“I am sure this confidence will be as sacred to you as it is to me,” he said. “There is no need to say more, unless it is now to give me your address.”
She murmured it, sobbing, and he took it down from her lips: “Myrtle Villa, Garden Lane, Gospel Oak.” And then, with many passionate, half coherent expressions of gratitude, she left him.
He sat pondering for some little while after she was gone, the glow of his impulsive action slowly cooling. He would not regret it; yet for some reason he felt a nervousness in confessing, as would come to be necessary, its nature to Miss Halifax. He felt quite sure that she, however moved, would have kept the balance of her judgment at the discriminating poise.
During the afternoon he paid a visit to some famous Auction rooms in Wellington Street. A notable sale of Japanese colour prints was advertised, and the precious lots were on show. Gilead’s love for these things was either a weakness or a fine enthusiasm, according to the point of view. He was enraptured with the art, and was a ruinous competitor where he coveted rare examples of it. Still, as yet he was not so bitten but that he could resist—occasionally—temptation at what he considered absurdly inflated prices. The final stage of the disease had not hopelessly overtaken him. This day, very possibly, was to mark the turning point.
It was certainly a demoralizing display. A St Anthony of a virtuosic cast would have had a desperate struggle not to succumb to its seductions. The walls of the big room were bedizened, tapestried with a very profusion of covetable things, all representing the better or best periods of the leading schools. Such a sale, such a chance for the collector, had not yet occurred in London. It was to extend over five days, and included examples of all the notable artists from Kiyonobu to Kuniyoshi.
Gilead spent an absorbed hour or so in the room before leaving instructions as to which delectable nishiki-ye he wished to acquire, if possible. In this matter he desired to temper cupidity with reason; and he put force upon himself—or imagined that he did—in deciding the limits to which he would go. It was no parsimony, of course, which moved him to this caution. It was a reluctance merely to associate himself with that form of plutocracy which, in its greediness to possess at any figure, sets that standard of artificial values which is the despair of the poor but honest collector. An admirable principle in itself, though perhaps, from the seller’s point of view, an admirably one-sided. Nevertheless, a humorist might have observed that the young gentleman was careful, in the case of those prints which he particularly wanted for himself, to leave bids morally calculated to beat any possible competitor out of the field. It seemed the more perverse of him therefore to exhibit an obstinately inelastic spirit before perhaps the finest example of a Haronobu in the room.
It was an exquisite thing, harmonious in tone and composition, perfect in registration, as flawless a specimen of artistic and technical work as was ever produced by this incomparable artist. It represented a young girl being carried on the shoulder of a man to a temple for the meyamairi or naming ceremony, attendants following; and in condition and treatment and the soft intricacies of its colour scheme it fairly baffled criticism.
“There, sir! What do you think of that?”
It was Mr Desmund who spoke, art expert and valuer to a well-known firm of print and book sellers. He had accompanied Gilead round the room, booking his bids—an unwearying resourceful man, with a drooping light moustache, a bright complexion, and pale blue eyes, tired but interested. He wore a loose blue serge suit with a bright tie; his shoulders were bent a trifle beneath their load of specialised knowledge; he was a busy soul, but never too busy for enthusiasm in the right directions or to the right people. What Mr Desmund did not know about Japanese art was not, in the vernacular, worth the knowing.
“There, sir!” he said, confident of the exclamation of delight that was to follow.