"No, I want to be let alone."
"Don"t you care to pay for all you have had? Haven"t you any sense of justice to Uncle Oliphant, to your opportunities?"
"Oliphant!" Edwards laughed, disagreeably. "Wouldn"t he be pleased to have an operetta, a Gilbert and Sullivan affair, dedicated to him! No.
I have tried to humor your idea of making myself famous. But what"s the use of being wretched?" The topic seemed fruitless. Mrs. Edwards looked over to the slight, careless figure. He was sitting dejectedly on a large fauteuil, smoking. He seemed f.a.gged and spiritless. She almost pitied him and gave in, but suddenly she rose and crossed the room.
"We"ve made ourselves pretty unhappy," she said, apologetically, resting her hand on the lapel of his coat. "I guess it"s mostly my fault, Will. I have wanted so much that you should do something fine with Uncle Oliphant"s money, with _yourself_. But we can make it up in other ways."
"What are you so full of that idea for?" Edwards asked, curiously. "Why can"t you be happy, even as happy as you were in Harlem?" His voice was hypocritical.
"Don"t you know?" she flashed back. "You _do_ know, I believe. Tell me, did you look over those papers on the davenport that night Uncle James fainted?"
The unexpected rush of her mind bewildered him. A calm lie would have set matters to rights, but he was not master of it.
"So you were willing--you knew?"
"It wasn"t my affair," he muttered, weakly, but she had left him.
He wandered about alone for a few days until the suspense became intolerable. When he turned up one afternoon in their apartments he found preparations on foot for their departure.
"We"re going away?" he asked.
"Yes, to New York."
"Not so fast," he interrupted, bitterly. "We might as well face the matter openly. What"s the use of going back there?"
"We can"t live here, and besides I shall be wanted there."
"You can"t do anything now. Talk sensibly about it. I will not go back."
She looked at him coldly, critically. "I cabled Sloc.u.m yesterday, and we must live somehow."
"You--" but she laid her hand on his arm. "It makes no difference now, you know, and it can"t be changed. I"ve done everything."
CHICAGO, August, 1895.
A REJECTED t.i.tIAN
"John," my wife remarked in horrified tones, "he"s coming to Rome!"
"Who is coming to Rome--the Emperor?"
"Uncle Ezra--see," she handed me the telegram. "Shall arrive in Rome Wednesday morning; have Watkins at the Grand Hotel."
I handed the despatch to Watkins.
"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 _antichitas_ 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 t.i.tian, 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 succ.u.mb."
"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 indors.e.m.e.nt 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.