat shabby conspiracy; but she found herself in a state of
suspended judgment, wherein her husband's treatment of Mrs. Davant became
for the moment merely a clue to larger meanings.

They had been four days in Paris when Claudia, returning one afternoon from
a parenthetical excursion to the Rue de la Paix, was confronted on her
threshold by the reproachful figure of their benefactress. It was not to
her, however, that Mrs. Davant's reproaches were addressed. Keniston, it
appeared, had borne the brunt of them; for he stood leaning against the
mantelpiece of their modest _salon_ in that attitude of convicted
negligence when, if ever, a man is glad to take refuge behind his wife.

Claudia had however no immediate intention of affording him such shelter.
She wanted to observe and wait.

"He's too impossible!" cried Mrs. Davant, sweeping her at once into the
central current of her grievance.

Claudia looked from one to the other.

"For not going to see you?"

"For not going to see his pictures!" cried the other nobly.

Claudia colored and Keniston shifted his position uneasily.

"I can't make her understand," he said, turning to his wife.

"I don't care about myself!" Mrs. Davant interjected.

"_I_ do, then; it's the only thing I do care about," he hurriedly
protested. "I meant to go at once--to write--Claudia wanted to go, but I
wouldn't let her." He looked helplessly about the pleasant red-curtained
room, which was rapidly burning itself into Claudia's consciousness as a
visible extension of Mrs. Davant's claims.

"I can't explain," he broke off.

Mrs. Davant in turn addressed herself to Claudia.

"People think it's so odd," she complained. "So many of the artists
here are anxious to meet him; they've all been so charming about the
pictures; and several of our American friends have come over from London
expressly for the exhibition. I told every one that he would be here
for the opening--there was a private view, you know--and they were so
disappointed--they wanted to give him an ovation; and I didn't know what
to say. What _am_ I to say?" she abruptly ended.

"There's nothing to say," said Keniston slowly.

"But the exhibition closes the day after to-morrow."

"Well, _I_ sha'n't close--I shall be here," he declared with an effort
at playfulness. "If they want to see me--all these people you're kind
enough to mention--won't there be other chances?"

"But I wanted them to see you _among_ your pictures--to hear you talk
about them, explain them in that wonderful way. I wanted you to interpret
each other, as Professor Wildmarsh says!"

"Oh, hang Professor Wildmarsh!" said Keniston, softening the commination
with a smile. "If my pictures are good for anything they oughtn't to need
explaining."

Mrs. Davant stared. "But I thought that was what made them so interesting!"
she exclaimed.

Keniston looked down. "Perhaps it was," he murmured.

There was an awkward silence, which Claudia broke by saying, with a glance
at her husband: "But if the exhibition is to remain open to-morrow, could
we not meet you there? And perhaps you could send word to some of our
friends."

Mrs. Davant brightened like a child whose broken toy is glued together.
"Oh, _do_ make him!" she implored. "I'll ask them to come in the
afternoon--we'll make it into a little tea--a _five o'clock_. I'll
send word at once to everybody!" She gathered up her beruffled boa and
sunshade, settling her plumage like a reassured bird. "It will be too
lovely!" she ended in a self-consoling murmur.

But in the doorway a new doubt assailed her. "You won't fail me?" she said,
turning plaintively to Keniston. "You'll make him come, Mrs. Keniston?"

"I'll bring him!" Claudia promised.

IV

When, the next morning, she appeared equipped for their customary ramble,
her husband surprised her by announcing that he meant to stay at home.

"The fact is I'm rather surfeited," he said, smiling. "I suppose my
appetite isn't equal to such a plethora. I think I'll write some letters
and join you somewhere later."

She detected the wish to be alone and responded to it with her usual
readiness.

"I shall sink to my proper level and buy a bonnet, then," she said. "I
haven't had time to take the edge off that appetite."

They agreed to meet at the Hotel Cluny at mid-day, and she set out alone
with a vague sense of relief. Neither she nor Keniston had made any direct
reference to Mrs. Davant's visit; but its effect was implicit in their
eagerness to avoid each other.

Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that
robs even new bonnets of their bloom; and this business despatched, she
turned aimlessly into the wide inviting brightness of the streets. Never
had she felt more isolated amid that ordered beauty which gives a social
quality to the very stones and mortar of Paris. All about her were
evidences of an artistic sensibility pervading every form of life like the
nervous structure of the huge frame--a sensibility so delicate, alert and
universal that it seemed to leave no room for obtuseness or error. In such
a medium the faculty of plastic expression must develop as unconsciously
as any organ in its normal surroundings; to be "artistic" must cease to be
an attitude and become a natural function. To Claudia the significance of
the whole vast revelation was centred in the light it shed on one tiny
spot of consciousness--the value of her husband's work. There are moments
when to the groping soul the world's accumulated experiences are but
stepping-stones across a private difficulty.

She stood hesitating on a street corner. It was barely eleven, and she had
an hour to spare before going to the Hotel Cluny. She seemed to be letting
her inclination float as it would on the cross-currents of suggestion
emanating from the brilliant complex scene before her; but suddenly, in
obedience to an impulse that she became aware of only in acting on it, she
called a cab and drove to the gallery where her husband's pictures were
exhibited.

A magnificent official in gold braid sold her a ticket and pointed the way
up the empty crimson-carpeted stairs. His duplicate, on the upper landing,
held out a catalogue with an air of recognizing the futility of the offer;
and a moment later she found herself in the long noiseless impressive room
full of velvet-covered ottomans and exotic plants. It was clear that the
public ardor on which Mrs. Davant had expatiated had spent itself earlier
in the week; for Claudia had this luxurious apartment to herself. Something
about its air of rich privacy, its diffusion of that sympathetic quality in
other countries so conspicuously absent from the public show-room, seemed
to emphasize its present emptiness. It was as though the flowers, the
carpet, the lounges, surrounded their visitor's solitary advance with
the mute assurance that they had done all they could toward making the
thing "go off," and that if they had failed it was simply for lack of
co-operation. She stood still and looked about her. The pictures struck her
instantly as odd gaps in the general harmony; it was self-evident that they
had not co-operated. They had not been pushing, aggressive, discordant:
they had merely effaced themselves. She swept a startled eye from one
familiar painting to another. The canvases were all there--and the
frames--but the miracle, the mirage of life and meaning, had vanished
like some atmospheric illusion. What was it that had happened? And had
it happened to _her_ or to the pictures? She tried to rally her
frightened thoughts; to push or coax them into a semblance of resistance;
but argument was swept off its feet by the huge rush of a single
conviction--the conviction that the pictures were bad. There was no
standing up against that: she felt herself submerged.

The stealthy fear that had been following her all these days had her by the
throat now. The great vision of beauty through which she had been moving
as one enchanted was turned to a phantasmagoria of evil mocking shapes.
She hated the past; she hated its splendor, its power, its wicked magical
vitality.... She dropped into a seat and continued to stare at the wall
before her. Gradually, as she stared, there stole out to her from the
dimmed humbled canvases a reminder of what she had once seen in them, a
spectral appeal to her faith to call them back to life. What proof had she
that her present estimate of them was less subjective than the other? The
confused impressions of the last few days were hardly to be pleaded as a
valid theory of art. How, after all, did she know that the pictures were
bad? On what suddenly acquired technical standard had she thus decided
the case against them? It seemed as though it were a standard outside of
herself, as though some unheeded inner sense were gradually making her
aware of the presence, in that empty room, of a critical intelligence that
was giving out a subtle effluence of disapproval. The fancy was so vivid
that, to shake it off, she rose and began to move about again. In the
middle of the room stood a monumental divan surmounted by a _massif_
of palms and azaleas. As Claudia's muffled wanderings carried her around
the angle of this seat, she saw that its farther side was occupied by the
figure of a man, who sat with his hands resting on his stick and his head
bowed upon them. She gave a little cry and her husband rose and faced her.

Instantly the live point of consciousness was shifted, and she became aware
that the quality of the pictures no longer mattered. It was what _he_
thought of them that counted: her life hung on that.

They looked at each other a moment in silence; such concussions are not apt
to flash into immediate speech. At length he said simply, "I didn't know
you were coming here."

She colored as though he had charged her with something underhand.

"I didn't mean to," she stammered; "but I was too early for our
appointment--"

Her word's cast a revealing glare on the situation. Neither of them looked
at the pictures; but to Claudia those unobtruding presences seemed suddenly
to press upon them and force them apart.

Keniston glanced at his watch. "It's twelve o'clock," he said. "Shall we go
on?"

V

At the door he called a cab and put her in it; then, drawing out his watch
again, he said abruptly: "I believe I'll let you go alone. I'll join you at
the hotel in time for luncheon." She wondered for a moment if he meant to
return to the gallery; but, looking back as she drove off, she saw him walk
rapidly away in the opposite direction.

The cabman had carried her half-way to the Hotel Cluny before she realized
where she was going, and cried out to him to turn home. There was an acute
irony in this mechanical prolongation of the quest of beauty. She had
had enough of it, too much of it; her one longing was to escape, to hide
herself away from its all-suffusing implacable light.

At the hotel, alone in her room, a few tears came to soften her seared
vision; but her mood was too tense to be eased by weeping. Her whole being
was centred in the longing to know what her husband thought. Their short
exchange of words had, after all, told her nothing. She had guessed a faint
resentment at her unexpected appearance; but that might merely imply a
dawning sense, on his part, of being furtively watched and criticised. She
had sometimes wondered if he was never conscious of her observation; there
were moments when it seemed to radiate from her in visible waves. Perhaps,
after all, he was aware of it, on his guard against it, as a lurking knife
behind the thick curtain of his complacency; and to-day he must have caught
the gleam of the blade.

Claudia had not reached the age when pity is the first chord to vibrate in
contact with any revelation of failure. Her one hope had been that Keniston
should be clear-eyed enough to face the truth. Whatever it turned out to
be, she wanted him to measure himself with it. But as his image rose before
her she felt a sudden half-maternal longing to thrust herself between him
and disaster. Her eagerness to see him tested by circumstances seemed now
like a cruel scientific curiosity. She saw in a flash of sympathy that he
would need her most if he fell beneath his fate.

He did not, after all, return for luncheon; and when she came up-stairs
from her solitary meal their _salon_ was still untenanted. She
permitted herself no sensational fears; for she could not, at the height of
apprehension, figure Keniston as yielding to any tragic impulse; but the
lengthening hours brought an uneasiness that was fuel to her pity. Suddenly
she heard the clock strike five. It was the hour at which they had promised
to meet Mrs. Davant at the gallery--the hour of the "ovation." Claudia
rose and went to the window, straining for a glimpse of her husband in the
crowded street. Could it be that he had forgotten her, had gone to the
gallery without her? Or had something happened--that veiled "something"
which, for the last hour, had grimly hovered on the outskirts of her mind?

She heard a hand on the door and Keniston entered. As she turned to meet
him her whole being was swept forward on a great wave of pity: she was so
sure, now, that he must know.

But he confronted her with a glance of preoccupied brightness; her first
impression was that she had never seen him so vividly, so expressively
pleased. If he needed her, it was not to bind up his wounds.

He gave her a smile which was clearly the lingering reflection of some
inner light. "I didn't mean to be so late," he said, tossing aside his hat
and the little red volume that served as a clue to his explorations. "I
turned in to the Louvre for a minute after I left you this morning, and the
place fairly swallowed me up--I couldn't get away from it. I've been there
ever since." He threw himself into a chair and glanced about for his pipe.

"It takes time," he continued musingly, "to get at them, to make out what
they're saying--the big fellows, I mean. They're not a communicative lot.
At first I couldn't make much out of their lingo--it was too different from
mine! But gradually, by picking up a hint here and there, and piecing them
together, I've begun to understand; and to-day, by Jove, I got one or two
of the old chaps by the throat and fairly turned them inside out--made them
deliver up their last drop." He lifted a brilliant eye to her. "Lord, it
was tremendous!" he declared.

He had found his pipe and was musingly filling it. Claudia waited in
silence.

"At first," he began again, "I was afraid their language was too hard for
me--that I should never quite know what they were driving at; they seemed
to cold-shoulder me, to be bent on shutting me out. But I was bound I
wouldn't be beaten, and now, to-day"--he paused a moment to strike a
match--"when I went to look at those things of mine it all came over me
in a flash. By Jove! it was as if I'd made them all into a big bonfire to
light me on my road!"

His wife was trembling with a kind of sacred terror. She had been afraid
to pray for light for him, and here he was joyfully casting his whole past
upon the pyre!

"Is there nothing left?" she faltered.

"Nothing left? There's everything!" he exulted. "Why, here I am, not much
over forty, and I've found out already--already!" He stood up and began to
move excitedly about the room. "My God! Suppose I'd never known! Suppose
I'd gone on painting things like that forever! Why, I feel like those
chaps at revivalist meetings when they get up and say they're saved! Won't
somebody please start a hymn?"

Claudia, with a tremulous joy, was letting herself go on the strong
current of his emotion; but it had not yet carried her beyond her depth,
and suddenly she felt hard ground underfoot.

"Mrs. Davant--" she exclaimed.

He stared, as though suddenly recalled from a long distance. "Mrs. Davant?"

"We were to have met her--this afternoon--now--"

"At the gallery? Oh, that's all right. I put a stop to that; I went to see
her after I left you; I explained it all to her."

"All?"

"I told her I was going to begin all over again."

Claudia's heart gave a forward bound and then sank back hopelessly.

"But the panels--?"

"That's all right too. I told her about the panels," he reassured her.

"You told her--?"

"That I can't paint them now. She doesn't understand, of course; but she's
the best little woman and she trusts me."

She could have wept for joy at his exquisite obtuseness. "But that isn't
all," she wailed. "It doesn't matter how much you've explained to her. It
doesn't do away with the fact that we're living on those panels!"

"Living on them?"

"On the money that she paid you to paint them. Isn't that what brought us
here? And--if you mean to do as you say--to begin all over again--how in
the world are we ever to pay her back?"

Her husband turned on her an inspired eye. "There's only one way that I
know of," he imperturbably declared, "and that's to stay out here till I
learn how to paint them."

"COPY"

A DIALOGUE

_Mrs. Ambrose Dale--forty, slender, still young--sits in her drawing-room
at the tea-table. The winter twilight is falling, a lamp has been lit,
there is a fire on the hearth, and the room is pleasantly dim and
flower-scented. Books are scattered everywhere--mostly with autograph
inscriptions "From the Author"--and a large portrait of_ Mrs. Dale,
_at her desk, with papers strewn about her, takes up one of the
wall-panels. Before_ Mrs. Dale _stands_ Hilda, _fair and twenty,
her hands full of letters_.

_Mrs. Dale_. Ten more applications for autographs? Isn't it strange
that people who'd blush to borrow twenty dollars don't scruple to beg for
an autograph?

_Hilda (reproachfully)_. Oh--

_Mrs. Dale_. What's the difference, pray?

_Hilda_. Only that your last autograph sold for fifty--

_Mrs. Dale (not displeased)_. Ah?--I sent for you, Hilda, because I'm
dining out to-night, and if there's nothing important to attend to among
these letters you needn't sit up for me.

_Hilda_. You don't mean to work?

_Mrs. Dale_. Perhaps; but I sha'n't need you. You'll see that my
cigarettes and coffee-machine are in place, and: that I don't have to crawl
about the floor in search of my pen-wiper? That's all. Now about these
letters--

_Hilda (impulsively)_. Oh, Mrs. Dale--

_Mrs. Dale_. Well?

_Hilda_. I'd rather sit up for you.

_Mrs. Dale_. Child, I've nothing for you to do. I shall be blocking
out the tenth chapter of _Winged Purposes_ and it won't be ready for
you till next week.

_Hilda_. It isn't that--but it's so beautiful to sit here, watching
and listening, all alone in the night, and to feel that you're in there
_(she points to the study-door)_ _creating_--._(Impulsively.)_
What do I care for sleep?

_Mrs. Dale (indulgently)_. Child--silly child!--Yes, I should have
felt so at your age--it would have been an inspiration--

_Hilda (rapt)_. It is!

_Mrs. Dale_. But you must go to bed; I must have you fresh in the
morning; for you're still at the age when one is fresh in the morning!
_(She sighs.)_ The letters? _(Abruptly.)_ Do you take notes of
what you feel, Hilda--here, all alone in the night, as you say?

_Hilda (shyly)_. I have--

_Mrs. Dale (smiling)_. For the diary?

_Hilda (nods and blushes)_.

_Mrs. Dale (caressingly)_. Goose!--Well, to business. What is there?

_Hilda_. Nothing important, except a letter from Stroud & Fayerweather
to say that the question of the royalty on _Pomegranate Seed_ has been
settled in your favor. The English publishers of _Immolation_ write
to consult you about a six-shilling edition; Olafson, the Copenhagen
publisher, applies for permission to bring out a Danish translation of
_The Idol's Feet_; and the editor of the _Semaphore_ wants a new
serial--I think that's all; except that _Woman's Sphere_ and _The
Droplight_ ask for interviews--with photographs--

_Mrs. Dale_. The same old story! I'm so toed of it all. _(To
herself, in an undertone.)_ But how should I feel if it all stopped?
_(The servant brings in a card.)_

_Mrs. Dale (reading it)_. Is it possible? Paul Ventnor? _(To the
servant.)_ Show Mr. Ventnor up. _(To herself.)_ Paul Ventnor!

_Hilda (breathless)_. Oh, Mrs. Dale--_the_ Mr. Ventnor?

_Mrs. Dale (smiling)_. I fancy there's only one.

_Hilda_. The great, great poet? _(Irresolute.)_ No, I don't
dare--

_Mrs. Dale (with a tinge of impatience)_. What?

_Hilda (fervently)_. Ask you--if I might--oh, here in this corner,
where he can't possibly notice me--stay just a moment? Just to see him come
in? To see the meeting between you--the greatest novelist and the greatest
poet of the age? Oh, it's too much to ask! It's an historic moment.

_Mrs. Dale_. Why, I suppose it is. I hadn't thought of it in that
light. Well _(smiling)_, for the diary--

_Hilda_. Oh, thank you, _thank you_! I'll be off the very instant
I've heard him speak.

_Mrs. Dale_. The very instant, mind. _(She rises, looks at herself
in the glass, smooths her hair, sits down again, and rattles the
tea-caddy.)_ Isn't the room very warm?--_(She looks over at her
portrait.)_ I've grown stouter since that was painted--. You'll make a
fortune out of that diary, Hilda--

_Hilda (modestly)_. Four publishers have applied to me already--

_The Servant (announces)_. Mr. Paul Ventnor.

_(Tall, nearing fifty, with an incipient stoutness buttoned into a
masterly frock-coat, Ventnor drops his glass and advances vaguely, with a
short-sighted stare.)_

_Ventnor_. Mrs. Dale?

_Mrs. Dale_. My dear friend! This is kind. _(She looks over her
shoulder at Hilda, mho vanishes through the door to the left.)_ The
papers announced your arrival, but I hardly hoped--

_Ventnor (whose short-sighted stare is seen to conceal a deeper
embarrassment)_. You hadn't forgotten me, then?

_Mrs. Dale_. Delicious! Do _you_ forget that you're public
property?

_Ventnor_. Forgotten, I mean, that we were old friends?

_Mrs. Dale_. Such old friends! May I remind you that it's nearly
twenty years since we've met? Or do you find cold reminiscences
indigestible?

_Ventnor_. On the contrary, I've come to ask you for a dish of
them--we'll warm them up together. You're my first visit.

_Mrs. Dale_. How perfect of you! So few men visit their women friends
in chronological order; or at least they generally do it the other way
round, beginning with the present day and working back--if there's time--to
prehistoric woman.

_Ventnor_. But when prehistoric woman has become historic woman--?

_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, it's the reflection of my glory that has guided you
here, then?

_Ventnor_. It's a spirit in my feet that has led me, at the first
opportunity, to the most delightful spot I know.

_Mrs. Dale_. Oh, the first opportunity--!

_Ventnor_. I might have seen you very often before; but never just in
the right way.

_Mrs. Dale_. Is this the right way?

_Ventnor_. It depends on you to make it so.

_Mrs. Dale_. What a responsibility! What shall I do?

_Ventnor_. Talk to me--make me think you're a little glad to see me;
give me some tea and a cigarette; and say you're out to everyone else.

_Mrs. Dale_. Is that all? _(She hands him a cup of tea.)_ The
cigarettes are at your elbow--. And do you think I shouldn't have been glad
to see you before?

_Ventnor_. No; I think I should have been too glad to see you.

_Mrs. Dale_. Dear me, what precautions! I hope you always wear
goloshes when it looks like rain and never by any chance expose yourself
to a draught. But I had an idea that poets courted the emotions--

_Ventnor_. Do novelists?

_Mrs. Dale_. If you ask _me_--on paper!

_Ventnor_. Just so; that's safest. My best things about the sea have
been written on shore. _(He looks at her thoughtfully.)_ But it
wouldn't have suited us in the old days, would it?

_Mrs. Dale (sighing)_. When we were real people!

_Ventnor_. Real people?

_Mrs. Dale_. Are _you_, now? I died years ago. What you see
before you is a figment of the reporter's brain--a monster manufactured out
of newspaper paragraphs, with ink in its veins. A keen sense of copyright
is _my_ nearest approach to an emotion.

_Ventnor (sighing)_. Ah, well, yes--as you say, we're public property.

_Mrs. Dale_. If one shared equally with the public! But the last shred
of my identity is gone.

_Ventnor_. Most people would be glad to part with theirs on such
terms. I have followed your work with immense interest. _Immolation_
is a masterpiece. I read it last summer when it first came out.

_Mrs. Dale (with a shade less warmth)_. _Immolation_ has been out
three years.

_Ventnor_. Oh, by Jove--no? Surely not--But one is so overwhelmed--one
loses count. (_Reproachfully_.) Why have you never sent me your books?

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