Campton paused in the doorway, seized by his old fear of the painting’s passing into Anderson Brant’s possession.
“Look here: where is this one going?”
The dealer cocked his handsome grey head and glanced archly through plump eyelids. “Violation of professional secrecy? Well.... Well ... under constraint I’ll confess it’s to a young lady: great admirer, artist herself. Had her order by cable from New York a year ago. Been on the lookout ever since.”
“Oh, all right,” Campton answered, repocketing the money.
He set out at once for “The Friends of French Art,” and Léonce Black, bound for the Ministry of War, walked by his side, regaling him alternately with the gossip of the Ministry and with racy anecdotes of the dealers’ world. In M. Black’s opinion the war was an inexcusable blunder, since Germany was getting to be the best market for the kind of freak painters out of whom the dealers who “know how to make a man ‘foam’” can make a big turn over. “I don’t know what on earth will become of all those poor devils now: Paris cared for them only because she knew Germany would give any money for their things. Personally, as you know, I’ve always preferred sounder goods: I’m a classic, my dear Campton, and I can feel only classic art,” said the dealer, swelling out his uniformed breast and stroking his Assyrian nose as though its handsome curve followed the pure Delphic line. “But, as long as things go on as they are at present in my department of the administration, the war’s not going to end in a hurry,” he continued. “And now we’re in for it, we’ve got to see the thing through.”
Campton found Boylston, as usual, in his melancholy cabinet particulier. He was listening to the tale of a young woman with streaming eyes and an extravagant hat. She was so absorbed in her trouble that she did not notice Campton’s entrance, and behind her back the painter made a sign to say that she was not to be interrupted.
He was as much interested in the suppliant’s tale as in watching Boylston’s way of listening. That modest and commonplace-looking young man was beginning to excite a lively curiosity in Campton. It was not only that he remembered George’s commendation, for he knew that the generous enthusiasms of youth may be inspired by trifles imperceptible to the older. It was Boylston himself who interested the painter. He knew no more of the young man than the scant details Miss Anthony could give. Boylston, it appeared, was the oldest hope of a well-to-do Connecticut family. On his leaving college a place had been reserved for him in the paternal business; but he had announced good-humouredly that he did not mean to spend his life in an office, and one day, after a ten minutes’ conversation with his father, as to which details were lacking, he had packed a suitcase and sailed for France. There he had lived ever since, in shabby rooms in the rue de Verneuil, on the scant allowance remitted by an irate parent: apparently never running into debt, yet always ready to help a friend.
All the American art-students in Paris knew Boylston; and though he was still in the early thirties, they all looked up to him. For Boylston had one quality which always impresses youth: Boylston knew everybody. Whether you went with him to a smart restaurant in the rue Royale, or to a wine-shop of the Left Bank, the patron welcomed him with the same cordiality, and sent the same emphatic instructions to the cook. The first fresh peas and the tenderest spring chicken were always for this quiet youth, who, when he was alone, dined cheerfully on veal and vin ordinaire. If you wanted to know where to get the best Burgundy, Boylston could tell you; he could also tell you where to buy an engagement ring for your girl, a Ford runabout going at half-price, or the papier timbré on which to address a summons to a recalcitrant laundress.
If you got into a row with your landlady you found that Boylston knew her, and that at sight of him she melted and withdrew her claim; or, failing this, he knew the solicitor in whose office her son was a clerk, or had other means of reducing her to reason. Boylston also knew a man who could make old clocks go, another who could clean flannels without their shrinking, and a third who could get you old picture-frames for a song; and, best of all, when any inexperienced American youth was caught in the dark Parisian cobweb (and the people at home were on no account to hear about it) Boylston was found to be the friend and familiar of certain occult authorities who, with a smile and a word of warning, could break the mesh and free the victim.
The mystery was, how and why all these people did what Boylston wanted; but the reason began to dawn on Campton as he watched the young woman in the foolish hat deliver herself of her grievance. Boylston was simply a perfect listener—and most of his life was spent in listening. Everything about him listened: his round forehead and peering screwed-up eyes, his lips twitching responsively under the close-clipped moustache, and every crease and dimple of his sagacious and humorous young countenance; even the attitude of his short fat body, with elbows comfortably bedded in heaped up papers, and fingers plunged into his crinkled hair. There was never a hint of hurry or impatience about him: having once asserted his right to do what he liked with his life, he was apparently content to let all his friends prey on it. You never caught his eye on the clock, or his lips shaping an answer before you had turned the last corner of your story. Yet when the story was told, and he had surveyed it in all its bearings, you could be sure he would do what he could for you, and do it before the day was over.