He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his nostrils,
and a voice said:
"Well, Mr. Forsyde, what you goin' to do with this small lot?"
That Belgian chap, whose mother-as if Flemish blood were not enough--had
been Armenian! Subduing a natural irritation, he said:
"Are you a judge of pictures?"
"Well, I've got a few myself."
"Any Post-Impressionists?"
"Ye-es, I rather like them."
"What do you think of this?" said Soames, pointing to the Gauguin.
Monsieur Profond protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard.
"Rather fine, I think," he said; "do you want to sell it?"
Soames checked his instinctive "Not particularly"--he would not chaffer
with this alien.
"Yes," he said.
"What do you want for it?"
"What I gave."
"All right," said Monsieur Profond. "I'll be glad to take that small
picture. Post-Impressionists--they're awful dead, but they're amusin'. I
don' care for pictures much, but I've got some, just a small lot."
"What do you care for?"
Monsieur Profond shrugged his shoulders.
"Life's awful like a lot of monkeys scramblin' for empty nuts."
"You're young," said Soames. If the fellow must make a generalization,
he needn't suggest that the forms of property lacked solidity!
"I don' worry," replied Monsieur Profond smiling; "we're born, and we
die. Half the world's starvin'. I feed a small lot of babies out in my
mother's country; but what's the use? Might as well throw my money in
the river."
Soames looked at him, and turned back toward his Goya. He didn't know
what the fellow wanted.
"What shall I make my cheque for?" pursued Monsieur Profond.
"Five hundred," said Soames shortly; "but I don't want you to take it if
you don't care for it more than that."
"That's all right," said Monsieur Profond; "I'll be 'appy to 'ave that
picture."
He wrote a cheque with a fountain-pen heavily chased with gold. Soames
watched the process uneasily. How on earth had the fellow known that he
wanted to sell that picture? Monsieur Profond held out the cheque.
"The English are awful funny about pictures," he said. "So are the
French, so are my people. They're all awful funny."
"I don't understand you," said Soames stiffly.
"It's like hats," said Monsieur Profond enigmatically, "small or large,
turnin' up or down--just the fashion. Awful funny." And, smiling, he
drifted out of the gallery again, blue and solid like the smoke of his
excellent cigar.
Soames had taken the cheque, feeling as if the intrinsic value of
ownership had been called in question. 'He's a cosmopolitan,' he
thought, watching Profond emerge from under the verandah with Annette,
and saunter down the lawn toward the river. What his wife saw in the
fellow he didn't know, unless it was that he could speak her language;
and there passed in Soames what Monsieur Profond would have called a
"small doubt" whether Annette was not too handsome to be walking with
any one so "cosmopolitan." Even at that distance he could see the blue
fumes from Profond's cigar wreath out in the quiet sunlight; and his
grey buckskin shoes, and his grey hat--the fellow was a dandy! And he
could see the quick turn of his wife's head, so very straight on her
desirable neck and shoulders. That turn of her neck always seemed to him
a little too showy, and in the "Queen of all I survey" manner--not quite
distinguished. He watched them walk along the path at the bottom of the
garden. A young man in flannels joined them down there--a Sunday caller
no doubt, from up the river. He went back to his Goya. He was still
staring at that replica of Fleur, and worrying over Winifred's news,
when his wife's voice said: