CHAPTER I.

A PICTURE COLLECTOR.

“I’LLLETYOU have it for fifteen shillings.”

“I dare say you will, but I don’t intend to buy any more water-colours of you.”

“I am very hard up; give me ten shillings.”

“No, I really can’t; I have at least a hundred and odd drawings by you, and half of them aren’t even numbered: it will take me a week to get through them.”

“I’m nearly starving.”

“So you have often said before.”

The last speaker was an old, wizened little creature, with a grizzled white beard; the other was a young man of exquisite beauty, his feminine grace seemed like a relic of ancient Greece, saved by some miracle through the. wreck and ruin of ages. He leaned against an oak bureau, placed under a high, narrow window, and the pose defined his too developed hips, always, in a man, the sign of a weak and lascivious nature. His companion looked nervously through a pile of drawings, holding them up for a moment to the light, then instantly throwing them back into the heap which lay before him. He was evidently not examining them with a view to ascertaining their relative value, nor was he searching for any particular one; he was obviously pretending to be busy, so that he might get rid of his visitor.

The day died gloomily, and the lateral lines of the houses faded into a dun-coloured sky; but against the window the profiles of both men came out sharply, like the silhouettes of fifty years ago.

Pictures of all sizes and kinds covered and were piled against the walls; screens had been put up to hang them on, but even then the space did not suffice.

Pictures had gradually thrust almost everything else in the way of furniture out of the room; the sofas and chairs had been taken away to make place for them. The curtains had been pulled down to gain more light, only the heavy gold cornices remained, and the richness of these precluded the idea that the place was the shop of a vendor of cheap lodging-house art. Besides, the work, although as bad, was not of that kind. It was rather the lumber of studios, heads done after the model posing for a class, landscapes painted for some particular bit, regardless of composition. And what confusion! Next to an admirable landscape you would find a Virgin in red and blue draperies, of the crudest description; then came a horrible fruit piece, placed over an interesting attempt to reproduce the art of the fourteenth century; and this was followed by a whole line of racing sketches, of the very vulgarest kind. Yet in the midst of this heterogeneous collection there was a series of pictures whose curious originality could not fail to attract the eye.

Before them the Philistine might shake with laughter, but the connoisseur would pause puzzled, for he would see that they were the work of a new school that had broken with the traditions of all time and country, and was striving to formulate a new art. Bar girls, railway trains, and tennis players flared in the gayest colours, and, in the hope of interesting the old man, Lewis examined and rapturously praised a flight of ballet girls which hung on the opposite wall. The ruse was so far successful that Mr. Bendish joined eagerly in the conversation, and explained that if the new school who called themselves “The moderns” ever succeeded in gaining the public taste, the Fitzroy Square collection would excite the envy of thedilettante of Europe. As he spoke, his little wizen face lightened up, and his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.

Lewis looked at him and wondered. Here was a man who talked of a new artistic movement, and at the same time bought every conceivable kind of rubbish that was brought to him, provided the seller came down to his price. London is a strange fashioner of tastes, and Bendish was a curious example of what she had done in this respect. Being utterly ignorant, not knowing aMillet from aCorot, a Raphael from a Rubens, he bought pictures as an old clothes man buys second-hand pocket-handkerchiefs. He spoke volubly, and predicted the millenium in art, when the traditions, of which he knew nothing, would be overthrown, and Mr. Bendish would possess the finest collection in the world. Lewis listened, patiently awaiting an occasion of getting back to the subject of his water-colour drawings. At last his chance came: in the course of conversation, the old man asked him why he had deserted the new school? This, Lewis explained, was not so; and to prove his case he referred to his drawings. But immediately Mr. Bendish relapsed into silence, and showed that he took no further interest in the question. He evidently was determined not to buy anything more that day. His fancies were as varying as the wind; and there were times when he would look at nothing, and would turn away from the most tempting bait like a sulky trout This was one o