"He was very much taken with her. But how can he think about marrying, Arthur? You do say the strangest things. And after Dagnall's behaviour too."

"_Raison de plus!_ That girl has money, my dear, and will have more, when the old aunts depart this life. If you want Duggy still to go into Parliament, and to be able to do anything for the younger ones, you'll keep an eye on her."

Lady Laura, however, was too depressed to welcome the subject. The gong rang for dinner, and as they were leaving the room, Sir Arthur said--

"There are two men coming down to-morrow to see the pictures, Laura. If I were you, I should keep out of the way."

She gave him a startled look. But they were already on the threshold of the dining-room, where a butler and two footmen waited. The husband and wife took their places opposite each other in the stately panelled room, which contained six famous pictures. Over the mantelpiece was a half-length Gainsborough, one of the loveliest portraits in the world, a miracle of shining colour and languid grace, the almond eyes with their intensely black pupils and black eyebrows looking down, as it seemed, contemptuously upon this after generation, so incurably lacking in its own supreme refinement. Opposite Lady Laura was a full-length Van Dyck of the Genoese period, a mother in stiff brocade and ruff, with an adorable child at her knee; and behind her chair was the great t.i.tian of the house, a man in armour, subtle and ruthless as the age which bred him, his hawk's eye brooding on battles past, and battles to come, while behind him stretched the Venetian lagoon, covered dimly with the fleet of the great republic which had employed him. Facing the Gainsborough hung one of Cuyp's few masterpieces--a ma.s.s of shipping on the Scheldt, with Dordrecht in the background. For play and interplay of everything that delights the eye--light and distance, transparent water, and hovering clouds, the l.u.s.trous brown of fishing boats, the beauty of patched sails and fluttering flags--for both literary and historic suggestion, Dutch art had never done better. Impressionists and post-impressionists came down occasionally to stay at Flood--for Sir Arthur liked to play Maecenas--and were allowed to deal quite frankly with the pictures, as they wandered round the room at dessert, cigarette in hand, pointing out the absurdities of the Cuyp and the t.i.tian. Their host, who knew that he possessed in that room what the collectors of two continents desired, who felt them buzzing outside like wasps against a closed window, took a special pleasure in the scoffs of the advanced crew. They supplied an agreeable acid amid a general adulation that bored him.

To-night the presence of the pictures merely increased the excitement which was the background of his mind. He talked about them a good deal at dinner, wondering secretly all the time, what it would be like to do without them--without Flood--without his old butler there--without everything.

Douglas came down late, and was very silent and irresponsive. He too was morbidly conscious of the pictures, though he wished his father wouldn't talk about them. He was conscious of everything that meant money--of his mother's pearls for instance, which she wore every evening without thinking about them. If he did well with the pictures on the morrow she might, perhaps, justly keep them, as a dowry for Nelly. But if not--He found himself secretly watching his mother, wondering how she would take it all when she really understood--what sort of person she would turn out to be in the new life to which they were all helplessly tending.

After dinner, he followed his father into the smoking room.

"Where is the catalogue of the pictures, father?"

"In the library, Duggy, to the right hand of the fire-place. I paid a fellow a very handsome sum for making it--a fellow who knew a lot--a real expert. But, of course, when we published it, all the other experts tore it to pieces."

"If I bring it, will you go through it with me?"

Sir Arthur shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't think I will, Duggy. The catalogue--there are a great many marginal notes on it which the published copies haven't got--will tell you all I know about them, and a great deal more. And you'll find a loose paper at the beginning, on which I've noted down the prices people have offered me for them from time to time. Like their impudence, I used to think! I leave it to you, old boy. I know it's a great responsibility for a young fellow like you. But the fact is--I'm pumped. Besides, when they make their offer, we can talk it over. I think I'll go and play a game of backgammon with your mother."

He threw away his cigar, and Douglas, angry at what seemed to him his father's shirking, stood stiffly aside to let him pa.s.s. Sir Arthur opened the door. He seemed to walk uncertainly, and he stooped a great deal. From the hall outside, he looked back at his son.

"I think I shall see M'Clintock next time I'm in town, Duggy. I've had some queer pains across my chest lately."

"Indigestion?" said Douglas. His tone was casual.

"Perhaps. Oh, they're nothing. But it's best to take things in time."

He walked away, leaving his son in a state of seething irritation.

Extraordinary that a man could think of trumpery ailments at such a time! It was unlike his father too, whose personal fitness and soundness, whether on the moors, in the hunting field, or in any other sort of test, had always been triumphantly a.s.sumed by his family, as part of the general brilliance of Sir Arthur's role in life.

Douglas sombrely set himself to study the picture catalogue, and sat smoking and making notes till nearly midnight. Having by that time acc.u.mulated a number of queries to which answers were required, he went in search of his father. He found him in the drawing-room, still playing backgammon with Lady Laura.

"Oh Duggy, I'm so tired!" cried his mother plaintively, as soon as he appeared. "And your father will go on. Do come and take my place."

Sir Arthur rose.

"No, no, dear--we've had enough. Many thanks. If you only understood its points, backgammon is really an excellent game. Well, Duggy, ready to go to bed?"

"When I've asked you a few questions, father."

Lady Laura escaped, having first kissed her son with tearful eyes. Sir Arthur checked a yawn, and tried to answer Douglas's enquiries. But very soon he declared that he had no more to say, and couldn't keep awake.

Douglas watched him mounting the famous staircase of the house, with its marvellous _rampe_, bought under the Bourbon Restoration from one of the historic chateaux of France; and, suddenly, the young man felt his heart gripped. Was that shrunken, stooping figure really his father? Of course they must have M'Clintock at once--and get him away--to Scotland or abroad.

"The two gentlemen are in the red drawing-room, sir!" Douglas and his father were sitting together in the library, after lunch, on the following afternoon, when the butler entered.

"d.a.m.n them!" said Sir Arthur under his breath. Then he got up, smiling, as the servant disappeared. "Well, Duggy, now's your chance. I'm a brute not to come and help you, my boy. But I've made such a mess of driving the family coach, you'd really better take a turn. I shall go out for an hour. Then you can come and report to me."

Douglas went into the red drawing-room, one of the suite of rooms dating from the early seventeenth century which occupied the western front of the house. As he entered, he saw two men at the farther end closely examining a large Constable, of the latest "palette-knife" period, which hung to the left of the fire-place. One of the men was short, very stout, with a fringe of grey hair round his bald head, a pair of very shrewd and sparkling black eyes, a thick nose, full lips, and a double chin. He wore spectacles, and was using in addition, a magnifying gla.s.s with which he was examining the picture. Beside him stood a thin, slightly-bearded man, cadaverous in colour, who, with his hands in his pockets, was holding forth in a nonchalant, rather patronising voice.

Both of them turned at Douglas's entrance, surveying the son of the house with an evident and eager curiosity.

"You are, I suppose, Mr. Douglas Falloden?" said the short man, speaking perfect English, though with a slight German accent. "Your father is not able to see us?"

"My father will be pleased to see you, when you have been the round of the pictures," said Douglas stiffly. "He deputes me to show you what we have."

The short man laughed.

"I expect we know what you have almost as well as you. Let me introduce Mr. Miklos."

Douglas bowed, so did the younger man. He was, as Douglas already knew, a Hungarian by birth, formerly an official in one of the museums of Budapest, then at Munich, and now an "expert" at large, greatly in demand as the adviser of wealthy men entering the field of art collecting, and prepared to pay almost anything for success in one of the most difficult and fascinating _cha.s.ses_ that exist.

"I see you have given this room almost entirely to English pictures,"

said Mr. Miklos politely. "A fine Constable!"--he pointed to the picture they had just been considering--"but not, I think, entirely by the master?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Herr Schwarz was examining a picture with a magnifying gla.s.s when Falloden entered_]

"My great-grandfather bought it from Constable himself," said Douglas. "It has never been disputed by any one."

Mr. Miklos did not reply, but he shook his head with a slight smile, and walked away towards a Turner, a fine landscape of the middle period, hanging close to the Constable. He peered into it short-sightedly, with his strong gla.s.ses.

"A pity that it has been so badly relined," he said presently, to Douglas, pointing to it.

"You think so? Its condition is generally thought to be excellent. My father was offered eight thousand for it last year by the Berlin Museum."

Douglas was now apparently quite at his ease. With his thumbs in the armholes of his white waistcoat, he strolled along beside the two buyers, holding his own with both of them, thanks to his careful study of the materials for the history of the collection possessed by his father. The elder man, a Bremen ship-owner,--one Wilhelm Schwarz--who had lately made a rapid and enormous fortune out of the Argentine trade, and whose chief personal ambition it now was to beat the New York and Paris collectors, in the great picture game, whatever it might cost, was presently forced to take some notice of the handsome curly-headed youth in the perfectly fitting blue serge suit, whose appearance as the vendor, or the vendor's agent, had seemed to him, at first, merely one more instance of English aristocratic stupidity.

As a matter of fact, Herr Schwarz was simply dazzled by the contents of Flood Castle. He had never dreamt that such virgin treasures still existed in this old England, till Miklos, instructed by the Falloden lawyer, had brought the list of the pictures to his hotel, a few days before this visit. And now he found it extremely difficult to conceal his excitement and delight, or to preserve, in the presence of this very sharp-eyed young heir, the proper "don't care" att.i.tude of the buyer. He presently left the "running down" business almost entirely to Miklos, being occupied in silent and feverish speculations as to how much he could afford to spend, and a pa.s.sion of covetous fear lest somehow A----, or Z----, or K----, the leading collectors of the moment, should even yet forestall him, early and "exclusive" as Miklos a.s.sured him their information had been.

They pa.s.sed along through the drawing-rooms, and the whole wonderful series of family portraits, Reynolds', Lawrences, Gainsboroughs, Romneys, Hoppners, looked down, unconscious of their doom, upon the invaders, and on the son of the house, so apparently unconcerned. But Douglas was very far from unconcerned. He had no artistic gift, and he had never felt or pretended any special interest in the pictures. They were part of Flood, and Flood was the inseparable adjunct of the Falloden race. When his father had first mooted the sale of them, Douglas had a.s.sented without much difficulty. If other things went, why not they?

But now that he was in the thick of the business, he found, all in a moment, that he had to set his teeth to see it through. A smarting sense of loss--loss hateful and irreparable, cutting away both the past and the future--burnt deep into his mind, as he followed in the track of the sallow and depreciatory Miklos or watched the podgy figure of Herr Schwarz, running from side to side as picture after picture caught his eye. The wincing salesman saw himself as another Charles Surface; but now that the predicament was his own it was no longer amusing. These fair faces, these mothers and babies of his own blood, these stalwart men, fighters by sea and land, these grave thinkers and churchmen, they thronged about him transformed, become suddenly alien and hostile, a crowd of threatening ghosts, the outraged witnesses of their own humiliation. "For what are you selling us?"--they seemed to say.

"Because some one, who was already overfed, must needs grab at a larger mess of pottage--and we must pay! Unkind! degenerate!"

Presently, after the English drawing-rooms, and the library, with its one Romney, came the French room, with its precious Watteaus, its Latours, its two brilliant Nattiers. And here Herr Schwarz's coolness fairly deserted him. He gave little shrieks of pleasure, which brought a frown to the face of his companion, who was anxious to point out that a great deal of the Watteau was certainly pupil-work, that the Latours were not altogether "convincing" and the Nattiers though extremely pretty, "superficial." But Herr Schwarz brushed him aside.

"_Nein, nein, lieber freund_! Dat Nattier is as fine as anything at Potsdam. Dat I must have!" And he gazed in ecstasy at the opulent shoulders, the rounded forms, and gorgeous jewelled dress of an unrivalled Madame de Pompadour, which had belonged to her brother, the Marquis de Marigny.

"You will have all or nothing, my good sir!" thought Falloden, and bided his time.