So he laughed aloud, and went indoors rejoicing.
An hour or so later the painting was delivered by a porter from the auction room. But Lanyard was in his bath at the time and postponed examining his doubtful prize till he had dressed for dinner. For, though it was his whim to dine in his rooms alone, and though he had no fixed plans for the evening, Lanyard was too thoroughly cosmopolitan not to do in Cockaigne as the Cockneys do.
Besides, in this uncertain life one never knows what the next hour will bring forth; whereas if one is in evening dress after six o’clock, one is armoured against every emergency.
At seven he sat down to the morbid sort of a meal one gets in London lodgings: a calm soup; a segment of vague fish smothered painlessly in a pale pink blanket of sauce; a cut from the joint, rare and lukewarm; potatoes boiled dead; sad sea-kale; nonconformist pudding; conservative biscuit, and radical cheese.
With the aid and abetment of a bottle of excellent Montrachet, however, one contrived to worry through.
Meanwhile, Lanyard inspected his recent purchase, which occupied a place of honour, propped up on the arms of the chair on his right.
It was seldom that Lanyard entertained a guest of such equivocal character. Wagging a reproving head—“My friend,” he harangued the canvas, “you are lucky to have been sold. Sorry I can’t say as much for myself.”
It was really too bad it wasn’t a bit better. It wasn’t often that one encountered so genuine a counterfeit. The hand of an artist had painted it, but never the hand of Corot. Everything Corot was accustomed to put into his painting was there, except himself. The abode had been prepared in all respects as the master would have had it, but his spirit had not entered into it, it remained without life.
Still, Lanyard concluded, surveying his prize through the illusioning fumes of his cigar, while the waiter cleared away, it wasn’t so bad after all, it wouldn’t be in the end a total loss. He could afford to cart the thing back to Paris with him and give it room in his private gallery; and some day, doubtless, some rich American would pay a handsome price for it on the strength of its having found place in the collection of Michael Lanyard, even though it lacked the cachet of his guarantee.
But what the devil had made it so precious to the soi-disant Prince Victor and his charming wife?