Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (6 page)

 
          
The
young man felt no impatience of these judgements. America was a long way from
Europe, and it was many years since Mr. Raycie had travelled. He could hardly
be blamed for not knowing that the things he admired were no longer admirable,
still less for not knowing why. The pictures before which Lewis had knelt in spirit
had been virtually undiscovered, even by art-students and critics, in his
father’s youth. How was an American gentleman, filled with his own
self-importance, and paying his courier the highest salary to show him the
accredited “Masterpieces”—how was he to guess that whenever he stood rapt
before a Sassoferrato or a Carlo Dolce one of those unknown treasures lurked
near by under dust and cobwebs?

 
          
No;
Lewis felt only tolerance and understanding. Such a view was not one to magnify
the paternal image; but when the young man entered the study where Mr. Raycie
sat immobilized by gout, the swathed leg stretched along his sofa seemed only
another reason for indulgence…

 
          
Perhaps,
Lewis thought afterward, it was his father’s prone position, the way his great
bulk billowed over the sofa, and the lame leg reached out like a
mountain-ridge, that made him suddenly seem to fill the room; or else the sound
of his voice booming irritably across the threshold, and scattering Mrs. Raycie
and the girls with a fierce: “And now, ladies, if the hugging and kissing are
over, I should be glad of a moment with my son.” But it was odd that, after
mother and daughters had withdrawn with all their hoops and flounces, the study
seemed to grow even smaller, and Lewis himself to feel more like a David
without the pebble.

 
          
“Well,
my boy,” his father cried, crimson and puffing, “here you are at home again,
with many adventures to relate, no doubt; and a few masterpieces to show me, as
I gather from the drafts on my exchequer.”

 
          
“Oh,
as to the masterpieces, sir, certainly,” Lewis simpered, wondering why his
voice sounded so fluty, and his smile was produced with such a conscious
muscular effort.

 
          
“Good—good,”
Mr. Raycie approved, waving a violet hand which seemed to be ripening for a
bandage. “Reedy carried out my orders, I presume? Saw to it that the paintings
were deposited with the bulk of your luggage in Canal Street?”

 
          
“Oh,
yes, sir; Mr. Reedy was on the dock with precise instructions. You now he
always carries out your orders,” Lewis ventured with a faint irony.

 
          
Mr.
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.

 
          
  

 
          
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 doing so, provided the friend in question recognized
the name and bowed to its authority. But to have your effort received by a
blank stare, and the playful request: “You’ll have to say that over again,
please”—to know that, in going the round of the gallery (the Raycie Gallery!)
the same stare and the same 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…”