Chapter Nineteen

 

'A drawing to sell?'

      M. Weyl put on the bored, contemptuous expression he always assumed on these occasion.  But when the boy opened his case and revealed the Degas that had been so to ce pauvre Monsier Eustache only four days before, he could not restrain a start of surprise.

      'From where have you got this drawing?' he asked.

      'It was given to me,' Sebastian answered.

      'Given?'

      'Tout est possible,' M. Weyl said to himself.  But there had never been any suggestion that the old man was a homosexual.

      Conscious that he had become an object of suspicion, Sebastian blushed.

      'By my uncle,' he said.  'You probably knew him.  Mr Barnack.'

      'Your uncle?'

      M. Weyl's expression changed.  He smiled; he seized Sebastian's hand in both of his and shook it.

      One of his most valued clients.  One of his truest friends, he ventured to say.  He had been bouleversé by the tragic news.  An irreparable loss to art.  He could only offer his sincerest condolences.

      Sebastian stammered his thanks.

      'And the good uncle, he gave you this drawing?'

      The other nodded.

      'Just a few hours before ...'

      'Before the supreme adieu,' said Gabriel Weyl poetically.  'What a sentimental value it must possess for you!'

      Sebastian blushed a deeper crimson.  To justify himself, he mumbled something about his having no place to hang the drawing.  Besides, there was a sum of money which had to be paid out immediately - almost a debt of honour, he added as a picturesque afterthought.  Otherwise he wouldn't have dreamt of parting with his uncle's present.

      M. Weyl nodded sympathetically; but his eyes were bright with calculation.

      'Tell me,' he asked, 'for what reason did you address yourself to me in this affair?'

      'For no reason,' Sebastian answered.  M. Weyl's happened to be the first art-dealer's shop he had seen as he walked up the Via Tornabuoni.

      That meant that he didn't know where the drawing had been bought.  M. Weyl laughed gaily and patted Sebastian on the shoulder.

      'The hazard,' he said sententiously, 'is often our surest guide.'

      He looked down at the drawing, screwed up his eyelids and critically cocked his head.

      'Pretty,' he said, 'pretty.  Though hardly the master's best work.'  He laid his finger on the buttocks.  'One remarks the effects of failing sight, hein?'

      'Well, I didn't think so,' said Sebastian, in a manful effort to defend his property from disparagement.

      There was a little pause.

      'If your uncle gave you other things,' said M. Weyl in a casual tone, without looking up, 'I would be more than happy to make an offer.  Last time I had the honour of visiting his collection, I recall that I was struck by some of the Chinese bronzes.'  His thick, agile hands came together at the level of his face, as though he were clasping and cherishing some almost sacred object.  'What volumes!' he cried enthusiastically.  'What rhythmic sensuality!  But small, quite small.  One could almost carry them in the pockets.'

      Turning to Sebastian, he smiled ingratiatingly.

      'I could make you a very good offer for the bronzes,' he said.

      'But they're not mine.  I mean ... he only gave me this.'

      'Only this?' the other repeated in a tone of incredulity.

      Sebastian dropped his eyes.  That smile, that insistent bright regard, made him feel uncomfortable.  What was the fellow trying to suggest?

      'Nothing except this,' he insisted, wishing to God that he had picked on another dealer.  'But of course, if you're not interested ...'

      He started to put the drawing away again.

      'But no, but no!' cried M. Weyl, laying a restraining hand on his sleeve.  'On the contrary.  I interest myself in everything that Degas ever did - even in the smallest things, the most unimportant.'

      Ten minutes later it was all over.

      '... Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one and twenty-two.  Correct, hein?'

      'Thank you,' said Sebastian.  He took the thick wad of hundred-lire notes and crammed them into his wallet.  His face was flushed; his eyes shone with excitement and irrepressible triumph.  The man had begun by offering only a thousand.  Greatly daring, he had demanded three.  They had compromised at last on two thousand two hundred.  Ten per cent above the figure that would have split the difference between demand and offer.  Feeling that he had a right to be proud of himself, Sebastian put the wallet back into his pocket and looked up, to find the dealer smiling at him with almost paternal benevolence.

      'A young man who knows how to sell his article of commerce,' said M. Weyl, patting him once more.  'In business you will have the most brilliant career.'

      'No business for me,' Sebastian said.  And when the other questioningly raised eyebrows, 'You see,' he added, 'I'm a poet.'

      A poet?  But that had been M. Weyl's own youthful ambition.  To express the lyricism of a heart which suffers …

 

                                             Les chants désespérés sont les chants les plus beaux,

                                             Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots.

 

'De purs sanglots,' he repeated.  'Mais, hélas, the duty led me otherwhere.'

      He sighed, and went on to question Sebastian about his family.  Doubtless, in so cultivated a milieu, there was a tradition of poetry, and the fine arts?  And when the boy answered that his father was a barrister, he insisted on Mr Barnack's being one of those legal luminaries who devote their leisure to the Muses.

      The idea of his father ever having any leisure or, if he had, devoting them to anything but Blue books, was so funny that Sebastian laughed aloud.  But M. Weyl looked offended; and he hastily broke off in order to offer an explanation for his merriment.

      'You see,' he said, 'my father's rather peculiar.'

      'Peculiar?'

      Sebastian nodded, and in his broken incoherent style embarked upon an account of John Barnack's career.  And somehow, in his present mood, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to make the picture heroic - to harp on his father's success as an advocate, to magnify his political importance, to stress the greatness of his self-sacrifice.

      'But what generosity!' cried M. Weyl.

      Sebastian responded to the words as if they had been a compliment addressed to himself.  A tingling warmth ran up his spine.

      'He has lots of money,' he went on.  'But he gives it all away.  To political refugees and that kind of thing.'

      The pleasure of vicariously boasting had made him momentarily forget his hatred of those bloodsuckers who took what rightfully should have been his and left him without even a dinner jacket.

      'There's a chap called Cacciaguida, for example ...'

      'You mean the Professor?'

      Sebastian nodded.  M. Weyl cast a quick glance round the shop and, though it was empty, resumed the conversation in a lower tone.

      'Is he a friend of your father's?'

      'He came to dinner with us,' Sebastian answered importantly, 'just before we started for Florence.'

      'Personally,' M. Weyl whispered, after taking another look round the shop, 'I find him a great man.  But permit me to give you good advice.'

      He winked expressively, raised a forefinger to his floridly sculptured lips, and shook his head.  'The silence is gold,' he pronounced oracularly.

      The sudden jangling of the doorbell made them turn with a start, like a pair of conspirators.  Two ladies in the early forties, one rather plump and dark, the other fair, sunburnt and athletic, were entering the shop.  An expression of rapturous delight appeared on M. Weyl's face.

      'Gnädige Baronin!' he cried, 'y la reina de Buenos Aires!'

      Pushing Sebastian aside, he jumped over a cassettone, ducked under the right arm of a life-sized crucified Christ and, rushing up to the two ladies, ecstatically kissed their hands.

      Unobtrusively, Sebastian slipped out of the shop and, whistling, walked jauntily up the Via Tornabuoni in the direction of the cathedral and Uncle Eustace's tailor.