Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (250 page)

Her veil was not down this time. All the beauty of her large, soft, melancholy, brown eyes beamed on me. Her delicate complexion became suddenly suffused with a lovely rosy flush. Her glorious black hair — no! I will make an effort, I will suppress my ecstasies. Let me only say that she evidently recognised me. Will you believe it? — I felt myself colouring as I bowed to her. I never blushed before in my life. What a very curious sensation it is!

The horrid boy claimed her attention with a grin.

“Master’s engaged,” he said. “Please to wait here.”

“I don’t wish to disturb Mr. Pickup,” she answered.

What a voice! No! I am drifting back into ecstasies: her voice was worthy of her — I say no more.

“If you will be so kind as to show him this,” she proceeded; “he knows what it is. And please say, my father is very ill and very anxious. It will be quite enough if Mr. Pickup will only send me word by you — Yes or No.”

She gave the boy an oblong slip of stamped paper. Evidently a promissory note. An angel on earth, sent by an inhuman father, to ask a Jew for discount! Monstrous!

The boy disappeared with the message.

I seized my opportunity of speaking to her. Don’t ask me what I said! Never before (or since) have I talked such utter nonsense, with such intense earnestness of purpose and such immeasurable depth of feeling. Do pray remember what you said yourself, the first time you had the chance of opening your heart to
your
young lady. The boy returned before I had half done, and gave her back the odious document.

“Mr. Pickup’s very sorry, miss. The answer is, No.”

She lost all her lovely colour, and sighed, and turned away. As she pulled down her veil, I saw the tears in her eyes. Did that piteous spectacle partially deprive me of my senses? I actually entreated her to let me be of some use — as if I had been an old friend, with money enough in my pocket to discount the note myself. She brought me back to my senses with the utmost gentleness.

“I am afraid you forget, sir, that we are strangers. Good-morning.”

I followed her to the door. I asked leave to call on her father, and satisfy him about myself and my family connections. She only answered that her father was too ill to see visitors. I went out with her on to the landing. She turned on me sharply for the first time.

“You can see for yourself, sir, that I am in great distress. I appeal to you, as a gentleman, to spare me.”

If you still doubt whether I was really in love, let the facts speak for themselves. I hung my head, and let her go.

When I returned alone to the picture-gallery — when I remembered that I had not even had the wit to improve my opportunity by discovering her name and address — I did really and seriously ask myself if these were the first symptoms of softening of the brain. I got up, and sat down again. I, the most audacious man of my age in London, had behaved like a bashful boy! Once more I had lost her — and this time, also, I had nobody but myself to blame for it.

These melancholy meditations were interrupted by the appearance of my friend, the artist, in the picture-gallery. He approached me confidentially, and spoke in a mysterious whisper.

“Pickup is suspicious,” he said; “and I have had all the difficulty in the world to pave your way smoothly for you at the outset. However, if you can contrive to make a small Rembrandt, as a specimen, you may consider yourself employed here until further notice. I am obliged to particularize Rembrandt, because he is the only Old Master disengaged at present. The professional gentleman who used to do him died the other day in the Fleet — he had a turn for Rembrandts, and can’t be easily replaced. Do you think you could step into his shoes? It’s a peculiar gift, like an ear for music, or a turn for mathematics. Of course you will be put up to the simple elementary rules, and will have the professional gentleman’s last Rembrandt as a guide; the rest depends, my dear friend, on your powers of imitation. Don’t be discouraged by failures, but try again and again; and mind you are dirty and dark enough. You have heard a great deal about the light and shade of Rembrandt — Remember always that, in your case, light means dusky yellow, and shade dense black; remember that, and — ”

“No pay,” said the voice of Mr. Pickup behind me; “no pay, my dear, unlesh your Rembrandt ish good enough to take me in — even me, Ishmael, who dealsh in pictersh and knowsh what’sh what.”

What did I care about Rembrandt at that moment? I was thinking of my lost young lady; and I should probably have taken no notice of Mr. Pickup, if it had not occurred to me that the old wretch must know her father’s name and address. I at once put the question. The Jew grinned, and shook his grisly head. “Her father’sh in difficultiesh, and mum’s the word, my dear.” To that answer he adhered, in spite of all that I could say to him.

With equal obstinacy I determined, sooner or later, to get my information.

I took service under Mr. Pickup, purposing to make myself essential to his prosperity, in a commercial sense — and then to threaten him with offering my services to a rival manufacturer of Old Masters, unless he trusted me with the secret of the name and address. My plan looked promising enough at the time. But, as some wise person has said, Man is the sport of circumstances. Mr. Pickup and I parted company unexpectedly, on compulsion. And, of all the people in the world, my grandmother, Lady Malkinshaw, was the unconscious first cause of the events which brought me and the beloved object together again, for the third time!

CHAPTER VI.

ON the next day, I was introduced to the Jew’s workshop, and to the eminent gentlemen occupying it. My model Rembrandt was put before me; the simple elementary rules were explained; and my materials were all placed under my hands.

Regard for the lovers of the Old Masters, and for the moral well-being of society, forbids me to be particular about the nature of my labours, or to go into dangerous detail on the subject of my first failures and my subsequent success. I may, however, harmlessly admit that my Rembrandt was to be of the small or cabinet size, and that, as there was a run on Burgomasters just then, my subject was naturally to be of the Burgomaster sort. Three parts of my picture consisted entirely of different shades of dirty brown and black; the fourth being composed of a ray of yellow light falling upon the wrinkled face of a treacle-coloured old man. A dim glimpse of a hand, and a faint suggestion of something like a brass washhand basin, completed the job, which gave great satisfaction to Mr. Pickup, and which was described in the catalogue as —

“A Burgomaster at Breakfast. Originally in the collection of Mynheer Van Grubb. Amsterdam. A rare example of the master. Not engraved. The chiar’oscuro in this extraordinary work is of a truly sublime character. Price, Two Hundred Guineas.”

I got five pounds for it. I suppose Mr. Pickup got one-ninety-five.

This was perhaps not very encouraging as a beginning, in a pecuniary point of view. But I was to get five pounds more, if my Rembrandt sold within a given time. It sold a week after it was in a fit state to be trusted in the showroom. I got my money, and began enthusiastically on another Rembrandt — ”A Burgomaster’s Wife Poking the Fire.” Last time, the chiar’oscuro of the master had been yellow and black, this time it was to be red and black. I was just on the point of forcing my way into Mr. Pickup’s confidence, as I had resolved, when a catastrophe happened, which shut up the shop and abruptly terminated my experience as a maker of Old Masters.

“The Burgomaster’s Breakfast” had been sold to a new customer, a venerable connoisseur, blessed with a great fortune and a large picture-gallery. The old gentleman was in raptures with the picture — with its tone, with its breadth, with its grand feeling for effect, with its simple treatment of detail. It wanted nothing, in his opinion, but a little cleaning. Mr. Pickup knew the raw and ticklish state of the surface, however, far too well, to allow of even an attempt at performing this process, and solemnly asserted, that he was acquainted with no cleansing preparation which could be used on the Rembrandt without danger of “flaying off the last exquisite glazings of the immortal master’s brush.” The old gentleman was quite satisfied with this reason for not cleaning the Burgomaster, and took away his purchase in his own carriage on the spot.

For three weeks we heard nothing more of him. At the end of that time, a Hebrew friend of Mr. Pickup, employed in a lawyer’s office, terrified us all by the information that a gentleman related to our venerable connoisseur had seen the Rembrandt, had pronounced it to be an impudent counterfeit, and had engaged on his own account to have the picture tested in a court of law, and to charge the seller and maker thereof with conspiring to obtain money under false pretenses. Mr. Pickup and I looked at each other with very blank faces on receiving this agreeable piece of news. What was to be done? I recovered the full use of my faculties first; and I was the man who solved that important and difficult question, while the rest were still utterly bewildered by it. “Will you promise me five and twenty pounds in the presence of these gentlemen if I get you out of this scrape?” said I to my terrified employer. Ishmael Pickup wrung his dirty hands and answered, “Yesh, my dear!”

Our informant in this awkward matter was employed at the office of the lawyers who were to have the conducting of the case against us; and he was able to tell me some of the things I most wanted to know in relation to the picture.

I found out from him that the Rembrandt was still in our customer’s possession. The old gentleman had consented to the question of its genuineness being tried, but had far too high an idea of his own knowledge as a connoisseur to incline to the opinion that he had been taken in. His suspicious relative was not staying in the house, but was in the habit of visiting him, every day, in the forenoon. That was as much as I wanted to know from others. The rest depended on myself, on luck, time, human credulity, and a smattering of chemical knowledge which I had acquired in the days of my medical studies. I left the conclave at the picture-dealer’s forthwith, and purchased at the nearest druggist’s a bottle containing a certain powerful liquid, which I decline to particularize on high moral grounds. I labeled the bottle “The Amsterdam Cleansing Compound”; and I wrapped round it the following note:

“Mr. Pickup’s respectful compliments to Mr. — (let us say, Green). Is rejoiced to state that he finds himself unexpectedly able to forward Mr. Green’s views relative to the cleaning of ‘The Burgomaster’s Breakfast.’ The inclosed compound has just reached him from Amsterdam. It is made from a recipe found among the papers of Rembrandt himself — has been used with the most astonishing results on the Master’s pictures in every gallery of Holland, and is now being applied to the surface of the largest Rembrandt in Mr. P.’s own collection. Directions for use: Lay the picture flat, pour the whole contents of the bottle over it gently, so as to flood the entire surface; leave the liquid on the surface for six hours, then wipe it off briskly with a soft cloth of as large a size as can be conveniently used. The effect will be the most wonderful removal of all dirt, and a complete and brilliant metamorphosis of the present dingy surface of the picture.”

I left this note and the bottle myself at two o’clock that day; then went home, and confidently awaited the result.

The next morning our friend from the office called, announcing himself by a burst of laughter outside the door. Mr. Green had implicitly followed the directions in the letter the moment he received it — had allowed the “Amsterdam Cleansing Compound” to remain on the Rembrandt until eight o’clock in the evening — had called for the softest linen cloth in the whole house — and had then, with his own venerable hands, carefully wiped off the compound, and with it the whole surface of the picture! The brown, the black, the Burgomaster, the breakfast, and the ray of yellow light, all came clean off together in considerably less than a minute of time. If the picture, was brought into court now, the evidence it could give against us was limited to a bit of plain panel, and a mass of black pulp rolled up in a duster.

Our line of defense was, of course, that the compound had been improperly used. For the rest, we relied with well-placed confidence on the want of evidence against us. Mr. Pickup wisely closed his shop for a while, and went off to the Continent to ransack the foreign galleries. I received my five and twenty pounds, rubbed out the beginning of my second Rembrandt, closed the back door of the workshop behind me, and there was another scene of my life at an end. I had but one circumstance to regret — and I did regret it bitterly. I was still as ignorant as ever of the young lady’s name and address.

My first visit was to the studio of my excellent artist-friend, whom I have already presented to the reader under the sympathetic name of “Dick.” He greeted me with a letter in his hand. It was addressed to me — it had been left at the studio a few days since; and (marvel of all marvels!) the handwriting was Mr. Batterbury’s. Had this philanthropic man not done befriending me even yet? Were there any present or prospective advantages to be got out of him still? Read his letter, and judge.