JUNE held her breath, while S. Gedge Antiques with thought for
nothing save the object that had brought him there, made a bee-line for
the picture at which William was still solemnly staring. The old man
put on his spectacles. Whether they were his “buying” or his “selling”
ones, June was unable to decide, but whichever they might be they had
an important function to perform. Uncle Si’s long and foxlike nose bent
so close to the paint that it might have been smelling it.
June’s instinct was to flee before they were discovered. And perhaps
she would have urged this course upon William had not pride said no.
She was in mortal fear of the old man, yet she despised herself for
that emotion. After all, they were doing no wrong in spending Saturday
afternoon in such a very elevated form of amusement. Surely it devolved
upon her to stand up to this tyrant.
William, for his part, was without misgiving. Thinking evil of none,
least of all his master, he was a little awed by that odd arrival, and
yet he was unfeignedly glad of his presence. The simpleton regarded
it as a compliment to himself that S. Gedge Antiques should take the
trouble to come in his own person to look at the Van Roon.
At last S. Gedge Antiques turned away from the Van Roon, and little
suspecting who were so near to him, came full upon William and June
seated together upon the adjacent sofa. For a moment it was as if a
feather would have knocked him down. He could trust his eyes so little
that he hastily changed his spectacles.
“What!” His brow was thunder. “You! Here!”
June, ready to carry the war into the country of the enemy, was
prepared to offer a cool “Why not?” Happily, a second and wiser thought
led her to await developments. Secretly, Uncle Si was in a pretty rage
as June could tell by the look of him. But he was not one to let his
feelings override his judgment. Whatever they were, they could keep. He
had come there for a particular purpose; this afternoon he was bent on
business only.
In the rasping voice which made June think of a file and sandpaper, S.
Gedge Antiques remarked: “Still Hobbemaising, eh?”
William modestly admitted that he hoped Miss June would have a look at
The Avenue.
“Let’s hope she’ll be the better for it.” The old man did his best to
be polite. “It will improve her mind, no doubt.”
“But we have come to see the Van Roon, sir,” said William impulsively.
“Oh, you have.” There was a sudden narrowing of foxy eyes. “Seems to
me, boy, you’ve got Van Roon on the brain.”
William could not help laughing at his master’s tone of playfulness,
but June did not laugh. She knew but too well that as far as Uncle Si
was concerned, Van Roon was an exceedingly serious matter.
“You are wise, boy”--the old man tried very hard to keep the sneer out
of his voice--“to come and find out what a Van Roon really looks like.”
William modestly said that he thought he knew that already.
His master shook the head of wisdom. “Judging by the way you’ve
been going on lately I take leave to doubt it. If you can trace the
slightest resemblance to that thing of ours”--as Uncle Si half turned
to point to the picture, June noticed that he was careful to say
“ours”--“I’m afraid, boy, you’re qualifying for Colney Hatch.”
William laughed gaily at his master’s humour. He felt bound in honour
to do so, since the jokes from that quarter were thin and few. But June
did not laugh. Something cold, subtle, deadly, was creeping into her
heart.
The old fox struck an attitude before the Van Roon. “How a man who
has his wits can compare that daub of ours with this acknowledged
masterpiece passes me altogether.”
As a fact, William had not exactly compared his Crowdham Market
purchase with Number 2020 in the official catalogue. He had merely
affirmed that it was by the same hand.
June was privileged to hear great argument. And as at her birth a kind
fairy had bestowed the gift of penetration upon her, she listened
to all that passed with a fixity of mind that was almost painful.
Carefully weighing the pros and the cons as they were advanced, she
was fully determined to get a real insight into the merits of a most
singular and perplexing matter.
Who was in the right? It was the opinion of William against the
opinion of Uncle Si. From the first she had had horrid doubts of the
old man’s sincerity, yet she must not prejudge so grave an issue.
Account must be taken, moreover, of the entire range of William’s
fantastic ideas. The thought was not pleasant, but on the face of it,
Uncle Si was likely to be far the safer guide of the two.
As June listened, however, to the wheedling sneers of the one and the
forthright tone of the other, almost too transparent in its honesty,
she could only conclude that Uncle Si was deliberately cheapening
William’s discovery for purposes of his own.
Looking at the masterpiece on the opposite wall, with what June was
only too keenly aware were the eyes of ignorance, it was impossible to
deny an extraordinary similarity of subject and treatment. And this,
as she perceived at once, was where Uncle Si overdid it. He would not
allow that to the vision of a technical expert, the possession of which
he did not scruple now to claim for himself, there was the slightest
resemblance. Such similarities as might exist on the surface to delude
the untutored eye he explained away in a flood of words whose force
was intended to convince them both. But he convinced neither. June,
pinning her wits to a plain argument, smiled secretly as more than once
he contradicted himself. William on the other hand, was not permitted
by the love and reverence he bore his master, to submit his speeches to
the scale. He took his stand upon the divine instinct that was his by
right of birth. Such being the case he could but gently dissent from
the old man. It was one of his peculiarities that the surer he was,
the more gentle he grew. And therein, as June perceived, he differed
strangely from Uncle Si who could only render conviction in terms of
vehemence.
Finally, as a clincher, S. Gedge Antiques growled: “Boy, you talk like
a fool!” and head in air, marched with the aid of his knobby walking
stick out of William’s treasure house.
William and June having stood to talk with the old man, now sat down
again.
“Thank goodness he’s gone!” said June.
William confessed that the master had puzzled him considerably.
“’Tisn’t like him to close his eyes to the facts of a case. I can’t
think what has happened to the master. He hardly ever makes a mistake.”
Said June sagaciously: “Uncle Si being so wise about most things, isn’t
it likely that the mistake is yours?”
“It may be so,” William allowed. But at once he added, with a divine
simplicity: “I will stake my life, all the same, Miss June, that our
picture is a Van Roon.”
“Or a clever forgery, perhaps.”
“No, no. As sure as you and I sit here, only one hand painted that
little thing of ours.”
“Then why should Uncle Si declare that it doesn’t in the least resemble
a Van Roon?”
“Ah, that I don’t know. It is very strange that he should be so blind
to the truth. As I say, it is the first time I have known it to happen.”
“It may be,” said June, “that this is the first time there has been so
much money in the case.”
William dissented gravely. “The master would never let money influence
him in a matter of this kind.”
“Uncle Si lets money influence him in matters of every kind.”
William shook his head. “I am afraid you don’t quite understand the
master,” he said, with a wonderful look in his deep eyes.
June was too wise to contest the point. He might know more about
pictures than did she, but when it came to human nature it was another
pair of shoes. It made her quite hot with anger to feel how easily he
could be taken in.
Sitting by William’s side on the edge of the sofa she made a vow. From
now on it should be her aim in life to see that Uncle Si did not get
the better of this young man. She had made a good and wise beginning
by inducing him to bestow the picture upon herself, instead of giving
it, as so easily might have happened, to the Old Crocodile. She knew
that some bad quarters of an hour lay ahead, in the course of which she
and her box might easily find themselves in the street; but come what
might, let her cherish that picture as if it were life itself. For she
saw with a startling clearness that William’s future, and perhaps her
own, was bound up in its fortunes.
This surmise as to trouble ahead was borne out very exactly by events.
When accompanied by William she returned to tea in a state as near
positive happiness as she had ever known, Uncle Si’s aspect was so
hostile that it would not have been surprising had she been sent
packing there and then. The presence of William helped to restrain the
anger of S. Gedge Antiques, since there was more to lose than to gain
just now by fixing a quarrel upon him; but it was clear that the old
man did not intend to pass over the incident lightly.
“Niece,” he began the moment his cup had been handed to him, “kindly
tell me what you mean by gallivanting about London.”
A hot flame of resentment ran in June’s cheek. But she was too proud to
express it otherwise than by rather elaborately holding her peace. She
continued to pour out tea just as if not a word had been said on the
subject.
“It’s my fault, sir,” said William, stepping into the breach
chivalrously, but with an absence of tact. “Miss June very kindly
consented to come and look at the Van Roon.”
“There must be no more of it.” Miss June received the full benefit of a
north eye. “I will not have you going about with a young man, least of
all a young man earning fifteen shillings a week in my employ.”
It was now the turn of William’s cheek to feel the flame, but it was
not in his nature to fight over a thing of that kind, even had he been
in a position to do so. Besides, it hardly needed his master to tell
him that he had been guilty of presumption.
Indeed, the circumstances of the case made it almost impossible for
either of the culprits to defend such conduct in the other’s presence.
Yet June, to the intense astonishment of Uncle Si, and no doubt to her
own, contrived to give battle in hostile territory.
“I can only say,” she remarked, with a fearlessness so amazing that
Uncle Si scalded his mouth by drinking out of his cup instead of out of
his saucer, “that if fifteen shillings a week is all that William gets,
it is just about time he had a rise in his wages.”
For a moment Uncle Si could only splutter. Then he took off his
spectacles and wiped them fiercely.
“Gracious goodness me! God bless my body and my soul!” June would not
have been at all surprised had the old slave-driver “thrown a fit.”
“William is very clever,” she said undaunted.
“Niece, hold your tongue.” The words came through clenched teeth. “And
understand, once for all, that I’ll have no more carryings-on. If you
don’t look out, you’ll find your box in the street.”
Having put June out of action, the old man turned his attention to
William. But with him he walked more delicately. There must be no more
Van Rooning, but the ukase was given in a tone so oily that June just
had to smile.
In spite of his own edict, however, it was clear that Van Roon
continued much in the mind of William’s master. The next day, Sunday,
instead of taking the air of the west central postal district, his
custom as a rule, when the forenoon was fine, he spent most of the
morning with the young man in the studio. June felt this boded so ill
that she went about her household chores in a fever of anxiety. She was
sure that Uncle Si had fully made up his mind to have the picture; he
meant, also, to have it at his own price. However, she had fully made
up hers that this tragedy simply must not occur.