IV

Her pictures and furniture were on view at Christie's in the early spring, and all Owen's friends met each other in the rooms and on the staircase.

The pictures were to be sold on Saturday, the furniture, china, and enamels on the following Monday.

"The pictures don't matter so much, although her own portrait is going to be sold. But the furniture! Dear God, look at that brute trying the springs of the sofa where I have sat so often with her. And there is the chair on which I used to sit listening to her when she sang. And her piano—why, my God, she is selling her piano!— What is to become of that woman? A singer who sells her piano!"

"My dear friend, I suppose she had to sell everything or nothing?"

"But she'll have to buy another piano, and she might have kept the one I gave her. It is extraordinary how religion hardens the heart, Harding. Do you see that fellow, a great nose, lumpy shoulders, trousers too short for him, a Hebrew barrel of grease—Rosental. You know him; I bought that clock from him. He's looking into it to see if anything has been broken, if it is in as good condition as when he sold it. The brutes have all joined the 'knock-out,' and there—"

As he said these words young Mr. Rowe, who believed himself to be connected with society, and who dealt largely in pictures, without, however, descending to the vulgarity of shop-keeping (he would resent being called a picture-dealer), approached and insisted on Sir Owen listening to the story of his difficulties with some county councillors who could not find the money to build an art gallery.

"But I object to your immortality being put on the rates."

"You write books, Mr. Harding; I can't."

As soon as he left them, Harding, who knew the dealer kind, the original stock and the hybrid, told an amusing story of Mr. Rowe's beginnings; and Owen forgot his sentimental trouble; but the story was interrupted by Lady Ascott coming down the room followed by her attendants, her literary and musical critics.

"Every one of them most interesting, I assure you, Sir Owen. Mr.
Homer has just returned from Italy—"

"But I know Mr. Homer; we met long ago at Innes' concerts. If I am not mistaken you were writing a book then about Bellini."

"Yes, 'His Life and Works.' I've just returned from Italy after two years' reading in the public libraries."

Lady Ascott's musical critic was known to Owen by a small book he had written entitled "A Guide to the Ring." Before he was a Wagnerian he was the curator of a museum, and Owen remembered how desirous he was to learn the difference between Dresden and Chelsea china. He had dabbled in politics and in journalism; he had collected hymns, ancient and modern, and Owen was not in the least surprised to hear that he had become the director of a shop for the sale of religious prints and statues, or that he had joined the Roman Church, and the group watched him slinking round on the arm of a young man, one who sang forty-nine songs by all the composers in Europe in exactly the same manner.

"He is teaching Botticelli in his three manners," said Lady Ascott, "and Cyril is thinking of going over to Rome."

"Asher, let us get away from this culture," Harding whispered.

"Yes, let's get away from it; I want to show you a table, the one on which Evelyn used to write her letters. We bought it together at the Salle Druot."

"Yes, Asher, yes; but would you mind coming this way, for I see Ringwood. He goes by in his drooping mantle, looking more like an umbrella than usual. Lady Ascott has engaged him for the season, and he goes out with her to talk literature—plush stockings, cockade. Literature in livery! Ringwood introducing Art!"

Owen laughed, and begged Harding to send his joke to the comic papers.

"An excellent subject for a cartoon."

"He has stopped again. Now I'm sure he's talking of Sophocles. He walks on…. I'm mistaken; he is talking about Molière."

"An excellent idea of yours—'Literature in livery!'"

"His prose is always so finely spoken, so pompous, that I cannot help smiling. You know what I mean."

"I've told you it ought to be sent to the papers. I wish he would leave that writing-table; and Lady Ascott might at least ask him to brush his coat."

"It seems to me so strange that she should find pleasure in such company."

"Men who will not cut their hair. How is it?"

"I suppose attention to externals checks or limits the current of feeling… or they think so."

"I am feeling enough, God knows, but my suffering does not prevent me from selecting my waistcoat and tying my tie."

Harding's eyes implied acquiescence in the folding of the scarf (it certainly was admirably done) and glanced along the sleeves of the coat—a rough material chosen in a moment of sudden inspiration; and they did not miss the embroidered waistcoat, nor the daring brown trousers (in admirable keeping withal), turned up at the ends, of course, otherwise Owen would not have felt dressed; and, still a little conscious of the assistance his valet had been to him, he walked with a long, swinging stride which he thought suited him, stopping now and again to criticise a friend or a picture.

"There's Merrington. How absurdly he dresses! One would think he was an actor; yet no man rides better to hounds. Lady Southwick! I must have a word with her."

Before leaving Harding he mentioned that she attributed her lapses from virtue, not to passionate temperament, but to charitable impulses. "She wouldn't kiss—" and Owen whispered the man's name, "until he promised to give two thousand pounds to a Home for Girl Mothers."

"Now, my dear Lady Southwick, I'm so delighted to see you here. But how very sad! The greatest singer of our time."

"She was exceedingly good in two or three parts."

A dispute arose, in which Owen lost his temper; but, recovering it suddenly, he went down the room with Lady Southwick to show her a Wedgewood dessert service which he had bought some years ago for Evelyn, pressing it upon her, urging that he would like her to have it.

"Every time you see it you will think of us," and he turned on his heel suddenly, fearing to lose Harding, whom he found shaking hands with one of the dealers, a man of huge girth—"like a waggoner," Owen said, checking a reproof, but he could not help wishing that Harding would not shake hands with such people, at all events when he was with him.

"These are the Chadwells, whom—" (Harding whispered a celebrated
name) "used to call the most gentlemanly picture-dealers in
Bond-street." Harding spoke to them, Owen standing apart absorbed in
His grief, until the word "Asher" caught his ear.

"Of whom are you speaking?"

"Of you, of Sir Owen Asher." And Harding followed Owen, intensely annoyed.

"Not even to a gentlemanly picture-dealer should you—"

"You are entirely wrong; I said 'Sir Owen Asher.'"

"Very strange you should say 'Sir Owen Asher'; why didn't you say Sir
Owen?"

Harding did not answer, being uncertain if it would not be better to drop Asher's acquaintance. But they had known each other always. It would be difficult.

"The sale is about to begin," Asher said, and Harding sat down angry with Asher and interested in the auctioneer's face, created, Harding thought, for the job… "looking exactly like a Roman bust. Lofty brow, tight lips, vigilant eyes, voice like a bell…. That damned fellow Asher! What the hell did he mean—"

The auctioneer sat at a high desk, high as any pulpit, and in the benches the congregation crowded—every shade of nondescript, the waste ground one meets in a city: poor Jews and dealers from the outlying streets, with here and there a possible artist or journalist. As the pictures were sold the prices they fetched were marked in the catalogues, and Harding wondered why.

Around the room were men and women of all classes; a good many of Sir Owen's "set" had come—"Society being well represented that day," as the newspapers would put it. All the same, the pictures were not selling well, not nearly so well as Owen and Harding anticipated. Harding was glad of this, for his heart was set on a certain drawing by Boucher.

"I would sooner you had it, Harding, than anybody else. It would be unendurable if one of those picture-dealers should get it; they'd come round to my house trying to sell it to me again, whereas in your rooms—"

"Yes," said Harding, "it will be an excuse to come to see me. Well, if I can possibly afford it—"

"Of course you can afford it; I paid eighty-seven pounds for it years ago; it won't go to more than a hundred. I'd really like you to have it."

"Well, for goodness' sake don't talk so loud, somebody will hear you."

The pictures went by—portraits of fair ladies and ancient admirals, landscapes, underwoods and deserts, flower and battle pieces, pathetic scenes and gallantries. There was a time when every one of these pictures was the hope and delight of a human being, now they went by interesting nobody….

At last the first of Evelyn's pictures was hoisted on the easel.

"Good God!" isn't it a miserable sight seeing her pictures going to whomsoever cares to bid a few pounds. But if I were to buy the whole collection—"

"I quite understand, and every one is a piece of your life."

The pictures continued to go by.

"I can't stand this much longer."

"Hush!"

The Boucher drawing went up. It was turned to the right and to the left: a beautiful girl lying on her belly, her legs parted slightly. Therefore the bidding began briskly, but for some unaccountable reason it died away. "Somebody must have declared it to be a forgery," Owen whispered to Harding, and a moment after it became Harding's property for eighty-seven pounds—"The exact sum I paid for it years ago. How very extraordinary!"

"A portrait by Manet—a hundred pounds offered, one hundred," and two grey eyes in a face of stone searched the room for bidders. "One hundred pounds offered, five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, fifty," and so on to two hundred.

"Her portrait will cost me a thousand," Owen whispered to Harding, and, catching the auctioneer's eyes, he nodded again. Seven hundred. "Will they never stop bidding? That fellow yonder is determined to run up the picture." Eight hundred and fifty! The auctioneer raised his hammer, and the watchful eyes went round the room in search of some one who would pay another ten pounds for Evelyn's portrait by Manet. Eight hundred and fifty—eight hundred and fifty. Down came the hammer. The auctioneer whispered "Sir Owen Asher" to his clerk.

"It's a mercy I got it for that; I was afraid it would go over the thousand. Now, come, we have got our two pictures. I'm sick of the place."

Harding had thought of staying on, just to see the end of the sale, but it was easier to yield to Owen than to argue with him; besides, he was anxious to see how the drawing would look on his wall. Of course it was a Boucher. Stupid remarks were always floating about Christie's. But he would know for certain as soon as he saw the drawing in a new light.

He was muttering "It is genuine enough," when his servant opened the door—"Sir Owen Asher."

"I see you have hung up the drawing. It looks very well, doesn't it.
You'll never regret having taken my advice."

"Taken your advice!" Harding was about to answer. "But what is the use in irritating the poor man? He is so much in love he hardly knows what he is saying. Owen Asher advising me as to what I should buy!"

Owen went over and looked into Harding's Ingres.

"Every time one sees it one likes it better." And they talked about Ingres for some time, until Owen's thoughts went back to Evelyn, and looking from the portrait by Ingres to the drawing by Boucher he seemed suddenly to lose control; tears rose to his eyes, and Harding watched him, wondering whither Owen's imagination carried him. "Is he far away in Paris, hearing her sing for the first time to Madame Savelli? Or is he standing with her looking over the bulwarks of the Medusa, seeing the shape of some Greek island dying in the twilight?" And Harding did not speak, feeling the lover's meditation to be sacred. Owen flung himself into an arm-chair, and without withdrawing his eyes from the picture, said, relying on Harding's friendship:

"It is very like her, it is really very like her. I am much obliged to you, Harding, for having bought it. I shall come here to see it occasionally."

"And I'll present you with a key, so that when I am away you can spend your leisure in front of the picture…. Do you know whom I shall feel like? Like the friend of King Condules."

"But she'll not ask you to conspire to assassinate me. My murder would profit you nothing. All the same, Harding, now I come to think of it, there's a good deal of that queen in Evelyn, or did she merely desire to take advantage of the excuse to get rid of her husband?"

"Ancient myths are never very explicit; one reads whatever psychology one likes into them. Perhaps that is why they never grow old."

The door opened… Harding's servant brought in a parcel of proofs.

"My dear Asher, the proof of an article has just come, and the editor tells me he'll be much obliged if I look through it at once."

"Shall I wait?"

"Well, I'd sooner you didn't. Correcting a proof with me means a rewriting, and—"

"You can't concentrate your thoughts while I am roving about the room. I understand. Are you dining anywhere?"

"I'm not engaged."

The thought crossed Harding's mind when Owen left the room that it would be better perhaps to write saying that the proofs detained him, for to spend the evening with Owen would prove wearisome. "No matter what the subject of conversation may be his mind will go back to her very soon…. But to leave him alone all the evening would be selfish, and if I don't dine with him I shall have to dine alone…." Harding turned to his writing-table, worked on his proof for a couple of hours, and then went to meet Owen, whom he found waiting for him at his club.

"My dear friend, I quite agree with you," he said, sitting down to the table; "what you want is change."

"Do you think, Harding, I shall find any interest again in anything?"

"Of course you will, my dear friend, of course you will." And he spoke to his friend of ruined palaces and bas-reliefs; Owen listened vaguely, begging of him at last to come with him.

"It will give you ideas, Harding; you will write better."

Harding shook his head, for it did not seem to him to be his destiny to relieve the tedium of a yachting excursion in the Mediterranean.