Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/255

 248 He jerked out the words with evident effort, as though he did not like parting with them.

“For five shillings? Why it was well worth five pounds, if not ten!”

“Do you think so?” he asked, meekly.

“Oh! no,” cried some one in the depth of shadow of the window, the half of which was covered to exclude the light, “it vas only vorth a crown, vorth vot I give for it, not a farding more. A poor little thing. I shall have a hard job to sell it agin, and get my money back.”

Moss Bokes was the speaker. I could see him now standing behind Lupthorpe, and if I could not have seen him I should have recognised him by his voice. For there was no mistaking Moss Bokes’s voice. It had all the peculiarities of his nation. Need I say that the purchaser of Lupthorpe’s “Epping Forest,” for five shillings, was of what is called the Jewish persuasion? The voice evidenced the ordinary stoppage in his nose—(it was a roomy-looking and largely moulded nose, too, and was not so ornamentally formed but what it might have been useful)—and seemed influenced by a perennial cold in his head, and it had the usual husky gutturalness and indistinctness which may proceed from labial peculiarities or lingual excess of size. An anatomical question here presents itself, upon which I hardly feel justified in entering: the reader who has ever talked with one of Mr. Bokes’s nation will understand the kind of voice I desire to describe; if not, he has only to listen to the persuasive tones of the next crier of “Old Clo’!” who passes down his street, to be thoroughly acquainted with it. A small old man, with a hat much too large for him, and a thick stock of dusky black silk round his neck, fastened with a huge buckle at the back—a stock of so ample a circumference that he could avail himself of it easily, if necessary, to withdraw his chin and almost his nose from public view. In fact, it always seemed to me that by pulling his stock well up and his hat well down, Bokes could have, at any moment, rendered himself invisible so far as his face was concerned. A dusty olive-green coat of remote antiquity, high in the collar, short in the waist, and long in the skirt; thin sallow claw-like hands, that were generally either buried in his pockets or concealed by overhanging cuffs; a stunted beard of rather a patchy piebald aspect—here orange, there grisly grey—there quite white; prominent green eyes with a glassy glitter in them; and I think I have catalogued the specialities of Mr. Bokes’s appearance.

“A poor little thing! Vot am I to do vith it now I got it? Who’ll buy it of me I should like to know? I don’t know no one. But I’m so veak; there’s vhere it ish. I’m so veak, ’specially when a gent says to me, ‘Bokes,’ says he, or ‘Mossy,’ if he’s more intimate, ‘buy a picture of us?’ vhy, I buys it right off. I’m so veak, and loses no end of money by it; that’s me all over, that is.”

He gesticulated violently as he spoke, and smiled and chuckled, and put his head on one side, and shrugged his shoulders, and meanwhile held his purchase tight under his arm.

“I never thought, Lup, that you’d have sold it for such a figure as that,” I said.

“No!” cried Bokes, exultingly, “else you’d have bought it yourself. Vouldn’t you now?”

“Well, I don’t buy pictures”

“No. You sells them; and sellers alvays vants to keep up prices, don’t they?” and Mr. Bokes laughed loudly, stamping on the floor in his merriment. May I avow that I, at that moment, felt a passionate longing to “bonnet” Bokes where he stood, as violently as might be. I resisted that longing and overcame it. I hardly know now whether I am glad or sorry that I did so. I turned to Lupthorpe.

“That’s a pretty thing you’re painting there, Lup.”

“Do you think so? I hardly know what to make of it yet; or what it means, quite. Can you give us a name for it?”

“Call it Paul and Virginia,” interrupted Bokes, “that’s a good selling name.”

“Don’t be absurd, Bokes. You know it won’t do for that.”

“Well, vasn’t I advising you against my own interest? Put a little more brown on the boy’s face, and it’ll do very vell.”

“I was thinking of Lorenzo and Isabella—that might do?” said Lupthorpe, turning his puzzled-looking face to me, “or Lorenzo and Jessica,—or Romeo and Juliet,—or Claudio and Isabella,—or Claudio and Hero,—or Hero and Leander—no, that wouldn’t do. Dear me. How difficult it is to find a good name for a picture.”

“What’s that sketch over there?”

“O, I designed that for a large picture as big as that side of the room, a Jael and Sisera, or a Judith and Holofernes, I don’t know which it will be. Crickson, who was here the other day, advised me to make it a Samson and Dalilah, or if not that, a Charlotte Corday and Marat. You see it would come very well for any one of them.”

“I’ll buy it, I’ll buy it,” cried Bokes; “what shall we say for this pretty little thing?” and he brought out a handful of silver from his pocket and began to swing it about before us. “I don’t bear no malice,” he said, “I’ll trade with you; let me do a deal with you—do. What shall we say?—one half-crown, two half-crowns, three half-crowns—four; do let me do a deal with you, Tom, my boy.”

“No, Mr. Bokes,” I said to him, sternly, “we’ll have no more dealings here at present. You’ve done too good a morning’s work as it is.”

“To think of saying that now,” cried the Jew, in a tone of expostulation. “Suppose I’d bought it—the poor little thing! Vot should I have done vith it? I don’t know, no more than the dead. But I’m so veak—there’s vere it is—so veak!”

“How can I help it?” asked Lupthorpe, piteously, after the Jew had gone, in answer to my regrets on the loss of Epping Forest. “He would have it you know, and I don’t know how much things are worth. Well, it does seem a poor price certainly, as you say; but I did want five shillings rather badly, and then—and then—you know—Bokes isn’t such a bad sort of fellow after all. I wish though he wouldn’t call me Tom. I do wish that. It does not sound well.”

“You’ve sold him a good many things, haven’t you, Lup?”