“There’ll be a picture come today. You’d better get Hunt and Thomas to help you hang it. It’s to go in the middle of that space on the stairs. You’d better have it done when your mistress is out. Let ’em bring it in the back way–it’s eleven foot by six; and mind the paint.”
When he returned, rather late, the Hondekoeter was hung. It covered the space admirably, but the light being poor and the picture dark, it was not possible to see what it was about. It looked quite well. Emily was in the drawing-room when he went in.
“What on earth is that great picture on the stairs, James?”
“That?” said James. “A Hondekoeter; picked it up, a bargain, at Smelter’s sale. Jolyon’s got one at Stanhope Gate.”
“I never saw such a lumbering great thing.”
“What?” said James. “It covers up that space well. It’s not as if you could see anything on the stairs. There’s some good poultry in it.”
“It makes the stairs darker than they were before. I don’t know what Soames will say. Really, James, you oughtn’t to go about alone, buying things like that.”
“I can do what I like with my money, I suppose,” said James. “It’s a well-known name.”
“Well,” said Emily, “for a man of your age–Never mind! Don’t fuss! Sit down and drink your tea.”
James sat down, muttering. Women–always unjust, and no more sense of values than an old tom-cat!
Emily said no more, ever mistress of her suave and fashionable self.
Winifred, with Montague Dartie, came in later, so that all the family were assembled for dinner; Cicely having her hair down, Rachel her hair up–she had ‘come out’ this season; Soames, who had just parted with the little whiskers of the late ‘seventies, looking pale and flatter-cheeked than usual. Winifred, beginning to be ‘interesting,’ owing to the approach of a little Dartie, kept her eyes somewhat watchfully on ‘Monty,’ square and oiled, with a ‘handsome’ look on his sallow face, and a big diamond stud in his shining shirt-front.
It was she who broached the Hondekoeter.
“Pater dear, what made you buy that enormous picture?”
James looked up, and mumbled through his mutton:
“Enormous! It’s the right size for that space on the stairs.” It seemed to him at the moment that his family had very peculiar faces.
“It’s very fine and large!” Dartie was speaking! ‘Um!’ thought James: ‘What does HE want–money?’
“It’s so yellow,” said Rachel, plaintively.
“What do YOU know about a picture?”
“I know what I like, Pater.”
James stole a glance at his son, but Soames was looking down his nose.
“It’s very good value,” said James, suddenly. “There’s some first-rate feather painting in it.”
Nothing more was said at the moment, nobody wanting to hurt the Pater’s feelings, but, upstairs, in the drawing-room after Emily and her three daughters had again traversed the length of the Hondekoeter, a lively conversation broke out.
Really–the Pater! Rococo was not the word for pictures that size! And chickens–who wanted to look at chickens, even if you could see them? But, of course, Pater thought a bargain excused everything.
Emily said:
“Don’t be disrespectful, Cicely.”
“Well, Mater, he does, you know. All the old Forsytes do.”
Emily, who secretly agreed, said: “H’ssh!”
She was always loyal to James, in his absence. They all were, indeed, except among themselves.
“Soames thinks it dreadful,” said Rachel. “I hope he’ll tell the Pater so.”
“Soames will do nothing of the sort,” said Emily. “Really your father can do what he likes in his own house–you children are getting very uppish.”
“Well, Mater, you know jolly well it’s awfully out of date.”
“I wish you would not say ‘awfully’ and ‘jolly,’ Cicely.”
“Why not? Everybody does, at school.”
Winifred cut in:
“They really are the latest words, Mother.”
Emily was silent; nothing took the wind out of her sails like the word ‘latest,’ for, though a woman of much character, she could not bear to be behindhand.
“Listen!” said Rachel, who had opened the door.
A certain noise could be heard; it was James, extolling the Hondekoeter, on the stairs.
“That rooster,” he was saying, “is a fine bird; and look at those feathers floating. Think they could paint those nowadays? Your Uncle Jolyon gave a hundred an’ forty for his Hondekoeter, and I picked this up for twenty-five.”
“What did I say?” whispered Cicely. “A bargain. I hate bargains; they lumber up everything. That Turner was another!”
“Shh!” said Winifred, who was not so young, and wished that Monty had more sense of a bargain than he had as yet displayed. “I like a bargain myself; you know you’ve got something for your money.”
“I’d rather have my money,” said Cicely.
“Don’t be silly, Cicely,” said Emily; “go and play your piece. Your father likes it.”
James and Dartie now entered, Soames having passed on up to his room where he worked at night.
Cicely began her piece. She was at home owing to an outbreak of mumps at her school on Ham Common; and her piece, which contained a number of runs up and down the piano, was one which she was perfecting for the school concert at the end of term. James, who made a point of asking for it, partly because it was good for Cicely, and partly because it was good for his digestion, took his seat by the hearth between his whiskers, averting his eyes from animated objects. Unfortunately, he never could sleep after dinner, and thoughts buzzed in his head. Soames had said there was no demand now for large pictures, and very little for the Dutch school–he had admitted, however, that the Hondekoeter was a bargain as values went; the name alone was worth the money. Cicely commenced her ‘piece’; James brooded on. He really didn’t know whether he was glad he had bought the thing or not. Everyone of them had disapproved, except Dartie; the only one whose disapproval he would have welcomed. To say that James was conscious of a change in the mental outlook of his day would be to credit him with a philosophic sensibility unsuited to his breeding and his age; but he WAS uncomfortably conscious that a bargain was not what it had been. And while Cicely’s fingers ran up and down–he didn’t know, he couldn’t say.
“D’you mean to tell me,” he said, when Cicely shut the piano, “that you don’t like those Dresden vases?”
Nobody knew whom he was addressing or why, so no one replied.
“I bought ’em at Jobson’s in ‘67, and they’re worth three times what I gave for them.”
It was Rachel who responded.
“Well, Pater, do you like them yourself?”
“Like them? What’s that got to do with it? They’re genuine, and worth a lot of money.”
“I wish you’d sell them, then, James,” said Emily. “They’re not the fashion now.”
“Fashion! They’ll be worth a lot more before I die.”
“A bargain,” muttered Cicely, below her breath.
“What’s that?” said James, whose hearing was sometimes unexpectedly sharp.
“I said: ‘A bargain,’ Pater; weren’t they?”
“Of course they were”; and it could be heard from his tone that if they hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have bought them. “You young people know nothing about money, except how to spend it”; and he looked at his son-inlaw, who was sedulously concerned with his finger-nails.
Emily, partly to smooth James, whom she could see was ruffled, and partly because she had a passion for the game, told Cicely to get out the card table, and said with cheery composure:
“Come along, James, we’ll play Nap.”
They sat around the green board for a considerable time playing for farthings, with every now and then a little burst of laughter, when James said: “I’ll go Nap!” At this particular game, indeed, James was always visited by a sort of recklessness. At farthing points he could be a devil of a fellow for very little money. He had soon lost thirteen shillings, and was as dashing as ever.
He rose at last, in excellent humour, pretending to be bankrupt.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said, “I always lose MY money.”
The Hondekoeter, and the misgivings it had given rise to, had faded from his mind.
Winifred and Dartie departing, without the latter having touched on finance, he went up to bed with Emily in an almost cheerful condition; and, having turned his back on her, was soon snoring lightly.
He was awakened by a crash and bumping rumble, as it might be thunder, on the right.
“What on earth’s that, James?” said Emily’s startled voice.
“What?” said James: “Where? Here, where are my slippers?”
“It must be a thunderbolt. Be careful, James.”
For James, in his nightgown, was already standing by the bedside–in the radiance of a night-light, long as a stork.
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