“Now, understand,” I said, “I will bring the girl to see you to-morrow on one condition only, that you buy her husband’s ‘Last Farewell,’ and ‘The dawn of love’ for fifty pounds each. They are in this portfolio—and ‘The Goldfish’ by his wife for five. Is that a bargain?”
“If you say so it is. You always get your own way. I suppose he’s jealous of her.”
“He’s just beginning to be, and he doesn’t do things by halves.”
Perhaps the happiest moment of poor Arthur’s tawdry inflamed existence was when I told him that the great M. had bought his pictures. The latent suspicion and smouldering animosity died out of his eyes. He became radiant, boyish, for the moment sane. Perhaps he had looked like that before the shadow fell. Blanche, too, was suffused with delight. Mrs. Robinson, hurrying in with an armful of lilac orchids, was overjoyed. She burst forth in loud jubilation, not unlike the screeches of the London “syrens” when they herald the coming in of the New Year. She it seemed had always known, always seen her boy’s genius. He would get into the Academy now, from which jealousy had so long kept him out. He would be hung on the line. He would be recognised. He would be as great as M. himself, greater, for she and others among her friends had never fancied his pictures. They had not the lofty moral tone of Arthur’s.
I produced the cheque.
“One hundred pounds for Arthur,” I said, “and five pounds for the goldfish.”
Blanche started violently and looked incredulously at me.
Arthur’s jaw dropped. Then he said patronizingly, “Well done, Blanche,” and leaned back pallid and exhausted on the satin couch.
“I must see him,” he said over and over again as his mother laid a warm rug over his knees, and his wife put a cushion behind his head. “He could tell me things, tricks of the trade. Art is all a trick.”
“He found no fault with your work,” I said, “but—don’t be discouraged, Blanche—he did criticise yours. He said you could not put down all you saw.”