She took the baby from Black, then, saying: “Your poster—hasn’t the time come? Won’t you show it yourself, please?”
“I want to, if I may. But it’s not for sale.”
“Oh! Then we have all we are to get to-night.”
“I’m not sure. Yes—I think we have all we are to get—to-night. But—perhaps we have something to give.”
She didn’t understand—how should she? She watched him go back to the little platform, its boards covered with a fine rug and its backing a piece of valuable French tapestry above which hung the French and Belgian flags. Jane had conceived this effective setting for her auctioneer, but it was none the less effective for the man who had taken Burns’ place. Standing there he slowly unrolled the poster, and the people before him ceased their buzzing talk to watch, for something in his face told them that here was that which they must not miss.
Ah, but this was an original! How had he procured it? It was a strip of canvas which Black unrolled and silently held up before the hundred pairs of gazing eyes. And as they looked, the last whisper gave way to a stillness which was its own commentary on and tribute to the story told by an artist who was somehow different from the rest.
The colouring of the picture—it was a poster like the others—was all rich blues and browns, with a hint of yellow and one gleam of white. The background was a dim huddle of ruins and battle smoke. Close in the foreground were two figures—a stalwart British soldier in khaki and steel hat supporting a wounded Frenchman in the “horizon blue” of the French army, his bare head bandaged and drooping upon his chest. These two figures alone were infinitely touching, but that which gave the picture its thrilling appeal was that at which the Briton, his hand at the salute, was gazing over the bent head of his comrade. And of that, at the extreme left of the picture, all that one saw was a rough wooden post, and upon it, nailed to it by the rigid feet, two still, naked limbs. A roadside Calvary—or the suggestion of it—that was all one saw. But the look in the saluting soldier’s rugged face was one of awe—and adoration.
Black held the canvas for a long minute, his own grave face turned toward it. Not even Fanny Fitch, in her cynical young heart, could dare to accuse him of “acting” now. The silence over the room was breathless—it was the hush which tells its story unmistakably. Before it could be broken, Black lowered the canvas.
“That’s all,” he said. “It brought it home to me so powerfully what is happening ‘over there’—I just wanted you to see it, too. That’s where the gifts you have given to-night are going.”
“Mr. Black——” It was Mr. Samuel Lockhart, speaking in a low voice from the front—“is that—to be bought?”