Читать книгу Her Serene Highness - David Graham Phillips - Страница 5

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ON the top floor of Grafton’s house, in Michigan Avenue, there was a room filled with what he called “the sins of the fathers”—the bad pictures and statuary come down from two generations of more or less misdirected enthusiasm for art. In old age his father had begun this collection; forty years of dogged pursuit of good taste taught him much. Grafton completed it as soon as he came into possession.

In him a Grafton at last combined right instinct and right judgment. Although he was not yet thirty, every picture dealer of note in America and Europe knew him, and he knew not only them but also a multitude of small dealers with whom he carefully kept himself unknown. He was no mere picture buyer. The pretentious plutocrats of that class excited in him contempt—and resentment. How often had one of them destroyed, with a coarse fling of a moneybag, his subtle plans to capture a remarkable old picture at a small price. For he was a true collector—he knew pictures, he knew where they were to be found, he knew how to lie in wait patiently, how to search secretly. And no small part of his pride in his acquisitions came from what they represented as exhibits of his skill as a collector.

A few months before his father died they were in New York and went together to see the collection of that famous plutocratic wholesale picture buyer, Henry Acton.

“Do you see the young Spaniard over there?” said the father, pointing to one of the best-placed pictures in the room.

The son looked at it and was at once struck by the boldness, the imagination with which it was painted. “Acton has it credited to Velasquez,” he said. “It does look something like Velasquez, but it isn’t, I’m certain.”

“That picture was one of my costly mistakes,” continued the elder Grafton. “I bought it as a Velasquez. I was completely taken in—paid eleven thousand dollars for it in Paris about twenty-five years ago. But I soon found out what I’d done. How the critics did laugh at me! When the noise quieted down I sold it. It was shipped back to Paris and they palmed it off on Acton.”

Just then Acton joined them. “We were talking of your Velasquez there,” said the elder Grafton.

Acton grew red—the mention of that picture always put him angrily on the defensive. “Yes; it is a Velasquez. These ignorant critics say it isn’t, but I know a Velasquez when I see one. And I know Velasquez painted that face, or it wasn’t painted. It’ll hang there as a Velasquez while I live, and when I die it’ll hang in the Metropolitan Museum as a Velasquez. If they try to catalogue it any other way they lose my whole collection.”

While Acton was talking the younger Grafton was absorbed in the picture. The longer he looked the more he admired. He cared for pictures as well as for names, and he saw that this portrait was from a master-hand—the unknown painter had expressed through the features of that one face the whole of the Spaniard in the Middle Ages. He felt it was a reflection upon the name of Grafton that such a work of genius had been cast out obviously because a Grafton could appreciate only names. He said nothing to his father, but then and there made up his mind that he would have that picture back.

Apparently there was no hope. But he was not discouraged; patience and tenacity were the main factors in his temperament.

While he was sick with typhoid fever at a New York hotel Acton got into financial difficulties and was forced to “realize” on all his personal property. His pictures were hurriedly sent to the auctioneer. Grafton, a few days past the crisis in his illness, heard the news at nine o’clock in the evening of the third and last day of the sale. He leaped from bed and ordered the nurse to help him dress. He brushed aside protests and pleadings and warnings. They went together to Mendelssohn Hall. Grafton made the driver gallop the horses. He rushed in; his Spaniard was on the easel.

“How much is bid?” he called out.

Everybody looked round, and the auctioneer replied, “It’s just been sold.”

There was a laugh, Grafton looked so wild and strange. Leaning on the arm of the nurse he went to the settlement desk. “To whom was that picture sold?” he said to the clerk.

“On a cable from Paris, Mr. Grafton,” interrupted one of the members of the auction firm. “We’ve had a standing order from Candace Brothers for five years to let them know if the picture came or was likely to come into the market. And they’ve cabled every six months to remind us. When Mr. Acton decided to sell, we sent word. They ordered us to buy, with fifteen thousand dollars as the limit.”

Grafton was furious; he would gladly have paid twenty. “And what did it go for?” he asked.

“Seventeen hundred,” replied the dealer. “Everybody was suspicious of it. We would have got it for five hundred, if it hadn’t been for an artist; he bid it up to his limit.”

“I must sit,” said Grafton to his nurse. “This is too much—too much.”

He was little the worse for his imprudence, and was able to sail on the steamer that carried the picture. He beat it to Paris, and went at once to Candace Brothers, strolling in as if he had no purpose beyond killing time by looking about. He slowly led the conversation round to a point where Louis Candace, to whom he was talking, would naturally begin to think of the Acton sale.

“We’re getting in several pictures from New York,” said Candace—“from the Acton sale.”

“I was ill while it was on,” said Grafton, carelessly. “What did you take?”

“A Rousseau, a Corot, a Wyant, and a—Velasquez.” He hesitated before speaking the last name, and looked confused as Grafton slightly elevated his eyebrows. “Of course,” he hurried on, “we strongly suspect the Velasquez; in fact, we know it’s not genuine. But we’re delighted to get it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Grafton. “I know you too well to suspect that it will be sold as a Velasquez.”

“But certainly not. Even if we did that sort of thing, we couldn’t deceive any of your rich countrymen or any of the English with it. The story is too well known. No; we bought it for His Royal Highness the Grand Duke of Zweitenbourg. It is—or he thinks it is—a portrait of one of his Spanish ancestors. His agent tells me that it is the only known work of a remarkable young Spaniard who was soon afterwards killed at the siege of Barcelona, early in the eighteenth century. They are not even sure of his name. The Grand Duke was most anxious to get it. For years we have been sending him semiannual bulletins on Monsieur Acton’s health and financial condition.”

Grafton’s heart sank. Here was a true collector—a past-master of the art. “If I hadn’t been a mere novice,” thought Grafton, “I, too, would have had bulletins on Acton, and a standing order. As it is, my trouble has only begun,” for, being himself a true collector, with all the fatalism of the collector’s temperament, he was not despairing, was only the more resolute in face of these new difficulties.

“His Royal Highness,” continued Candace, “wants the picture because it fills one of the gaps in his gallery of ancestral portraits.” Under skilful questioning, Candace yielded the further information that the keeper of the Grand Duke’s privy purse, Baron Zeppstein, would arrive the following Thursday personally to escort the picture to Zweitenbourg.

It reached Paris on Tuesday, and Grafton took Jack Campbell, whom he found at the Ritz, round to Candace’s on Wednesday morning. Campbell, having been thoroughly coached, made offers for several pictures, all too low, then pretended to fall in love with the Spaniard. He insisted that it was a Velasquez—Grafton seemed to be disgusted with him, somewhat ashamed of him. When Candace told him that the picture was sold, he had them send a telegram to the Grand Duke offering eight thousand dollars for it. A curt refusal to sell at any price came a few hours later.

Campbell and Grafton were there the next morning when Baron Zeppstein came. As he was voluble, and appreciative of the rare pleasure of an attentive listener, Grafton rapidly ingratiated himself, and soon had him flowing on the subject of “my royal master.”

“His Royal Highness has two passions,” said the Baron, “Americans and his pictures. You Americans are making astonishing—I may say appalling—inroads in Germany; your ideas are getting even into the heads of our women, our girls. I don’t like it; I don’t like it. It’s breeding a race of thinking women. I can’t endure a thinking woman. You can’t imagine what I’m suffering just now through Her Serene Highness; but no matter. Your terrible democratic ideas of disrespect for tradition, for institutions, for restraints, are slipping about even in the palaces of our kings. His Royal Highness—the story goes that he was in love with one of your beautiful countrywomen and that she refused to marry him; she did marry his brother, Duke Wolfgang—morganatically, of course. It would be impossible for one of the house of Traubenheim to marry a commoner in the regular way. Your American invasion hasn’t extended that far—”

“And the pictures?” interrupted Grafton, impatient of the digression.

“Ah—yes—there His Royal Highness has a high enthusiasm, a noble passion. He is positively mad about Rembrandts. He has a notable collection of them, and is always trying to add to it.”

Grafton’s eyes dropped; he feared that this simple old Zweitenbourgian might read his thoughts. “Rembrandts?” he said. “That interests me. I have the same craze in a small way.” And he drew the Baron on. He learned that a Rembrandt filled the Grand Duke with the same burning longing for possession with which his craze, the spurious Velasquez, was now filling him. He began to see victory. He cabled his Chicago agent to send him forthwith, in care of Candace Brothers, his two examples of Rembrandt’s early work. When he was a boy, travelling about with his father, he had found them in an obscure shop in Leyden. They now interested him little except as reminders of an early triumph. But to a collector of Rembrandts they would be treasures.

A few days after sending the cable he went in the morning with Mrs. Campbell to Paquin’s—Mrs. Campbell was at Paris for her annual shopping. She was to be fitted for six dresses, she explained, and that meant an hour—perhaps two or three hours. But Grafton was so attracted by the scene that he said he would wait, at least until he was tired. He seated himself on the sofa against the wall, near the door. It was in line with the passage-way into which the fitting-salons open.

The general room was crowded with women—women in the fashions of the day preparing for the fashions of the morrow; girls—the pretty, graceful, polite dressmakers’ assistants famed in Parisian song and story—persuading, soothing, cajoling, flattering. There were a few men, all of them fitters except two. The exceptions were Grafton, trying to efface himself, and Paquin, trying to escape. He had come forth at the request of a customer important enough to be worthy of personal attention, but not important enough to be admitted to the honor of his private consultation-room. The women had seized him and, regardless of his bored and absent expression and speech, were swarming about him, impeding his retreat.

Grafton soon forgot himself, so interested was he in his surroundings—the clamor in French, German, English, American, Italian, Spanish; the exhibits of manners grand and manners sordid; the play of feminine emotions—the passion for dress, the thoughtful pauses before plunging into tempting extravagances, the reckless yieldings to temptation, the woe-begone putting aside of temptation; the mingling of women of all degrees, from royalty and American to actress and demi-mondaine. And they so far ignored the male intruder that they were presently tossing aside dresses into his lap or spreading them against his knees for better display. He retreated along the sofa before up-piling silks and satins and laces and linens. At last he had to choose between being submerged and abandoning the sofa. He still lingered, meekly standing, his hat and stick buried. As he was examining an evening dress that pleased him mightily—a new kind of silk in new shades, a cream white over which a haze of the palest blue-green seemed to be drifting—he chanced to glance along the passage-way.

One of the fitting-salons was open, and half in the doorway, half in the hall, stood a young woman. Her waist was off; her handsome shoulders and arms were bare, yet no more than if she had been in evening dress. She had fine brown hair with much red in it. Her features were strong and rather haughty, but delicate and pleasing. Her skin was dead-white, colorless even on her cheeks. She was frowning and biting her lip and tapping her foot on the floor. As he glanced she caught his eye. She beckoned imperiously.

He put down the dress and went slowly towards her.

“Quick,” she said, in French. “My patience is exhausted. I’ve been waiting half an hour and no fitter has come. Are you a fitter?”

“No,” he replied, also in French. “I’m not exactly a fitter; I’m a—an American. But I’ll get you one.”

“Heavens!” exclaimed the young woman, in English, and she darted into her salon and slammed the door.

Two attendants—a man and a woman—came at him from opposite directions. “But, monsieur! But, monsieur! What does monsieur do here? It is forbidden!” Their politeness was thin, indeed, over their alarm and indignation.

“The lady called me,” explained Grafton, calmly. “It was impossible for me to disobey her. She thought I was a fitter.”

As he spoke she opened her door and showed her head. The attendants, with serious faces, began to pour out apologies. “Pardon, Your Serene Highness! We hope that your—”

“It was my fault,” she interrupted, in French, and he noted that she had a German accent. Her look of condescending good-nature was not flattering to him. It said that in the mind of Her Serene Highness he and the two attendants formed a trio of inferior persons before whom she could conduct herself with almost as much freedom as before so many blocks of wood.

“No apology is necessary,” he said, with abrupt courtesy. “You wish a fitter. I’ll see that you get one at once.”

Her Serene Highness flushed and withdrew her head. “Take him away,” she called through the door, in a haughty tone, “and send a fitter.”

Grafton faced the attendants. He drew from his pocket two ten-franc pieces and gave one to each. “Have the goodness to get mademoiselle her fitter instantly,” he said.

They bowed and thanked him and he slowly returned to his sofa. Half an hour and she issued from her salon in street costume. Close behind her came an old-maidish German woman. As they reached the door, Grafton held it open. Her Serene Highness drew herself up coldly. He bowed with politeness and without impertinence, and closed the door behind them.

“Who was that lady?” he said to her fitter, hurrying past with her dresses on his arm.

“Her Serene Highness the Duchess Erica of Zweitenbourg, monsieur. She is the niece of His Royal Highness the Grand Duke Casimir.”

Grafton met her twice the next day. In the morning he was at the tomb of Napoleon. A woman—one of two walking together a short distance in front of him—dropped her handkerchief. He picked it up and overtook her.

“Pardon, mademoiselle,” he said. “Your handkerchief.” She paused. He saw that it was Her Serene Highness. At the same time she recognized him and the smile she had begun died away. She took the handkerchief with an icy “Thanks.” He dropped back, but their way happened to be his. Her companion glanced round presently; he was near enough to hear her say, “The person is following Your Serene Highness.” He came on, passed them as if unconscious of their existence, and they changed their route.

In the afternoon he was at the Louvre. He saw two women coming towards him—Her Serene Highness and her companion. As they saw him they turned abruptly into a side corridor. He came to where they had turned; there lay a handkerchief. He picked it up and noted that it was a fine one, deeply bordered with real lace. In the corner, under a ducal crown, was the initial “E.” He walked rapidly after the two women and, although they quickened their pace, he was soon beside them.

“Pardon, mademoiselle,” he began.

Her Serene Highness flushed with anger and her gray eyes blazed. “This is insufferable!” she exclaimed. “If you do not leave—”

“Your handkerchief,” he said, extending it, his eyes smiling but his face grave.

She looked at it in horror. “Monsieur is mistaken,” she said, fighting against embarrassment and a feeling that she had made herself ridiculous.

“Mademoiselle is mistaken—doubly mistaken,” he replied, tranquilly. “The handkerchief bears her monogram, and”—here he smiled satirically—“if mademoiselle is vain enough to mistake common courtesy for impudence, I am not vain enough to mistake accident—even twice repeated accident—for design.”

She looked at him with generous, impulsive repentance and took the handkerchief from his outstretched hand. “It is mine,” she said, in English, “and I regret my foolish mistake.” Her tone had no suggestion of condescension. It was the tone of the universal woman in presence of the universal man.

He bowed his appreciation without speaking and went rapidly away.