The two fellows set out. Lanny had to make some explanation, for of course Rick would recognize the portrait. Lanny couldn't say that he was an illegitimate son, and that this painting was to blame for it — no, that would be too much for even the coldest-blooded connoisseur! He said: “My mother posed for several painters when she was young, and I guess my father thinks I'm old enough to know about it now.”
“Well, you surely can't blame the painters,” was Rick's consoling reply.
V
The decorous and black-clad picture dealer found nothing out of the way in the fact that two young gentlemen wanted to see the “Lady with a Blue Veil” by Oscar Deroule. It was his business to show pictures; a clerk went down some stairs and brought it up, and set it on a stand for them to look at, and then went to attend to another customer. So they had it to themselves, and no need to repress their feelings. “Oh, my God!” exclaimed Rick; and Lanny's heart hit him several blows underneath his throat.
There was Mabel Blackless, as she was in those days, just ripened into womanhood, a creature of such loveliness as made men catch their breath. The painter who had done her was a lover of the flesh, and had set himself to exploiting its lusciousness; the creams and whites and pinks, the velvety texture, the soft curves, the delicately changing shadows. Beauty was seated upon a silk-covered couch, half supported by one arm. There was a light blue veil across her hips, and the shower of her hair fell over one shoulder, half hiding a breast; she was in bright sunlight, and the fine strands gleamed like gold — not such an easy thing for a painter to get.
These were the modern days — they always are — and when a woman went swimming at Juan, she put on a fairly light bathing suit, and when it was wet it clung tightly, so really there wasn't so much in the picture that Lanny didn't know already. One thing he had never seen was her breasts, with nipples of delicate pink; he couldn't help thinking: “So that is where I was nourished!” He thought: “God, what a strange thing life is!” He confronted once more that most bewildering of ideas: “I was her accident! If it hadn't happened, where would I have been?”
He looked at the date in the corner of the painting; it was 1899, and he knew it was just before Robbie had come along and started him upon his strange journey into the present. Now, by the magic of art, the son could stand and look at the past; but no magic would enable him to look into the future, and know what he was going to do with his own power to create life. Were there baby souls waiting in the unknown, for him to decide whether or not they were to be?
His friend saw how deeply stirred he was; the blood had a way of mounting into Lanny's cheeks, just as you saw recorded in the portrait of his mother. Rick tried to ease him down by discussing the work from the technical point of view. Finally he allowed himself to remark: “If I owned that painting I don't think I'd ever marry. I'd expect too much!”
Lanny's reply was: “I think I'm the one who ought to own it.” He recalled his father's wish to buy him something; and now he knew what it was going to be. When the dealer rejoined them he inquired: “What is the price of this painting?”
The man looked at him, and then pretended to look on the back of the painting. The artist was not a well-known one, and the price was thirty-two hundred francs, or six hundred and forty dollars. “I will take it,” Lanny said. “I will pay you two hundred francs down, and if you send the painting to the Hotel Crillon this evening, I will have the rest.” The dealer knew then that he should have asked a higher price, but it was too late.