Literary Love Letters and Other Stories by Robert Herrick

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I thought Watkins would have convulsions.

"And it has brought those two young souls together in a marvellous way,
this common interest in fine art. You will find Maud a much more serious
person, Jane. No, if I were Painter I certainly should not care a fig
whether it proves to be a copy or not. I shouldn't let that influence me
in my love for such an educational wonder."

The bluff was really sublime, but painful. My wife gave a decided hint to
Watkins that his presence in such a family scene was awkward. He took his
hat and cane. Uncle Ezra rose and grasped him cordially by the hand.

"You have been very generous, Mr. Watkins," he said, in his own sweet way,
"to do such an unpleasant job. It's a large draft to make on the kindness
of a friend."

"Oh, don't mention it, Mr. Williams; and if you want to buy something
really fine, a Van Dyck print--a----"

Uncle Ezra was shooing him toward the door. From the stairs we could still
hear his voice. "Or a Whistler etching for twenty-five pounds, I could get
you, now, a very fine----"

"No, thank you, Mr. Watkins," Uncle Ezra said, firmly. "I don't believe I
have any money just now for such an investment."

My wife tiptoed about the room, making faces at the exposed masterpieces.
"What shall we do?" Uncle Ezra came back into the room, his face a trifle
grayer and more worn. "Capital fellow, that Watkins," he said; "so firm
and frank."

"Uncle," I ventured at random, "I met Flugel the other day in the street.
You know Flugel's new book on the Renaissance. He's the coming young
critic in art, has made a wonderful reputation the last three years, is on
the _Beaux Arts_ staff, and really _knows_. He is living out at Frascati.
I could telegraph and have him here this afternoon, perhaps."

"Well, I don't know;" his tone, however, said "Yes." "I don't care much
for expert advice--for specialists. But it wouldn't do any harm to hear
what he has to say. And Maud and Painter have made up their minds that
Maud's is a Titian."

So I ran out and sent off the despatch. My wife took Uncle Ezra down to
the Forum and attempted to console him with the ugliness of genuine
antiquity, while I waited for Flugel. He came in a tremendous hurry, his
little, muddy eyes winking hard behind gold spectacles.

"Ah, yes," he began to paw the pictures over as if they were live stock,
"that was bought for a Bonifazio," he had picked up Maud's ruby-colored
prize. "Of course, of course, it's a copy, an old copy, of Titian's
picture, No. 3,405, in the National Gallery at London. There is a replica
in the Villa Ludovisi here at Rome. It's a stupid copy, some alterations,
all for the bad--worthless--well, not to the _antichita_, for it must be
1590, I should say. But worthless for us and in bad condition. I wouldn't
give cinque lire for it."

"And the Bissola?" I said. "Oh, that was done in the seventeenth
century--it would make good kindling. But this," he turned away from
Painter's picture with a gesture of contempt, "this is Domenico Tintoretto
fast enough, at least what hasn't been stippled over and painted out. St.
Agnes's leg here is entire, and that tree in the background is original. A
damn bad man, but there are traces of his slop work. Perhaps the hair is
by him, too. Well, good-by, old fellow; I must be off to dinner."

That was slight consolation; a leg, a tree, and some wisps of hair in a
picture three feet six by four feet eight. Our dinner that evening was
labored. The next morning Uncle Ezra packed his three treasures tenderly,
putting in cotton-wool at the edges, my wife helping him to make them
comfortable. We urged him to stay over with us for a few days; we would
all go on later to Venice. But Uncle Ezra seemed moved by some hidden
cause. Back he would trot at once. "Painter will want his picture," he
said, "he has been waiting on in Venice just for this, and I must not keep
him." Watkins turned up as we were getting into the cab to see Uncle Ezra
off, and insisted upon accompanying us to the station. My wife took the
opportunity to rub into him Flugel's remarks, which, at least, made
Watkins out shady in chronology. At the station we encountered a new
difficulty. The ticket collector would not let the pictures through the
gate. My uncle expostulated in pure Tuscan. Watkins swore in Roman.

"Give him five lire, Mr. Williams."

Poor Uncle Ezra fumbled in his pocket-book for the piece of money. He had
never bribed in his life. It was a terrible moral fall, to see him
tremblingly offer the piece of scrip. The man refused, "positive orders,
_permesso_ necessary," etc., etc. The bell rang; there was a rush. Uncle
Ezra looked unhappy.

"Here," Watkins shouted, grabbing the precious pictures in a manner far
from reverent, "I'll send these on, Mr. Williams; run for your train."
Uncle Ezra gave one undecided glance, and then yielded. "You will look
after them," he pleaded, "carefully."

"You shall have them safe enough," my wife promised.

"Blast the pasteboards," Watkins put in under his breath, "the best thing
to do with them is to chop 'em up." He was swinging them back and forth
under his arm. My wife took them firmly from him. "He shall have his
pictures, and not from your ribald hands."

A week later Rome became suddenly oppressively warm. We started off for
Venice, Watkins tagging on incorrigibly. "I want to see 'Maud,'" he
explained. The pictures had been packed and sent ahead by express. "The
storm must have burst, tears shed, tempers cooled, mortification set in,"
I remarked, as we were being shoved up the Grand Canal toward the Palazzo
Palladio. "There they are in the balcony," my wife exclaimed, "waving to
us. Something is up; Maudie is hanging back, with Aunt Mary, and Professor
Painter is at the other end, with Uncle Ezra."

The first thing that caught the eye after the flurry of greetings was the
impudent blue and red of Uncle Ezra's "Sancta Conversazione," Domenico
Tintoretto, Savoldo, or what not; St. Agnes's leg and all, beaming at us
from the wall. The other two were not there. My wife looked at me. Maudie
was making herself very gracious with little Watkins. Painter's solemn
face began to lower more and more. Aunt Mary and Uncle Ezra industriously
poured oil by the bucket upon the social sea.

At last Maud rose: "You _must_ take me over there at once, Mr. Watkins. It
will be such an enjoyment to have someone who really knows about pictures
and has taste." This shot at poor Painter; then to my wife, "Come, Jane,
you will like to see your room."

Painter crossed to me and suggested, lugubriously, a cigar on the balcony.
He smoked a few minutes in gloomy silence.

"Does that fellow know anything?" he emitted at last, jerking his head at
Watkins, who was pouring out information at Uncle Ezra. I began gently to
give Charles Henderson Watkins a fair reputation for intelligence. "I mean
anything about art? Of course it doesn't matter what he says about my
picture, whether it is a copy or not, but Miss Vantweekle takes it very
hard about hers. She blames me for having been with her when she bought
it, and having advised her and encouraged her to put six hundred dollars
into it."

"Six hundred," I gasped.

"Cheap for a Bonifazio, or a _Titian_, as we thought it."

"Too cheap," I murmured.

"Well, I got bitten for about the same on my own account. I sha'n't get
that Rachel's library at Berlin, that's all. The next time you catch me
fooling in a subject where I don't know my bearings--like fine art--You
see Mr. Williams found my picture one day when he was nosing about at an
_antichita's_, and thought it very fine. I admire Mr. Williams
tremendously, and I valued his opinion about art subjects much more then
than I do now. He and Mrs. Williams were wild over it. They had just
bought their picture, and they wanted us each to have one. They have lots
of sentiment, you know."

"Lots," I assented.

"Mrs. Williams got at me, and well, she made me feel that it would bring
me nearer to Miss Vantweekle. You know she goes in for art, and she used
to be impatient with me because I couldn't appreciate. I was dumb when she
walked me up to some old Madonna, and the others would go on at a great
rate. Well, in a word, I bought it for my education, and I guess I have
got it!

"Then the man, he's an old Jew on the Grand Canal--Raffman, you know him?
He got out another picture, the Bonifazio. The Williamses began to get up
steam over that, too. They hung over that thing Mr. Williams bought, that
Savoldo or Domenico Tintoretto, and prowled about the churches and the
galleries finding traces of it here in the style of this picture and that;
in short, we all got into a fever about pictures, and Miss Vantweekle
invested all the money an aunt had given her before coming abroad, in that
Bonifazio.

"I must say that Miss Vantweekle held off some time, was doubtful about
the picture; didn't feel that she wanted to put all her money into it. But
she caught fire in the general excitement, and I may say"--here a sad sort
of conscious smile crept over the young professor's face--"at that time I
had a good deal of influence with her. She bought the picture, we brought
it home, and put it up at the other end of the hall. We spent hours over
that picture, studying out every line, placing every color. We made up our
minds soon enough that it wasn't a Bonifazio, but we began to think--now
don't laugh, or I'll pitch you over the balcony--it was an early work by
Titian. There was an attempt in it for great things, as Mr. Williams said:
no small man could have planned it. One night we had been talking for
hours about them, and we were all pretty well excited. Mr. Williams
suggested getting Watkins's opinion. Maud--Miss Vantweekle said, loftily,
'Oh! it does not make any difference what the critics say about it, the
picture means everything to me'; and I, like a fool, felt happier than
ever before in my life. The next morning Mr. Williams telegraphed you and
set off."

He waited.

"And when he returned?"

"It's been hell ever since."

He was in no condition to see the comic side of the affair. Nor was Miss
Vantweekle. She was on my wife's bed in tears.

"All poor Aunt Higgins's present gone into that horrid thing," she moaned,
"and all the dresses I was planning to get in Paris. I shall have to go
home looking like a perfect dowd!"

"But think of the influence it has been in your life--the education you
have received from that picture. How can you call all that color, those
noble faces, 'that horrid thing?'" I said, reprovingly. She sat upright.

"See here, Jerome Parker, if you ever say anything like that again, I will
never speak to you any more, or to Jane, though you are my cousins."

"They have tried to return the picture," my wife explained. "Professor
Painter and Uncle Ezra took it over yesterday; but, of course, the Jew
laughed at them."

"'A copy!' he said." Maud explained, "Why, it's no more a copy than
Titian's 'Assumption.' He could show us the very place in a palace on the
Grand Canal where it had hung for four hundred years. Of course, all the
old masters used the same models, and grouped their pictures alike. Very
probably Titian had a picture something like it. What of that? He defied
us to find the exact original."

"Well," I remarked, soothingly, "that ought to comfort you, I am sure.
Call your picture a new Titian, and sell it when you get home."

"Mr. Watkins says that's an old trick," moaned Maud, "that story about the
palace. He says old Raffman has a pal among the Italian nobility, and
works off copies through him all the time. I won't say anything about
Uncle Ezra; he has been as kind and good as he can be, only a little too
enthusiastic. But Professor Painter!"

She tossed her head.

The atmosphere in the Palazzo Palladio for the next few days was highly
charged.

At dinner Uncle Ezra placidly made remarks about the Domenico Tintoretto,
almost vaingloriously, I thought. "Such a piece of Venice to carry away.
We missed it so much, those days you had it in Rome. It is so precious
that I cannot bear to pack it up and lose sight of it for five months.
Mary, just see that glorious piece of color over there."

Meantime some kind of conspiracy was on foot. Maud went off whole mornings
with Watkins and Uncle Ezra. We were left out as unsympathetic. Painter
wandered about like a sick ghost. He would sit glowering at Maud and
Watkins while they held whispered conversations at the other end of the
hall. Watkins was the hero. He had accepted Flugel's judgment with
impudent grace.

"A copy of Titian, of course," he said to me; "really, it is quite hard on
poor Miss Vantweekle. People, even learned people, who don't know about
such things, had better not advise. I have had the photographs of all
Titian's pictures sent on, and we have found the original of your cousin's
picture. Isn't it very like?"

It was very like; a figure was left out in the copy, the light was
changed, but still it was a happy guess of Flugel.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" I said to Maud, who had just
joined us.

"Oh, Mr. Watkins has kindly consented to manage the matter for me; I
believe he has a friend here, an artist, Mr. Hare, who will give expert
judgment on it. Then the American vice-consul is a personal friend of Mr.
Watkins, and also Count Corner, the adviser at the Academy. We shall
frighten the old Jew, sha'n't we, Mr. Watkins?"

I walked over to the despised Madonna that was tipped up on its side,
ready to be walked off on another expedition of defamation.

"Poor Bonifazio," I sighed, "Maud, how can you part with a work of fine
art that has meant so much to you?"

"Do you think, Jerome, I would go home and have Uncle Higgins, with his
authentic Rembrandt and all his other pictures, laugh at me and my Titian?
I'd burn it first."

I turned to Uncle Ezra. "Uncle, what strange metamorphosis has happened to
this picture? The spiritual light from that color must shine as brightly
as ever; the intrinsic value remains forever fixed in Maud's soul; it is
desecration to reject such a precious message. Why, it's like sending back
the girl you married because her pedigree proved defective, or because she
had lost her fortune. It's positively brutal!"

Maud darted a venomous glance at me; however, I had put the judge in a
hole.

"I cannot agree with you, Jerome." Uncle Ezra could never be put in a
hole. "Maud's case is a very different one from Mr. Painter's or mine. We
can carry back what we like personally, but for Maud to carry home a
doubtful picture into the atmosphere she has to live in--why, it would be
intolerable--with her uncle a connoisseur, all her friends owners of
masterpieces." Uncle Ezra had a flowing style. "It would expose her to
annoyance, to mortification--constant, daily. Above all, to have taken a
special gift, a fund of her aunt's, and to apply it in this mistaken
fashion is cruel."

Painter remarked bitterly to me afterward, "He wants to crawl on his share
of the responsibility. I'd buy the picture if I could raise the cash, and
end the whole miserable business."

Indeed, Watkins seemed the only one blissfully in his element. As my wife
remarked, Watkins had exchanged his interest in pictures for an interest
in woman. Certainly he had planned his battle well. It came off the next
day. They all left in a gondola at an early hour. Painter and I watched
them from the balcony. After they were seated, Watkins tossed in
carelessly the suspected picture. What went on at the _antichita's_ no one
of the boat-load ever gave away. Watkins had a hold on the man somehow,
and the evidence of the fraud was overwhelming. About noon they came back,
Maud holding an enormous envelope in her hand.

"I can never, never thank you enough, Mr. Watkins," she beamed at him.
"You have saved me from such mortification and unhappiness, and you were
so _clever_."

That night at dinner Uncle Ezra was more than usually genial, and beamed
upon Maud and Watkins perpetually. Watkins was quite the hero and did his
best to look humble.

"How much rent did the spiritual influence cost, Maud?" I asked. She was
too happy to be offended. "Oh, we bought an old ring to make him feel
pleased, five pounds, and Mr. Hare's services were worth five pounds, and
Mr. Watkins thinks we should give the vice-consul a box of cigars.

"Let's see; ten pounds and a box of cigars, that's three hundred lire at
the price of exchange. You had the picture just three weeks, a hundred
lire a week for the use of all that education in art, all that spiritual
influence. Quite cheap, I should say."

"And Mr. Watkins's services, Maud!" my wife asked, viciously. There was a
slight commotion at the table.

"May I, Maud?" Watkins murmured.

"As you please, Charles," Maud replied, with her eyes lowered to the
table.

"Maud has given herself," Uncle Ezra said, gleefully.

Painter rose from the table and disappeared into his room. Pretty soon he
came out bearing a tray with a dozen champagne glasses, of modern-antique
Venetian glass.

"Let me present this to you, Miss Vantweekle," he pronounced, solemnly,
"as an engagement token. I, I exchanged my picture for them this morning."

"Some Asti Spumante, Ricci."

"To the rejected Titian--" I suggested for the first toast.

VENICE, May, 1896.

PAYMENT IN FULL

The two black horses attached to the light buggy were chafing in the crisp
October air. Their groom was holding them stiffly, as if bolted to the
ground, in the approved fashion insisted upon by the mistress of the
house. Old Stuart eyed them impatiently from the tower window of the
breakfast-room where he was smoking his first cigar; Mrs. Stuart held him
in a vise of astounding words.

"They will need not only the lease of a house in London for two years, but
a great deal of money besides," she continued in even tones, ignoring his
impatience.

"I've done enough for 'em already," the old fellow protested, drawing on
his driving gloves over knotted hands stained by age.

Mrs. Stuart rustled the letter that lay, with its envelope, beside her
untouched plate. It bore the flourishes of a foreign hotel and a foreign-
looking stamp.

"My mother writes that their summer in Wiesbaden has made it surer that
Lord Raincroft is interested in Helen. It is evidently a matter of time. I
say two years--it may be less."

"Well," her husband broke in. "Haven't they enough to live on?"

"At my marriage," elucidated Mrs. Stuart, imperturbably, "you settled on
them securities which yield about five thousand a year. That does not give
them the means to take the position which I expect for my family in such a
crisis. They must have a large house, must entertain lavishly," she swept
an impassive hand toward him in royal emphasis, "and do all that that set
expects--to meet them as equals. You could not imagine that Lord Raincroft
would marry Helen out of a pension?"

"I don't care a damn how he marries her, or if he marries her at all." He
rose, testily. "I guess my family would have thought five thousand a year
enough to marry the gals on, and to spare, and it was more'n you ever had
in your best days."

"Naturally," her voice showed scorn at his perverse lack of intelligence.
"Out contract was made with that understanding."

"Let Helen marry a feller who is willing to go half way for her without a
palace. Why didn't you encourage her marrying Blake, as smart a young man
as I ever had? She was taken enough with him."

"Because I did not think it fit for my sister to marry your junior
partner, who, five years ago, was your best floor-walker."

"Well, Blake is a college-educated man and a hustler. He's bound to get on
if I back him. If Blake weren't likely enough, there's plenty more in
Chicago like me--smart business men who want a handsome young wife."

"Perhaps we have had enough of Stuart, Hodgson, and Blake. There are other
careers in the world outside Chicago."

"Tut, tut! I ain't going to fight here all day. What's the figure? What's
the figure?" He slapped his breeches with the morning paper.

"You will have to take the house in London (the Duke of Waminster's is to
let, mamma writes), and give them two hundred thousand dollars in addition
to their present income for the two years." She let her eyes fall on his
toast and coffee. The old man turned about galvanically and peered at her.

"You're crazy! two hundred thousand these times, so's your sister can get
married?"

"She's the last," interposed Mrs. Stuart, deftly.

"I tell you I've done more than most men. I've paid your old bills, your
whole family's, your brothers' in college, to the tune of five thousand a
year (worthless scamps!) and put 'em in business. You've had all of 'em at
Newport and Paris, let alone their living here off and on nearly twenty
years. Now you think I can shell out two hundred thousand and a London
house as easily as I'd buy pop-corn."

"It was our understanding." Mrs. Stuart began on her breakfast.

"Not much. I've done better by you than I agreed to, because you've been a
good wife to me. I settled a nice little fortune on you independent of
your widder's rights or your folks."

"Your daughter will benefit by that," Mrs. Stuart corrected.

"Well, what's that to do with it?" He seemed to lose the scent.

"What was our understanding when I agreed to marry you?"

"I've done more'n I promised, I tell you."

"As you very well know, I married you because my family were in desperate
circumstances. Our understanding was that I should be a good wife, and you
were to make my family comfortable according to my views. Isn't that
right?"

The old man blanched at this businesslike presentation; his voice grew
feebler.

"And I have, Beatty. I have! I've done everything by you I promised. And I
built this great house and another at Newport, and you ain't never
satisfied."

"That was our agreement, then," she continued, without mercy. "I was just
nineteen, and wise, for a girl, and you had forty-seven pretty wicked
years. There wasn't any nonsense between us. I was a stunning girl, the
most talked about in New York at that time. I was to be a good wife, and
we weren't to have any words. Have I kept my promise?"

"Yes, you've been a good woman, Beatty, better'n I deserved. But won't you
take less, say fifty thousand?" He advanced conciliatorily. "That's an
awful figure!"

His wife rose, composed as ever and stately in her well-sustained forty
years.

"Do you think _any_ price is too great in payment for these twenty-one
years?" Contempt crept in. "Not one dollar less, two hundred thousand,
and I cable mamma to-day."

Stuart shrivelled up.

"Do you refuse?" she remarked, lightly, for he stood irresolutely near the
door.

"I won't stand that!" and he went out.

When he had left Mrs. Stuart went on with her breakfast; a young woman
Came in hastily from the hall, where she had bade her father good-by.
She stood in the window watching the coachman surrender the horses to
the old man. The groom moved aside quickly, and in a moment the two
horses shot nervously through the ponderous iron gateway. The delicate
wheels just grazed the stanchions, lifting the light buggy in the air
to a ticklish angle. It righted itself and plunged down the boulevard.
Fast horses and cigars were two of the few pleasures still left the old
store-keeper. There was another--a costly one--which was not always
forthcoming.

Miss Stuart watched the groom close the ornate iron gates, and then turned
inquiringly to her mother.

"What's up with papa?"

Mrs. Stuart went on with her breakfast in silence. She was superbly
preserved, and queenly for an American woman. It seemed as if something
had stayed the natural decay of her powers, of her person, and had put
her always at this impassive best. Something had stopped her heart to
render her passionless, and thus to embalm her for long years of
mechanical activity. She would not decay, but when her time should come
she would merely stop--the spring would snap.

The daughter had her mother's height and her dark coloring. But her large,
almost animal eyes, and her roughly moulded hands spoke of some homely,
prairie inheritance. Her voice was timid and hesitating.

At last Mrs. Stuart, her mail and breakfast exhausted at the same moment,
Rose to leave the room.

"Oh, Edith," she remarked, authoritatively, "if you happen to drive down
town this morning, will you tell your father that we are going to Winetka
for a few weeks? Or telephone him, if you find it more convenient. And
send the boys to me. Miss Bates will make all arrangements. I think there
is a train about three."

"Why, mamma, you don't mean to stay there! I thought we were to be here
all winter. And my lessons at the Art Institute?"

Mrs. Stuart smiled contemptuously. "Lessons at the Art Institute are not
the most pressing matter for my daughter, who is about to come out. You
can amuse yourself with golf and tennis as long as they last. Then,
perhaps, you will have a chance to continue your lessons in Paris."

"And papa!" protested the daughter, "I thought he couldn't leave this
winter?"

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