He gave her a reassuring nod and this moment of friendly treachery seemed to bring them into an intimate alliance.
He had indeed made up his mind to adjust his criticism to the evident exigencies of his friend’s situation, but this benevolent attitude disappeared with his first inspection. De Gollyer, as Dangerfield had said, had more than erudition and the compilation of technique at his finger tips. His instinct was keen and his judgment seldom erred. He had expected to witness a measure of growth along the lines of the polite and rather dramatic talent which his friend had shown in the past. He was quite unprepared for the revolution which had been wrought.
“Going to show you what I have been at from month to month,” said Dangerfield nervously. “I think it will interest you. At any rate that is Inga’s advice and I am going to follow it.”
De Gollyer immediately bowed to Inga and said in a sharp staccato which marked the passage of the man of the world and the arrival of the critic: “Quite so, quite so, and now, my boy, let’s go to it. I want to see everything, good, bad and indifferent. We’ll go through everything once—without any phrases, sans phrases, sans phrases! The eagle’s point of view first—le coup d’œil!”
“That suits me,” said Dangerfield, by the easel. “Well, here are some of the first things, a few sketches I made last Spring when this young lady was getting hold of me.”
He brought out a half dozen of the rapid, powerful, incisive sketches which had marked even to his own surprise the complete and unpremeditated revolution in his art.
“Eh, what?” said De Gollyer with an exclamation of astonishment, “one moment, one moment.” He took a few quick steps forward, pursed his lips, drew his eyebrows together and stared at the canvases. Then he looked up suddenly at Dangerfield with an astonishment so complete that a great wave of happiness came into the soul of the artist. “Um-um, is it so? Well, well, indeed?—Suppose we go a little slow. Last Spring, hey? You did that last Spring? My boy, my boy, you should have warned me. Well, well, is it possible?”
A sudden excitement caught him. On that instant, he divined what was ahead and with it came a certain possessive joy of discovery, that he, De Gollyer, would have it within his power to announce a new phenomenon to an interested world. He became transformed into a veritable dynamo of human curiosity, excited as a connoisseur who in a casual rummaging suddenly stumbles upon a treasure of the past. He wished to see everything, even the hurried fragments, details of arms and shoulders, suggestions of profiles and figures blocked in with a few rapid fertile lines. In his excitement he seemed to forget their presence, or rather to have suddenly assumed command of the situation by right of a superior authority, giving his orders in quick, nervous staccato, insisting on recalling canvases which had pleased him, discarding a few with peremptory directness.
“Not bad, not bad for last year but no place here, my boy. You’ve gone beyond that. Burn them up or, better still, send them to that ass Carvallo; that’s just what he would understand. He could sell a dozen of those to his moving-picture aristocracy. Put it aside, Dan, it doesn’t belong. No American sentimentalism, no Hudson River school! We’ve gone beyond Queen Victoria!”
The rejections which the little Czar of criticism ordered into the scrap heap with intolerant finger were few and, to tell the truth, quite merited. Dangerfield himself admitted their justice with a curt nod of his head while the canvas went shying across the floor, like a discarded rag.