Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/42

34 bed he obtained little rest. When he was able to sleep at all he was the victim of terrible dreams, and woke frequently, starting up in quite a paroxysm of alarm.

was morning. Mr. Phillimore, restless, uncomfortable, disturbed, paced up and down his front-room in Freer Street. His toilet was little cared for, and he had not enjoyed his breakfast. He no longer appeared to be the same cosy, prosperous picture-dealer—genial almost to joviality, serene almost to sublimity—who, at an earlier period of this history, had the honour of introduction to the reader. His sleekness had gone; he was as a cat with its fur rubbed roughly the wrong way; the bloom of his smugness had been blemished; he was as a fingered plum, more unsightly from its disfigured beauty than if it had never possessed beauty at all—just as a pretty lady with pock-marks is less attractive than a plainer woman with a smooth skin. If Mr. Phillimore had seemed less supremely happy before, he would not have been so remarkable an object now in his hour of depression. Even the gorgeousness of his brocaded dressing-gown did little to redeem the melancholy nature of his presentment; his splendour seemed inappropriate, useless, culpable even in connection with his state of mind—altogether out of place, like coronation robes upon a deposed monarch. The economy of his life appeared to have been visited by a convulsion; his career had suffered a sprain, if not an absolute dislocation. He was not the same man: for he was now miserable, and he had never been that before. He would have gone out in unpolished boots and a crumpled cravat; and the thought began to occur to him that, after all, port wine, even the best and in pints, was an over-rated drink.

He was himself struck by the change in his appearance. He paused before the mirror in the carved oak frame.

“I look disgraced and deboshed, that’s quite clear; I’ve lost my old burgomaster air; or else I’m a burgomaster that’s been in the Bench or dragged through the Court after opposition on the part of all the creditors. I look no better now than a toper by Ostade, or a skittle-player by Teniers. Hum! It’s not pleasant. If I had looked like the Banished Lord, in the National Gallery, or Ugolino, I wouldn’t so much have minded. It can’t be helped! I suppose people always go down in effect when their collections are dispersed, or their galleries burnt down; and I’m not even insured! I doubt even if I could have effected an insurance. But what then? No money can replace an art-treasure. My sweet Raphael, with her pure, lovely, saintly look! I suppose she always hid her nimbus somehow in her bonnet, or twined her hair-plaits over it. She’s gone—went away suddenly and sorrowfully, a glaze of tears dimming her lustrous, religious, grey eyes; and no one knows where she’s gone; and she’s taken the precious little Fiamingo with her; and St. Joseph, too, has disappeared; I begin to be afraid that he’s not a Joseph at all. No; nor a saint neither. And my riposa is utterly ruined, past all repairing or replacing. It’s very, very sad! I seek recreation, and I see a Murillo break away from its cord and nearly smash itself into pieces. I try devilled-oysters for consolation, and I find that the devil predominated greatly over the fish; then rum-punch and oblivion, to be followed by nightmare, and dyspepsia, and headache, and misery, and the unwholesome effect of a very bad Dutch picture.”

He took a few more strides about the room.

“The whole household upset. The Rembrandt doesn’t know what’s become of herself—she won’t be worth a frame soon—she’s washed her face with her tears about the loss of the Fiamingo, and she puts rancid butter on the toast and forgets to put the tea in the pot; and that at a time when I particularly wanted tea. I see what it is. It’s quite time I retired from business; or I’ll go into the country and devote myself to landscapes—they can’t run away.”

He took up the Times newspaper.

“I wonder whether it will be any good if I were to advertise—‘Lost, stolen, or strayed, an undoubted riposa by Raphael.’ The public must be warned against buying the figures cut out and sold separately—that’s always a dodge with picture-thieves. I should have to offer a very considerable reward. It would make a great sensation in the trade. Why I’d sooner have given the picture to the government even than such a thing as this should have happened!”

So Mr. Phillimore rambled on in his eccentric way. Suddenly, Sally appeared at the door.

“Lawks!” she said, looking round. “Why I thought there was some one else here by the talking. You have got a lot to say to yourself!”

“What do you want here, Sally? I shall not have any dinner to-day! I shall never want dinner any more!”

But Sally paid no heed to this sad remark.

“He’s come back!” she said in a loud whisper.

“Who’s come back?” Mr. Phillimore inquired.

“The master on the first-floor. Haven’t you heard him moving about? He’s come back, but he an’t been to bed all night.”

“How awful!” cried Mr. Phillimore, clasping his hands.

‘Where is she?’ he keeps on asking. ‘Where is she?’ as if I could tell him!”

“As if, indeed!” echoed Sally’s master.

“Seems to me as if he was going out of his mind like,” said Sally, “and he looks shocking, and he’s emptied the water-bottle”

“Hush!” said Mr. Phillimore, starting up and running to the window; “there’s some one at the door.”

After a moment’s pause, he exclaimed:

“Bless my soul! Why it’s the sister of the Raphael—it’s the Lancret—the Greuze—but how she’s grown!—how she’s changed!—why she’s positively developing into a Guido!”

Mr. Phillimore was correct. Miss Margaret Fuller—the sister of Violet—knocked at the door of the house in Freer Street. She had grown tall, and grand-looking, and very handsome. More, as Mr. Phillimore hastened to assure himself, from her richness of hue—quite Giorgionesque, as he said—than from any absolute regularity in the