Part 5

“You’ve got one already, haven’t you? Besides, the shops won’t be open.”

The good shops might not be open, June allowed. But she was not seeking a good hat. The article to which her fancy turned was for every-day use; yet when all was said it was a mere blind. She did not really intend to buy a hat, but she certainly meant if possible, to throw dust in the eyes of the Old Crocodile. Had he been able to guess that she was going with William to the National Gallery he would have banned the expedition.

In order to stand well with her conscience and not be a story teller in the eyes of the world, June walked as far as the Strand, and carefully inspected the window of a cheap milliner’s. And then, as arranged, she met William as the clocks were striking three at the Charing Cross corner of Trafalgar Square.

It was a glorious September afternoon. And for June it was an exquisite if brief escape from servitude. She had yet to see William apart from the shop, yet now, as she came upon him standing by the post office, she was quite struck by his appearance. Tall and slight of form, he carried himself well, his neat suit of blue serge, old though it was in the revealing light of the sun, was brushed with scrupulous care, and his large flowing tie which he had the art of tying in a way of his own, made him look so interesting that June secretly was rather proud of being seen in his company. For undeniably he was handsome. In fact, standing there straight, alert and smiling upon the world, he had a look of mysterious charm which in the eye of one beholder raised him above the run of men.

At the sight of June, he lifted his old straw hat with a little air of homage, and also with a slight blush that became him adorably. And in his mood there was a poetry that delighted her, although she was careful not to let him know it.

“How wonderful it all is!” He waved his hand gaily to the sky. “And to think that every bit of it belongs to you and me!”

June, as matter-of-fact a young woman as the city of Blackhampton had ever produced, felt bound to ask what William meant by this extravagant remark. Charmed she was, and yet she was a little scandalised too.

“Beauty, beauty everywhere,” said the young man, letting his voice take its delicious fall. “There was an old Frenchman who said, that to see Beauty is to possess it. Look, Miss June, at that marvellous blue, and those wonderful, wonderful clouds that even Van Roon himself could hardly have painted. It is all ours, you know, all for our enjoyment, all for you and me.”

“But you are speaking of the world, aren’t you?” There was a slight note of protest in June’s solemn tone.

“If you fall in love with beauty, all the world is yours. There’s no escape from beauty so long as the sky is above us. No matter where we walk we are face to face with beauty.”

June was afraid that a girl who looked so smart in a lilac silk dress and a picture hat that she had the air of a fashion plate must have caught William’s injudicious observation. At any rate, she smiled at him as they passed. But then arose the question, had he not first smiled at her? Certainly, to be up against that intriguing frock, to say nothing of the hat, must have meant rare provocation for such an out-and-out lover of the ornamental.

Miss Grandeur, no doubt, had caught the look in his eyes which a minute ago June herself had surprised there. He simply could not help paying tribute to such radiance.

But was the girl beautiful? There was no doubt that William thought so. Still, the worst of it was that in his eyes everything under the sun was beautiful.

“She’d be nothing at all if it were not for the money she spends on herself,” June remarked, with more severity than relevance.

All the same it was a rare experience to walk abroad with William. He had an eye for all things and in all things he found the thing he sought.

On the steps of the National Gallery was a majestic policeman. To June he was but an ordinary symbol of the law, but for William he had a different message.

“Good morning, sir!”

At the compliment of this unwonted style of address, Constable X drew himself up, and returned the greeting with a proud smile.

“I can’t tell you how grateful we are to you,” said William, “for taking such care of our treasures.”

The policeman seemed rather amused. “It’s my job,” he said, training, at the same time, upon June an eye of quizzical intelligence. It was odd, yet all in a moment Constable X had ceased to be a stern-looking fellow.

As soon as William crossed the threshold of his treasure house, a kind of rapture came upon him. His voice grew hushed. And to June it seemed doubtful whether he would ever get beyond the Hermes on the main staircase. Once within this palace of many enchantments, he began to lose all sense of time and place; and, in spite of the fact that he was the soul of chivalry, he even seemed in danger of forgetting that he was accompanied by a lady.

Troubled at last by the silence of her escort, June gently observed: “This place seems nearly as big as the Blackhampton Art Museum.”

To William’s fine perception it was a delicate reminder that art is eternal, and that in the month of September the National Gallery closes at six.

The young man sighed deeply and turned away from the Hermes. Up the main staircase they walked side by side.

“Keep straight on, Miss June. If we glance to the right or the left, we may not get to the Van Roon before next Saturday.”

“We!” was June’s thought. “Better speak for yourself. In the Blackhampton Art Museum we have things far nicer than a few old chipped statues.” Happily, for the time being at least, it remained a thought without words.

They went through a room on the right, and then into an inner room. June was led to its farthest corner, and proudly marshalled into the presence of an object so small, and so insignificant, that she felt it was really surprising that even William should attach the least importance to it.

However, a mere glance proved that it was not so surprising after all. The picture contained a cloud, a tree, some water and a windmill. And these objects in themselves so trivial, yet sufficed, as June had learned already, to raise William at any time to the seventh heaven of bliss.

A moment’s inspection of the picture was enough for June. To her mind the work was quite commonplace. Yet William stood in front of it in an attitude of silent adoration, his head a little to one side, and apparently holding his breath for such a long period that June began to wonder how the trick was done. She was bound in honour to share this silent ecstasy, but having varied the proceedings a little by standing first on her right foot, and then on her left, she decided at last to throw up her part.

Very gently she put an end to William’s reverie.

“I think I will sit down,” said June.

“Please, please do!” The queer fellow came back with a start to the world of reality. “Let us sit over there on the corner of that sofa. Perhaps we may be able to see it even better then than we do now.”

To the sofa they went accordingly and to June’s discomfiture her mentor was at pains to dispose them both in a way that should enable them to keep the picture in their eye. June had no wish to keep the picture in her eye. She had had more than enough of it already. Besides, the large room was full of things vastly more imposing, much better worth looking at. But William, even seated on the sofa by her side, was still in thrall to this remarkable work.

There is no saying how long June’s trial would have lasted, but after it had gone on for a length of time that began to seem interminable, it came to an end in the most abrupt and dramatic way. Without any kind of warning, a strange appearance swam into their ken. Uncle Si, looking spruce and businesslike, and much better dressed than usual, entered the room through the door behind them.

XIII

JUNE held her breath, while S. Gedge Antiques with thought for nothing save the object that had brought him there, made a bee-line for the picture at which William was still solemnly staring. The old man put on his spectacles. Whether they were his “buying” or his “selling” ones, June was unable to decide, but whichever they might be they had an important function to perform. Uncle Si’s long and foxlike nose bent so close to the paint that it might have been smelling it.

June’s instinct was to flee before they were discovered. And perhaps she would have urged this course upon William had not pride said no. She was in mortal fear of the old man, yet she despised herself for that emotion. After all, they were doing no wrong in spending Saturday afternoon in such a very elevated form of amusement. Surely it devolved upon her to stand up to this tyrant.

William, for his part, was without misgiving. Thinking evil of none, least of all his master, he was a little awed by that odd arrival, and yet he was unfeignedly glad of his presence. The simpleton regarded it as a compliment to himself that S. Gedge Antiques should take the trouble to come in his own person to look at the Van Roon.

At last S. Gedge Antiques turned away from the Van Roon, and little suspecting who were so near to him, came full upon William and June seated together upon the adjacent sofa. For a moment it was as if a feather would have knocked him down. He could trust his eyes so little that he hastily changed his spectacles.

“What!” His brow was thunder. “You! Here!”

June, ready to carry the war into the country of the enemy, was prepared to offer a cool “Why not?” Happily, a second and wiser thought led her to await developments. Secretly, Uncle Si was in a pretty rage as June could tell by the look of him. But he was not one to let his feelings override his judgment. Whatever they were, they could keep. He had come there for a particular purpose; this afternoon he was bent on business only.

In the rasping voice which made June think of a file and sandpaper, S. Gedge Antiques remarked: “Still Hobbemaising, eh?”

William modestly admitted that he hoped Miss June would have a look at The Avenue.

“Let’s hope she’ll be the better for it.” The old man did his best to be polite. “It will improve her mind, no doubt.”

“But we have come to see the Van Roon, sir,” said William impulsively.

“Oh, you have.” There was a sudden narrowing of foxy eyes. “Seems to me, boy, you’ve got Van Roon on the brain.”

William could not help laughing at his master’s tone of playfulness, but June did not laugh. She knew but too well that as far as Uncle Si was concerned, Van Roon was an exceedingly serious matter.

“You are wise, boy”--the old man tried very hard to keep the sneer out of his voice--“to come and find out what a Van Roon really looks like.”

William modestly said that he thought he knew that already.

His master shook the head of wisdom. “Judging by the way you’ve been going on lately I take leave to doubt it. If you can trace the slightest resemblance to that thing of ours”--as Uncle Si half turned to point to the picture, June noticed that he was careful to say “ours”--“I’m afraid, boy, you’re qualifying for Colney Hatch.”

William laughed gaily at his master’s humour. He felt bound in honour to do so, since the jokes from that quarter were thin and few. But June did not laugh. Something cold, subtle, deadly, was creeping into her heart.

The old fox struck an attitude before the Van Roon. “How a man who has his wits can compare that daub of ours with this acknowledged masterpiece passes me altogether.”

As a fact, William had not exactly compared his Crowdham Market purchase with Number 2020 in the official catalogue. He had merely affirmed that it was by the same hand.

June was privileged to hear great argument. And as at her birth a kind fairy had bestowed the gift of penetration upon her, she listened to all that passed with a fixity of mind that was almost painful. Carefully weighing the pros and the cons as they were advanced, she was fully determined to get a real insight into the merits of a most singular and perplexing matter.

Who was in the right? It was the opinion of William against the opinion of Uncle Si. From the first she had had horrid doubts of the old man’s sincerity, yet she must not prejudge so grave an issue. Account must be taken, moreover, of the entire range of William’s fantastic ideas. The thought was not pleasant, but on the face of it, Uncle Si was likely to be far the safer guide of the two.

As June listened, however, to the wheedling sneers of the one and the forthright tone of the other, almost too transparent in its honesty, she could only conclude that Uncle Si was deliberately cheapening William’s discovery for purposes of his own.

Looking at the masterpiece on the opposite wall, with what June was only too keenly aware were the eyes of ignorance, it was impossible to deny an extraordinary similarity of subject and treatment. And this, as she perceived at once, was where Uncle Si overdid it. He would not allow that to the vision of a technical expert, the possession of which he did not scruple now to claim for himself, there was the slightest resemblance. Such similarities as might exist on the surface to delude the untutored eye he explained away in a flood of words whose force was intended to convince them both. But he convinced neither. June, pinning her wits to a plain argument, smiled secretly as more than once he contradicted himself. William on the other hand, was not permitted by the love and reverence he bore his master, to submit his speeches to the scale. He took his stand upon the divine instinct that was his by right of birth. Such being the case he could but gently dissent from the old man. It was one of his peculiarities that the surer he was, the more gentle he grew. And therein, as June perceived, he differed strangely from Uncle Si who could only render conviction in terms of vehemence.

Finally, as a clincher, S. Gedge Antiques growled: “Boy, you talk like a fool!” and head in air, marched with the aid of his knobby walking stick out of William’s treasure house.

William and June having stood to talk with the old man, now sat down again.

“Thank goodness he’s gone!” said June.

William confessed that the master had puzzled him considerably.

“’Tisn’t like him to close his eyes to the facts of a case. I can’t think what has happened to the master. He hardly ever makes a mistake.”

Said June sagaciously: “Uncle Si being so wise about most things, isn’t it likely that the mistake is yours?”

“It may be so,” William allowed. But at once he added, with a divine simplicity: “I will stake my life, all the same, Miss June, that our picture is a Van Roon.”

“Or a clever forgery, perhaps.”

“No, no. As sure as you and I sit here, only one hand painted that little thing of ours.”

“Then why should Uncle Si declare that it doesn’t in the least resemble a Van Roon?”

“Ah, that I don’t know. It is very strange that he should be so blind to the truth. As I say, it is the first time I have known it to happen.”

“It may be,” said June, “that this is the first time there has been so much money in the case.”

William dissented gravely. “The master would never let money influence him in a matter of this kind.”

“Uncle Si lets money influence him in matters of every kind.”

William shook his head. “I am afraid you don’t quite understand the master,” he said, with a wonderful look in his deep eyes.

June was too wise to contest the point. He might know more about pictures than did she, but when it came to human nature it was another pair of shoes. It made her quite hot with anger to feel how easily he could be taken in.

Sitting by William’s side on the edge of the sofa she made a vow. From now on it should be her aim in life to see that Uncle Si did not get the better of this young man. She had made a good and wise beginning by inducing him to bestow the picture upon herself, instead of giving it, as so easily might have happened, to the Old Crocodile. She knew that some bad quarters of an hour lay ahead, in the course of which she and her box might easily find themselves in the street; but come what might, let her cherish that picture as if it were life itself. For she saw with a startling clearness that William’s future, and perhaps her own, was bound up in its fortunes.

This surmise as to trouble ahead was borne out very exactly by events. When accompanied by William she returned to tea in a state as near positive happiness as she had ever known, Uncle Si’s aspect was so hostile that it would not have been surprising had she been sent packing there and then. The presence of William helped to restrain the anger of S. Gedge Antiques, since there was more to lose than to gain just now by fixing a quarrel upon him; but it was clear that the old man did not intend to pass over the incident lightly.

“Niece,” he began the moment his cup had been handed to him, “kindly tell me what you mean by gallivanting about London.”

A hot flame of resentment ran in June’s cheek. But she was too proud to express it otherwise than by rather elaborately holding her peace. She continued to pour out tea just as if not a word had been said on the subject.

“It’s my fault, sir,” said William, stepping into the breach chivalrously, but with an absence of tact. “Miss June very kindly consented to come and look at the Van Roon.”

“There must be no more of it.” Miss June received the full benefit of a north eye. “I will not have you going about with a young man, least of all a young man earning fifteen shillings a week in my employ.”

It was now the turn of William’s cheek to feel the flame, but it was not in his nature to fight over a thing of that kind, even had he been in a position to do so. Besides, it hardly needed his master to tell him that he had been guilty of presumption.

Indeed, the circumstances of the case made it almost impossible for either of the culprits to defend such conduct in the other’s presence. Yet June, to the intense astonishment of Uncle Si, and no doubt to her own, contrived to give battle in hostile territory.

“I can only say,” she remarked, with a fearlessness so amazing that Uncle Si scalded his mouth by drinking out of his cup instead of out of his saucer, “that if fifteen shillings a week is all that William gets, it is just about time he had a rise in his wages.”

For a moment Uncle Si could only splutter. Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them fiercely.

“Gracious goodness me! God bless my body and my soul!” June would not have been at all surprised had the old slave-driver “thrown a fit.”

“William is very clever,” she said undaunted.

“Niece, hold your tongue.” The words came through clenched teeth. “And understand, once for all, that I’ll have no more carryings-on. If you don’t look out, you’ll find your box in the street.”

Having put June out of action, the old man turned his attention to William. But with him he walked more delicately. There must be no more Van Rooning, but the ukase was given in a tone so oily that June just had to smile.

In spite of his own edict, however, it was clear that Van Roon continued much in the mind of William’s master. The next day, Sunday, instead of taking the air of the west central postal district, his custom as a rule, when the forenoon was fine, he spent most of the morning with the young man in the studio. June felt this boded so ill that she went about her household chores in a fever of anxiety. She was sure that Uncle Si had fully made up his mind to have the picture; he meant, also, to have it at his own price. However, she had fully made up hers that this tragedy simply must not occur.

XIV

JUNE, preparing for dinner a Yorkshire pudding, brought an acute mind to bear on the still graver problem before it. What would happen when Uncle Si found out that William had been persuaded to give her the picture? It was a question she was bound to ask, yet she dare not foretell the answer. William and she were completely in his power. Wholly dependent upon the food and lodging the old man provided and the few shillings a week with which he grudgingly supplemented them, they could not afford to come to an open breach with him; at the same time to June’s practical mind, it would be an act of sheer madness to give up the rare thing that fortune had put into their hands.

Her need just then was the advice of some able and disinterested friend. There was only her power of putting two and two together to tell her that the picture might be worth a large sum. And even that did not allow her to know for certain; she must find a means of making sure. Unhappily, there was not one person in the world to whom she could turn for advice, unless it was William himself; and in plain matters of business he seemed so hopelessly at sea--if they involved dealings with his master at all events--that June was convinced he would be no use at all.

Beating up an egg for the Yorkshire pudding, she felt a deep concern for what was now taking place up that second pair of stairs in the garret next the tiles. Vainly she wished that she had had the sense to ask William to keep back as long as possible the fact that he had given the picture to her. But the mere request would have opened the door to another anxiety. If the picture was what he thought it was, could such a gift, made in such circumstances, be regarded as irrevocable? That must be left to the giver himself to decide: assuming the simpleton had enough strength of mind to prevent Uncle Si deciding it for him.

The pudding was just ready for the oven when she heard Uncle Si come downstairs. He went into the parlour, where every Sunday morning, with the help of the _Exchange and Mart_ and half an ounce of shag, he spent an hour in meditation. As soon as the door closed upon the old man, June ran attic-wards to confer with William.

There was no beating about the bush. Bursting in upon him breathlessly, she cried: “I hope you have not told Uncle Si the picture is mine. I had meant to warn you not to do so on any account--not for the present, at least.”

William looked up from the treasure with his absorbed air; but it appeared that as yet he had not let the cat out of the bag.

“I am very glad.” June breathed freely again.

“I thought,” said William sadly, “it would be best not to tell the master until after his dinner. But I fear that whenever he knows it will upset him terribly.”

“Why should it?”

“It’s like this, Miss June--the master is fairly setting his heart upon this picture.”

“Then he’d better unset it,” said June harshly.

Trouble came unmistakably into the expressive face of the picture’s late owner.

“I am afraid it will be quite a blow to him if he doesn’t get this beautiful thing,” he said, gazing affectionately at what he held in his hand.

“And yet he thinks so little of it?”

“Oh no! Not now. This morning after a careful examination he’s changed his mind.”

June was not impressed by this face-about on the part of S. Gedge Antiques. “If you ask me,” she declared scornfully, “he changed his mind some time ago. But he’s a bit too artful to let you know that.”

“But why?” said William perplexedly.

“Don’t you see that he thinks the more he cheapens it the easier it will be to get it from you?”

William could not bring himself to take so harsh a view.

“What does he offer for it now?” the new owner of the Van Roon sternly inquired.

“You are not fair to the dear old master, believe me, Miss June.” The young man spoke with charming earnestness. “He has such a reverence for beauty that he cannot reckon it in terms of money. This morning I have brought him to see with my eyes.” Pride and affection deepened in the voice of the simpleton. “He has now such a regard for this lovely thing that he will not be happy until he possesses it, and I shall not be happy until you have given it to him.”

June was simply aghast.

“But--but it was given to me!”