Sister Teresa Part 7

"These are the Chadwells, whom--" (Harding whispered a celebrated name) "used to call the most gentlemanly picture-dealers in Bond-street." Harding spoke to them, Owen standing apart absorbed in His grief, until the word "Asher" caught his ear.

"Of whom are you speaking?"

"Of you, of Sir Owen Asher." And Harding followed Owen, intensely annoyed.

"Not even to a gentlemanly picture-dealer should you--"

"You are entirely wrong; I said 'Sir Owen Asher.'"

"Very strange you should say 'Sir Owen Asher'; why didn't you say Sir Owen?"

Harding did not answer, being uncertain if it would not be better to drop Asher's acquaintance. But they had known each other always. It would be difficult.

"The sale is about to begin," Asher said, and Harding sat down angry with Asher and interested in the auctioneer's face, created, Harding thought, for the job... "looking exactly like a Roman bust. Lofty brow, tight lips, vigilant eyes, voice like a bell.... That d.a.m.ned fellow Asher! What the h.e.l.l did he mean--"

The auctioneer sat at a high desk, high as any pulpit, and in the benches the congregation crowded--every shade of nondescript, the waste ground one meets in a city: poor Jews and dealers from the outlying streets, with here and there a possible artist or journalist. As the pictures were sold the prices they fetched were marked in the catalogues, and Harding wondered why.

Around the room were men and women of all cla.s.ses; a good many of Sir Owen's "set" had come--"Society being well represented that day," as the newspapers would put it. All the same, the pictures were not selling well, not nearly so well as Owen and Harding antic.i.p.ated.

Harding was glad of this, for his heart was set on a certain drawing by Boucher.

"I would sooner you had it, Harding, than anybody else. It would be unendurable if one of those picture-dealers should get it; they'd come round to my house trying to sell it to me again, whereas in your rooms--"

"Yes," said Harding, "it will be an excuse to come to see me. Well, if I can possibly afford it--"

"Of course you can afford it; I paid eighty-seven pounds for it years ago; it won't go to more than a hundred. I'd really like you to have it."

"Well, for goodness' sake don't talk so loud, somebody will hear you."

The pictures went by--portraits of fair ladies and ancient admirals, landscapes, underwoods and deserts, flower and battle pieces, pathetic scenes and gallantries. There was a time when every one of these pictures was the hope and delight of a human being, now they went by interesting n.o.body....

At last the first of Evelyn's pictures was hoisted on the easel.

"Good G.o.d!" isn't it a miserable sight seeing her pictures going to whomsoever cares to bid a few pounds. But if I were to buy the whole collection--"

"I quite understand, and every one is a piece of your life."

The pictures continued to go by.

"I can't stand this much longer."

"Hus.h.!.+"

The Boucher drawing went up. It was turned to the right and to the left: a beautiful girl lying on her belly, her legs parted slightly.

Therefore the bidding began briskly, but for some unaccountable reason it died away. "Somebody must have declared it to be a forgery," Owen whispered to Harding, and a moment after it became Harding's property for eighty-seven pounds--"The exact sum I paid for it years ago. How very extraordinary!"

"A portrait by Manet--a hundred pounds offered, one hundred," and two grey eyes in a face of stone searched the room for bidders. "One hundred pounds offered, five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, fifty,"

and so on to two hundred.

"Her portrait will cost me a thousand," Owen whispered to Harding, and, catching the auctioneer's eyes, he nodded again. Seven hundred.

"Will they never stop bidding? That fellow yonder is determined to run up the picture." Eight hundred and fifty! The auctioneer raised his hammer, and the watchful eyes went round the room in search of some one who would pay another ten pounds for Evelyn's portrait by Manet. Eight hundred and fifty--eight hundred and fifty. Down came the hammer. The auctioneer whispered "Sir Owen Asher" to his clerk.

"It's a mercy I got it for that; I was afraid it would go over the thousand. Now, come, we have got our two pictures. I'm sick of the place."

Harding had thought of staying on, just to see the end of the sale, but it was easier to yield to Owen than to argue with him; besides, he was anxious to see how the drawing would look on his wall. Of course it was a Boucher. Stupid remarks were always floating about Christie's. But he would know for certain as soon as he saw the drawing in a new light.

He was muttering "It is genuine enough," when his servant opened the door--"Sir Owen Asher."

"I see you have hung up the drawing. It looks very well, doesn't it.

You'll never regret having taken my advice."

"Taken your advice!" Harding was about to answer. "But what is the use in irritating the poor man? He is so much in love he hardly knows what he is saying. Owen Asher advising me as to what I should buy!"

Owen went over and looked into Harding's Ingres.

"Every time one sees it one likes it better." And they talked about Ingres for some time, until Owen's thoughts went back to Evelyn, and looking from the portrait by Ingres to the drawing by Boucher he seemed suddenly to lose control; tears rose to his eyes, and Harding watched him, wondering whither Owen's imagination carried him. "Is he far away in Paris, hearing her sing for the first time to Madame Savelli? Or is he standing with her looking over the bulwarks of the _Medusa_, seeing the shape of some Greek island dying in the twilight?" And Harding did not speak, feeling the lover's meditation to be sacred. Owen flung himself into an arm-chair, and without withdrawing his eyes from the picture, said, relying on Harding's friends.h.i.+p:

"It is very like her, it is really very like her. I am much obliged to you, Harding, for having bought it. I shall come here to see it occasionally."

"And I'll present you with a key, so that when I am away you can spend your leisure in front of the picture.... Do you know whom I shall feel like? Like the friend of King Condules."

"But she'll not ask you to conspire to a.s.sa.s.sinate me. My murder would profit you nothing. All the same, Harding, now I come to think of it, there's a good deal of that queen in Evelyn, or did she merely desire to take advantage of the excuse to get rid of her husband?"

"Ancient myths are never very explicit; one reads whatever psychology one likes into them. Perhaps that is why they never grow old."

The door opened... Harding's servant brought in a parcel of proofs.

"My dear Asher, the proof of an article has just come, and the editor tells me he'll be much obliged if I look through it at once."

"Shall I wait?"

"Well, I'd sooner you didn't. Correcting a proof with me means a rewriting, and--"

"You can't concentrate your thoughts while I am roving about the room. I understand. Are you dining anywhere?"

"I'm not engaged."

The thought crossed Harding's mind when Owen left the room that it would be better perhaps to write saying that the proofs detained him, for to spend the evening with Owen would prove wearisome. "No matter what the subject of conversation may be his mind will go back to her very soon.... But to leave him alone all the evening would be selfish, and if I don't dine with him I shall have to dine alone...." Harding turned to his writing-table, worked on his proof for a couple of hours, and then went to meet Owen, whom he found waiting for him at his club.

"My dear friend, I quite agree with you," he said, sitting down to the table; "what you want is change."

"Do you think, Harding, I shall find any interest again in anything?"

"Of course you will, my dear friend, of course you will." And he spoke to his friend of ruined palaces and bas-reliefs; Owen listened vaguely, begging of him at last to come with him.

"It will give you ideas, Harding; you will write better."

Harding shook his head, for it did not seem to him to be his destiny to relieve the tedium of a yachting excursion in the Mediterranean.