The Verdict
I had always thought Jack Gisburn rather a cheap genius -- though a goodfellow enough -- so it was no great surprise to me to hear that, in theheight of his glory, he had dropped his painting, married a rich widow,and established himself in a villa on the Riviera. (Though I ratherthought it would have been Rome or Florence.)"The height of his glory" -- that was what the women called it. Ican hear Mrs. Gideon Thwing -- his last Chicago sitter -- deploring hisunaccountable abdication. "Of course it's going to send the value of mypicture 'way up; but I don't think of that, Mr. Rickham -- the loss toArrt is all I think of." The word, on Mrs. Thwing's lips, multiplied itsrs as though they were reflected in an endless vista of mirrors. Andit was not only the Mrs. Thwings who mourned. Had not the exquisiteHermia Croft, at the last Grafton Gallery show, stopped me beforeGisburn's "Moon-dancers" to say, with tears in her eyes: "We shall notlook upon its like again"?Well! -- even through the prism of Hermia's tears I felt able toface the fact with equanimity. Poor Jack Gisburn! The women had made him-- it was fitting that they should mourn him. Among his own sex fewerregrets were heard, and in his own trade hardly a murmur. Professionaljealousy? Perhaps. If it were, the honour of the craft was vindicated bylittle Claude Nutley, who, in all good faith, brought out in theBurlington a very handsome "obituary" on Jack -- one of those showyarticles stocked with random technicalities that I have heard (I won'tsay by whom) compared to Gisburn's painting. And so -- his resolve beingapparently irrevocable -- the discussion gradually died out, and, asMrs. Thwing had predicted, the price of "Gisburns" went up.It was not till three years later that, in the course of a fewweeks' idling on the Riviera, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder whyGisburn had given up his painting. On reflection, it really was atempting problem. To accuse his wife would have been too easy -- hisfair sitters had been denied the solace of saying that Mrs. Gisburn had"dragged him down." For Mrs. Gisburn -- as such -- had not existed tillnearly a year after Jack's resolve had been taken. It might be that hehad married her -- since he liked his ease -- because he didn't want togo on painting; but it would have been hard to prove that he had givenup his painting because he had married her.Of course, if she had not dragged him down, she had equally, asMiss Croft contended, failed to "lift him up" -- she had not led himback to the easel. To put the brush into his hand again-what a vocationfor a wife! But Mrs. Gisburn appeared to have disdained it -- and I feltit might be interesting to find out why.The desultory life of the Riviera lends itself to such purelyacademic speculations; and having, on my way to Monte Carlo, caught aglimpse of Jack's balustraded terraces between the pines, I had myselfborne thither the next day.I found the couple at tea beneath their palm-trees; and Mrs.Gisburn's welcome was so genial that, in the ensuing weeks, I claimed itfrequently. It was not that my hostess was "interesting": on that pointI could have given Miss Croft the fullest reassurance. It was justbecause she was not interesting -- if I may be pardoned the bull --that I found her so. For Jack, all his life, had been surrounded byinteresting women: they had fostered his art, it had been reared in thehot-house of their adulation. And it was therefore instructive to notewhat effect the "deadening atmosphere of mediocrity" (I quote MissCroft) was having on him.I have mentioned that Mrs. Gisburn was rich; and it was immediatelyperceptible that her husband was extracting from this circumstance adelicate but substantial satisfaction. It is, as a rule, the people whoscorn money who get most out of it; and Jack's elegant disdain of hiswife's big balance enabled him, with an appearance of perfectgood-breeding, to transmute it into objects of art and luxury. To thelatter, I must add, he remained relatively indifferent; but he wasbuying Renaissance bronzes and eighteenth-century pictures with adiscrimination that bespoke the amplest resources."Money's only excuse is to put beauty into circulation," was one ofthe axioms he laid down across the Sevres and silver of an exquisitelyappointed luncheon-table, when, on a later day, I had again run overfrom Monte Carlo; and Mrs. Gisburn, beaming on him, added for myenlightenment: "Jack is so morbidly sensitive to every form of beauty."Poor Jack! It had always been his fate to have women say suchthings of him: the fact should be set down in extenuation. What struckme now was that, for the first time, he resented the tone. I had seenhim, so often, basking under similar tributes -- was it the conjugalnote that robbed them of their savour? No -- for, oddly enough, itbecame apparent that he was fond of Mrs. Gisburn -- fond enough not tosee her absurdity. It was his own absurdity he seemed to be wincingunder -- his own attitude as an object for garlands and incense."My dear, since I've chucked painting people don't say that stuffabout me -- they say it about Victor Grindle," was his only protest, ashe rose from the table and strolled out onto the sunlit terrace.I glanced after him, struck by his last word. Victor Grindle was,in fact, becoming the man of the moment -- as Jack himself, one mightput it, had been the man of the hour. The younger artist was said tohave formed himself at my friend's feet, and I wondered if a tinge ofjealousy underlay the latter's mysterious abdication. But no -- for itwas not till after that event that the rose Dubarry drawing-rooms hadbegun to display their "Grindles."I turned to Mrs. Gisburn, who had lingered to give a lump of sugarto her spaniel in the dining-room."Why has he chucked painting?" I asked abruptly.She raised her eyebrows with a hint of good-humoured surprise."Oh, he doesn't have to now, you know; and I want him to enjoyhimself," she said quite simply.I looked about the spacious white-panelled room, with itsfamille-verte vases repeating the tones of the pale damask curtains, andits eighteenth-century pastels in delicate faded frames."Has he chucked his pictures too? I haven't seen a single one inthe house."A slight shade of constraint crossed Mrs. Gisburn's opencountenance. "It's his ridiculous modesty, you know. He says they're notfit to have about; he's sent them all away except one -- my portrait --and that I have to keep upstairs."His ridiculous modesty -- Jack's modesty about his pictures? Mycuriosity was growing like the bean-stalk. I said persuasively to myhostess: "I must really see your portrait, you know."She glanced out almost timorously at the terrace where her husband,lounging in a hooded chair, had lit a cigar and drawn the Russiandeerhound's head between his knees."Well, come while he's not looking," she said, with a laugh thattried to hide her nervousness; and I followed her between the marbleEmperors of the hall, and up the wide stairs with terracotta nymphspoised among flowers at each landing.In the dimmest corner of her boudoir, amid a profusion of delicateand distinguished objects, hung one of the familiar oval canvases, inthe inevitable garlanded frame. The mere outline of the frame called upall Gisburn's past!Mrs. Gisburn drew back the window-curtains, moved aside ajardiniere full of pink azaleas, pushed an arm-chair away, and said: "Ifyou stand here you can just manage to see it. I had it over themantel-piece, but he wouldn't let it stay."Yes -- I could just manage to see it -- the first portrait ofJack's I had ever had to strain my eyes over! Usually they had the placeof honour -- say the central panel in a pale yellow or rose Dubarrydrawing-room, or a monumental easel placed so that it took the lightthrough curtains of old Venetian point. The more modest place became thepicture better; yet, as my eyes grew accustomed to the half-light, allthe characteristic qualities came out -- all the hesitations disguisedas audacities, the tricks of prestidigitation by which, with suchconsummate skill, he managed to divert attention from the real businessof the picture to some pretty irrelevance of detail. Mrs. Gisburn,presenting a neutral surface to work on -- forming, as it were, soinevitably the background of her own picture -- had lent herself in anunusual degree to the display of this false virtuosity. The picture wasone of Jack's "strongest," as his admirers would have put it -- itrepresented, on his part, a swelling of muscles, a congesting of veins,a balancing, straddling and straining, that reminded one of thecircus-clown's ironic efforts to lift a feather. It met, in short, atevery point the demand of lovely woman to be painted "strongly" becauseshe was tired of being painted "sweetly" -- and yet not to lose an atomof the sweetness."It's the last he painted, you know," Mrs. Gisburn said withpardonable pride. "The last but one," she corrected herself-"but theother doesn't count, because he destroyed it.""Destroyed it?" I was about to follow up this clue when I heard afootstep and saw Jack himself on the threshold.As he stood there, his hands in the pockets of his velveteen coat,the thin brown waves of hair pushed back from his white forehead, hislean sunburnt cheeks furrowed by a smile that lifted the tips of aself-confident moustache, I felt to what a degree he had the samequality as his pictures -- the quality of looking cleverer than he was.His wife glanced at him deprecatingly, but his eyes travelled pasther to the portrait."Mr. Rickham wanted to see it," she began, as if excusing herself.He shrugged his shoulders, still smiling."Oh, Rickham found me out long ago," he said lightly; then, passinghis arm through mine: "Come and see the rest of the house."He showed it to me with a kind of naive suburban pride: thebath-rooms, the speaking-tubes, the dress-closets, the trouserpresses --all the complex simplifications of the millionaire's domestic economy.And whenever my wonder paid the expected tribute he said, throwing outhis chest a little: "Yes, I really don't see how people manage to livewithout that."Well -- it was just the end one might have foreseen for him. Onlyhe was, through it all and in spite of it all -- as he had been through,and in spite of, his pictures -- so handsome, so charming, so disarming,that one longed to cry out: "Be dissatisfied with your leisure!" as onceone had longed to say: "Be dissatisfied with your work!"But, with the cry on my lips, my diagnosis suffered an unexpectedcheck."This is my own lair," he said, leading me into a dark plain roomat the end of the florid vista. It was square and brown and leathery: no"effects"; no bric-a-brac, none of the air of posing for reproduction ina picture weekly -- above all, no least sign of ever having been used asa studio.The fact brought home to me the absolute finality of Jack's breakwith his old life."Don't you ever dabble with paint any more?" I asked, still lookingabout for a trace of such activity."Never," he said briefly."Or water-colour -- or etching?"His confident eyes grew dim, and his cheeks paled a little undertheir handsome sunburn."Never think of it, my dear fellow -- any more than if I'd nevertouched a brush."And his tone told me in a flash that he never thought of anythingelse.I moved away, instinctively embarrassed by my unexpected discovery;and as I turned, my eye fell on a small picture above the mantel-piece-- the only object breaking the plain oak panelling of the room."Oh, by Jove!" I said.It was a sketch of a donkey -- an old tired donkey, standing in therain under a wall."By Jove -- a Stroud!" I cried.He was silent; but I felt him close behind me, breathing a littlequickly."What a wonder! Made with a dozen lines -- but on everlastingfoundations. You lucky chap, where did you get it?"He answered slowly: "Mrs. Stroud gave it to me.""Ah -- I didn't know you even knew the Strouds. He was such aninflexible hermit.""I didn't -- till after. . . . She sent for me to paint him when hewas dead.""When he was dead? You?"I must have let a little too much amazement escape through mysurprise, for he answered with a deprecating laugh: "Yes -- she's anawful simpleton, you know, Mrs. Stroud. Her only idea was to have himdone by a fashionable painter -- ah, poor Stroud! She thought it thesurest way of proclaiming his greatness -- of forcing it on a purblindpublic. And at the moment I was the fashionable painter.""Ah, poor Stroud -- as you say. Was that his history?""That was his history. She believed in him, gloried in him -- orthought she did. But she couldn't bear not to have all the drawing-roomswith her. She couldn't bear the fact that, on varnishing days, one couldalways get near enough to see his pictures. Poor woman! She's just afragment groping for other fragments. Stroud is the only whole I everknew.""You ever knew? But you just said --"Gisburn had a curious smile in his eyes."Oh, I knew him, and he knew me -- only it happened after he wasdead."I dropped my voice instinctively. "When she sent for you?""Yes -- quite insensible to the irony. She wanted himvindicated-and by me!"He laughed again, and threw back his head to look up at the sketchof the donkey. "There were days when I couldn't look at that thing --couldn't face it. But I forced myself to put it here; and now it's curedme -- cured me. That's the reason why I don't dabble any more, my dearRickham; or rather Stroud himself is the reason."For the first time my idle curiosity about my companion turned intoa serious desire to understand him better."I wish you'd tell me how it happened," I said.He stood looking up at the sketch, and twirling between his fingersa cigarette he had forgotten to light. Suddenly he turned toward me."I'd rather like to tell you -- because I've always suspected youof loathing my work."I made a deprecating gesture, which he negatived with agoodhumoured shrug."Oh, I didn't care a straw when I believed in myself -- and nowit's an added tie between us!"He laughed slightly, without bitterness, and pushed one of the deeparm-chairs forward. "There: make yourself comfortable -- and here arethe cigars you like."He placed them at my elbow and continued to wander up and down theroom, stopping now and then beneath the picture."How it happened? I can tell you in five minutes -- and it didn'ttake much longer to happen. . . . I can remember now how surprised andpleased I was when I got Mrs. Stroud's note. Of course, deep down, I hadalways felt there was no one like him-only I had gone with the stream,echoed the usual platitudes about him, till I half got to think he was afailure, one of the kind that are left behind. By Jove, and he wasleft behind-because he had come to stay! The rest of us had to letourselves be swept along or go under, but he was high above the current-- on everlasting foundations, as you say."Well, I went off to the house in my most egregious mood -- rathermoved, Lord forgive me, at the pathos of poor Stroud's career of failurebeing crowned by the glory of my painting him! Of course I meant to dothe picture for nothing -- I told Mrs. Stroud so when she began tostammer something about her poverty. I remember getting off a prodigiousphrase about the honour being mine -- oh, I was princely, my dearRickham! I was posing to myself like one of my own sitters."Then I was taken up and left alone with him. I had sent all mytraps in advance, and I had only to set up the easel and get to work. Hehad been dead only twenty-four hours, and he died suddenly, of heartdisease, so that there had been no preliminary work of destruction --his face was clear and untouched. I had met him once or twice, yearsbefore, and thought him insignificant and dingy. Now I saw that he wassuperb."I was glad at first, with a merely aesthetic satisfaction: glad tohave my hand on such a 'subject.' Then his strange lifelikeness began toaffect me queerly -- as I blocked the head in I felt as if he werewatching me do it. The sensation was followed by the thought: if hewere watching me, what would he say to my way of working? My strokesbegan to go a little wild -- I felt nervous and uncertain."Once, when I looked up, I seemed to see a smile behind his closegrayish beard -- as if he had the secret, and were amusing himself byholding it back from me. That exasperated me still more. The secret?Why, I had a secret worth twenty of his! I dashed at the canvasfuriously, and tried some of my bravura tricks. But they failed me, theycrumbled. I saw that he wasn't watching the showy bits -- I couldn'tdistract his attention; he just kept his eyes on the hard passagesbetween. Those were the ones I had always shirked, or covered up withsome lying paint. And how he saw through my lies!"I looked up again, and caught sight of that sketch of the donkeyhanging on the wall near his bed. His wife told me afterward it was thelast thing he had done -- just a note taken with a shaking hand, when hewas down in Devonshire recovering from a previous heart attack. Just anote! But it tells his whole history. There are years of patientscornful persistence in every line. A man who had swum with the currentcould never have learned that mighty up-stream stroke. . . ."I turned back to my work, and went on groping and muddling; then Ilooked at the donkey again. I saw that, when Stroud laid in the firststroke, he knew just what the end would be. He had possessed hissubject, absorbed it, recreated it. When had I done that with any of mythings? They hadn't been born of me -- I had just adopted them. . . ."Hang it, Rickham, with that face watching me I couldn't do anotherstroke. The plain truth was, I didn't know where to put it -- I hadnever known. Only, with my sitters and my public, a showy splash ofcolour covered up the fact -- I just threw paint into their faces. . . .Well, paint was the one medium those dead eyes could see through -- seestraight to the tottering foundations underneath. Don't you know how, intalking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time notwhat one wants to but what one can? Well -- that was the way I painted;and as he lay there and watched me, the thing they called my 'technique'collapsed like a house of cards. He didn't sneer, you understand, poorStroud -- he just lay there quietly watching, and on his lips, throughthe gray beard, I seemed to hear the question: 'Are you sure you knowwhere you're coming out?'"If I could have painted that face, with that question on it, Ishould have done a great thing. The next greatest thing was to see thatI couldn't -- and that grace was given me. But, oh, at that minute,Rickham, was there anything on earth I wouldn't have given to haveStroud alive before me, and to hear him say: 'It's not too late -- I'llshow you how'?"It was too late -- it would have been, even if he'd been alive.I packed up my traps, and went down and told Mrs. Stroud. Of course Ididn't tell her that -- it would have been Greek to her. I simply saidI couldn't paint him, that I was too moved. She rather liked the idea --she's so romantic! It was that that made her give me the donkey. But shewas terribly upset at not getting the portrait -- she did so want him'done' by some one showy! At first I was afraid she wouldn't let me off-- and at my wits' end I suggested Grindle. Yes, it was I who startedGrindle: I told Mrs. Stroud he was the 'coming' man, and she toldsomebody else, and so it got to be true. . . . And he painted Stroudwithout wincing; and she hung the picture among her husband's things. .. ."He flung himself down in the arm-chair near mine, laid back hishead, and clasping his arms beneath it, looked up at the picture abovethe chimney-piece."I like to fancy that Stroud himself would have given it to me, ifhe'd been able to say what he thought that day."And, in answer to a question I put half-mechanically --"Beginagain?" he flashed out. "When the one thing that brings me anywhere nearhim is that I knew enough to leave off?"He stood up and laid his hand on my shoulder with a laugh. "Onlythe irony of it is that I am still painting -- since Grindle's doingit for me! The Strouds stand alone, and happen once -- but there's noexterminating our kind of art."
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