CHAPTER XXXI
THE ELDER MAKES A GOOD BARGAIN, AND
MICHAIL A POOR ONE
"What does he mean?" I growled. "Where's the portrait?"
Jack looked in the boxes, and turned the letter round; there was no sign of a drawing or of anything connected with portraiture.
I walked up to the elder's cupboard and looked in. Besides the teacups and other domestic treasures there was a tin case, in size about one foot by nine inches. I took this without permission from the elder, who had disappeared after Michail. I opened it.
Sure enough, it was a portrait of old Clutterbuck—the vilest that could be conceived, but still recognisable. The old man could never, I should say, have laid claim to good looks; but the "pavement artist" had scarcely done him justice; he had, in fact, represented his client as so repulsively hideous that the lowest criminal would probably have reconsidered his position and turned over a new leaf if informed that he possessed a face like this of poor maligned Clutterbuck.
"By George!" said Jack, "the old chap couldn't have been very vain to bequeath such a thing as that to his heirs. What a terrible specimen he must have been! Was he like this thing?"
"He wasn't as bad as that," I replied. I felt that I had a grievance against the man, and I was not inclined to give him more than the barest justice; but I was bound to admit this much.
"I'm glad to hear it," said Jack; "for if he had been, I think I should have lost my faith in the bonâ fides of his letters and of the whole thing. That pavement artist ought to have been hanged, and his body danced on. What, in Heavens name, did the old man want to leave you a thing like that for? Why couldn't he get himself photographed if he was sentimentally anxious that his heirs should possess his portrait?"
Jack laughed; I could not help joining in. It was really rather funny; and the more one looked at the picture the more one felt inclined to laugh. The artist was evidently not ashamed of his work, for he had painted his name in full at the foot of it, "Thomas Abraham Tibbett," bless him! I know his name well—I read it every day of my life, for his masterpiece hangs over my washstand, and I look at it whenever I feel low in spirits and think that a little T. A. Tibbett will do me good.