Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/257

 250 10th Hussars) had been sitting for Hugo, and pretty Miss Briggs (of Upper Paradise Place, Hampstead Road, top bell and a single knock, please), had posed for Parasina. It was decidedly a very admirable work, and did Lupthorpe infinite credit. Soon, it was finished.

“Itsh pretty; yes, itsh pretty. But it ishn’t much. I wouldn’t mind a tenner. Vat do you say Tom, my tear, a tenner—think of that.” And Mr. Bokes waved a Bank of England note in the air.

“Think of Crickson,” I whispered to Lup, for I saw he was yielding.

“Fifteen, then; come, twenty; there, twenty-five; I can’t say fairer.” It was evident that Bokes wanted the picture very badly.

“Am I right?” asked a bland voice at the door. “Is this Mr. Lupthorpe’s? I think the name is Lupthorpe. Oh, this is Mr. Lupthorpe’s. Thank you.”

An elderly gentleman, with smooth grey hair, and gold-rimmed spectacles, and a white neckerchief, a most respectable looking gentleman, clothed in a shiny suit of black, entered the room; he felt in his pockets for a letter. He produced and read it. He addressed himself to me in the first instance, mistaking me for Lupthorpe. I set him right.

“I am commissioned, sir,” he said, “as the London agent of” (he mentioned a name greatly venerated in studios, the name of a large purchaser of works of art, let us call him Smith of Manchester) “as the London agent of Mr. Smith of Manchester, to make an offer for a picture in your studio, called, I believe, Hugo and Parasina.”

“Indeed!” said the aghast Lupthorpe.

“Close with me, my tear boy,” whispered Bokes. “Thirty-seven pund ten; forty, there!”

“My instructions will prevent my offering more than a hundred pounds for the picture,” said the London agent of Mr. Smith of Manchester.

“A hundred pounds!” cried the Jew.

“I have the money with me,” said the agent, putting his hand in his pocket.

“So have I; so have I,” cried Moss Bokes. “Guineas. I’ll give guineas; take the money, my tear Tom, you’ll sell to me in preference to a stranger, von’t you, now? Ah! that’s right!”

The bland agent expressed his regret that he could make no advance on his offer. So Lupthorpe closed with the Jew, and gave him a receipt for the money as the agent left the room. Mr. Bokes nearly cried as he brought out the money—in gold, notes, silver, partly even in half-pence; then he danced round the picture and gazed into it; nearly colouring his nose with the wet paint, he inspected it so closely, and his green eyes sparkling with joy; then he subsided into an assumed despondency.

“A lot of money! I shall never see it again. Never! And what shall I do with this poor little pictur now that I’ve got it? Dear me! it will be a dead loss to me. But I am so veak, so precious veak! There’s vhere it is. I alvays vas!” And he went off in a cab, with Hugo and Parasina on the seat opposite to him.

“Well, that’s the best business I think I ever did with Bokes!” cried Lupthorpe, with elation, after the door had closed upon the Jew. “A hundred guineas for that little picture is really a very respectable price. I should have liked, though, rather to have sold it to Smith of Manchester. It would have been a good thing to have commenced a connexion with Smith of Manchester. Only Bokes was so pressing.”

Just then Mr. Smith’s agent re-entered the room. He stared at us curiously, and then commenced tearing off his white neckerchief, flinging a grey wig, and a pair of gold rimmed spectacles into the middle of the room, and capering round them extravagantly. It was Crickson!

“I consider that a very neat piece of acting,” he said; “and I think I circumnavigated Bokes in rather a superior manner. Lup, I congratulate you. You’ve made a good thing out of Bokes at last. Thanks to me. It was a grand idea. I shall get one of you fellows to try the same trick on with our Camden Town vampire.”

“Then, Smith of Manchester,” Lupthorpe began, in a disappointed tone—

“All a delusion, my dear Lup. He doesn’t want Hugo and Parasina, and wouldn’t give you a hundred pounds for them, so far as I know, any more than I would—and now I suppose some one will give me something to drink, for picture buying is very dry work,”—and Mr. Crickson began to amuse himself with a tumbler.

In the evening Budder called. He was always welcome to Lupthorpe’s studio; and indeed, at a good many other studios. We were sitting round the fire, and some of us were smoking, and there was a strong odour of whiskey and hot water in the room, which some of us must have been drinking. At this distance of time I may be forgiven for not remembering precisely who it must have been.

Budder was not an artist. He was an articled clerk in the firm of Blinker, Jugman, and Moggles, Austin Friars, City; and what with his official duties, bitter ale at all times of the day, late hours, reading law books while he drank cold green tea, and sat with a wet towel wrapped round his head, like a turbaned Turk who had been pumped upon, preparing for his examination, he had rather a pale and uncomfortable appearance, and had the coldest and flabbiest hands I ever met with—shaking hands with him was something like taking hold of the tail of a dead cod-fish.

He knew nothing about art, though he had many friends among the artists. But after all, friendship is just as unreasonable as love. Perhaps in both it is best to begin with a little aversion. How is it that men, with diametrically opposed minds, are always such fast friends with each other? Ideal poets cling to anatomical professors. Visionary politicians are fast allies of analytical chemists. We artists were cleaving to a lawyer.

Not, after all, that Budder was much of a lawyer really, though undoubtedly he seemed so to us. Upon reflection, I think now that though he is an unquestionable authority upon fly-fishing, and pigeon shooting, and bagatelle even—and I should not hesitate to accept a dictum of his upon any of these heads as quite final—he is perhaps