“I ... believe so....”
“Faugh!” said Mr. Raycie.
“It wasn’t only Ruskin, father.... I told you of those other friends in London, whom I met on the way home. They inspected the pictures, and all of them agreed that ... that the collection would some day be very valuable.”
“Some day—did they give you a date ... the month and the year? Ah, those other friends; yes. You said there was a Mr. Brown and a Mr. Hunt and a Mr. Rossiter, was it? Well, I never heard of any of those names, either—except perhaps in a trades’ directory.”
“It’s not Rossiter, father: Dante Rossetti.”
“Excuse me: Rossetti. And what does Mr. Dante Rossetti’s father do? Sell macaroni, I presume?”
Lewis was silent, and Mr. Raycie went on, speaking now with a deadly steadiness: “The friends I sent you to were judges of art, sir; men who know what a picture’s worth; not one of ’em but could pick out a genuine Raphael. Couldn’t you find ’em when you got to England? Or hadn’t they the time to spare for you? You’d better not,” Mr. Raycie added, “tell me that, for I know how they’d have received your father’s son.”
“Oh, most kindly ... they did indeed, sir....”
“Ay; but that didn’t suit you. You didn’t want to be advised. You wanted to show off before a lot of ignoramuses like yourself. You wanted—how’d I know what you wanted? It’s as if I’d never given you an instruction or laid a charge on you! And the money—God! Where’d it go to? Buying this? Nonsense—.” Mr. Raycie raised himself heavily on his stick and fixed his angry eyes on his son. “Own up, Lewis; tell me they got it out of you at cards. Professional gamblers the lot, I make no doubt; your Ruskin and your Morris and your Rossiter. Make a business to pick up young American greenhorns on their travels, I daresay.... No? Not that, you say? Then—women?... God A’mighty, Lewis,” gasped Mr. Raycie, tottering toward his son with outstretched stick, “I’m no blue-nosed Puritan, sir, and I’d a damn sight rather you told me you’d spent it on a woman, every penny of it, than let yourself be fleeced like a simpleton, buying these things that look more like cuts out o’ Foxe’s Book of Martyrs than Originals of the Old Masters for a Gentleman’s Gallery.... Youth’s youth.... Gad, sir, I’ve been young myself ... a fellow’s got to go through his apprenticeship.... Own up now: women?”
“Oh, not women——”