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.