Edith Wharton

“ There shall be a Raycie Gallery; and it shall be your mission to get together its nucleus.” Mr. Raycie paused, and mopped his flowing forehead. “I believe I could have given my son no task more to his liking.”
“Oh, no, sir, none indeed!” Lewis cried, flushing and paling. He had in fact never suspected this part of his father’s plan, and his heart swelled with the honour of so unforeseen a mission. Nothing, in truth, could have made him prouder or happier. ”

“ Raycie broke off with a crushing courtesy.
“I—oh, no,” his son stammered.
“Ah; I thought you might be about to allude to certain blasphemous penny-a-liners whose poetic ravings are said to have given them a kind of pothouse notoriety.”
Lewis reddened at the allusion but was silent, and his father went on:
“Where is our Byron—our Scott—our Shakespeare? And in painting it is the same. Where are our Old Masters? We are not without contemporary talent; but for works of genius we must still look to the past; we must, in most cases, content ourselves with copies.... ”

“ Lewis, at first, had not been greatly drawn to the newcomer, who, seated aloof in the dining-room, seemed not to see his fellow-traveller. The truth was that Lewis was dying for a little conversation. His astonishing experiences were so tightly packed in him (with no outlet save the meagre trickle of his nightly diary) that he felt they would soon melt into the vague blur of other people’s travels unless he could give them fresh reality by talking them over. And the stranger with the deep-blue eyes that matched his coat, the scarred cheek and eloquent lip, seemed to Lewis a worthy listener. ”

“ God A’mighty, Lewis,” gasped Mr. Raycie, tottering toward his son with outstretched stick, “I’m no blue-nosed Puritan, sir, and I’d a damn sight rather you told me you’d spent it on a woman, every penny of it, than let yourself be fleeced like a simpleton, buying these things that look more like cuts out o’ Foxe’s Book of Martyrs than Originals of the Old Masters for a Gentleman’s Gallery.... Youth’s youth.... Gad, sir, I’ve been young myself ... a fellow’s got to go through his apprenticeship.... Own up now: women?” ”

“ Old Miss Alethea Raycie lived in a house I had always heard spoken of as “Cousin Ebenezer’s.” It had evidently, in its day, been an admired specimen of domestic architecture; but was now regarded as the hideous though venerable relic of a bygone age. Miss Raycie, being crippled by rheumatism, sat above stairs in a large cold room, meagrely furnished with beadwork tables, rosewood étagères{133} and portraits of pale sad-looking people in odd clothes. ”

“ Because, as they begin to know the pictures better, and to understand them, they can’t fail to say very interesting things ... can they?” She turned and caught up the sleeping Louisa. “Can they ... oh, you darling—darling?”
Lewis turned away too. Not another woman in New York would have been capable of that. He could hear all the town echoing with this new scandal of his showing the pictures himself—and she, so much more sensitive to ridicule, so much less carried away by apostolic ardour, how much louder must that mocking echo ring in her ears! ”

“ Why, let alone the rest, there’s not a full-bodied female among ’em.... Do you know what those Madonnas of yours are like, my son? Why, there ain’t one of ’em that don’t remind me of a bad likeness of poor Treeshy Kent.... I should say you’d hired half the sign-painters of Europe to do her portrait for you—if I could imagine your wanting it.... No, sir! I don’t need your arm,” Mr. Raycie snarled, heaving his great bulk painfully across the hall. He withered Lewis with a last look from the doorstep. ”

“ All that Netta seems to know (or to care, for that matter) is that when he was very young—barely out of college—he was sent to Italy by his father to buy Old Masters—in the ’forties, it must have been—and came back with this extraordinary, this unbelievable collection ... a boy of that age!... and was disinherited by the old gentleman for bringing home such rubbish. The young fellow and his wife died ever so many years ago, both of them. It seems he was so laughed at for buying such pictures that they went away and lived like hermits in the depths of the country. ”

“ Kent, “I was once within an ace of being challenged to fight a duel.” He fetched a sigh of horror and relief, and glanced reassuredly down the Sound in the direction of his own peaceful roof-tree.
“Oh, a duel,” laughed the Commodore. “A man can fight duels here. I fought a dozen when I was a young feller in New Erleens.” The Commodore’s mother had been a southern lady, and after his father’s death had spent some years with her parents in Louisiana, so that her son’s varied experiences had begun early. “’Bout women,” he smiled confidentially, holding out his empty glass to Mr. Raycie. ”

“ So secluded was their way of living, and so much had it come to be a habit, that when Lewis announced that he had inherited Uncle Ebenezer’s house his wife hardly looked up from the baby-blanket she was embroidering.
“Uncle Ebenezer’s house in New York?{109}”
He drew a deep breath. “Now I shall be able to show the pictures.”
“Oh, Lewis—” She dropped the blanket. “Are we going to live there?”
“Certainly. But the house is so large that I shall turn the two corner rooms on the ground floor into a gallery. They are very suitably lighted. It was there that Cousin Ebenezer was laid out.” ”

“ I HAY, verbena and mignonette scented the languid July day. Large strawberries, crimsoning through sprigs of mint, floated in a bowl of pale yellow cup on the verandah table: an old Georgian bowl, with complex reflections on polygonal flanks, engraved with the Raycie arms between lions’ heads. Now and again the gentlemen, warned by a menacing hum, slapped their cheeks, their brows or their bald crowns; but they did so as furtively as possible, for Mr. Halston Raycie, on whose verandah they sat,{4} would not admit that there were mosquitoes at High Point. ”

“ Lewis grumbled, “with that ridiculous bed-quilt—and it’ll be broad day soon! To think that I was of age yesterday, and must come to you in a boat rigged like a child’s toy on a duck-pond! If you knew how it humiliates me—”
“What does it matter, dear, since you’re of age now, and your own master?”
“But am I, though? He says so—but it’s only on his own terms; only while I do what he wants! You’ll see ... I’ve a credit of ten thousand dollars ... ten ... thou ... sand ... d’you hear?... placed to my name in a London bank; and not a penny here to bless myself with meanwhile.... ”

“ Even the mosquitoes, which seemed at first the only connecting link, were different, because he fought with them in scenes so different; and a young gentleman who had journeyed across the desert in Arabian dress, slept under goats’-hair tents, been attacked by robbers in the Peloponnesus and despoiled by his own escort at Baalbek, and by customs’ officials everywhere, could not but look with a smile on the terrors that walk New York and the Hudson river. ”

“ How long have you been in Japan? Four years? I thought so. Well, it was only last winter that Netta found out.”
“Found out what?”
“What there was in old Alethea Raycie’s attic. You must remember the old Miss Raycie who lived in that hideous house in Tenth Street when we were children. She was a cousin of your mother’s, wasn’t she? Well, the old fool lived there for nearly half a century, with five millions’ worth of pictures shut up in the attic over her head. It seems they’d been there ever since the death of a poor young Raycie who collected them in Italy years and years ago. ”

“ Your love of the arts has not passed unperceived; and I mean, I desire, to do all I can to encourage it. Your future position in the world—your duties and obligations as a gentleman and a man of fortune—will not permit you to become, yourself, an eminent painter or a famous sculptor ”

“ Treeshy suggested sympathetically.
Mrs. Huzzard lifted the Raycie eyebrows. “Has it really? With two pairs of horses one hardly notices the weather.... Oh, the pretty, pretty, pretty baby!... Mary Adeline,” Sarah Anne continued, turning severely to her sister, “I shall be happy to offer you a seat in my carriage if you’re thinking of leaving.”
But Mary Adeline was a married woman too. She raised her mild head and her glance crossed her sister’s quietly. “My own carriage is at the door, thank you kindly, Sarah Anne,” she said; and the baffled Sarah Anne withdrew on Lewis’s arm. ”

“ But that first vision had laid a magic seed between his lips; the seed that makes you hear what the birds say and the grasses whisper. Even{78} if his English friend had not continued at his side, pointing out, explaining, inspiring, Lewis Raycie flattered himself that the round face of the little Saint Ursula would have led him safely and confidently past all her rivals. ”

“ Lewis was silent, and Mr. Raycie went on, speaking now with a deadly steadiness: “The friends I sent you to were judges of art, sir; men who know what a picture’s worth; not one of ’em but{100} could pick out a genuine Raphael. ”

“ For whatever Lewis said was seen by his companion from a new angle, and suggested a new train of thought; each commonplace item of experience became a many-faceted crystal flashing with unexpected fires. The young Englishman’s mind moved in a world of associations and references far more richly peopled than Lewis’s; but his eager communicativeness, his directness of speech and manner, instantly opened its gates to the simpler youth. It was certainly not the Madeira which sped the{74} hours and flooded them with magic ”

“ Lewis could have recited it beforehand. He bent his head in acquiescence.
“A man,” Mr. Raycie repeated, “prepared to play a part, a considerable part, in the social life of the community. I expect you to be a figure in New York; and I shall give you the means to be so.” He cleared his throat. “But means are not enough—though you must never forget that they are essential. Education,{51} polish, experience of the world; these are what so many of our men of standing lack. What do they know of Art or Letters? ”

“ He could only stammer: “I did allude to the revolution in taste ... new names coming up ... you may remember....”
“Revolution! New names! Who says so? I had a letter last week from the London dealers to whom I especially recommended you, telling me that an undoubted Guido Reni was coming into the market this summer.”
“Oh, the dealers—they don’t know!”
“The dealers ... don’t?... Who does ... except yourself?” Mr. Raycie pronounced in a white sneer.{97}
Lewis, as white, still held his ground. “I wrote you, sir, about my friends; in Italy, and afterward in England.” ”

“ No,{26} sir”—he swung about on the shrinking Mr. Kent—“it’s not the Church I’m afraid of in foreign countries, it’s the sewers, sir!”
Mrs. Raycie had grown very pale: Lewis knew that she too was deeply perturbed about the sewers. “And the night-air,” she scarce-audibly sighed.
But Mr. Raycie had taken up his main theme again. “In my opinion, if a young man travels at all, he must travel as extensively as his—er—means permit; must see as much of the world as he can. ”

“ Kent.
“Even in London,” said Mr. Ambrose Huzzard, “a young man must be on his look-out against gamblers. Every form of swindling is practised, and the touts are always on the look-out for greenhorns; a term,” he added apologetically, “which{19} they apply to any traveller new to the country.” ”

“ Mrs. Huzzard drew back hastily, her air of majesty collapsing. “Look at {124}the pictures? Oh, thank you ... but I can see them very well from here. And besides, I don’t pretend to be a judge....”
“Then come up and see Treeshy and the baby,” said Lewis quietly.
She stared at him, embarrassed. “Oh, thank you,” she stammered again; and as she prepared to follow him: “Then it’s no, really no, Lewis? Do consider, my dear! You say yourself that hardly any one comes. What harm can there be in closing the place?” ”

“ So, as the years passed, she gradually became the guardian of her guardians; since it was equally natural to Mr. and Mrs. Kent to throw themselves in helpless reliance on every one whom they did not nervously fear or mistrust.
“Yes, he’s off on Monday,” Mr. Raycie said, nodding sharply at Lewis, who had set down his glass after one sip. “Empty it, you shirk!” the nod commanded; and Lewis, throwing back his head, gulped down the draught, though it almost stuck{14} in his lean throat. ”

“ To the new Lewis, however, the whole business was less important than he had once thought it. His suddenly acquired maturity made Treeshy seem a petted child rather than the guide, the Beatrice, he had once considered her; and he prom{65}ised himself, with an elderly smile, that as soon as he got to Italy he would write her the long letter for which he was now considerably in her debt. ”

“ He went up to her, and put his arm about her and the child. “You’ve been braver than an army of heroes; but it won’t do. The expenses have been a good deal heavier than I was led to expect. And I ... I can’t raise a mortgage on the pictures. Nobody will touch them.”
She met this quickly. “No; I know. That was what Mary Adeline came about.{129}”
The blood rushed angrily to Lewis’s temples. “Mary Adeline—how the devil did she hear of it?”
“Through Mr. Reedy, I suppose. But you must not be angry. She was kindness itself: she doesn’t want you to close the gallery, Lewis ... ”