"Ah! This, now, is out of Persia, I think," said Mr. Baruch, edging one loose from the disordered bundle. "Think!" he said. "This poor fellow, lying here he is Armenian. How many years has he walked, carrying his carpets and rugs, all the way down into Persia, selling and changing his goods in bazaars and caravanserais, and then back over the Caucasus and through the middle of the Don Cossacks all across the Black Lands carrying the rugs till he comes to throw his fit on Mr. Selby's floor! It is a strange way to live, Miss Pilgrim, yes?"
"Ye-es," breathed Miss Pilgrim. "Ye-es."
He smiled at her. He had a corner of the rug unfolded now and draped over his bent knee. His hand stroked it delicately; the blank light from the window let its coloring show in its just values. Mr. Baruch, with the dregs of his smile yet curving his lips, scanned it without too much appearance of interest. He was known for a "collector," a man who gathered things that others disregarded, and both Miss Pilgrim and Selby watched him with the respect of the laity for the initiate. But they could not discern or share the mounting ecstasy of the connoisseur, of the spirit which is to the artist what the wife is to the husband, as he realized the truth and power of the coloring, its stained-glass glow, the justice and strength of the patterning and the authentic silk-and-steel of the texture.
"Is it any good?" asked Selby suddenly. "I've heard of 'em being worth a lot sometimes thousands of dollars!"
"Sometimes," agreed Mr. Baruch. "Those you can see in museums. This one, now I would offer him twenty rubles for it, and I would give perhaps thirty if he bargained too hard. That is because I have a place for it in my house."
"And he'd probably make a hundred per cent, on it at that," said
Selby. "These fellows."
The loud feet of the ambulance men on the stairs interrupted him. Mr. Baruch, dragging the partly unfolded rugs with him, moved away as the white clad doctor and his retinue of stretcher-bearers came in at the door, with exactly the manner of the mere spectator who makes room for people more directly concerned. He saw the doctor kneel beside the prostrate man and Miss Pilgrim hand him one of the office tea-glasses; then, while all crowded round to watch the process of luring back the strayed soul of the peddler, he had leisure to assure himself again of the quality of his find. The tea-glass clinked against clenched teeth. "A spoon, somebody!" snapped the doctor. The cramped throat gurgled painfully; but Mr. Baruch, slave to the delight of the eye, was unheeding. A joy akin to love, pervading and rejoicing his every faculty, had possession of him. The carpet was all he had deemed it and more, the perfect expression in its medium of a fine and pure will to beauty.
The peddler on the floor behind him groaned painfully and tatters of speech formed on his lips.
"That's better," said the doctor encouragingly.
Mr. Baruch dropped the rug and moved quietly towards the group.