Herr Schwarz was examining a picture with a magnifying glass when Falloden entered
“My great-grandfather bought it from Constable himself,” said Douglas. “It has never been disputed by any one.”
Mr. Miklos did not reply, but he shook his head with a slight smile, and walked away towards a Turner, a fine landscape of the middle period, hanging close to the Constable. He peered into it short-sightedly, with his strong glasses.
“A pity that it has been so badly relined,” he said presently, to Douglas, pointing to it.
“You think so? Its condition is generally thought to be excellent. My father was offered eight thousand for it last year by the Berlin Museum.”
Douglas was now apparently quite at his ease. With his thumbs in the armholes of his white waistcoat, he strolled along beside the two buyers, holding his own with both of them, thanks to his careful study of the materials for the history of the collection possessed by his father. The elder man, a Bremen ship-owner,—one Wilhelm Schwarz—who had lately made a rapid and enormous fortune out of the Argentine trade, and whose chief personal ambition it now was to beat the New York and Paris collectors, in the great picture game, whatever it might cost, was presently forced to take some notice of the handsome curly-headed youth in the perfectly fitting blue serge suit, whose appearance as the vendor, or the vendor’s agent, had seemed to him, at first, merely one more instance of English aristocratic stupidity.
As a matter of fact, Herr Schwarz was simply dazzled by the contents of Flood Castle. He had never dreamt that such virgin treasures still existed in this old England, till Miklos, instructed by the Falloden lawyer, had brought the list of the pictures to his hotel, a few days before this visit. And now he found it extremely difficult to conceal his excitement and delight, or to preserve, in the presence of this very sharp-eyed young heir, the proper “don’t care” attitude of the buyer. He presently left the “running down” business almost entirely to Miklos, being occupied in silent and feverish speculations as to how much he could afford to spend, and a passion of covetous fear lest somehow A——, or Z——, or K——, the leading collectors of the moment, should even yet forestall him, early and “exclusive” as Miklos assured him their information had been.
They passed along through the drawing-rooms, and the whole wonderful series of family portraits, Reynolds’, Lawrences, Gainsboroughs, Romneys, Hoppners, looked down, unconscious of their doom, upon the invaders, and on the son of the house, so apparently unconcerned. But Douglas was very far from unconcerned. He had no artistic gift, and he had never felt or pretended any special interest in the pictures. They were part of Flood, and Flood was the inseparable adjunct of the Falloden race. When his father had first mooted the sale of them, Douglas had assented without much difficulty. If other things went, why not they?
But now that he was in the thick of the business, he found, all in a moment, that he had to set his teeth to see it through. A smarting sense of loss—loss hateful and irreparable, cutting away both the past and the future—burnt deep into his mind, as he followed in the track of the sallow and depreciatory Miklos or watched the podgy figure of Herr Schwarz, running from side to side as picture after picture caught his eye. The wincing salesman saw himself as another Charles Surface; but now that the predicament was his own it was no longer amusing. These fair faces, these mothers and babies of his own blood, these stalwart men, fighters by sea and land, these grave thinkers and churchmen, they thronged about him transformed, become suddenly alien and hostile, a crowd of threatening ghosts, the outraged witnesses of their own humiliation. “For what are you selling us?”—they seemed to say. “Because some one, who was already overfed, must needs grab at a larger mess of pottage—and we must pay! Unkind! degenerate!”