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 Raycie stared. “Mr. Reedy,” he said, “does what I tell him, if that’s what you mean; otherwise he would hardly have been in my employ for over thirty years.”

      Lewis was silent, and his father examined him critically. “You appear to have filled out; your health is satisfactory? Well . . . well . . . Mr. Robert Huzzard and his daughters are dining here this evening, by the way, and will no doubt be expecting to see the latest French novelties in stocks and waistcoats. Malvina has become a very elegant figure, your sisters tell me.” Mr. Raycie chuckled, and Lewis thought: “I KNEW it was the oldest Huzzard girl!” while a slight chill ran down his spine.

      “As to the pictures,” Mr. Raycie pursued with growing animation, “I am laid low, as you see, by this cursed affliction, and till the doctors get me up again, here must I lie and try to imagine how your treasures will look in the new gallery. And meanwhile, my dear boy, I need hardly say that no one is to be admitted to see them till they have been inspected by me and suitably hung. Reedy shall begin unpacking at once; and when we move to town next month Mrs. Raycie, God willing, shall give the handsomest evening party New York has yet seen, to show my son’s collection, and perhaps . . . eh, well? . . . to celebrate another interesting event in his history.”

      Lewis met this with a faint but respectful gurgle, and before his blurred eyes rose the wistful face of Treeshy Kent.

      “Ah, well, I shall see her tomorrow,” he thought, taking heart again as soon as he was out of his father’s presence.

      6.

      Table of Contents

      MR. RAYCIE stood silent for a long time after making the round of the room in the Canal Street house where the unpacked pictures had been set out.

      He had driven to town alone with Lewis, sternly rebuffing his daughters’ timid hints, and Mrs. Raycie’s mute but visible yearning to accompany him. Though the gout was over he was till weak and irritable, and Mrs. Raycie, fluttered at the thought of “crossing him,” had swept the girls away at his first frown.

      Lewis’s hopes rose as he followed his parent’s limping progress. The pictures, though standing on chairs and tables, and set clumsily askew to catch the light, bloomed out of the half-dusk of the empty house with a new and persuasive beauty. Ah, how right he had been — how inevitable that his father should own it!

      Mr. Raycie halted in the middle of the room. He was still silent, and his face, so quick to frown and glare, wore the calm, almost expressionless look known to Lewis as the mask of inward perplexity. “Oh, of course it will take a little time,” the son thought, tingling with the eagerness of youth.

      At last, Mr. Raycie woke the echoes by clearing his throat; but the voice which issued from it was as inexpressive as his face. “It is singular,” he said, “how little the best copies of the Old Masters resemble the originals. For these ARE Originals?” he questioned, suddenly swinging about on Lewis.

      “Oh, absolutely, sir! Besides — ” The young man was about to add: “No one would ever have taken the trouble to copy them” — but hastily checked himself.

      “Besides —?”

      “I meant, I had the most competent advice obtainable.”

      “So I assume; since it was the express condition on which I authorised your purchases.”

      Lewis felt himself shrinking and his father expanding; but he sent a glance along the wall, and beauty shed her reviving beam on him.

      Mr. Raycie’s brows projected ominously; but his face remained smooth and dubious. Once more he cast a slow glance about him.

      “Let us,” he said pleasantly, “begin with the Raphael.” And it was evident that he did not know which way to turn.

      “Oh, sir, a Raphael nowadays — I warned you it would be far beyond my budget.”

      Mr. Raycie’s face fell slightly. “I had hoped nevertheless . . . for an inferior specimen . . . ” Then with an effort: “The Sassoferrato, then.”

      Lewis felt more at his ease; he even ventured a respectful smile. “Sassoferrato is ALL inferior, isn’t he? The fact is, he no longer stands . . . quite as he used to . . . ”

      Mr. Raycie stood motionless: his eyes were vacuously fixed on the nearest picture.

      “Sassoferrato . . . no longer . . .?”

      “Well, sir, NO; not for a collection of this quality.”

      Lewis saw that he had at last struck the right note. Something large and uncomfortable appeared to struggle in Mr. Raycie’s throat; then he gave a cough which might almost have been said to cast out Sassoferrato.

      There was another pause before he pointed with his stick to a small picture representing a snub-nosed young woman with a high forehead and jewelled coif, against a background of delicately interwoven columbines. “Is THAT,” he questioned, “your Carlo Dolce? The style is much the same, I see; but it seems to me lacking in his peculiar sentiment.”

      “Oh, but it’s not a Carlo Dolce: it’s a Piero della Francesca, sir!” burst in triumph from the trembling Lewis.

      His father sternly faced him. “It’s a COPY, you mean? I thought so!”

      “No, no; not a copy, it’s by a great painter . . . a much greater . . . ”

      Mr. Raycie had reddened sharply at his mistake. To conceal his natural annoyance he assumed a still more silken manner. “In that case,” he said, “I think I should like to see the inferior painters first. Where IS the Carlo Dolce?”

      “There IS no Carlo Dolce,” said Lewis, white to the lips.

      The young man’s next distinct recollection was of standing, he knew not how long afterward, before the armchair in which his father had sunk down, almost as white and shaken as himself.

      “This,” stammered Mr. Raycie, “this is going to bring back my gout . . . ” But when Lewis entreated: “Oh, sir, do let us drive back quietly to the country, and give me a chance later to explain . . . to put my case” . . . the old gentleman had struck through the pleading with a furious wave of his stick.

      “Explain later? Put your case later? It’s just what I insist upon your doing here and now!” And Mr. Raycie added hoarsely, and as if in actual physical anguish: “I understand that young John Huzzard returned from Rome last week with a Raphael.”

      After that, Lewis heard himself — as if with the icy detachment of a spectator — marshalling his arguments, pleading the cause he hoped his pictures would have pleaded for him, dethroning the old Powers and Principalities, and setting up these new names in their place. It was first of all the names that stuck in Mr. Raycie’s throat: after spending a life-time committing to memory the correct pronunciation of words like Lo Spagnoletto and Giulio Romano, it was bad enough, his wrathful eyes seemed to say, to have to begin a new set of verbal gymnastics before you could be sure of saying to a friend with careless accuracy: “And THIS is my Giotto da Bondone.”

      But that was only the first shock, soon forgotten in the rush of greater tribulation. For one might conceivably learn how to pronounced Giotto da Bondone, and even enjoy СКАЧАТЬ