Читать книгу Image of Josephine - Booth Tarkington - Страница 4

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Within the house, meanwhile, the “important event” had begun to take place, and it was even more important than she’d said. The passageway from the art gallery led by a door now closed into a large and lofty oblong room, at one end of which stood a splendid Jacobean mantelpiece of carved and blackened oak. The great fireplace, wherein small logs burned, was flanked by its proper antique adjuncts, part and parcel of the same despoiled Manor overseas: paneled high wainscotings similarly blackened by time, smoke and dark wax. Further aged panelings along the southern wall of the room separated the diamond-paned, deeply recessed windows of seventeenth-century glass that laid yellow rhomboids of sunshine on the broad-planked floor. The other sides of the room displayed books almost to the high and elaborate plaster ceiling—books on long “set-in” shelves, rows of tall thin books, rows of massive shorter books, rows of books in “special bindings,” tooled and gilded; and almost all of these books bore upon the arts of painting, sculpture, music and architecture. More books, as well as portfolios too large for the shelves, were stacked upon heavy Jacobean tables; but that there should be comfort in the room, however incongruously, the chairs and a couch against the north wall were of to-day and done in scarlet leather.

This was Mr. Thomas Oaklin’s library. Manorial himself, black-coated and wing-collared, with a beautiful Cashmere shawl over his knees, he sat in an easy-chair near the fireplace—a white-haired, finely withered old man palely handsome and still commanding. As he talked to his lawyer, Oscar Glessit, he sometimes made a gesture with a long, bony and old-veined white hand; but the movement was always so consciously suave that it took care not to disturb the inch-and-a-half ash of the cigar held between the first and second fingers. The picture he presented to the eye conveyed flawlessly the tradition in which he loved to live—connoisseur patron of art, grand seigneur—easily possible to an eighth-generation American, fastidious and scholarly third-generation mid-western millionaire. So neatly, in his rich surrounding, he made this portrait of himself that his knowing he made it is little to be doubted.

“You have it all in order now, Glessit,” he said graciously. “I’ve no further criticism.”

“Yes, it’ll do at last, Mr. Oaklin.” The lawyer sat at one of the Jacobean tables, and upon it his open brief-cases revealed a dismal quantity of legal papers. “Broadly, it all sounds simple enough, sir; but in detail it’s a rather staggeringly elaborate affair. The amount of securities involved and not leaving them to the natural heirs——”

“Just a moment.” Mr. Oaklin slightly lifted his long-ashed cigar as a middle-aged tall colored man entered the room. “What is it, Harvey?”

“Mr. Horne on the telephone, sir. Ask me find out how soon you expectin’ him, sir. Say he ready come now if you want him.”

“I do. Tell him so, Harvey.”

The colored man departed soft-footedly, and Mr. Oaklin’s grey eyes denoted pleasure. “We’ve got a surprise for John Constable Horne, I think, Glessit, what?”

“No question, sir. I hope Mr. Horne’ll have the patience to go through these papers as he ought to, considering what you plan for him; but, knowing him, I doubt it. By the way, until I drew them up for you I never knew his middle name was Constable. Is that a family name?”

“No, Glessit. His parents—rather ‘arty’ people in their day—naïvely named him for the greatest British landscapist, perhaps the greatest of all landscapists; but from boyhood John Horne’s admired that painter so much he’s always thought it would be pretentious to use the name. Probably he thinks it’s more American, too, to call himself John C. Horne; he’s notional. He’s a dozen years younger than I—at my age I find that my friends are all my juniors, otherwise they wouldn’t be alive—but John Horne’s life, like my own, has been a continuous devotion to the Fine Arts. He’s spent almost as much time as I have, myself, in my gallery of paintings and sculptures, and he’s a genuine authority upon Oriental art, in particular upon the Northern Wei stone sculptures. I fear this doesn’t much interest you, Glessit.” Mr. Oaklin smiled faintly and with his left hand rang a small steel bell beside him upon a squat old black table.

The colored man, Harvey, reappeared in the doorway. “Yes, sir?”

“Harvey, has my daughter-in-law come home?”

“Yes, sir. Few minutes ago. Upstairs changin’ her dress again.”

“And Miss Josephine’s where you can find her when I wish her to come in?”

“Yes, sir. Basketballin’ right outside.”

Harvey waited a moment; then, seeing that his employer had fallen into a meditation, departed. The lawyer, rearranging though not rustling certain of his papers, glanced up from time to time during the next fifteen minutes, but refrained from speaking. Mr. Oaklin not infrequently went into these silences—contemplations concerned with the past or with art, or with God knows what, Oscar Glessit thought; men as old as Thomas Oaklin seemed to live mainly in their own old dead worlds. The old dead world at present engaging Mr. Oaklin was shattered by the noisy voice of his friend, John Constable Horne, who walked into the library already talking. He was followed by Harvey, bringing upon a tray a decanter of sherry, thin wine glasses and a porcelain basket of small cakes.

“What, what? What’s all this?” Mr. Horne asked brusquely. Somewhere in his sixties, he was a thick, short, baldish, bustling man, pudgy in feature but with noticeably sparkling small blue eyes. “Oscar Glessit and a barrel of his horrible documents? Scene from one of those extinct genteel melodramas: the Duke changes his will.”

Mr. Oaklin smiled at him. “Sit down—I’m never comfortable till I can get you to sit down, John—and don’t go leaping up every moment or so while I’m explaining what you’re here for. Let the sherry alone; I’ll offer it later. That’s all, Harvey. I ask you to sit down and listen, John.”

“I’ll sit,” Mr. Horne responded, and did so. “It’s against my nature but I’m doing it. What for? My soul, but you and Oscar Glessit look ponderous! If you’re not changing your will——”

“No, I’ve just been making one, the first and last.”

“I see,” Horne said. “You want me for a witness, which shows you’re not leaving me anything, thank God!”

“I am, though.” His old friend regarded him gravely. “I’m leaving you a responsibility; I’m putting it upon you.”

“I decline. Whatever it is, Lord help me, I refuse!”

“You can’t.” Mr. Oaklin’s thin but mellow voice was slightly tremulous for the moment. “It’s what I’d have asked my son to do for me if he’d lived until now. It’s a great thing; but since Tom’s death there’s no one except you I’d trust with it. My daughter-in-law wouldn’t do at all. I make no complaint of her; I merely say she won’t do. My granddaughter is remarkable, highly gifted and precociously advanced in mind and character; but obviously she’s still too young. So I turn to you.”

“Why to me?” Mr. Horne looked seriously disturbed. “Don’t like responsibilities. What about your niece, Mary Fount? She’s your own brother’s daughter. She’s still alive, isn’t she? You know where she’s living, don’t you? Certainly used to take a great interest in her and——”

“I did, and I suppose of course she’s still alive or I’d have been notified. Mary Oaklin had a genuine feeling for the arts and I’d taken great pains to cultivate it in her—until she threw it all away to marry that migratory fellow, Fount.” Mr. Oaklin, though remaining scrupulously formal, looked cross. “Why bring it up, may I ask?”

“Oh, just a passing thought,” Mr. Horne explained. “A bit surprised by your saying you had no family except your granddaughter.”

“For this purpose I have not.” Irritation lingered in Mr. Oaklin’s voice. “I don’t say but that if my niece still lived here—and were not Mrs. Fount—I mightn’t have somewhat associated her with you and my granddaughter in this project; but I know almost nothing of her nowadays. She’s not available, John; she’s out.”

“Out of what?” Horne said testily. “Let’s get to it. What do you want done?”

“I think you already have an idea. The surprise for you is that it’s you who’ll have to do it. First I want you to understand why I want it done. I’m afraid the root reason is that in my old age I’ve discovered how abominably selfish a life I’ve led.”

Oscar Glessit displayed a protesting hand above his open brief-cases. “Oh, no, you can’t say that, Mr. Oaklin! A man who’s already made such a magnificent gift to his city as the Thomas Oaklin Symphony Hall—yes indeed, and provided for the orchestra’s annual deficit as you have and——”

“No.” Mr. Oaklin smiled ruefully. “I’ve done all that for my own personal pleasure. During most of my life, in order to hear a symphony orchestra I had to travel to larger cities. I’ll go abroad on a boat any day; but in my old age I hate trains and I hate automobiles. I backed a symphony orchestra here simply to avoid going away and for my own convenience. It’s been expensive, yes; but not compared to what I have in mind now.”

“To it, man!” the lively Horne suggested. “To it!”

Thomas Oaklin was not so to be hurried. “No, I’ll have my say my own way, no matter how it bores you and poor Glessit.” He disregarded another protest from the lawyer. “How many centuries and how many men tried to find the Philosophers’ Stone?”

“Asking me?” Horne said. “I think the search for it began before the Middle Ages; but I’d have to look it up, and as for how many alchemists spent their lives——”

“Never mind,” the old man interrupted. “We know it was supposed to change base metals into gold. In other words, it was to turn hard dull life into happiness. Well, I found the Philosophers’ Stone when I was young; but I never handed it about, just kept it to myself. It’s a real thing, Glessit, though I don’t expect you to believe it. What’s more, I shouldn’t say I found it, because it was presented to me by my father. My grandfather had given it to him.”

Oscar Glessit looked indulgent. “I understand, Mr. Oaklin. Everybody knows how largely and wisely you’ve increased what you inherited from your father and grandfather.”

“I’m afraid you’re speaking of money, Glessit.” Mr. Oaklin was amused. “However, most people would. They don’t know they may all possess the Philosophers’ Stone if they will.”

“Prosier and prosier in his old age,” the lawyer thought. “Always got to talk as if he’d written it first!” The spoken words were, of course, “Very interesting, Mr. Oaklin.”

“No, it isn’t. Not to you, Glessit, because you don’t believe me; you think I’m just mooning—and yet what I say is literally true. Any human being can find the Philosophers’ Stone for himself and by means of it transform his life. Even if it’s the dullest and most sordid, he can bring a golden happiness into it and keep that happiness as long as he lives. The Philosophers’ Stone isn’t what this nasty new slang calls ‘escape’; it’s a magic ready to anybody’s hand; yet it’s a secret from most of the millions of people on this earth. Strange, isn’t it, that such a secret should be as plain as day to anybody who chooses to open his eyes? The Philosophers’ Stone, Glessit, isn’t philosophy, isn’t science, isn’t even religion—it’s what we call art.”

“I see, Mr. Oaklin. Yes, of course, we all know that an appreciation of art is——”

“No, you don’t all know.” The old man became more emphatic. “Only a few people in this city of ours know what art could be to them, even though it can intimately be almost everything to almost everybody. Myself, I have known from my boyhood because right at home in the old house down on Madison Street there were my grandfather’s and my father’s collections surrounding me. They were of an earlier, sometimes naïve taste but had noble items among them, and thank heaven they got to me when I was young! Well, until now I’ve been a pig about them and all the splendid things I’ve added to them. I’ve kept to myself the pleasure they could put into other lives. Yet I love my city as well as any Florentine of the Renaissance loved his. Of course you see what I’m up to, John Horne.”

“I suppose so. Going to open your gallery to the public and——”

“No, that’s not a tenth of it.” Thomas Oaklin leaned forward and a pinkness appeared upon the old grey-white of his cheeks and temples. “I’ve been asking myself what it was the Florentines did to make their city a shrine of art for the whole world. What would a devoted Florentine have done with resources like mine? He’d have built something beautiful. I’ve said to myself, ‘Here’s my own town, a city of close upon a hundred and eighty thousand people now. I’ve given them an orchestra for their ears, yes; but what about an art that their eyes can see?’ John Horne, I want to build a great place. Call me romantic, call me sentimental; all right, but I want to build a Temple of Art. It will be the people’s and in it they’ll find the Philosophers’ Stone I’ve kept so long to myself. I want it to be for all the people of my city.”

“Bigger than I thought,” Horne said. “You’re having your will drawn to provide for a real museum, are you?”

“That guess goes only half-way, John. I’m leaving the funds to carry on the life of a museum amply; but I intend to see the building itself with my own eyes. The small gallery I built a few years ago is so crowded it hurts me to go in there—great paintings almost frame to frame, Whistler and Manet and Sargent in the next alcove to Rubens and Dobson and Van Dyck; Mino da Fiesole and Amadeo sculptures within ten feet of a Chinese room; Île de France Gothic ivories and Renaissance bronzes on shelves of the same cabinet, and some of my father’s darlingest Seventeenth Century Dutch pictures with no place to live but the cellar. Worthy canvases even pack the attic of this house. I intend to last until I’ve seen my masterpieces with the right space about them, John Horne; I mean to see them myself in the setting they deserve!”

“Easy come, easy go,” Horne said; but his laugh was a little excited. “Going it, aren’t you, rather?”

“I am indeed.” Mr. Oaklin still leaned forward, and the thin flush deepened upon his cheeks and brow. “That jumbled gallery of mine is to be only the lower story of one wing of the palace of art I’m going to build, and I’ll show you the blueprints next month when my New York architects bring them out here to be passed upon. You’ll have to look over those blueprints with me, and pretty critically, because you’re going to be President of my hand-picked Museum Association and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Thomas Oaklin Museum of Art—and for life, Jonathan, my Jo-John.”

“I am not!”

“You are.” The old man sank back in his chair, relaxed and smiling. “The will provides for the carrying-on of the museum after I’m gone, staff salaries, maintenance and all that, with also a fairly considerable fund, upwards of two hundred thousand dollars a year, for the continuing purchase of works of art—an item you’ll not be able to resist, not if I know you, and I think I do.”

“I’m afraid you do,” Horne said, almost in a whisper. “I’m afraid you do.”

“What a man!” Mr. Oaklin spared another glance to his lawyer. “Glessit, notice this fellow. When I spoke of bringing happiness and beauty into the lives of our fellow-townsmen he had no enthusiasm; but now when he understands it’s a chance for him to spend the rest of his days haggling with art dealers and winking at auctioneers, why, he’s all on fire!”

“At least starting to scorch and smoke,” Horne admitted. He jumped up and began to walk about the room. “President? Chairman of the Board of Trustees? Ex-officio on all committees, what? Dealers bringing Franz Halses, Bellinis, Sung porcelains, Gothic chasubles to make my mouth water—me that’s never had but one chipped Shansi head and one Pontormo drawing and one Winslow Homer watercolor to my name! I feel myself on the way to accept. Damn my old soul, I know I’m going to accept! Time for the sherry, ain’t it?”

“No, it isn’t. Sit down.”

Mr. Horne didn’t sit; he came and stood before Oaklin’s chair, serious. “See here, though! This is a fairly colossal cobweb you’re spinning, ain’t it? It’s a prospect removing a good big hunk of your assets out of the reach of your family, ain’t it?”

“Yes, more than nine-tenths.”

“Well, see here, then.” Horne’s seriousness increased. “What are Mrs. Thomas Oaklin, Junior, and her young daughter going to say to it? The time may come when they——”

“No. I was just getting to that—if I could induce you to sit down again.”

“I’m down,” Horne said, and was.

Mr. Oaklin leaned forward once more. “I’ll show you presently; but first I want to ask you to begin to interest yourself rather earnestly in my granddaughter.”

“But I——” Horne looked polite as if with certain inner reservations. “Oh, I do, I do! A very, very pretty child, Josephine. Precociously advanced, too, as you say. A nice confidence in herself; willing to be talkative with older people and on almost any subject under the sun. Only the last time I was here she told me all about El Greco.”

Mr. Oaklin laughed fondly. “Yes, she’s a bit that way and I’m glad she is; youth ought to be sure of itself. I want you to learn to understand her better, though, John. I’m not just a doting grandparent when I say she has a feeling for art and a comprehension of it far, far beyond her years.”

“Oh, no doubt, no doubt! I’m sure——”

“She’s sound, John. Volatile, yes; but sound underneath. That lovely child’s companionship in my tastes—why, even two years ago, when she was only twelve and she and I had a month together with the Prado, her love of the great masters there was as deep as mine and her knowledge of them almost as thorough. Last year it was the same in the Louvre and the Uffizi. It’s her human quality I want you to know better, though.”

“Oh, yes, certainly! I’m sure I——”

“I want you to know her generous heart, John. Isn’t it rather remarkable that she’s enthusiastic over my plan for a museum? She’s for it heart and soul, in spite of the plain fact that it’ll keep her from being what people call a great heiress. Isn’t it a pretty rare thing, John Horne, that she’d actually rather see the museum built than have the money, herself?”

“She would? You’re sure she understands what she loses?”

“Perfectly. I’ve been all over it with her and she wants it my way; but for what she gives up I intend that she’ll have the compensation of identifying her life with that of the museum. I’ve been over it with Glessit and it’s provided that when she comes of age she’ll be a member of the Board of Trustees, herself, and I know you’ll regard my wish that along with you she’ll always have a decisive voice in the museum’s control. I’ve promised her that and I know I can trust you to see the promise kept.”

“Yes—certainly, certainly.” Shadow again lay faintly upon Mr. Horne’s brow. “But young people—and their mothers—do change their minds sometimes about inheritances that go to great public benefits. You’re sure you’re not afraid that some day——”

“I said I’d show you.” Mr. Oaklin once more rang his bell and spoke to the prompt servitor. “Harvey, ask Miss Josephine and her mother to join us now. Then go into the gallery and tell Mrs. Hevlin and her sister-in-law I’d like them to come in.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Oaklin turned a smiling face upon his old friend. “Now, John Horne, you’re going to see how a child in years can have the mind and heart of a woman whose love of art—yes, and of art for all our people—is greater than her love for self.”