“Not usually. But I thought it my duty——”
“Yes; I see. But, as you say, what earthly consequence——?”
“None whatever; we must just be patient and persist.”
She hesitated, and then, her arms about him, her head on his breast: “Only, dearest, I’ve been counting up again, ever so carefully; and even if we give up fires everywhere but in the nursery, I’m afraid the wages of the door-keeper and the guardian ... especially if the gallery’s open to the public every day....”
“I’ve thought of that already, too; and I myself shall hereafter act as door-keeper and guardian.”
He kept his eyes on hers as he spoke. “This is the test,” he thought. Her face paled under its brown glow, and the eyes dilated in her effort to check her tears. Then she said gaily: “That will be ... very interesting, won’t it, Lewis? Hearing what the people say.... Because, as they begin to know the pictures better, and to understand them, they can’t fail to say very interesting things ... can they?” She turned and caught up the sleeping Louisa. “Can they ... oh, you darling—darling?”
Lewis turned away too. Not another woman in New York would have been capable of that. He could hear all the town echoing with this new scandal of his showing the pictures himself—and she, so much more sensitive to ridicule, so much less carried away by apostolic ardour, how much louder must that mocking echo ring in her ears! But his pang was only momentary. The one thought that possessed him for any length of time was that of vindicating himself by making the pictures known; he could no longer fix his attention on lesser matters. The derision of illiterate journalists was not a thing to wince at; once let the pictures be seen by educated and intelligent people, and they would speak for themselves—especially if he were at hand to interpret them.
VIII
FOR a week or two a great many people came to the gallery; but, even with Lewis as interpreter, the pictures failed to make themselves heard. During the first days, indeed, owing to the unprecedented idea of holding a paying exhibition in a private house, and to the mockery of the newspapers, the Gallery of Christian Art was thronged with noisy curiosity-seekers; once the astonished metropolitan police had to be invited in to calm their comments and control their movements. But the name of “Christian Art” soon chilled this class of sightseer, and before long they were replaced by a dumb and respectable throng, who roamed vacantly through the rooms and out again, grumbling that it wasn’t worth the money. Then these too diminished; and once the tide had turned, the ebb was rapid. Every day from two to four Lewis still sat shivering among his treasures, or patiently measured the length of the deserted gallery: as long as there was a chance of any one coming he would not admit that he was beaten. For the next visitor might always be the one who understood.
One snowy February day he had thus paced the rooms in unbroken solitude for above an hour when carriage-wheels stopped at the door. He hastened to open it, and in a great noise of silks his sister Sarah Anne Huzzard entered.