Crucial Instances

Mrs. Davant glanced reverentially about the studio.  “I have always said,” she murmured, “that they ought to be seen in Europe.”

Mrs. Davant was young, credulous and emotionally extravagant:  she reminded Claudia of her earlier self—­the self that, ten years before, had first set an awestruck foot on that very threshold.

“Not for his sake,” Mrs. Davant continued, “but for Europe’s.”

Claudia smiled.  She was glad that her husband’s pictures were to be exhibited in Paris.  She concurred in Mrs. Davant’s view of the importance of the event; but she thought her visitor’s way of putting the case a little overcharged.  Ten years spent in an atmosphere of Keniston-worship had insensibly developed in Claudia a preference for moderation of speech.  She believed in her husband, of course; to believe in him, with an increasing abandonment and tenacity, had become one of the necessary laws of being; but she did not believe in his admirers.  Their faith in him was perhaps as genuine as her own; but it seemed to her less able to give an account of itself.  Some few of his appreciators doubtless measured him by their own standards; but it was difficult not to feel that in the Hillbridge circle, where rapture ran the highest, he was accepted on what was at best but an indirect valuation; and now and then she had a frightened doubt as to the independence of her own convictions.  That innate sense of relativity which even East Onondaigua had not been able to check in Claudia Day had been fostered in Mrs. Keniston by the artistic absolutism of Hillbridge, and she often wondered that her husband remained so uncritical of the quality of admiration accorded him.  Her husband’s uncritical attitude toward himself and his admirers had in fact been one of the surprises of her marriage.  That an artist should believe in his potential powers seemed to her at once the incentive and the pledge of excellence:  she knew there was no future for a hesitating talent.  What perplexed her was Keniston’s satisfaction in his achievement.  She had always imagined that the true artist must regard himself as the imperfect vehicle of the cosmic emotion—­that beneath every difficulty overcome a new one lurked, the vision widening as the scope enlarged.  To be initiated into these creative struggles, to shed on the toiler’s path the consolatory ray of faith and encouragement, had seemed the chief privilege of her marriage.  But there is something supererogatory in believing in a man obviously disposed to perform that service for himself; and Claudia’s ardor gradually spent itself against the dense surface of her husband’s complacency.  She could smile now at her vision of an intellectual communion which should admit her to the inmost precincts of his inspiration.  She had learned that the creative processes are seldom self-explanatory, and Keniston’s inarticulateness no longer discouraged her; but she could not reconcile her sense of the continuity of all high effort to his unperturbed air of finishing each picture as though he had despatched a masterpiece to posterity.  In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed herself to perceive that, if he worked slowly, it was not because he mistrusted his powers of expression, but because he had really so little to express.

“It’s for Europe,” Mrs. Davant vaguely repeated; and Claudia noticed that she was blushingly intent on tracing with the tip of her elaborate sunshade the pattern of the shabby carpet.

“It will be a revelation to them,” she went on provisionally, as though Claudia had missed her cue and left an awkward interval to fill.

Claudia had in fact a sudden sense of deficient intuition.  She felt that her visitor had something to communicate which required, on her own part, an intelligent co-operation; but what it was her insight failed to suggest.  She was, in truth, a little tired of Mrs. Davant, who was Keniston’s latest worshipper, who ordered pictures recklessly, who paid for them regally in advance, and whose gallery was, figuratively speaking, crowded with the artist’s unpainted masterpieces.  Claudia’s impatience was perhaps complicated by the uneasy sense that Mrs. Davant was too young, too rich, too inexperienced; that somehow she ought to be warned.—­Warned of what?  That some of the pictures might never be painted?  Scarcely that, since Keniston, who was scrupulous in business transactions, might be trusted not to take any material advantage of such evidence of faith.  Claudia’s impulse remained undefined.  She merely felt that she would have liked to help Mrs. Davant, and that she did not know how.

“You’ll be there to see them?” she asked, as her visitor lingered.

“In Paris?” Mrs. Davant’s blush deepened.  “We must all be there together.”

Claudia smiled.  “My husband and I mean to go abroad some day—­but I don’t see any chance of it at present.”

“But he ought to go—­you ought both to go this summer!” Mrs. Davant persisted.  “I know Professor Wildmarsh and Professor Driffert and all the other critics think that Mr. Keniston’s never having been to Europe has given his work much of its wonderful individuality, its peculiar flavor and meaning—­but now that his talent is formed, that he has full command of his means of expression,” (Claudia recognized one of Professor Driffert’s favorite formulas) “they all think he ought to see the work of the other great masters—­that he ought to visit the home of his ancestors, as Professor Wildmarsh says!” She stretched an impulsive hand to Claudia.  “You ought to let him go, Mrs. Keniston!”

Claudia accepted the admonition with the philosophy of the wife who is used to being advised on the management of her husband.  “I sha’n’t interfere with him,” she declared; and Mrs. Davant instantly caught her up with a cry of, “Oh, it’s too lovely of you to say that!” With this exclamation she left Claudia to a silent renewal of wonder.

A moment later Keniston entered:  to a mind curious in combinations it might have occurred that he had met Mrs. Davant on the door-step.  In one sense he might, for all his wife cared, have met fifty Mrs. Davants on the door-step:  it was long since Claudia had enjoyed the solace of resenting such coincidences.  Her only thought now was that her husband’s first words might not improbably explain Mrs. Davant’s last; and she waited for him to speak.

He paused with his hands in his pockets before an unfinished picture on the easel; then, as his habit was, he began to stroll touristlike from canvas to canvas, standing before each in a musing ecstasy of contemplation that no readjustment of view ever seemed to disturb.  Her eye instinctively joined his in its inspection; it was the one point where their natures merged.  Thank God, there, was no doubt about the pictures!  She was what she had always dreamed of being—­the wife of a great artist.  Keniston dropped into an armchair and filled his pipe.  “How should you like to go to Europe?” he asked.

His wife looked up quickly.  “When?”

“Now—­this spring, I mean.”  He paused to light the pipe.  “I should like to be over there while these things are being exhibited.”

Claudia was silent.

“Well?” he repeated after a moment.

“How can we afford it?” she asked.

Keniston had always scrupulously fulfilled his duty to the mother and sister whom his marriage had dislodged; and Claudia, who had the atoning temperament which seeks to pay for every happiness by making it a source of fresh obligations, had from the outset accepted his ties with an exaggerated devotion.  Any disregard of such a claim would have vulgarized her most delicate pleasures; and her husband’s sensitiveness to it in great measure extenuated the artistic obtuseness that often seemed to her like a failure of the moral sense.  His loyalty to the dull women who depended on him was, after all, compounded of finer tissues than any mere sensibility to ideal demands.

“Oh, I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” he rejoined.  “I think we might manage it.”

“At Mrs. Davant’s expense?” leaped from Claudia.  She could not tell why she had said it; some inner barrier seemed to have given way under a confused pressure of emotions.

He looked up at her with frank surprise.  “Well, she has been very jolly about it—­why not?  She has a tremendous feeling for art—­the keenest I ever knew in a woman.”  Claudia imperceptibly smiled.  “She wants me to let her pay in advance for the four panels she has ordered for the Memorial Library.  That would give us plenty of money for the trip, and my having the panels to do is another reason for my wanting to go abroad just now.”

“Another reason?”

“Yes; I’ve never worked on such a big scale.  I want to see how those old chaps did the trick; I want to measure myself with the big fellows over there.  An artist ought to, once in his life.”

She gave him a wondering look.  For the first time his words implied a sense of possible limitation; but his easy tone seemed to retract what they conceded.  What he really wanted was fresh food for his self-satisfaction:  he was like an army that moves on after exhausting the resources of the country.

Womanlike, she abandoned the general survey of the case for the consideration of a minor point.

“Are you sure you can do that kind of thing?” she asked.

“What kind of thing?”

“The panels.”

He glanced at her indulgently:  his self-confidence was too impenetrable to feel the pin-prick of such a doubt.

“Immensely sure,” he said with a smile.

“And you don’t mind taking so much money from her in advance?”

He stared.  “Why should I?  She’ll get it back—­with interest!” He laughed and drew at his pipe.  “It will be an uncommonly interesting experience.  I shouldn’t wonder if it freshened me up a bit.”

She looked at him again.  This second hint of self-distrust struck her as the sign of a quickened sensibility.  What if, after all, he was beginning to be dissatisfied with his work?  The thought filled her with a renovating sense of his sufficiency.