“Say, Maury, think it over! What do you take me for, anyway? Do you suppose I want to carry on a queer joint like this, always? It isn’t merely my commission I’m thinking of when I’m asking you for your best stuff! My littlest skirt will be growing up, and there’ll be others, perhaps. Pants, too,—who knows? I wouldn’t like to have him, and them, see me spend my days in a frisky, risky side-show like this!” His gesture included the emerald-green elephant, as yet unbought, and beginning to flake off a little at the tip of the trunk. “I like this art business—I like it fine. But I want to carry it on in a way a fellow like you would approve of, and respect, and be enthusiastic about!”
“Do you know,” answered Maurice, reflectively, “I begin to think that’s just what you are doing, as fast as you can!” He spilled some cigar-ash on the rug, and ground it in carefully with his foot, always a sign of emotion in Price-of-Great-Pearls. And the two had parted, well pleased with each other and with themselves.
Hence it was that Maurice, in reviewing the work of that good summer, had decided, Academician though he was, to send to the Court of New Departures his best-loved landscape. Farintosh was to have the rest. They were all of them good stuff, too; he knew that. But not one of them, either for his artist friends or for himself, surpassed in charm and amplitude that southern picture of Ascutney, painted with Anthony’s materials, too. At first blush, it seemed a high-keyed, ecstatic picture, but a second glance revealed a multitude of lovely, lively grays; dew-spangled or tear-touched, who could say? Maurice knew that he had never before put so much of himself into any picture. It was dyed-in-the-wool Price, by Jove it was! He told himself so, in a passion of certainty. He knew, he knew, that beyond anything he had ever before painted, it showed him at his best, intellectually and emotionally; it revealed the man, and whatever mastery he had over his life and times; and incidentally, his technique, too, a thing not to be despised in the midst of larger considerations. Yes, the pearl among his pictures! He smiled, remembering his nickname.
And the jewel had a suitable setting. To his joy, he had discovered among the hills an old Frenchman, cultivating his garden—a frame-maker who had long been with Chartier. Think of it, a man who not only could carve to perfection the delicately reserved mouldings Maurice Price desired, but who also really knew how to gild, in the reliable old manner! Such finds as these make life worth living. The Frenchman’s frame was a masterpiece, Maurice declared. He sent it, in advance, to the Court of New Departures; he felt that it might have an elevating influence there. But he kept the landscape by him, for pure joy in its presence, until the last moment. Sometimes, when he put it away at night, out of the reach of thieves and other insects, he looked at Amouretta, on the back of the panel, and wondered. But he had no wish to blot out that strange likeness. It was part and parcel—there was something about it, too—He left it there, just as Pietro of the merry heart had left it, until a later jester had wreaked himself upon the signature, sparing only the name Price.
In the Court of New Departures, Hal Wrayne was expecting that picture. Maurice had laconically written of his fresh adventures in painting, that summer; he had added that what he was about to send was “the gem of the whole outfit.” All of his new pictures were new departures, according to Maurice. However, he honestly believed that this one, the gem! had in its inspiration something at once deeper and fresher than the others could boast. No need to mention that fact to Farintosh, of course; for he had decided to let Farintosh exhibit all but the gem. Thus Maurice, half in jest and all in earnest. Hal was jubilant. He did not know whether the gem was a portrait, or a fragment of a decoration. What did that matter? A gem is a gem. When the frame arrived, he recognized its beauty, and danced for joy. He commissioned Dodo to keep her weather eye out for a harmonizing remnant.
At that time, he had in his employ a long lean German, straight as a die, body and soul; a man whose services were really worth more than Hal could afford to pay, but who nevertheless had begged to remain, because he was happy in the Court of New Departures, and had been unhappy elsewhere. He called himself the famulus, and had made himself well liked as such. Hal decided that when the pearl among pictures should at last arrive, the famulus, who was perfect in such duties, should unpack it, set it into its frame, and hang it in the place of honor, so that he himself might view it unexpectedly, from across the room. He carefully explained to the famulus that this picture, coming down from the mountains, was a new departure by a very great artist, and that he himself wanted to see it just as a buyer might see it; with a fresh eye, don’t you know? Just for the big impression, so to speak, and to avoid letting his mind get confused by a lot of little impressions, as would surely happen if he took it out of the box himself, and fussed around with the hanging. There was something of the boy and the comedian still left in Hal, you observe. The famulus, who had seen and heard strange things in art and from men, both here and abroad, nodded sagely. He understood.
Even so, after he had unpacked the panel, he scarcely knew which of the two sides it were best to show, in that frame whose workmanship he had already lovingly examined. In his honest conceit, he did not wish to seek counsel from his employer. To him, the landscape looked more beautiful than the lady! On the other hand, Mr. Wrayne had spoken of the great artist’s work as a new departure; surely the lady, rather than the landscape, fitted that specification! Ach, it was a turvy-tipsy world, these days. No one knew what was beauty, any more. Turning the lady’s bright image this way and that, he noted a signature, Price. Yes, that settled it; Price was the name Mr. Wrayne had spoken, many times already. With a sigh for the passing of the old régime in art as in life, the German famulus fitted the Italian boy’s “fake” study of the Irish girl within the Frenchman’s faultless frame, and set the picture in the place of honor, for rich Americans to see.
Not even to his “quartette of skirts” has Hal Wrayne ever disclosed his real feelings on seating himself in the buyer’s seat, to take in suddenly, “in one big impression,” the effect of Maurice’s new departure. He himself did not know what his real feelings were. He had once had some little taste, he told himself, some little training; but these had been set at naught by certain of his recent exploits in salesmanship. More than once, of late, he had experienced the acute distress of a frank soul that does not know whether it is lying or not.
“That’s what a joint like this brings a man to,” mused Hal. “First, intellectual dishonesty, in other words, blinking; and next, total blindness of the mind’s eye.” Amouretta’s lively blue glance dismayed him. Was that girl with pearls really a Price—a Price of deeper and fresher inspiration than was to be discerned in those Prices the great Farintosh was soon to show, on the Avenue? He could not believe his eyes. Yet there was the signature. It did not look like Maurice’s usual signature; but then, there was nothing like Maurice, in the whole thing. A new departure indeed! Hal’s spirit quailed.
“They always said Maurice Price could paint anything, in any way; but this stumps me. And it sure does give me a pain all over when I try to like it. Perhaps there’s something in one of those eyes that gets me, somehow. Is there, or isn’t there? If there is, hanged if I know whether it’s the near eye or the off eye!” Still playing the part of a buyer, Hal writhed in the buyer’s seat, a spurious Renaissance antique discarded by Maurice.