I have just found this manuscript
among my music, and to charm a lonely evening I will
continue it. I remember that the candle went out
so suddenly that I lost the place of my pen, or I
would have completed the sentence. In the morning
I had other things to think of. My landlady came
up for the picture and took it away. In five minutes
I heard a step upon the stairs, and opening my door
I saw Cecilia-I have not told you my little
English angel’s name until now-with
the picture in her hands. For a moment I thought
that my inestimable uncle had refused to accept it,
but I saw by her smiling face that it was no misfortune
which had brought her back.
’There is a gentleman downstairs,
signor, who wishes to buy your picture.
He is waiting in the hall. Shall I send him up?
It is the gentleman who jumped from the cab yesterday
and caused the accident.’
I besought her not to take so much
trouble, and myself ran downstairs. There was
an Englishman, broad-shouldered, ruddy, and iron-grey,
with bushy eyebrows and blue eyes and a square chin.
‘Do you wish to see me, sir?’ I asked
him.
‘If you’re the painter of the picture
I saw just now-yes.’
‘It is something of a climb upstairs,’
I warned him.
He took the warning as an invitation,
and went upstairs, stepping firmly and solidly in
his heavy boots. When he reached my room, he took
his hat off and I saw he was bald. He had a good
face, and a high forehead, and he was evidently of
the prosperous middle classes. Mademoiselle had
left the room, and had placed the picture upon the
easel. He looked round the room, and then faced
the picture, square and business-like-like
an Englishman.
‘Ah!’ he said, ’that’s
the picture, is it? H’m. What do you
want for it?’
I told him I had never yet sold a
picture, and did not know what price to set upon it.
‘What have you done with the
rest?’ he said, looking round the room again.
‘This isn’t the first you’ve painted.’
His bluntness amused me, and I laughed.
He saw my circumstances, and there could be no service
in disguise. I told him of my estimable Uncle.
‘H’m?’ he said,
lifting his eyebrows. Then suddenly, ’What
do you get on ‘em?’
‘Twelve and sixpence each.’
‘How many has he got?’
‘Nine,’ I answered.
‘Got the tickets?’ he said, examining
the picture on the easel.
I produced them from a drawer.
‘Five pounds fourteen,’
he said to himself. ’A pound ’ll pay
the interest. Call it six ten, roughly.
Got anybody you can send out for ‘em?’
I rang the bell, and by-and-by my landlady appeared.
‘Look here,’ said the
stranger, taking out a purse. ’Take this
six pounds ten and that lot of pawn tickets, and send
somebody to the pawnbroker’s to bring the pictures
out.’
My landlady took the money and went
downstairs. In ten minutes she came back again
with a boy behind her, carrying all my canvas children
home again. During this time the stranger said
nothing. Now he took the change in silver and
copper from my landlady, said ‘Eight,’
and nothing more, and then set the pictures one by
one on the easel and looked at them all in turn.
When he had satisfied himself, he turned on me again.
‘Now, Signor-’
’Calvotti’-I helped him with
my name.
‘Now, Signor Calvotti, what do you want for
the lot?’
I entered into his business humour as well as I could.
‘Permit me to ask what you are prepared to give?’
‘Oh,’ he said emphatically,
’I can’t be buyer and seller.
How much for the lot?’
I thought it over. I knew the
pictures were good-that they were better
than many I had seen sold for high prices. I spoke
quietly, but with inward desperation.
‘A hundred pounds.’
My landlady clasped her hands.
‘What?’ said the stranger sharply.
‘Say seventy-five.’
My landlady absolutely curtsied, with her hands clasped.
‘If you think that is a fair price,’ I
said.
The stranger looked at me for a minute, then turned
to my landlady.
‘Pardon me a minute,’
he said, waving a backward hand to me. Then to
the landlady; ‘What sort of gentleman is this?
Dissipated dog, eh?’
‘Lord bless you, no, sir,’
said the landlady; ’the steadiest gentleman I
ever had in the house.’
‘H’m,’ said the
stranger, facing round on me. ’Want a hundred
pounds for ’em, eh? Very well. If
I can’t get ’em for less. Pen and
ink anywhere? Ah, I see.’
He wrote a cheque standing at the
table. Then he produced a card.
’That’s my address.
Glad to see you, if you’ll call. Any Friday
evening after eight. I’ve got a cab at
the door, and I’ll take these away at once.’
I was embarrassed by a terrible suspicion.
I had read and heard much of London fraud.
’You will pardon me, sir.
You are too much a man of the world not to forgive
a little caution in a man who is selling all he has.’
Then I stumbled and could not go on.
‘Ah!’ he said, ‘quite
right. Stupid of me, to be sure. Wait a minute.’
He seized the cheque and his hat,
and went heavily downstairs. When he was at the
bottom of the first flight he shouted, ‘Back
directly,’ and so went down the other three
flights, and out-of-doors.
My landlady opened the window, and looked out.
‘He’s gone into the bank,
sir,’ she said; then ran to the head of the
stairs and screamed for somebody to open the door.
‘He’s coming out of the
bank, sir,’ said the landlady after an interval
of renewed observation. He came upstairs, solidly,
and into the room.
‘Count that,’ he said,
and placed a small bag on the table.
I counted the contents of the bag,
but my fingers trembled, and I was confused.
I made out one hundred and six pounds.
‘No,’ he said, ’make no mistakes
at the bank?
He counted the money rapidly.
‘One hundred and five.’
‘We agreed for one hundred,
sir,’ I said pushing five pounds across the
table.
‘Guineas,’ he said brusquely.
’Always guineas in art. Don’t know
why, but always is. Oblige me, ma’am, by
carrying these downstairs.’
My landlady took the pictures in her arms.
They were defended from each other
by strips of thin cork at the corners, and they made
a clumsy bundle. I had not looked at my client’s
card until now. Whilst he gave his directions
to the landlady I took it up, and learned that his
name was John Gregory; and that he lived in Westbourne
Terrace. When my landlady had gone, he spoke to
me, with another glance round the room.
‘Been hard up?’ he asked.
‘I have been totally without
money,’ I answered him frankly, for I began
to understand him.
‘These things belong to you?’
he asked again, waving his hand at the piano and the
violin and the violoncello.
‘Yes,’ I answered.
’Why didn’t you sell ’em? Better
than starving.’
‘I would sooner starve than part with any of
them,’ I told him.
He turned sharply upon me.
‘Why?’
‘My mother played them.’
There seemed no reason, for all his brusquerie, why
I should not tell him this.
‘Didn’t play the fiddle, did she?’
‘Divinely,’ I told him.
’And the ‘cello?’ ‘Yes.’
‘Singular,’ he said.
’Oh, ah, foreign lady. Yes, of course.
Not at all remarkable. Good morning. Don’t
forget the Fridays. Glad to see you.’
As he was going out he caught sight
of the portfolio of sketches. He stopped and
turned them over without remark or apology until he
came to one which pleased him. It was a large
sketch, sixteen inches by twelve, in water-colour,
and had some little finish. He held it up and
took it to the light.
’I meant to say just now, but
I forgot it, he said, turning the picture upside down
and looking at it so-’I meant to tell
you that you’re making a mistake in painting
so small. A larger canvas would suit your style.
Let me have this, now, in oil. Say eighty by sixty.
Give you fifty pounds for it. What do you say?’
What was I likely to say? I told him I would
do my best.
‘I know that,’
he answered. ‘Couldn’t help it.
Good morning.’
This time he really went away.
I was confounded by my good fortune. I scarcely
knew what had happened, until my landlady came upstairs
again and asked me if she should get me something
to eat. Then I remembered that I was ravenous.
She brought me eggs and ham and coffee; and when I
had finished breakfast I despatched her for a portmanteau
which lay in the care of my estimable uncle, and for
certain parcels of clothing and boots and jewellery.
Twenty-three pounds went in this way. I spread
my clothing about the room to freshen it after its
long confinement. Then I dressed, and was delighted
to feel once more like a gentleman. I clapped
my hands, and sang, and rattled gay things on the pianoforte.
Then I put on my hat-newly recovered from
my estimable uncle-and went out to buy
canvas and materials for my new picture. I brought
these things back in a cab, and carried them upstairs.
When I got them there, I found that I had no room
for so large a canvas. I had managed to get the
small canvases and the little field-easel on which
I painted into a good light, but with this it was
impossible. I spoke about it to the landlady.
‘If you’ll excuse me,
sir,’ she said, ’I think I could propose
an arrangement as would suit. The ladies below
give warning last week, because the rooms they’ve
got is too expensive.
Now, this little room would do nicely
for ’em, with the next, which I shall be glad
and thankful for a chance of giving Mr. Jinks his
warning,’ (Jinks was a drunken tailor, my next-room
neighbour.) ’Now, sir, if the rooms below will
suit you-’
I told her I was sure they would,
and asked her if she would broach the question with
the ladies. She went down at once, and came back
shortly to ask when it would be convenient for me
to remove my things. I said ‘at any moment,’
There was so little property between us all three,
that it was transferred without much trouble in a
few minutes. The landlady agreed that Mr. Jinks
should have other accommodation secured for him in
the house until the end of the next week; and for a
single day the ladies were to make themselves at home
in this one old room of mine. Miss Grammont came
up the stairs with difficulty, and asked-
‘When shall you wish to remove your piano,
signor?’
Now, I had already proposed to myself a great pleasure.
‘Permit me, madame,’
I answered, ’to leave it here for a little time,
until I can arrange my rooms.’
‘Certainly,’ the lady answered.
’And if madame or her sister
play, it will improve the piano to be played upon,
and I shall be vastly gratified.’
Cecilia thanked me with so much energy
that I was assured that she was a devotee to music.
‘Would she play?’ I asked; and she consented.
She was shy before me, but so eager
to put her fingers on the keys that she conquered
all diffidence and went at once to the piano.
When she had played a Sonata of Haydn’s,
I turned in my enthusiastic way to her sister and
said how I rejoiced to have been able to gratify genius.
‘Genius is a very large word,’
said Miss Grammont. Cecilia was playing something
else, and had not heard me.
‘Genius is a large word,
madame,’ I replied. ’But is not
that a large style? Is it not a noble style?’
Cecilia, she allowed, played very finely.
’Finely, madame? ’I
respectfully protested-’she should
play among the seraphs. You shall allow me, madame.
I am no mean musician. As a critic I am exact
and exacting. Permit me, madame, that I bring
my violin, and play once with Mademoiselle Cecilia.’
She consented. I brought my violin
and we played. Cecilia’s musical memory
is prodigious. Mine is also retentive and precise.
But she had too much inventive genius for precision,
unless the notes were before her, and sometimes I
corrected her. Next, this delicious interlude
over, I begged that the ladies would do me the honour
to dine with me.
‘You must not be extravagant
in your good fortune, signor,’ Miss Grammont
said.
‘Trust me, madame,’
I answered. ’If the day has dawned, I will
hasten no new night and make no artificial curtains.’
Then I went down to paint, and at
seven o’clock they joined me at dinner.
The meal was sent in from the famous tavern hard by,
and I think I may say we all enjoyed it. And
then came music, and for an hour we were happy.