Читать книгу Rumbin Galleries - Booth Tarkington - Страница 6

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Howard Cattlet, listening, comprehended that he was still—though only by a hair—an Art Dealer’s Assistant. He perceived also that the Rosa Bonheur was a dead issue; that his employer, penniless, intended to redecorate Mr. and Mrs. Hollins’s apartment in rose and ivory at a cost to himself of twenty-five thousand dollars, for which he would receive eighteen thousand—and at this point the young man’s mind seemed to be failing him. Mr. Rumbin, tense, made no explanation as they returned with the seven horses in Schwankel’s truck to Seventeenth Street; nor did Miss Georgina Horne enlighten Howard at the Galleries, either then or later.

She couldn’t, because she didn’t know.

“There are times,” she said, “when Mr. Rumbin hardly dares to let himself know what he’s up to. He never does like questions much, anyhow; and we must just remember he’s a remarkable man.” She paused, then added conscientiously, “That is, I mean if you feel you’d like to stay—and can take the chance?”

Howard did wish to stay, would take the chance, and told her so. His unmentioned thought was that, even at the worst, three weeks of intimate association with old paintings, objets d’art and Miss Horne would add much to his knowledge; but here he erred. Mr. Rumbin moved as the whirlwind; his employees whirled with him, and, beginning next morning (in overalls) Howard was kept too furiously busy to learn anything except how to hurry unnaturally. During the whole of the vital period his association with Miss Horne was fragmentary, flitting and never anything like intimate.

He had an intimate association with Schwankel’s truckmen, however, moving the furniture, carpets, rugs, curtains and ornamental clutter of the absent Hollins family out of their apartment and into a storage warehouse until not a trace of Moultons was left, except in Mr. Hollins’s damn den. Also, he brought to Park Avenue momentous truckloads from Rumbin Galleries, and crates from auction rooms wherein Rumbin had plainly been plunging. Most of the time the assistant was kept at the apartment where, among jostling workmen, he measured floors, ran errands, mixed buckets of paint and carried them up stepladders to a fevered chief turned painter and working passionately to obtain exquisite accuracies in color.

Mr. Rumbin had begun to look like a thin fat man. On the last morning of the Hollins family’s absence, he came into the Galleries pallid, having worked at the apartment all night, alone.

“We take my great Clouet in a taxi, Georchie,” he said. “You get a sandwich in your left hand for lunch and dinner. You come, too, to-day. She wires me from Glouchester they’re home eight o’clock this evening. Up to date, twenty-seven t’ousand eight hundut forty-one dollars, sixty-two cents, and noon comes the second drawing-room’s carpet eighteen hundut fifty. Hurry, Georchie!”

Thus the assistant, unrolling a beautifully faded Aubusson rug, had the pleasure of seeing morning sunlight momentarily gild the fair head of the secretary as she came into the apartment and passed a window in the corridor. Until late in the afternoon he had only glimpses of her, mostly through doorways; then Mr. Rumbin sent him to help her hang the Clouet above the narrow mantel in the reception-room, and they were alone together.

“Even I can see it’s a grand little thing,” he said from the stepladder, in allusion to the glowing small picture she lifted to him. “It goes in for the eighteen thousand, too, does it? Either he’s crazy or I am!”

Georgina was pale. “Even at auction this Clouet ought to bring four to seven thousand dollars. He’s put the Largillière Duchess over the mantel in the first drawing-room and the Francis Cotes Lady Blount over the mantel in the second, with the English Eighteenth Century furniture. He’s got the Troyon in the dining-room, and Thomas Sully’s Madame Malibran in the music-room. They’re by far his five best pictures. Besides that, he’s brought up here most of the best objets d’art and every bit of the furniture that’s really good! He’d already borrowed over the limit on everything he owns, long before this began. Now he owes over twenty-nine thousand dollars more!” She took from a box two slim statuettes of faintly gleaming, almost black bronze, and placed them upon the marble mantelshelf. “With their patine, these look beautiful here against the ivory wall. Italian Renaissance is pleasant with a Clouet. These dear little bronzes are probably by Francesco de St. Agata. I do wonder—”

“Wonder what?”

Georgina seemed to struggle with the pressure of her loyalty; then she burst out, “I’ve guessed his idea—I mean I’m afraid I have. It’s just too—well, people do lose their minds and still go about talking rationally and—”

“Georchie!”

Rumbin summoned her to him in the broad hallway and set her upon a task there. He came into the reception-room, had the Clouet lifted an inch, then gave Howard the key to the locked-up Galleries and sent him all the way to Seventeenth Street for a tiny patch-box, églomisé mounted on ivory, that had been overlooked.

When the young man returned, the workmen were gone and Mrs. Hollins’s staff of servants had begun to come back to the apartment and stare; but Rumbin and Georgina were still busy.

Rumbin stopped at last. “I can’t do no more; I can’t tell what I’m doing. If I got them crystal chandeliers and crystal sconces cleaned enough, I don’t know. It’s o’clock seven-twenty. Georchie, in them boxes on the hall Directoire consoles, it’s four dozen pale pinky roses, four dozen pale yellow; you place ’em. Howie, I borrowed from the butler one the guest-rooms; the suit-cases they’re in there—we go put on our tuxedo dinner theatre suits. If we get drownt, anyhow we go under dressed up!”

In the process of dressing, however, even this consolation seemed not to console. He sat sagged upon the bed, spoke hollowly from the inside of the shirt he drew over his head. “Howie, what’s a art dealer’s life?”

“Sir?”

“It’s a eggony!” Mr. Rumbin’s head emerged; he began with feeble fingers to insert small gold studs in the shirt. “It’s a eggony of always struckling to create the ideel. Clients got to be made; they ain’t born. Howie—”

“Sir?”

“I used to have NRA on the show window, Howie,” Rumbin said. “It meant Not Running Any. Comes to-morrow I put up some more letters, different. I make it ‘Rumbin Galleries, S.I.G.’ ”

“S.I.G., sir? What—”

“Socked In the Jaw,” Rumbin explained. “Howie, you and Georchie come see me sometimes when the U.S. Governament sends me to Leavenworse.” He rose, completed his change of clothing, looked drearily in a mirror, and then, shifting his gaze to his assistant, showed a little interest. “Listen, Howie, when Hollinses come, you stand around looking at ’em just like that—the way you’re looking at me now. Keep looking at Hollinses that way, like you know you’re more fash’nable than them but wouldn’t say so to their faces. That cold solemn look you got, it’s good; it’s a pig effect.”

Howard grew red, spoke impulsively. “I don’t feel cold, Mr. Rumbin. I—I wish I could do something. I don’t understand at all; but I—I do wish I—”

“No, don’t break it,” Mr. Rumbin said sadly. “Just keep the face looking natchal; it’s good. Come on; let’s go get arrested.”

Returned to the drawing-rooms, fine vistas through the suite seemed to please him mournfully, not making him more hopeful. “Space,” he said. “Looks anyhow twice as large as Moultons done it. Space and coolness, no hot tones—all cool tones of rose—some ivories a little warmed, for richness; it’s rich but yet cool. Georchie, you got just the right spots palish roses. Flowers lifts a place to life. It’s all pyootiful; but does that make it heppen?” There was a sound of little bells, servants hurried through the hallway, and Mr. Rumbin crumpled; yet even in despair was practical. “Georchie, keep in the beckground; you look like you been working. My Lort, I got not the muscles of a kitten!”

With rolling eyes he sent one panic-stricken glance about the great place he’d so completely changed; then, upon the instant, he stood smiling, his abdomen distended, his gaze beaming, his whole person bold, confident and sleek. Indulgently, sure of praise, he waved both hands in wide and gracious gestures.

“Welcome home!” he cried. “Welcome home to all rose and ivory, Mr. and Mrs. Kingsford J. Hollins and little Miss Lulu. Look what a home you got NOW! Welcome home!”

Mr. and Mrs. Kingsford J. Hollins and little Miss Lulu paused in the open, wide doorway, facing Mr. Rumbin. Mr. Hollins, a small, dried, grey man with icy nose-glasses and a tooth-brush moustache, looked annoyed. Mrs. Hollins and little Miss Lulu stared into the room, gazed up and down the hall and through all vistas visible to them. Their eyes widened and widened; then both began to scream softly.

“Beautiful!” Mrs. Hollins cried.

“Perfectly dee-vine!” little Lulu shouted.

They came in, exclaiming rapturously. Then they began to flutter from room to room, making outcries. “Perfectly gorgeous!” “Look at this heavenly sofa!” “Oh, the lovely, lovely picture!” “Oh, look at this one, too, Mamma!” They were heard calling to each other from the farthest rooms. “Heavenly!” “Dee-vine!” “Grand!” “Oh, scrumptious!”

Mrs. Hollins, radiant, preceded by her whooping child, swept back to Rumbin. “Mr. Rumbin, I never dreamed anything could be so beautiful! It’s worth all that horrible boresome trip we’ve been on. It’s a dream!”

Lulu was already calling from the reception-room, “Mamma, come look! Here’s something we missed. It’s a man with lovely jewelry on. It’s gray-and!”

Mrs. Hollins flew jubilantly to the summons; but Mr. Rumbin’s expression, as he looked after her, became almost theatrically solicitous. He shook his head, made lamentant sounds. “Ts, ts, ts!” With an air of deepest concern he approached Mrs. Hollins’s husband. “Mr. Kingsford J. Hollins, please, please! Please don’t let your wife get so excited!”

“What?” Mr. Hollins said crossly. “I’m doggone glad she’s tickled, myself. What’s the matter?”

“It’s going to break her heart,” Mr. Rumbin said in a low, deeply troubled voice. “She didn’t let me time to explain. When she finds out—but you know her nerfs yourself, Mr. Kingsford J. Hollins. She’s delicate; and such a disappointment could send her moaning in bed. She thinks she owns all these pictures, all these objets d’art, all the furniture, all the antique—”

“What! What you mean she doesn’t own ’em? She said you said eighteen thousand dollars for—”

“Certainly,” Rumbin agreed benignly. “Eighteen t’ousand dollars for the apartment, Mr. Hollins—the pyootiful old-ivory walls, white-ivory ceilings, the rose curtains—Eighteent’ Century French brocade—rose carpets, rose rugs—four Aubusson, Mr. Hollins—and you got antique crystal chandeliers, crystal sconces, all macknificent. Of course it couldn’t include no paintings, no Old Masters, no Renaissance bronzes, no pieces Chinese ivory, no Eighteent’ Century furniture, no details like snuff-boxes, patch-boxes, Riccio inkstends. I put all these pyootiful masterpieces in here for this one evening just to make it a bright welcome home for her, so she gets a treat looking at ’em a little, Mr. Kingsford J.—”

Mr. Hollins said “What!” so insultedly that two listeners across the room, affecting interest in an old silver vase filled with roses, looked at each other miserably. “What! Just for this evening? You mean you intend to move all this stuff out to-morrow?”

“But all your Moultons I move beck in of course, Mr. Hollins.” Mr. Rumbin’s solicitude increased poignantly. “Please! Please, Mr. Kingsford J. Hollins, run stop your wife from getting used to thinking she owns all these pyootiful things. Tell her she’s got her lovely rose and ivory apartment but of course not no Clouet nor Troyon nor—Listen! She’s hollering louder over the Clouet! You got to think of yourself, Mr. Kingsford J. Hollins, too, because what’ll her nerfs be the longer you put off telling her? She’ll be sick and reproaching you for not—”

“See here!” Mr. Hollins’s expression was concentratedly bitter. “What’s your figure?”

“My figure? My figure for—”

“For the whole damn jamboree! What’s it got to cost me? Here, damn it, come out to my den where there’s some damn paper and ink.”

“Monseigneur!” Mr. Rumbin bowed as profoundly as ancestors of his had bowed to their ensnared princes. “Certainly, Mr. Kingsford J. Hollins,” he said, and his voice, beginning with the bass-viol, ended with the flute. “It’s a pleasure!”

Then, as he followed the crossest millionaire in the United States out through the doorway, he looked back over his shoulder at two excited young people who’d given up pretending not to listen. He slowed his step and paused; Mr. Hollins could be heard stamping down the corridor. Mr. Rumbin rolled shining round eyes in that direction, thus by a purely ocular gesture designating whom he meant by the one symbolic and prophetic word he triumphantly whispered.

“Ideel!”

Another thought detained him yet another moment. “Don’t wait no longer, Georchie and Howie. You’re both raised ten anyhow—ten weekly, payable weekly. You’re permanent, Howie. I commenced liking you.”