"Poor uncle!" my wife remarked.
"He will get it in the neck," I added, profanely.
"They ought to put nice old gentlemen like your uncle in bond when they
reach Italy," Watkins mused, as if bored in advance. "The _antichitàs_
get after them, like--like confidence-men in an American city, and the
same old story is the result; they find, in some mysterious fashion, a
wonderful Titian, a forgotten Giorgione, cheap at _cinque mille lire_.
Then it's all up with them. His pictures are probably decalcomanias,
you know, just colored prints pasted over board. Why, we _know_ every
picture in Venice; it's simply _impossible_--"
Watkins was a connoisseur; he had bought his knowledge in the dearest
school of experience.
"What are you going to do, Mr. Watkins?" my wife put in. "Tell him the
truth?"
"There's nothing else to do. I used up all my ambiguous terms over that
daub he bought in the Piazza di Spagna--'reminiscential' of half a
dozen worthless things, 'suggestive,' etc. I can't work them over
again." Watkins was lugubrious.
"Tell him the truth as straight as you can; it's the best medicine." I
was Uncle Ezra's heir; naturally, I felt for the inheritance.
"Well," my wife was invariably cheerful, "perhaps he has found
something valuable; at least, one of them may be; isn't it possible?"
Watkins looked at my wife indulgently.
"He's been writing me about them for a month, suggesting that, as I was
about to go on to Venice, he would like to have me see them; such
treasures as I should find them. I have been waiting until he should
get out. It isn't a nice job, and your uncle--"
"There are three of them, Aunt Mary writes: Cousin Maud has bought one,
with the advice of Uncle Ezra and Professor Augustus Painter, and
Painter himself is the last one to succumb."
"They have all gone mad," Watkins murmured.
"Where did Maudie get the cash?" I asked.
"She had a special gift on coming of age, and she has been looking
about for an opportunity for throwing it away"--my wife had never
sympathized with my cousin, Maud Vantweekle. "She had better save it
for her trousseau, if she goes on much more with that young professor.
Aunt Mary should look after her."
Watkins rose to go.
"Hold on a minute," I said. "Just listen to this delicious epistle from
Uncle Ezra."
"'... We have hoped that you would arrive in Venice before we break up
our charming home here. Mary has written you that Professor Painter has
joined us at the Palazzo Palladio, complementing our needs and
completing our circle. He has an excellent influence for seriousness
upon Maud; his fine, manly qualities have come out. Venice, after two
years of Berlin, has opened his soul in a really remarkable manner. All
the beauty lying loose around here has been a revelation to him--'"
"Maud's beauty," my wife interpreted.
"'And our treasures you will enjoy so much--such dashes of color, such
great slaps of light! I was the first to buy--they call it a Savoldo,
but I think no third-rate man could be capable of so much--such
reaching out after infinity. However, that makes little difference. I
would not part with it, now that I have lived these weeks with so fine
a thing. Maud won a prize in her Bonifazio, which she bought under my
advice. Then Augustus secured the third one, a Bissola, and it has had
the greatest influence upon him already; it has given him his education
in art. He sits with it by the hour while he is at work, and its charm
has gradually produced a revolution in his character. We had always
found him too Germanic, and he had immured himself in that barbarous
country for so long over his Semitic books that his nature was stunted
on one side. His picture has opened a new world for him. Your Aunt Mary
and I already see the difference in his character; he is gentler, less
narrowly interested in the world. This precious bit of fine art has
been worth its price many times, but I don't think Augustus would part
with it for any consideration now that he has lived with it and learned
to know its power.'"
"I can't see why he is coming to Rome," Watkins commented at the end.
"If they are confident that they know all about their pictures, and
don't care anyway who did them, and are having all this spiritual
love-feast, what in the world do they want any expert criticism of
their text for? Now for such people to buy pictures, when they haven't
a mint of money! Why don't they buy something within their means really
fine--a coin, a Van Dyck print? I could get your uncle a Whistler
etching for twenty-five pounds; a really fine thing, you know--"
This was Watkins's hobby.
"Oh, well, it won't be bad in the end of the hall at New York; it's as
dark as pitch there; and then Uncle Ezra can leave it to the
Metropolitan as a Giorgione. It will give the critics something to do.
And I suppose that in coming on here he has in mind to get an
indorsement for his picture that will give it a commercial value. He's
canny, is my Uncle Ezra, and he likes to gamble too, like the rest of
us. If he should draw a prize, it wouldn't be a bad thing to brag of."
Watkins called again the next morning.
"Have you seen Uncle Ezra?" my wife asked, anxiously.
"No. Three telegrams. Train was delayed--I suppose by the importance of
the works of art it's bringing on."
"When do you expect him?"
"About noon."
"Mr. Watkins," my wife flamed out, "I believe you are just shirking it,
to meet that poor old man with his pictures. You ought to have been at
the station, or at least at the hotel. Why, it's twelve now!"
Watkins hung his head.
"I believe you are a coward," my wife went on. "Just think of his
arriving there, all excitement over his pictures, and finding you gone!"
"Well, well," I said, soothingly, "it's no use to trot off now,
Watkins; stay to breakfast. He will be in shortly. When he finds you
are out at the hotel he will come straight on here, I am willing to
bet."
Watkins looked relieved at my suggestion.
"I believe you meant to run away all along," my wife continued,
severely, "and to come here for refuge."
Watkins sulked.
We waited in suspense, straining our ears to hear the sound of a cab
stopping in the street. At last one did pull up. My wife made no
pretence of indifference, but hurried to the window.
"It's Uncle Ezra, with a big, black bundle. John, run down--No! there's
a facchino."
We looked at each other and laughed.
"The three!"
Our patron of art came in, with a warm, gentle smile, his tall, thin
figure a little bent with the fatigue of the journey, his beard a
little grayer and dustier than usual, and his hands all a-tremble with
nervous impatience and excitement. He had never been as tremulous
before an opinion from the Supreme Court. My wife began to purr over
him soothingly; Watkins looked sheepish; I hurried them all off to
breakfast.
The omelette was not half eaten before Uncle Ezra jumped up, and began
unstrapping the oil-cloth covering to the pictures. There was
consternation at the table. My wife endeavored soothingly to bring
Uncle Ezra's interest back to breakfast, but he was not to be fooled.
My Uncle Ezra was a courageous man.
"Of course you fellows," he said, smiling at Watkins, in his suave
fashion, "are just whetting your knives for me, I know. That's right. I
want to know the worst, the hardest things you can say. You can't
destroy the intrinsic _worth_ of the pictures for us; I have lived with
mine too long, and know how precious it is!"
At last the three pictures were tipped up against the wall, and the
Madonnas and saints in gold, red, and blue were beaming out insipidly
at us. Uncle Ezra affected indifference. Watkins continued with the
omelette. "We'll look them over after breakfast," he said, severely,
thus getting us out of the hole temporarily.
After breakfast my wife cooked up some engagement, and hurried me off.
We left Uncle Ezra in the hands of the physician. Two hours later, when
we entered, the operation had been performed--we could see at a
glance--and in a bloody fashion. The pictures were lying about the vast
room as if they had been spat at. Uncle Ezra smiled wanly at us, with
the courage of the patient who is a sceptic about physicians.
"Just what I expected," he said, briskly, to relieve Watkins, who was
smoking, with the air of a man who has finished his job and is now
cooling off. "Mr. Watkins thinks Painter's picture and Maud's are
copies, Painter's done a few years ago and Maud's a little older, the
last century. My Savoldo he finds older, but repainted. You said cinque
cento, Mr. Watkins?"
"Perhaps, Mr. Williams," Watkins answered, and added, much as a dog
would give a final shake to the bird, "_Much_ repainted, hardly
anything left of the original. There may be a Savoldo underneath, but
you don't see it." Watkins smiled at us knowingly. My wife snubbed him.
"Of course, Uncle Ezra, _that's_ one man's opinion. I certainly should
not put much faith in one critic, no matter how eminent he may be. Just
look at the guide-books and see how the 'authorities' swear at one
another. Ruskin says every man is a fool who can't appreciate his
particular love, and Burckhardt calls it a daub, and Eastlake insipid.
Now, there are a set of young fellows who think they know all about
paint and who painted what. They're renaming all the great
masterpieces. Pretty soon they will discover that some tenth-rate
fellow painted the Sistine Chapel."
Watkins put on an aggrieved and expostulatory manner. Uncle Ezra cut in.
"Oh! my dear! Mr. Watkins may be right, quite right. It's his business
to know, I am sure, and I anticipated all that he would say; indeed, I
have come off rather better than I expected. There is old paint in it
somewhere."
"Pretty far down," Watkins muttered. My wife bristled up, but Uncle
Ezra assumed his most superb calm.
"It makes no difference to me, of course, as far as the _worth_ of the
work of art is concerned. I made up my mind before I came here that my
picture was worth a great deal to me, much more than I paid for it."
There was a heroic gasp. Watkins interposed mercilessly, "And may I
ask, Mr. Williams, what you did give for it?"
Uncle Ezra was an honest man. "Twenty-five hundred lire," he replied,
sullenly.
"Excuse me" (Watkins was behaving like a pitiless cad), "but you paid a
great deal too much for it, I assure you. I could have got it for----"
"Mr. Watkins," my wife was hardly civil to him, "it doesn't matter much
what you could have got it for."
"No," Uncle Ezra went on bravely, "I am a little troubled as to what
this may mean to Maud and Professor Painter, for you see their pictures
are copies."
"Undoubted modern copies," the unquenchable Watkins emended.
"Maud has learned a great deal from her picture. And as for Painter, it
has been an education in art, an education in life. He said to me the
night before I came away, 'Mr. Williams, I wouldn't take two thousand
for that picture; it's been the greatest influence in my life.'"