There was then the Renaissance jewelry, pieces lying like fragments of sky, of peach tree in bloom, of cherry and apple, a lovely pendant parrot enamelled in natural colours, a beautiful ship pendant of Venetian workmanship, an Italian earring formed of a large irregular pear-shaped pearl, in a gold setting a Cinquecento jewel—an emerald lizard set with a baroque pearl holding an emerald in its mouth.
Eighteenth-century glory. Gold studs with little skeletons on silk, covered with glass and set in gold. Initials of fine gold with a ground of plaited hair, this edged with blue and covered with faceted glass on crystal and the border of garnets. A pair of earrings, paintings in gouache mounted in gold. A brooch set with garnets. A French vinaigrette enamelled in panels of green on a gold and white ground.
Loveliest of anything yet seen, a sixteenth-century cameo portrait of Lucius Verius cut in a dark onyx. The enamel was green with little white "peas" and small diamonds were set in each pod.
"Ah this!" said Harkness, holding it in his hand. "This is exquisite!"
But Crispin was restless. The eyes closed, the short body moved to another part of the room leaving all the treasures carelessly exposed behind him. "That is enough," he said—"enough of those, I bore you. And now," turning aside with a deprecatory child-like smile, as though he had been exhibiting his doll's house, "you must see the prints."
Harkness turning back to the room saw it as even shabbier than before. It was lit by candle-light, and in the centre of the round shining table there were four tall amber-coloured candlesticks that threw around them a flickering colour as the draught ruffled their power. To this table Crispin drew two chairs. Then he went to a handsome old oak cabinet carved stiffly with flowers and fruit. He stayed looking with a long lingering glance at the drawers, then sharply up at Harkness. Seen there in the mellow light, with the coloured glory of the open cabinets dimly shining in the far room, with the pleasant timid smile that a collector wears when he is approaching his beloved friends, he might have stood to Rembrandt for another "Jan Six," short and stumpy though he be.
"Now what will you have? Dürer, Whistlers, Little Masters, Meryons, Dutch seventeenth century, Callot, Hollar? What you will. . . . No, you shall have only a few, and those not the most celebrated but perhaps the best loved. Now, here's for your pleasure. . . ."
He came to the table bearing carefully, reverentially, his treasures. He set them down. From one after another he withdrew the paper, there gleaming between the stiff white shining mats they breathed, they lived, they smiled. There was the Rembrandt "Landscape with a flock of sheep," there the Muirhead Bone "Orvieto," the Hollar "Seasons," Callot's "Passion," Meryon's "College Henri Quatre," Paul Potter's "Two Horses," a seascape of Zeeman, Cotman's "Windmill," Bracquemond's "Teal Alighting," a seascape of Moreau, and Aldegrever's "Labour of Hercules" to close the list. Not more than thirty in all, but living there on the table with their personal glow spontaneity. He bent over them caressing them, fondling them, smiling at them. Harkness drew near and, looking at the tender wistfulness of the two old Potter's horses, bravely living out there the last days of their broken forgotten lives, he felt a sudden friendliness to all the world, a reassurance, a comfort.
Those glittering jewelled things had had at their heart a warning, an alarm; but no one, he was suddenly aware, who cared for these prints could be bad. There are no things in the world so kindly, so simple, so warm in their humanity. . . .
The little man was near to him. He put his hand on his knee.