His excitement had something of the apostle’s ecstasy. He was not only, in a few hours, to embrace Treeshy, and be reunited to his honoured parents; he was also to go forth and preach the new gospel to them that sat in the darkness of Salvator Rosa and Lo Spagnoletto…
The first thing that struck Lewis was the smallness of the house on the
Sound, and the largeness of Mr. Raycie.
He had expected to receive the opposite impression. In his recollection the varnished Tuscan villa had retained something of its impressiveness, even when compared to its supposed originals. Perhaps the very contrast between their draughty distances and naked floors, and the expensive carpets and bright fires of High Point, magnified his memory of the latter—there were moments when the thought of its groaning board certainly added to the effect. But the image of Mr. Raycie had meanwhile dwindled. Everything about him, as his son looked back, seemed narrow, juvenile, almost childish. His bluster about Edgar Poe, for instance—true poet still to Lewis, though he had since heard richer notes; his fussy tyranny of his womenkind; his unconscious but total ignorance of most of the things, books, people, ideas, that now filled his son’s mind; above all, the arrogance and incompetence of his artistic judgments. Beyond a narrow range of reading—mostly, Lewis suspected, culled in drowsy after-dinner snatches from Knight’s “Half-hours with the Best Authors”—Mr. Raycie made no pretence to book-learning; left THAT, as he handsomely said, “to the professors.” But on matters of art he was dogmatic and explicit, prepared to justify his opinions by the citing of eminent authorities and of market-prices, and quite clear, as his farewell talk with his son had shown, as to which Old Masters should be privileged to figure in the Raycie collection.
The young man felt no impatience of these judgements. America was a long way from Europe, and it was many years since Mr. Raycie had travelled. He could hardly be blamed for not knowing that the things he admired were no longer admirable, still less for not knowing why. The pictures before which Lewis had knelt in spirit had been virtually undiscovered, even by art-students and critics, in his father’s youth. How was an American gentleman, filled with his own self-importance, and paying his courier the highest salary to show him the accredited “Masterpieces”—how was he to guess that whenever he stood rapt before a Sassoferrato or a Carlo Dolce one of those unknown treasures lurked near by under dust and cobwebs?
No; Lewis felt only tolerance and understanding. Such a view was not one to magnify the paternal image; but when the young man entered the study where Mr. Raycie sat immobilized by gout, the swathed leg stretched along his sofa seemed only another reason for indulgence…
Perhaps, Lewis thought afterward, it was his father’s prone position, the way his great bulk billowed over the sofa, and the lame leg reached out like a mountain-ridge, that made him suddenly seem to fill the room; or else the sound of his voice booming irritably across the threshold, and scattering Mrs. Raycie and the girls with a fierce: “And now, ladies, if the hugging and kissing are over, I should be glad of a moment with my son.” But it was odd that, after mother and daughters had withdrawn with all their hoops and flounces, the study seemed to grow even smaller, and Lewis himself to feel more like a David without the pebble.
“Well, my boy,” his father cried, crimson and puffing, “here you are at home again, with many adventures to relate, no doubt; and a few masterpieces to show me, as I gather from the drafts on my exchequer.”
“Oh, as to the masterpieces, sir, certainly,” Lewis simpered, wondering why his voice sounded so fluty, and his smile was produced with such a conscious muscular effort.
“Good—good,” Mr. Raycie approved, waving a violet hand which seemed to be ripening for a bandage. “Reedy carried out my orders, I presume? Saw to it that the paintings were deposited with the bulk of your luggage in Canal Street?”
“Oh, yes, sir; Mr. Reedy was on the dock with precise instructions. You now he always carries out your orders,” Lewis ventured with a faint irony.
Mr. Raycie stared. “Mr. Reedy,” he said, “does what I tell him, if that’s what you mean; otherwise he would hardly have been in my employ for over thirty years.”
Lewis was silent, and his father examined him critically. “You appear to have filled out; your health is satisfactory? Well… well… Mr. Robert Huzzard and his daughters are dining here this evening, by the way, and will no doubt be expecting to see the latest French novelties in stocks and waistcoats. Malvina has become a very elegant figure, your sisters tell me.” Mr. Raycie chuckled, and Lewis thought: “I KNEW it was the oldest Huzzard girl!” while a slight chill ran down his spine.
“As to the pictures,” Mr. Raycie pursued with growing animation, “I am laid low, as you see, by this cursed affliction, and till the doctors get me up again, here must I lie and try to imagine how your treasures will look in the new gallery. And meanwhile, my dear boy, I need hardly say that no one is to be admitted to see them till they have been inspected by me and suitably hung. Reedy shall begin unpacking at once; and when we move to town next month Mrs. Raycie, God willing, shall give the handsomest evening party New York has yet seen, to show my son’s collection, and perhaps… eh, well?… to celebrate another interesting event in his history.”
Lewis met this with a faint but respectful gurgle, and before his blurred eyes rose the wistful face of Treeshy Kent.
“Ah, well, I shall see her tomorrow,” he thought, taking heart again as soon as he was out of his father’s presence.
6.
MR. RAYCIE stood silent for a long time after making the round of the room in the Canal Street house where the unpacked pictures had been set out.
He had driven to town alone with Lewis, sternly rebuffing his daughters’ timid hints, and Mrs. Raycie’s mute but visible yearning to accompany him. Though the gout was over he was till weak and irritable, and Mrs. Raycie, fluttered at the thought of “crossing him,” had swept the girls away at his first frown.
Lewis’s hopes rose as he followed his parent’s limping progress. The pictures, though standing on chairs and tables, and set clumsily askew to catch the light, bloomed out of the half-dusk of the empty house with a new and persuasive beauty. Ah, how right he had been—how inevitable that his father should own it!
Mr. Raycie halted in the middle of the room. He was still silent, and his face, so quick to frown and glare, wore the calm, almost expressionless look known to Lewis as the mask of inward perplexity. “Oh, of course it will take a little time,” the son thought, tingling with the eagerness of youth.
At last, Mr. Raycie woke the echoes by clearing his throat; but the voice which issued from it was as inexpressive as his face. “It is singular,” he said, “how little the best copies of the Old Masters resemble the originals. For these ARE Originals?” he questioned, suddenly swinging about on Lewis.
“Oh, absolutely, sir! Besides—” The young man was about to add: “No one would ever have taken the trouble to copy them”—but hastily checked himself.
“Besides—?”
“I meant, I had the most competent advice obtainable.”
“So I assume; since it was the express condition on which I authorised your purchases.”
Lewis felt himself shrinking and his father expanding; but he sent a glance along the wall, and beauty shed her reviving beam on him.