Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 698
Within the trees there was a quiet sound of diminished dripping; airless outdoors grew warm again and shiny leaves took rosiness from the western sun. There came a tapping upon Bailey’s door. He started, muttered at himself for doing so, and opened the door. Miss Jyre, cool in a pinkish print dress, was smiling upon him from the hall.
“I’ve come to give you a choice, Mr. Fount. We Cranfordites all eat at small tables in the big dining-room downstairs and I’ve arranged for you to sit at mine. The others at that table are only a comfortable elderly couple and one of my fellow-spinsters, a librarian — all of ’em easy to get on with. So if you feel you’d rather, you’ll hear a dinner gong pretty soon and I’ll be waiting for you in the lounge downstairs.”
“Thank you. I — —”
“Wait,” she said. “I promised you a choice; but I’m afraid it doesn’t include an escape from me. Before I came home this afternoon Mr. Rossbeke remembered he’d asked the head of the museum to dine with him to-night — our boss, you know, Mr. Horne. He’s been just as much interested and pleased by your coming to join us as the rest of us are. Mr. Rossbeke thought it might be pretty nice if you and I’d come along and have dinner with them, especially as Mr. Horne’s anxious to meet you.”
“To meet me?” Bailey looked dismayed. “I don’t think I’d better — —”
She laughed quickly. “Nobody needs to worry about meeting Mr. John Constable Horne. He’s the best old soul alive and as easy as an old shoe. He’s a terrific talker, so all that the rest of us need do is eat and listen. Besides, he said he knew your mother and she was a grand woman.”
“Yes, she was; but I’m afraid — I’m afraid I’d better not — —”
“I think you’d like it,” Helena Jyre said. “I know how you feel about meeting people. I often feel that way, myself, all jittered up and just wanting to hide.”
“You do? You — you feel that way sometimes, Miss Jyre?”
“Why, of course! Everybody does — sometimes.” She was persuasive. “We’ve all got to get used to being with people, though, don’t we? — even when at first it seems a little appalling. There’ll be only one other guest, an amusing man, Mr. Parannik, our orchestra conductor, and the food’ll be the best in town. Mr. Rossbeke’s a widower, you know. The restaurant’s on the ground floor of the apartment house where he lives, and his table will be in a sort of alcove where we can be pretty private to ourselves. Probably we’ll have coffee in his living-room upstairs. It’s only a step or so from here and really might be less bothersome than going into The Cranford’s dining-room and meeting the people at our table. Still, I said I’d brought you the choice, so it’s up to you.”
“No — I’ll — I’ll leave it to you.”
“I hoped you would! We’ll join Mr. Rossbeke. I’ll be waiting for you downstairs in ten minutes.”
“Yes — I’ll come.”
At the table in the alcove Bailey sat with his back to the main part of the restaurant; but he could hear the murmur of numerous voices behind him, and, though he knew that the diners were busy with their own concerns, he didn’t feel much protected from them. At first, when he sat down, he felt an actually quivering need of shelter even from Miss Jyre and Mr. Rossbeke, as well as from Mr. Parannik and that unformidable old personage, the Chairman of the museum’s Board of Trustees.
“Fine boy! Fine boy!” Mr. Horne had said at once. “What I’d have expected from knowing your mother — yes, and your father, too; though I never had much chance to see anything of him before they moved away. No wonder you turned out to be a painter — until the Army got you. You’ll get back to the gummy old color tubes some day, of course.”
Bailey stammered that he thought not; but Mr. Horne returned to the subject as they were finishing their jellied gumbo.
“I saw one of your landscapes reproduced somewhere two years ago, young fellow,” he said. “Looked promising. Maybe better than promising. About the age of poor Bonington when he did his best, aren’t you? Oh, yes, you’ll go back to it! Never knew of any landscape painter that quit cold, unless it was Hobbema. Of course you’ll be at it again some day. Not now, not now. Take it easy a while, what?” He laughed as if at some inner information. “Nothing to disturb you much in the way of visitors to our museum, I promise you! That uncle of yours’d be surprised, wouldn’t he?”
“You mean my — my great-uncle, sir?”
“Who else? Old Tom Oaklin, certainly. What’s an art museum for, Rossbeke?”
The Director shook his head. “Ask Helena. She’s got it all set — in her own mind.”
“Yes,” Helena Jyre said. “I think your question’s wrong, Mr. Horne. You say, ‘What’s an art museum for?’ I think you should ask, ‘For whom is an art museum?’ ”
“Oh! Oh! Always the museum!” This was Parannik. “You talk museum, museum, museum! Better ask for whom is my orchestra? I tell you they both are for avverybody, all the people — and how many take what we want to give them? Don’t answer or you are goink to distress me.”
“At that, you do better than we,” Rossbeke said. “You’ve just heard our President telling our new Assistant Curator of Paintings he won’t be bothered by many visitors to the museum. Our attendance for the whole of last month was about four hundred. Of course it was July and wartime — but four hundred out of a population of two hundred thousand — call it two hundred and fifty thousand now, with the war plants — four hundred out of something like a quarter of a million! Think of it!”
“I do,” John Horne said cheerfully. “I suggest to Mr. Fount it’s a joke on his uncle. Some people think a museum’s purpose is the preservation of works of art. All right; but as this finicky gal just said: Preserve ’em for whom? Some people think art’s for an élite; some think it’s for the general vulgar and some think it’s for both. Well, since nobody can intelligibly say, except to himself, what art is, who the devil’s entitled to decide either what or whom it’s for? Care to answer, Rossbeke?”
“No, I don’t.” Rossbeke drank cold white wine from a chilled glass. “Too hot.”
“Too hot a subject!” The old man grunted chucklingly. “People are scared to talk about art unless they know beforehand you agree with ’em — afraid they’ll get their feelings lacerated. Funny thing! We’re jumpier about our own peculiar little art tastes and opinions than about the condition of our souls. Oh, yes, me too! Disagree with me about a painter and I’ll be madder at you than if you aspersed the honor of my grandmother. Are you like that, too, Bailey Fount?”
“I suppose so, sir.”
“Why, certainly! Let’s get back to your uncle. Old Tom Oaklin didn’t give much of a damn whether or not students of art history came to dig in his museum or if a few æsthetes might wander in, either — no, nor for schoolteachers to hustle gangs of children to get bored and romp in the Oaklin galleries. Your uncle had a rarefied old vanity, young feller. What Tom Oaklin wanted was to perpetuate himself in a gift to the populace.”
“Was that all, sir?” Bailey was able to look up from his plate. “Just to perpetuate himself?”
“Oh, there was generosity in him, too! He knew that art’s a sort of secret from the public; but that anybody — anybody at all — can discover the secret if he lets himself look at works of art a little attentively and that thenceforth he’ll live much more happily than other people will. Poor old Tom! He called art his Philosophers’ Stone because his own discovery of it transfigured his life. Knew it could be the same with anybody else; so he thought all he had to do was to put his collected art into a magnificent setting, give it to the people and they’d rush to take the gift. They didn’t, Mr. Fount. They didn’t and they don’t. They — —”
Helena Jyre interrupted. “Sometimes they do. They come to our special exhibitions and they like our lectures and chamber music concerts. Then remember that Renaissance Loan Exhibition we had — —”
“Miraculous!” Mr. Horne laughed loudly. “That exhibition had forty-one hundred visitors in four weeks, about two per cent of the population! Why did even that poor many come? Because our newspaper publicity mentioned that the paintings and sculptures in that exhibition had cost the owners three million dollars. Anywhere in America a lot of people’ll go look at anything that cost three million dollars. I would, myself. No, Mr. Fount, our museum’s a joke on your uncle.”
“Did he see it?” Bailey surprised himself by finding voice to ask this. “I mean — I —— Was he able to see the joke, himself, sir?”
“Didn’t live long enough to be killed that way. We had a tremendous opening — Governor, both Senators, Mayor, a crowd from all over the state. Then it slacked off and he died thinking that was only temporary. Just as well, wasn’t it? So what’s the answer to the great question and to the joke on the poor old fellow? It’s this: art is for those who can take it, and anybody can take it who’s willing to expose himself to it. If the people don’t care to put that interest and happiness into their lives, we can’t force ’em or even coax ’em to it. It’s their loss. We don’t repine.”
Parannik looked gloomy. “You will some day. Some day nobody at all will come and not a human beink will sit to hear my orchestra. My wife telephones me six o’clock from mountains hotel she have just been long-distanced from here that my comink season concert program it’s punk. Punk. Oh, yes, punk! Must I always breathe poison? Oh, yes, and you too — you are goink to see! You all know what I mean.”
Bailey Fount of course didn’t know what he meant; but he perceived that the others did. They looked darkened, as if by something that shouldn’t have been brought out of a background momentarily forgotten. They were like people determined to be gay for an evening but indiscreetly reminded of death and taxes. Rossbeke’s face, always remotely careworn, became more vividly so; then he heaved a half-humorous sigh, threw off the shadow and called Parannik “Banquo!”
“Who is that?” Parannik asked. “Somebody from Shakespeare? If I can remember which from the operas from Shakespeare has a Banquo in it — —”
“There it is!” Mr. Horne, also throwing off the shadow, was delighted. “Parannik can’t remember anything unless he gets his reminder out of music. The American people can’t remember anything unless they get reminders out of the movies. They know Anne Boleyn’s head came off; they know it because there was a movie about that professional husband, Henry. They remember Rembrandt because there was a movie about him. How can we expect ’em to come into a museum and look at Old Crome until there’s a movie about him? — and there never will be. You’re a landscapist. What do you think of Old Crome, Bailey Fount?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “What do you think of Theodore Rousseau? What do you think of Hercules Seghers? What do you think of Cotman and Girtin and Turner? Ah — and what do you think of John Constable?”
“I?” Bailey reddened. “What do I —— I’m only a painter, sir. I mean I’m not a critic. I like all of them — in their periods. I think they — they — —”
He didn’t need to struggle further; he was interrupted. Parannik, who faced the main part of the restaurant, suddenly exclaimed “Oh! Oh!” and sat motionless.
Helena Jyre, next to Bailey, turned her head and, like Parannik, Rossbeke and the aged Horne, stared into the restaurant. The expressions of all four were unanimous: they saw something that disturbed them; but Bailey Fount, glancing jerkily over his shoulder, found nothing in view to explain their plain perturbation.
Most of the tables were occupied by summer-clad middle-aged men — probably their wives and families were cooling by lakes or the sea — and, as it happened, only one woman was visible from the alcove. She’d just sat down, facing the other way, and was obviously young, though Bailey saw nothing of her except her back hair, her neck and the top of her bare shoulders. The hair was golden, glisteningly waved close to her head; the neck and shoulders were tanned and gracefully expressive; she seemed already to be talking animatedly. Her escort, just taking the seat opposite her, was an officer, sturdy in figure, not without agreeable good looks and, at this moment, most devoted in manner. Dimming the other diners, a superiority in worldly distinction seemed to shine about the couple. The fat sexagenarian headwaiter beamed above their “reserved” table, upon which he’d set flowers; he was in a flurry of paternal subservience.
“Call me Banquo some more!” Parannik exclaimed. “Still here! The Captain again!”
Rossbeke laughed, though perhaps with an effort. “It’s only the one day’s visitation. Departure to-morrow. How’d you like to write the views about museums you’ve just been expressing, Mr. Horne? We could use it in our September Bulletin.”
The Director began to urge this, the others stopped staring into the restaurant, and tension seemed to lessen. Bailey Fount wondered what in the world these art-people had to do with an army captain and how a man so frank and friendly in countenance could have brought an oppression upon them.
Everything mystified Bailey, however. His thoughts, incurious about other people — except for his fear of his effect upon them — didn’t follow the conversation but hovered among his timidities. He liked old Mr. Horne and Rossbeke and Helena Jyre and Parannik. They were much the sort he’d mostly lived with before the war, and, though he’d never cared to “talk art,” he wished that he could join in their familiar chatting as once — before the war — he’d have been readily able. He couldn’t now; he couldn’t even eat confidently of the excellent dishes or risk a glass of wine — it might excite him. Self-consciousness was on him like the plague; indeed he knew it for a disease, and he couldn’t change the posture of his feet under the table without wondering if the others noticed the movement and what they thought of it.
Miss Jyre, Mr. Horne and Rossbeke shop-talked on, mildly teasing one another, including Bailey with a reference or a question now and then but careful never to do so pressingly. Parannik had no share in this. He hadn’t revived; he sat silent, eating little and frowning at what was set before him. Ices were brought; he looked indignantly at his, gave the dish a hostile push and said, “No! It makes me hotter after. I am too hot.” He gazed strangely out through the alcove opening, and Bailey thought he was looking again at the mysterious captain. “I cannot stay. I cannot sit here. I must go.”
Rossbeke protested. “But we’re all going up to my rooms for coffee in a moment or two. Can’t you — —”
“No, I don’t wait.” Parannik rose, threw his napkin upon the table as if with violence, ran agonized supple fingers through his pale hair. “Avverythink I had to eat rolls more in a ball in me avvery second I am here! ‘Punk’! I am punk musician. I create a punk program. If I stay one minute longer in this place I am goink to die.”
“Sit down,” Mr. Horne said commandingly. “We’ll be up in Rossbeke’s apartment within a few minutes, don’t you understand? Sit down!”
“No. A few minute’ more it’s too late; I will be det! Can you sit where is somebody call you punk? Me, not one second more! No! Excuse me, good-bye!”
His chair scraped the floor, he strode from the alcove, passed drivenly through the restaurant, and was gone.
VIII
“WE’LL HAVE TO forgive Parannik,” Rossbeke said ruefully. “Quite a lot of the finest artists seem to spend a good part of their lives in tragic flights. I wish he’d stayed and we could have got him to talk, because when he’s interested he talks almost as well as he conducts. Too bad he’s so sensitive; but you’ve known musicians, haven’t you, Mr. Fount? No doubt you’ve seen how much more they feel things than the rest of us do? You understand, don’t you, their emotional — —”
“Of course he does; everybody does!” Bailey was relieved to hear old Mr. Horne take this up for him. “Only you’re wrong, Henry Rossbeke, and so’s everybody else. These music people don’t feel things more; they’re like actors and only express more. When trouble comes, the rest of us sit around not saying much; but they get up on their hind legs and — —”
He elaborated this worn theme until his host stopped him by rising. The four passed through the restaurant and took the elevator up to Rossbeke’s rooms where Miss Jyre made coffee for them; then came to sit by Bailey, bringing with her a portfolio of drawings the Director had collected for himself.
“Maybe we can’t put our minds on ’em,” she said, as she sat. “Not with Mr. Horne making all this noise!”
Mr. Horne was walking about the room, shouting. He’d set down his black coffee with a loud clink and jumped up — his response to something Rossbeke had said to him. “Don’t repeat those moronics to me, Henry Rossbeke! Why, damn my old soul, rather than consent to the buying of a Matisse for that museum I’d — —” He interrupted himself to sit down and shake a violent forefinger almost against the face of the mild Rossbeke. “There’s no such thing as a revolution in art, Henry. Never let anybody talk you into believing it! Damn it, revolution ain’t art; it’s only trying to get noticed by being different. Different! Hell, I can be different by leaving off my pants, painting one leg blue and the other ochre! Then, if I get a ‘good press,’ it’ll get to be the style and me called a genius!” He jumped up, paced the floor again, gesticulating. “Squawked at you we’ve got to be progressive, did she, had to advance, all that old parrot stuff? Threadbare! Matisse is already old hat; they’ve had to get different from him, too. You know that, don’t you, Henry?”
