Quarren arrived in town about twilight. Taxis were no longer for him nor
he for them. Suit-case and walking-stick in hand, he started up
Lexington Avenue still excited and exhilarated from his leave-taking
with Strelsa. An almost imperceptible fragrance seemed to accompany him,
freshening the air around him in the shabby streets of Ascalon; the
heat-cursed city grew cooler, sweeter for her memory. Through the
avenue's lamp-lit dusk passed the pale ghosts of Gath and the phantoms
of the Philistines, and he thought their shadowy forms moved less
wearily; and that strange faces looked less wanly at him as they grew
out of the night--"clothed in scarlet and ornaments of gold"--and
dissolved again into darkness.
Still thrilled, almost buoyant, he walked on, passing the high-piled
masonry of the branch Post-Office and the Central Palace on his left.
Against high stars the twin Power-House chimneys stood outlined in
steel; on the right endless blocks of brown-stone dwellings stretched
northward, some already converted into shops where print-sellers,
dealers in old books, and here and there antiquaries, had constructed
show-windows.
Firemen lounged outside the Eighth Battalion quarters; here and there a
grocer's or wine-seller's windows remained illuminated where those who
were neither well-to-do nor very poor passed to and fro with little
packages which seemed a burden under the sultry skies.
At last, ahead, the pseudo-oriental towers of a synagogue varied the
flat skyline, and a moment later he could see the New Thought Laundry,
the Tonsorial Drawing Rooms, the Undertaker's discreetly illuminated
windows, and finally the bay-window of his own recent Real-Estate
office, now transmogrified into the Dankmere Galleries of Old Masters,
Fayre and Quarren, proprietors.
The window appeared to be brilliantly illuminated behind the drawn
curtains; and Quarren, surprised and vexed, concluded that the little
Englishman was again entertaining. So it perplexed and astonished him to
find the Earl sitting on the front steps, his straw hat on the back of
his head, smoking. At the same moment from within the house a confused
and indescribable murmur was wafted to his ears as though many people
were applauding.
"What on earth is going on inside?" he asked, bewildered.
"You told me over the telephone that Karl Westguard might have the
gallery for this evening," said the Englishman calmly. "So I let him
have it."
"What did he want of it? Who has he got in there?"--demanded Quarren as
another ripple of applause sounded from within.
Dankmere thought a moment: "I really don't know the audience,
Quarren--they're not a very fragrant lot."
"What audience? Who are they?"
"You Americans would call them a 'tough-looking bunch--except
Westguard and Bleecker De Groot and Mrs. Caldera----"
[Illustration: "A high and soulful tenor was singing 'Perfumes of
Araby.'"]
"Cyrille Caldera and De Groot! What's that silly old Dandy doing down
here?"
"Diffusing sweetness and light among the unwashed; telling them that
there are no such things as classes, that wealth is no barrier to
brotherhood, that the heart of Fifth Avenue beats as warmly and
guilelessly as the heart of Essex Street, and that its wealth-burdened
inhabitants have long desired to fraternise with the benchers in
Paradise Park."
"Who put Westguard up to this?" asked Quarren, aghast.
"De Groot. Karl is writing a levelling novel calculated to annihilate
caste. The Undertaker next door furnished the camp-chairs; the corner
grocer the collation; Westguard, Mrs. Caldera, and Bleecker De Groot the
mind-food. Go in and look 'em over."
The front door was standing partly open; the notes of a piano floated
through; a high and soulful tenor voice was singing "Perfumes of Araby,"
but Quarren did not notice any as he stepped inside.
Not daring to leave his suit-case in the hallway he kept on along the
passage to the extension where the folding doors were locked. Here he
deposited his luggage, locked the door, then walked back to the front
parlour and, unobserved, slipped in, seating himself among the battered
derelicts of the rear row.
A thin, hirsute young man had just finished scattering the perfumes of
Araby; other perfumes nearly finished Quarren; but he held his ground
and gazed grimly at an improvised platform where sat in a half-circle
and in full evening dress, Karl Westguard, Cyrille Caldera and Bleecker
De Groot. Also there was a table supporting a Calla lily.
Westguard was saying very earnestly: "The world calls me a novelist. I
am not! Thank Heaven, I aspire to something loftier. I am not a mere
scribbler of fiction; I am a man with a message--a plain, simple,
earnest, warm-hearted humanitarian who has been roused to righteous
indignation by the terrible contrast in this miserable city between
wealth and poverty----"
"That's right," interrupted a hoarse voice; "it's all a con game, an'
the perlice is into it, too!"
"T'hell wit te bulls! Croak 'em!" observed another gentleman thickly.
Westguard, slightly discountenanced by the significant cheers which
greeted this sentiment, introduced Bleecker De Groot; and the rotund old
Beau came jauntily forward, holding out both immaculate hands with an
artlessly comprehensive gesture calculated to make the entire East Side
feel that it was reposing upon his beautifully laundered bosom.
"Ah, my friends!" cried De Groot, "if you could only realise how great
is the love for humanity within my breast!--If you could only know of
the hours and days and even weeks that I have devoted to solving the
problems of the poor!
"And I _have_ solved them--every one. And _this_ is the
answer!"--grasping dauntlessly at a dirty hand and shaking it--"this!"
seizing another--"and this, and this! And now I ask you, _what_ is this
mute answer which I have given you?"
"De merry mitt," said a voice, promptly. Mr. De Groot smiled with
sweetness and indulgence.
"I apprehend your quaint and trenchant vernacular," he said. "It _is_
the 'merry mitt'--the 'glad glove,' the 'happy hand'! Fifth Avenue
clasps palms with Doyers Street----"
"Ding!" said a weary voice, "yer in wrong, boss. It's nix f'r the Tongs
wit us gents. We transfer to Avenue A."
Mr. De Groot merely smiled indulgently. "The rich," he said, "are not
really happy." His plump, highly coloured features altered; presently a
priceless tear glimmered in his monocle eye; and he brushed it away with
a kind of noble pity for his own weakness.
"Dear, dear friends," he said tremulously, "believe me--oh, believe me
that the rich are not happy! Only the perspiring labourer knows what is
true contentment. The question of poverty is a great social question.
With me it is a religion. Oh, I could go on forever on this subject,
dear friends, and talk on and on and on----"
Emotion again checked him--or perhaps he had lost the thread of his
discourse--or possibly he had attained its limit--but he filled it out
by coming down from the platform and shaking hands so vigorously that
the gardenia in his lapel presently fell out.
Cyrille Caldera rose, fresh and dainty and smiling, and discoursed
single-tax and duplex tenements, getting the two subjects mixed but not
minding that. Also she pointed at the Calla lily and explained that the
lily was the emblem of purity. Which may have had something to do with
something or other.
Then Westguard arose once more and told them all about the higher type
of novel he was writing for humanity's sake, and became so interested
and absorbed in his own business that the impatient shuffling of shabby
feet on the floor alone interrupted him.
"Has anybody," inquired De Groot, sweetly, "any vital question to
ask--any burning inquiry of deeper, loftier import, which has perhaps
long remained unanswered in his heart?"
A gentleman known usually as "Mike the Mink" arose and indicated with
derisive thumb a picture among the Dankmere collection, optimistically
attributed to Correggio:
"Is that Salome, mister?" he inquired with a leer.
De Groot looked at the canvas, slightly startled.
"No, my dear friend; that is a picture painted hundreds of years ago by
a great Italian master. It is called 'Danaë.' Jupiter, you know, came to
her in a shower of gold----"
"They all have to come across with it," remarked the Mink.
Somebody observed that if the police caught the dago who painted it
they'd pinch him.
To make a diversion, and with her own fair hands, Cyrille Caldera
summoned the derelicts to sandwiches and ginger-ale; and De Groot,
dashing more unmanly moisture from his monocle, went about resolutely
shaking hands, while Westguard and the hirsute young man sang "Comrades"
with much feeling.
Quarren, still unrecognised, edged his way out and rejoined Dankmere on
the front stoop. Neither made any comment on the proceedings.
Later the derelicts, moodily replete, shuffled forth into the night,
herded lovingly by De Groot, still shaking hands.
From the corner of the street opposite, Quarren and Dankmere observed
their departure, and, later, they beheld De Groot and Mrs. Caldera slip
around the block and discreetly disappear into a 1912 touring-car with
silver mountings and two men in livery on the box.
Westguard, truer to his principles, took a tram and Quarren and the Earl
returned to their gallery with mixed emotions, and opened every window
top and bottom.
"It's all right in its way, I suppose," said Quarren. "Probably De Groot
means well, but there's no conversation possible between a man who has
just dined rather heavily, and a man who has no chance of dining at
all."
"Like preaching Christ to the poor from a Fifth Avenue pulpit," said
Dankmere, vaguely.
"How do you mean?"
"A church on a side street would seem to serve the purpose. And the poor
need the difference."
"I don't know about those matters."
"No; I don't either. It's easy, cheap, and popular to knock the
clergy.... Still, somehow or other, I can't seem to forget that the
disciples were poor--and it bothers me a lot, Quarren."
Quarren said: "Haven't you and I enough to worry us concerning our own
morals?"
Dankmere, who had been closing up and piling together the Undertaker's
camp-chairs, looked around at the younger man.
"What did you say?" he asked.
"I said that probably you and I would find no time left to criticise
either De Groot or the clergy, if we used our leisure in
self-examination."
His lordship went on piling up chairs. When he finished he started
wandering around, hands in his pockets. Then he turned out all the
electric lamps, drew the bay-window curtains wide so that the silvery
radiance from the arc-light opposite made the darkness dimly lustrous.
A little breeze stirred the hair on Quarren's forehead; Dankmere dropped
into the depths of an armchair near him. For a while they sat together
in darkness and silence, then the Englishman said abruptly:
"You've been very kind to me."
Quarren glanced up surprised.
"Why not?"
"Because nobody else has any decent words to say to me or of me."
Quarren, amused, said: "How do you know that I have, Dankmere?"
"A man knows some things. For example, most people take me for an
ass--they don't tell me so but I know it. And if they don't take me for
an ass they assume that I'm something worse--because I have a title of
sorts, no money, an inclination for the stage and the people who make a
living out of it."
"Also," Quarren reminded him, "you are looking for a wealthy wife."
"God bless my soul! Am I the only chap in America who happens to be
doing that?"
"No; but you're doing it conspicuously."
"You mean I'm honest about it?"
Quarren laughed: "Anyway perhaps that's one reason why I like you. At
first I also thought it was merely stupidity."
Dankmere crossed his short legs and lighted his pipe:
"The majority of your better people have managed not to know me. I've
met a lot of men of sorts, but they draw the line across their home
thresholds--most of them. Is it the taint of vaudeville that their wives
sniff at, or my rather celebrated indigence?"
"Both, Dankmere--and then some."
"Oh, I see. Many thanks for telling me. I take it you mean that it was
my first wife they shy at."
Quarren remained silent.
"She was a bar-maid," remarked the Earl. "We were quite happy--until she
died."
Quarren made a slight motion of comprehension.
"Of course my marrying her damned us both," observed the Earl.
"Of course."
"Quite so. People would have stood for anything else.... But she
wouldn't--you may think it odd.... And I was in love--so there you are."
For a while they smoked in the semi-darkness without exchanging further
speech; and finally Dankmere knocked out his pipe, pocketed it, and put
on his hat.
"You know," he said, "I'm not really an ass. My tastes and my caste
don't happen to coincide--that's all, Quarren."
They walked together to the front stoop.
"When do we open shop?" asked the Earl, briskly.
"As soon as I get the reports from our experts."
"Won't business be dead all summer?"
"We may do some business with agents and dealers."
"I see. You and I are to alternate as salesmen?"
"For a while. When things start I want to rent the basement and open a
department for repairing, relining and cleaning; and I'd like to be
able to do some of the work myself."
"_You?_"
"Surely. It interests me immensely."
"You're welcome I'm sure," said Dankmere drily. "But who's to keep the
books and attend to correspondence?"
"We'll get somebody. A young woman, who says she is well recommended,
advertised in Thursday's papers, and I wrote her from Witch-Hollow to
come around Sunday morning."
"That's to-morrow."
Quarren nodded.
So Dankmere trotted jauntily away into the night, and Quarren locked the
gallery and went to bed, certain that he was destined to dream of
Strelsa. But the sleek, narrow head and slightly protruding eyes of
Langly Sprowl was the only vision that peered cautiously at him through
his sleep.
The heated silence of a Sunday morning in June awoke him from a somewhat
restless night. Bathed and shaved, he crept forth limply to breakfast at
the Founders' Club where he still retained a membership. There was not a
soul there excepting himself and the servants--scarcely a person on the
avenues and cross-streets which he traversed going and coming, only one
or two old men selling Sunday papers at street-stands, an old hag
gleaning in the gutters, and the sparrows.
Clothing was a burden. He had some pongee garments which he put on,
installed himself in the gallery with a Sunday paper, an iced lime
julep, and a cigarette, and awaited the event of the young lady who
had advertised that she knew all about book-keeping, stenography,
and typewriting, and could prove it.
[Illustration: "She came about noon--a pale young girl, very slim in her
limp black gown."]
She came about noon--a pale young girl, very slim in her limp black
gown, and, at Quarren's invitation, seated herself at the newly
purchased desk of the firm.
Here, at his request she took a page or two of dictation from him and
typed it rapidly and accurately.
She had her own system of book-keeping which she explained to the young
man who seemed to think it satisfactory. Then he asked her what salary
she expected, and she told him, timidly.
"All right," he said with a smile, "if it suits you it certainly suits
me. Will you begin to-morrow?"
"Whenever you wish, Mr. Quarren."
"Well, there won't be very much to do for a while," he said laughingly,
"except to sit at that desk and look ornamental."
She flushed, then smiled and thanked him for giving her the position,
adding with another blush that she would do her best.
"Your best," he said amiably, "will probably be exactly what we
require.... Did you bring any letters?"
She hesitated: "One," she said gravely. She searched in her reticule,
found it, and handed it to Quarren who read it in silence, then returned
it to her.
"You were stenographer in Mr. Sprowl's private office?"
"Yes."
"This letter isn't signed by Mr. Sprowl."
"No, by Mr. Kyte, his private secretary."
"It seems you were there only six months."
"Six months."
"And before that where were you?"
"At home."
"Oh; Mr. Sprowl was your first employer!"
"Yes."
"Why did you leave?"
The girl hesitated so long that he thought she had not understood, and
was about to repeat the question when something in her pallor and in her
uplifted eyes checked him.
"I don't know why I was sent away," she said in a colourless voice.
He thought for a while, then, carelessly: "I take it that there was
nothing irregular in _your_ conduct?"
"No."
"You'd tell me if there was, wouldn't you?"
She lifted her dark eyes to his. "Yes," she said.
How much of an expert he was at judging faces he did not know, but he
was perfectly satisfied with himself when she took her leave.
And when Dankmere came in after luncheon he said:
"I've engaged a book-keeper. Her name is Jessie Vining. She's evidently
unhappy, poor, underfed, and the prettiest thing you ever saw out of a
business college. So, being unhappy, poor, underfed _and_ pretty, I take
it that she's all to the good."
"It's a generous world of men," said Dankmere--"so I guess she _is_
good."
"I'm sure of it. She was Sprowl's private stenographer--and he sent her
away.... There are three reasons why he might have dismissed her. I've
taken my choice of them."
"Did he give her a letter?"
"No."
"Oh. Then I've taken my choice, too."
"Kyte ventured to give her a letter," said Quarren. "I've heard that
Kyte _could_ be decent sometimes."
"I see."
Nothing further was said about the new book-keeper. His lordship went
into the back parlour and played the piano until satiated; then mixed
himself a lime julep.
That afternoon they went over the reports of the experts very carefully.
From these reports and his own conclusions Quarren drafted a catalogue
while Dankmere went about sticking adhesive labels on the frames, all
numbered. And, as he trotted blithely about his work, he talked to
himself and to the pictures:
"Here's number nine for you, old lady! If I'd had a face like that I'd
have killed the artist who transferred it to canvas!... Number sixteen
for you there in your armour! Somebody in Springfield will buy you for
an ancestor and that's what will happen to you.... And you, too, in a
bag-wig!--_you'll_ be some rich Yankee's ancestor before you know it!
That's the way you'll end, my smirking friend.... Hello! _Tiens!_ _In
Gottes namen_--whom have we here? Why, it's Venus!... And hot weather is
no excuse for going about _that_ way!... Listen to this, Quarren, for an
impromptu patter-song--
"'Venus, dear, you ought to know
What the proper caper is--
Even Eve, who wasn't slow,
Robbed the neighbours' graperies!
Even Mænads on the go,
Fat Bacchantes in a row--
Even ladies in a show
Wear _some_ threads of naperies!
Through the heavens planet-strewn
Where a shred of vapour is
Quickly clothes herself the Moon!
Get you to a modiste soon
Where the tissue-paper is,
Cut in fashions fit for June--
Wear 'em, dear, for draperies----'"
"_Good_ heavens!" protested Quarren--"how long can you run on like
that?"
"Years and years, my dear fellow. It's in me--born in me! Can you beat
it? Though I appear to be a peer appearance is a liar; cast for a part
apart from caste, departing I climb higher toward the boards to bore the
hordes and lord it, sock and buskin dispensing sweetness, art, and light
as per our old friend Ruskin----"
"Dankmere!"
"Heaven-born?"
"Stop!"
"I remain put.... What number do I stick on this gentleman with streaky
features?"
"Eighteen. That's a Franz Hals."
"Really?"
"Yes; the records are all here, and the experts agree."
His lordship got down nimbly from the step-ladder and came over to the
desk:
"Young sir," he said, "how much is that picture worth?"
"All we can get for it. It's not a very good example."
"Are you going to tell people that?"
"If they ask me," said Quarren, smiling.
"What price are you going to put on it?"
"Ten thousand."
"And do you think any art-smitten ass will pay that sum for a thing like
that?"
"I think so. If it were only a decent example I'd ask ten times
that--and probably get it in the end."
Dankmere inspected the picture more respectfully for a few moments, then
pasted a label on an exquisite head by Greuze.
"She's a peach," he said. "What price is going to waft her from my
roof-tree?"
"The experts say it's not a Greuze but a contemporary copy. And there's
no pedigree, either."
"Oh," said the Earl blankly, "is that your opinion, too?"
"I haven't any yet. But there's no such picture by Greuze extant."
"You _don't_ think it a copy?"
"I'm inclined not to. Under that thick blackish-yellow varnish I believe
I'll find the pearl and rose texture of old Greuze himself. In the
meantime it's not for sale."
"I see. And this battle-scene?"
"Wouverman's--ruined by restoring. It's not worth much."
"And this Virgin?"
"Pure as the Virgin Herself--not a mark--flawless. It's by 'The Master
of the Death of Mary.' Isn't it a beauty? Do you notice St. John holding
the three cherries and the Christ-child caressing the goldfinch? Did you
ever see such colour?"
"It's--er--pretty," said his lordship.
And so during the entire afternoon they compiled the price-list and
catalogue, marking copies for what they were, noting such pictures as
had been ruined by restoring or repainted so completely as to almost
obliterate the last original brush stroke. Also Quarren reserved for his
own investigations such canvases as he doubted or of which he had
hopes--a number that under their crocked, battered, darkened or
discoloured surfaces hinted of by-gone glories that might still be
living and only imprisoned beneath the thick opacity of dust, soot,
varnish, and the repainting of many years ago.
And that night he went to bed happier than he had ever been in all his
life--unless his moments with Strelsa Leeds might be termed happy ones.
* * * * *
Monday morning brought, among other things, a cloudless sun, and little
Miss Vining quite as spotless and radiant; and within ten minutes the
click of the typewriter made the silent picture-plastered rooms almost
gay.
In shirtwaist and cuffs she took her place behind the desk with a sort
of silent decision which seemed at once to invest her with suzerainty
over all that corner of the room; and Dankmere coming in a little later,
whistling merrily and twirling his walking-stick, sheered off
instinctively on his breezy progress through the rooms, skirting Jessie
Vining's domain as though her private ensign flew above it and
earthworks, cannon and trespass notices flanked her corner on every
side.
In the back parlour he said to Quarren: "So that is the girl?"
"It sure is."
"God bless my soul! she acts as though she had just bought in the whole
place."
"What's she doing?"
"Just sitting there," admitted Dankmere.
He seemed to have lost his spirits. Once, certain that he was unobserved
except by Quarren, he ventured to balance his stick on his chin, but it
was a half-hearted performance; and when he tossed up his straw hat and
attempted to catch it on his head, he missed, and the corrugated brim
sustained a dent.
A number of people called that morning, quiet, well-dressed,
cautious-eyed, soft-spoken gentlemen who moved about noiselessly over
the carpets and, on encountering one another, nodded with silent
familiarity and smiles scarcely perceptible.
They seemed to require no information concerning the pictures which they
swept with glances almost careless on their first rounds of the rooms.
But the first leisurely tour always resulted in a second where one or
two pictures seemed to claim their closer scrutiny.
Now and then one of these gentlemen would screw a jeweller's glass into
his eye and remain a few minutes nose almost touching a canvas. Several
used the large reading-glass lying on a side table. Before they departed
all glanced over the incomplete scale of prices which Jessie Vining had
typed and bound in blue covers; but one and all took their leave in
amiable silence, saying a non-committal word or two to Quarren in
pleasantly modulated voices and passing Jessie's desk with a grave
inclination of gravely preoccupied faces.
When the last leisurely lingerer had taken his leave Quarren said to
Jessie Vining:
"Those are representatives of various first-class dealers--confidential
buyers, sons--even dealers themselves--like that handsome gray-haired
young-looking man who is Max Von Ebers, head of that great house."
"But they didn't buy one single thing!" said Jessie.
Quarren laughed: "People don't buy off-hand. Our triumph is to get them
here at all. I wrote to each of them personally."
* * * * *
Nobody else came for a long while; then one or two of the lesser dealers
appeared, and now and then a man who might be an agent or a prowling and
wealthy amateur or perhaps one of those curious haunters of all art
marts who never buy but who never miss assisting at all inaugurations in
person--like an ubiquitous and silent dog who turns up wherever more
than two people assemble with any purpose in view--or without any.
During the forenoon and early afternoon several women came into the
galleries; and they seemed to be a little different from ordinary women,
although it would be hard to say wherein they were different except in
one instance--a tall, darkly handsome girl whose jewellery was as
conspicuously oriental as her brilliant colour.
Later Quarren told Jessie Vining that they were expert buyers on
commission or brokers having clients among those very wealthy people who
bought pictures now and then because it was fashionable to do so. Also,
these same women-brokers represented a number of those unhappy old
families who, incognito, were being forced by straitened circumstances
to part secretly with heirlooms--family plate, portraits, miniatures,
furniture--even with the antique mirrors on the walls and the very
fire-dogs on the hearth amid the ashes of a burnt-out race almost
extinct.
A few Jews came--representing the extreme types of the most wonderful
race of people in the world--one tall, handsome, immaculate young man
whose cultivated accent, charming manners, and quiet bearing challenged
exception--and one or two representing the other extreme, loud,
restless, aggressive, and as impertinent as they dared be, discussing
the canvases in noisy voices and with callous manners verging always on
the offensive.
These evinced a disposition for cash deals and bargain-wrangling,
discouraged good-naturedly by Quarren who referred them to the
catalogue; and presently they took themselves off.
Dankmere sidled up to Quarren rather timidly toward the close of the
afternoon.
"I don't see what bally good _I_ am in this business," he said. "I don't
mean to shirk, Quarren, but there doesn't seem to be anything for me to
do. I think that all these beggars spot me for an ignoramus the moment
they lay eyes on me, and the whole thing falls on you."
Quarren said laughingly: "Well, didn't you furnish the stock?"
"We ought to go halves," muttered Dankmere, shyly skirting Jessie
Vining's domain where she was writing letters with the Social Register
at her elbow.
* * * * *
The last days of June and the first of July were repetitions in a
measure of the opening day at the Dankmere Galleries; people came and
were received and entertained by Quarren; Dankmere sat about in various
chairs or retired furtively to the backyard to smoke at intervals;
Jessie Vining with more colour in her pale, oval face, ruled her corner
of the room in a sort of sweet and silent dignity.
Dankmere, who, innately, possessed the effrontery of a born comedian,
for some reason utterly unknown to himself, was inclined to be afraid of
her--afraid of the clear brown eyes indifferently lifted to his when he
entered--afraid of the quiet "Good-morning, Lord Dankmere," with which
she responded to his morning greeting--afraid of her cool skilful little
hands busy with pencil, pen, or lettered key--afraid of everything about
her from her rippling brown hair and snowy collar to the tips of her
little tan shoes--even afraid of the back of her head when it presented
only a slender neck and two little rosy, close-set ears. But he didn't
mention his state of abasement to Quarren.
A curious thing occurred, too: Jessie had evidently been gay on Sunday;
and, Monday noon, while out for lunch, she had left on her desk two
Coney Island postal cards decorated with her own photograph. When she
returned, one card had vanished; and she searched quietly but thoroughly
before she left for home that evening, but she did not find the card.
But she said nothing about it.
The dreadful part of the affair was that it was theft--the Earl of
Dankmere's first crime.
Why he had taken it he did not know. The awful impulse of kleptomania
alone seemed to explain but scarcely palliate his first offence against
society.
It was only after he realised that the picture and Jessie Vining vaguely
resembled his dead Countess that his lordship began to understand why he
had committed a felony before he actually knew what he was doing.
[Illustration: Jessie Vining.]
And one day when Quarren was still out for lunch and Jessie had returned
to her correspondence, the terrified Earl suddenly appeared before her
holding out the photograph: and she took it, astonished, her lifted eyes
mutely inquiring concerning the inwardness of this extraordinary
episode.
But Dankmere merely fled to the backyard and remained there all the
afternoon smoking his head off; and it was several days before Jessie
had an opportunity to find herself alone in his vicinity and to ask him
with almost perfect self-possession where he had found the photograph.
"I stole it," said Dankmere, turning bright red to his ear-tips.
"All she could think of to say was: 'Why?'
"It resembles my wife. So do you."
"Really," she said coldly.
* * * * *
Several days later she learned by the skilfully careless questioning of
Quarren that the Countess of Dankmere had not existed on earth for the
last ten years.
This news extenuated the Earl's guilt in her eyes to a degree which
permitted a slight emotion resembling pity to pervade her. And one day
she said to him, casually pleasant--"Would you care for that post-card,
Lord Dankmere? If it resembles your wife I would be very glad to return
it to you."
Dankmere, painfully red again, thanked her so nicely that the slight,
instinctive distrust and aversion which, in the beginning, she had
entertained for his lordship, suddenly disappeared so entirely that it
surprised her when she had leisure to think it over afterward.
So she gave him the post-card, and next day she found a rose in a glass
of water on her desk; and that ended the incident for them both except
that Dankmere was shyer of her than ever and she was beginning to
realise that his aloof and expressionless deportment was due to
shyness--which seemed to be inexplicable because otherwise timidity was
scarcely the word to characterise his lively little lordship.
Once, looking out of the rear windows, through the lace curtains she saw
the Earl of Dankmere in the backyard, gravely turning handsprings on the
grass while still smoking his pipe. Once, entering the gallery
unexpectedly, she discovered the Earl standing at the piano, playing a
rattling breakdown while his nimble little feet performed the same with
miraculous agility and professional precision. She withdrew to the front
door, hastily, and waited until the piano ceased from rumbling and the
Oxfords were at rest, then returned with heightened colour and a stifled
desire to laugh which she disguised under an absent-minded nod of
greeting.
Meanwhile one or two pictures had been sold to dealers--not important
ones--but the sales were significant enough to justify the leasing of
the basement. And here Quarren installed himself from morning to noon as
apprentice to an old Englishman who, before the failure of his eyesight,
had amassed a little fortune as surgeon, physician, and trained nurse to
old and decrepit pictures.
Not entirely unequipped in the beginning, Quarren now learned more about
his trade--the guarded secrets of mediums and solvents, the composition
of ancient and modern canvases, how old and modern colours were ground
and prepared, how mixed, how applied.
He learned how the old masters of the various schools of painting
prepared a canvas or panel--how the snowy "veil" was spread and dried,
how the under painting was executed in earth-red and bone-black, how the
glaze was used and why, what was the medium, what the varnish.
He learned about the "baths of sunlight," too--those clarifying
immersions practised so openly yet until recently not understood. He
comprehended the mechanics, physics, and simple chemistry of that
splendid, mysterious "inward glow" which seemed to slumber under the
colours of the old masters like the exquisite warmth in the heart of a
gem.
To him, little by little, was revealed the only real wonder of the old
masters--their astonishing honesty. He began to understand that, first
of all, they were self-respecting artisans, practising their trade of
making pictures and painting each picture as well as they knew how;
that, like other artisans, their pride was in knowing their trade, in a
mastery of their tools, and in executing commissions as honestly as they
knew how and leaving the "art" to take care of itself.
Also he learned--for he was obliged to learn in self-protection--the
tricks and deceptions and forgeries of the trade--all that was unworthy
about it, all its shabby disguises and imitations and crude artifices
and cunning falsehoods.
He examined old canvases painted over with old-new pictures and then
relined; canvases showing portions of original colour; old canvases and
panels repainted and artificially darkened and cleverly covered with
both paint and varnish cracks; canvases that almost defied detection by
needle-point or glass or thumb friction or solvent, so ingenious was
the forgery simulating age.
Every known adjunct was provided to carry out deception--genuinely old
canvases or panels, old stretchers really worm-eaten, aged frames of the
period, half-obliterated seals bearing sometimes even the cross-keys of
the Vatican. Even, in some cases, pretence that the pictures had been
cut from the frame and presumably stolen was carried out by a
knife-slashed and irregular ridge where the canvas had actually been so
cut and then sewed to a modern _toile_.
For forgery of art is as old as the Greeks and as new as to-day--the one
sinister art that perhaps will never become a lost art; and Quarren and
his aged mentor in the basement of the Dankmere Galleries discovered
more than enough frauds among the Dankmere family pictures showing how
the little Earl's forebears had once been gulled before his present
lordship lay in his cradle.
To Quarren the work was fascinating and, except for his increasing worry
over Strelsa Leeds, would have been all-absorbing to the degree of
happiness--or that interested contentment which passes for it on earth.
To see the dull encasing armour of varnish disappear from some ancient
masterpiece under the thumb, as the delicate thumb of the Orient
polishes lacquer; to dare a solvent when needed, timing its strength to
the second lest disaster tarnish forever the exquisite bloom of the
shrouded glazing; to cautiously explore for suspected signatures, to
brood and ponder over ancient records and alleged pedigrees; to compare
prints and mezzotints, photographs and engravings in search for
identities; to study threads of canvas, flakes of varnish, flinty
globules of paint under the microscope; to learn, little by little, the
technical manners and capricious mannerisms significant of the progress
periods of each dead master; to pore over endless volumes, monographs,
illustrated foreign catalogues of public and private collections--in
these things and through them happiness came to Quarren.
Never a summer sun rose over the streets of Ascalon arousing the
Philistine to another day of toil but it awoke Quarren to the subdued
excitement of another day. Eager, interested, content in his
self-respect, he went forth to a daily business which he cared about for
its own sake, and was fast learning to care about to the point of
infatuation.
He was never tired these days; but the summer heat and lack of air and
exercise made him rather thin and pale. Close work with the magnifying
glass had left his features slightly careworn, and had begun little
converging lines at the outer corners of his eyes. Only one line in his
face expressed anything less happy--the commencement of a short
perpendicular crease between his eyebrows. Anxious pondering over old
canvases was not deepening that faint signature of perplexity--or the
forerunner of Care's signs manual nervously etched from the wing of
either nostril.