Edith Wharton: New Year's Day, False Dawn, The Old Maid & The Spark (4 Books in One Edition). Edith Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ request were likely to be repeated before each picture; the bitterness of this was so great that Mr. Raycie, without exaggeration, might have likened his case to that of Agag.

      “God! God! God! Carpatcher, you say this other fellow’s called? Kept him back till the last because it’s the gem of the collection, did you? Carpatcher — well, he’d have done better to stick to his trade. Something to do with those new European steam-cars, I suppose, eh?” Mr. Raycie was so incensed that his irony was less subtle than usual. “And Angelico you say did that kind of Noah’s Ark soldier in pink armour on gold leaf? Well, THERE I’ve caught you tripping, my boy. Not AngelicO, AngelicA; Angelica Kauffman was a lady. And the damned swindler who foisted that barbarous daub on you as a picture of hers deserves to be drawn and quartered — and shall be, sir, by God, if the law can reach him! He shall disgorge every penny he’s rooked you out of, or my name’s not Halston Raycie! A bargain . . . you say the thing was a BARGAIN? Why, the price of a clean postage stamp would be too dear for it! God — my son; do you realize you had a TRUST to carry out?”

      “Yes, sir, yes; and it’s just because — ”

      “You might have written; you might at least have placed your views before me . . . ”

      How could Lewis say: “If I had, I knew you’d have refused to let me buy the pictures?” He could only stammer: “I DID allude to the revolution in taste . . . new names coming up . . . you may remember . . . ”

      “Revolution! New names! Who says so? I had a letter last week from the London dealers to whom I especially recommended you, telling me that an undoubted Guido Reni was coming into the market this summer.”

      “Oh, the dealers — THEY don’t know!”

      “The dealers . . . don’t? . . . Who does . . . except yourself?” Mr. Raycie pronounced in a white sneer.

      Lewis, as white, still held his ground. “I wrote you, sir, about my friends; in Italy, and afterward in England.”

      “Well, God damn it, I never heard of one of THEIR names before, either; no more’n of these painters of yours here. I supplied you with the names of all the advisers you needed, and all the painters, too; I all but made the collection for you myself, before you started . . . I was explicit enough, in all conscience, wasn’t I?”

      Lewis smiled faintly. “That’s what I hoped the pictures would be . . . ”

      “What? Be what? What’d you mean?”

      “Be explicit . . . Speak for themselves . . . make you see that their painters are already superseding some of the better known . . . ”

      Mr. Raycie gave an awful laugh. “They are, are they?” In whose estimation? Your friends’, I suppose. What’s the name, again, of that fellow you met in Italy, who picked ’em out for you?”

      “Ruskin — John Ruskin,” said Lewis.

      Mr. Raycie’s laugh, prolonged, gathered up into itself a fresh shower of expletives. “Ruskin — Ruskin — just plain John Ruskin, eh? And who IS this great John Ruskin, who sets God A’mighty right in his judgments? Who’d you say John Ruskin’s father was, now?”

      “A respected wine-merchant in London, sir.”

      Mr. Raycie ceased to laugh: he looked at his son with an expression of unutterable disgust.

      “Retail?”

      “I . . . believe so . . . ”

      “Faugh!” said Mr. Raycie.

      “It wasn’t only Ruskin, father . . . I told you of those other friends in London, whom I met on the way home. They inspected the pictures, and all of them agreed that . . . that the collection would some day be very valuable.”

      “SOME DAY— did they give you a date . . . the month and the year? Ah, those other friends; yes. You said there was a Mr. Brown and a Mr. Hunt and a Mr. Rossiter, was it? Well, I never heard of any of those names either — except perhaps in a trades’ directory.”

      “It’s not Rossiter, father: Dante Rossetti.”

      “Excuse me: Rossetti. And what does Mr. Dante Rossetti’s father do? Sell macaroni, I presume?”

      Lewis was silent, and Mr. Raycie went on, speaking now with a deadly steadiness: “The friends I sent you to were judges of art, sir; men who know what a picture’s worth; not one of ’em but could pick out a genuine Raphael. Couldn’t you find ’em when you got to England? Or hadn’t they the time to spare for you? You’d better not,” Mr. Raycie added, “tell me THAT, for I know how they’d have received your father’s son.”

      “Oh, most kindly . . . they did indeed, sir . . . ”

      “Ay; but that didn’t suit you. You didn’t WANT to be advised. You wanted to show off before a lot of ignoramuses like yourself. You wanted — how’d I know what you wanted? It’s as if I’d never given you an instruction or laid a charge on you! And the money — God! Where’d it go to? Buying THIS? Nonsense — .” Mr. Raycie raised himself heavily on his stick and fixed his angry eyes on his son. “Own up, Lewis; tell me they got it out of you at cards. Professional gamblers the lot, I make no doubt; your Ruskin and your Morris and your Rossiter. Make a business to pick up young American greenhorns on their travels, I daresay . . . No? Not that, you say? Then — women? God A’mighty, Lewis,” gasped Mr. Raycie, tottering toward his son with outstretched stick, “I’m no blue-nosed Puritan, sir, and I’d a damn sight rather you told me you’d spent it on a woman, every penny of it, than let yourself be fleeced like a simpleton, buying these things that look more like cuts out o’ Foxe’s book of Martyrs than Originals of the Old Masters for a Gentleman’s Gallery . . . Youth’s youth . . . Gad, sir, I’ve been young myself . . . a fellow’s got to go through his apprenticeship . . . Own up now: women?”

      “Oh, not women — ”

      “Not even!” Mr. Raycie groaned. “All in pictures, then? Well, say no more to me now . . . I’ll get home, I’ll get home . . . ” He cast a last apoplectic glance about the room. “The Raycie Gallery! That pack of bones and mummers’ finery! . . . Why, let alone the rest, there’s not a full-bodied female among ’em . . . Do you know what those Madonna’s of yours are like, my son? Why, there ain’t one of ’em that don’t remind me of a bad likeness of poor Treeshy Kent . . . I should say you’d hired half the sign-painters of Europe to do her portrait for you — if you could imagine your wanting it . . . No, sir! I don’t need your arm,” Mr. Raycie snarled, heaving his great bulk painfully across the hall. He withered Lewis with a last look from the doorstep. “And to buy THAT you overdrew your account? — No, I’ll drive home alone.”

      7.

      Table of Contents

      MR. RAYCIE did not die till nearly a year later; but New York agreed it was the affair of the pictures that had killed him.

      The day after his first and only sight of them he sent for his lawyer, and it became known that he had made a new will. Then he took to his bed with a return of the gout, and grew so rapidly worse that it was thought “only proper” to postpone the party Mrs. Raycie was to have given that autumn to inaugurate the gallery. This enabled the family to pass over in silence the question of the works of art themselves; СКАЧАТЬ