III
STANWELL, while seeing Caspar through the attack which had been the
cause of his sister's arrival, had struck up a friendship with the
young doctor who climbed the patient's seven flights with
unremitting fidelity. The two, since then, had continued to exchange
confidences regarding the sculptor's health, and Stanwell, anxious
to waylay the doctor after his visit, left the studio door ajar, and
went out when he heard a sound of leave-taking across the landing.
But it appeared that the doctor had just come, and that it was
Mungold who was making his adieux.
The latter at once assumed that Stanwell had been on the alert for
him, and met the supposed advance by affably inviting himself into
the studio.
"May I come and take a look around, my dear fellow? I have been
meaning to drop in for an age--" Mungold always spoke with a girlish
emphasis and effusiveness--"but I have been so busy getting up Mrs.
Van Orley's tableaux--English eighteenth century portraits, you
know--that really, what with that and my sittings, I've hardly had
time to think. And then you know you owe me about a dozen visits!
But you're a savage--you don't pay visits. You stay here and
_piocher_--which is wiser, as the results prove. Ah, you're very
strong--immensely strong!" He paused in the middle of the studio,
glancing about a little apprehensively, as though he thought the
stored energy of the pictures might result in an explosion. "Very
original--very striking--ah, Miss Arran! A powerful head;
but--excuse the suggestion--isn't there just the least little lack
of sweetness? You don't think she has the sweet type? Perhaps
not--but could she be so lovely if she were not intensely feminine?
Just at present, though, she is not looking her best--she is
horribly tired. I am afraid there is very little money left--and
poor dear Caspar is so impossible: he won't hear of a loan.
Otherwise I should be most happy--. But I came just now to propose a
piece of work--in fact to give him an order. Mrs. Archer Millington
has built a new ball-room, as I daresay you may have seen in the
papers, and she has been kind enough to ask me for some hints--oh,
merely as a friend: I don't presume to do more than advise. But her
decorator wants to do something with Cupids--something light and
playful, you understand. And so I ventured to say that I knew a very
clever sculptor--well, I _do_ believe Caspar has talent--latent
talent, you know--and at any rate a job of that sort would be a big
lift for him. At least I thought he would regard it so; but you
should have heard him when I showed him the decorator's sketch. He
asked me what the Cupids were to be done in--lard? And if I thought
he had had his training at a confectioner's? And I don't know what
more besides--but he worked himself up to such a degree that he
brought on a frightful fit of coughing, and Miss Arran, I'm afraid,
was rather annoyed with me when she came in, though I'm sure an
order from Mrs. Archer Millington is not a thing that would annoy
most people!"
Mr. Mungold paused, breathless with the rehearsal of his wrongs, and
Stanwell said with a smile: "You know poor Caspar is terribly stiff
on the purity of the artist's aim."
"The artist's aim?" Mr. Mungold stared. "What is the artist's aim
but to please--isn't that the purpose of all true art? But his
theories are so extravagant. I really don't know what I shall say to
Mrs. Millington--she is not used to being refused. I suppose I had
better put it on the ground of ill-health." The artist glanced at
his handsome repeater. "Dear me, I promised to be at Mrs. Van
Orley's before twelve o'clock. We are to settle about the curtain
before luncheon. My dear fellow, it has been a privilege to see your
work. By the way, you have never done any modelling, I suppose?
You're so extraordinarily versatile--I didn't know whether you might
care to undertake the Cupids yourself."
Stanwell had to wait a long time for the doctor; and when the latter
came out he looked grave. Worse? No, he couldn't say that Caspar was
worse--but then he wasn't any better. There was nothing mortal the
matter, but the question was how long he could hold out. It was the
kind of case where there is no use in drugs--he had just scribbled a
prescription to quiet Miss Arran.
"It's the cold, I suppose," Stanwell groaned. "He ought to be
shipped off to Florida."
The doctor made a negative gesture. "Florida be hanged! What he
wants is to sell his group. That would set him up quicker than
sitting on the equator."
"Sell his group?" Stanwell echoed. "But he's so indifferent to
recognition--he believes in himself so thoroughly. I thought at
first he would be hard hit when the Exhibition Committee refused it,
but he seems to regard that as another proof of its superiority."
His visitor turned on him the penetrating eye of the confessor.
"Indifferent to recognition? He's eating his heart out for it. Can't
you see that all that talk is just so much whistling to keep his
courage up? The name of his disease is failure--and I can't write
the prescription that will cure that complaint. But if somebody
would come along and take a fancy to those two naked parties who are
breaking each other's heads, we'd have Mr. Caspar putting on a pound
a day."
The truth of this diagnosis became suddenly vivid to Stanwell. How
dull of him not to have seen before that it was not cold or
privation which was killing Caspar--not anxiety for his sister's
future, nor the ache of watching her daily struggle--but simply the
cankering thought that he might die before he had made himself
known! It was his vanity that was starving to death, and all
Mungold's hampers could not appease that hunger. Stanwell was not
shocked by the discovery--he was only the more sorry for the little
man, who was, after all, denied that solace of self-sufficiency
which his talk so noisily pro- claimed. His lot seemed hard enough
when Stanwell had pictured him as buoyed up by the scorn of public
opinion--it became tragic if he was denied that support. The artist
wondered if Kate had guessed her brother's secret, or if she were
still the dupe of his stoicism. Stanwell was sure that the sculptor
would take no one into his confidence, and least of all his sister,
whose faith in his artistic independence was the chief prop of that
tottering pose. Kate's penetration was not great, and Stanwell
recalled the incredulous smile with which she had heard him defend
poor Mungold's "sincerity" against Caspar's assaults; but she had
the insight of the heart, and where her brother's happiness was
concerned she might have seen deeper than any of them. It was this
last consideration which took the strongest hold on Stanwell--he
felt Caspar's sufferings chiefly through the thought of his sister's
possible disillusionment.
