As none came, and the silence grew intolerable, he ventured at last to glance furtively across at her. Her face seemed to him a shade paler than before, but that might be exaggerated by the relief of her rich and sombre furs. Her eyes were quite expressionless and blank, although she had the air of being immensely thoughtful; her mouth was inscrutable and unmoved. And he experienced a sudden pang of horror at the anticipation of a dinner alone with her, with the ghostly presence of this news dividing them, before he reminded himself that Colonel Lightmark was to be of the party.
For, perhaps, the first time in his life the prospect of his uncle's company afforded him a sensation of relief.
CHAPTER XXXI
When Oswyn emerged from the narrow doorway of the gallery in Bond Street, which on the morrow was to be filled with the heterogeneous presence of those who, for different reasons, are honoured with cards of invitation to private views, it was still daylight, although the lamps had been lighted; and the east wind, which during the earlier hours of the day had made the young summer seem such a mockery of flowery illusions, had taken a more genial air from the south into alliance; and there was something at once caressing and exhilarating in their united touch as they wandered in gentle eddies up the crooked thoroughfare.
Oswyn paused upon the pavement, outside the showroom which Mosenthal called a gallery, gazing up the road towards Oxford Street, with a momentary appreciation of the subtile early evening charm, which lent so real a beauty even to a vista of commonplace shop-fronts and chimney-pots, straightening his bent figure, and wondering whither to betake himself.
He had not allowed his friend's death to be an excuse for abandoning the projected exhibition; indeed, when this event occurred, he was already too far compromised; and he even found the labour involved in the preparations for the new departure a very welcome distraction—the one thing which made it possible for the desolate man to stay on in London, which, he assured himself dogmatically, was the only place on earth where he could face life with an indifference which was at least a tolerable imitation of equanimity.
To get together the materials for even a modest exhibition of the kind which he contemplated, it became necessary for him to ransack old portfolios, and to borrow from dealers, and from his few discriminating private patrons, works which had but recently left his studio and could still be traced; to utilize all the hours of daylight accorded to him by a grudging season for finishing, mounting, and retouching.
The man who made frames for Oswyn knew him of old as an exacting customer and hard to please, who insisted on a rigid adherence to his own designs, and was quick to detect inferior workmanship or material; but during the last few days he had been driven almost to rebellion by the painter's exigencies; never had such calls been made upon him for flawless glass, and delicately varied shades of gold and silver; never had artist's eye been so ruthless in the condemnation of imperfect mitres and superfluous plaster.
But now the work of preparation was at an end: the catalogues had been printed, and his impresario had judiciously circulated invitations to press and public: the work was done, and the workman felt only weary and indifferent. If the public howled, what did it matter? Their hostility would be for him a corroboration, for his Jew an invaluable advertisement. If they fawned, so much the better: it would not hurt him, and Mosenthal would still have his advertisement. If they were indifferent, well, so was he.
The question of pecuniary profit troubled him not at all (though here his Jew joined issue): what in the world could he do with money, now? He could paint a picture in a month which would keep him for six, and the dealer who bought it probably for a year.