On Something (Dodo Press) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the
long and short of it was that the lord did not get the picture until he
had paid three thousand guineas—not pounds, mind you. For this sum the
picture was to be sent round to the lord's house, and so it was, and there
it would have stayed but for a very curious accident. The lord had put
the greater part of his money into a company which was developing the
resources of the South Shetland Islands, and by some miscalculation or
other the expense of this experiment proved larger than the revenues
obtainable from it. His policy, as I need hardly tell you, was to hang on,
and so he did, because in the long run the property must pay. And so it
would if they could have gone on shelling out for ever, but they could
not, and so the whole affair was wound up and the lord lost a great deal
of money.
    Under these circumstances he bethought him of the toiling millions who
never see a good picture and who have no more vivid appetite than the
hunger for good pictures. He therefore lent his collection of Van Tromps
with the least possible delay to a public gallery, and for many years they
hung there, while the lord lived in great anxiety, but with a sufficient
income for his needs in the delightful scenery of the Pennines at some
distance from a railway station, surrounded by his tenants. At last even
these—the tenants, I mean—were not sufficient, and a gentleman in the
Government who knew the value of Van Tromps proposed that these Van Tromps
should be bought for the nation; but a lot of cranks made a frightful row,
both in Parliament and out of it, so that the scheme would have fallen
through had not one of the Van Tromps—to wit, that little copy of a
corner which was obviously a replica of or a study for the best-known of
the Van Tromps—been proclaimed false quite suddenly by a gentleman who
doubted its authenticity; whereupon everybody said that it was not genuine
except three people who really counted, and these included the gentleman
who had recommended the purchase of the Van Tromps by the nation. So
enormous was the row upon the matter that the picture reached the very
pinnacle of fame, and an Australian then travelling in England was
determined to get that Van Tromp for himself, and did.
    This Australian was a very simple man, good and kind and childlike, and
frightfully rich. When he had got the Van Tromp he carried it about with
him, and at the country houses where he stopped he used to pull it out and
show it to people. It happened that among other country houses he stopped
once at the hunchback squire's, whose name, as you will remember, was Mr.
Hammer, and he showed him the Van Tromp one day after dinner.
    Now Mr. Hammer was by this time an old man, and he had ceased to care much
for the things of this world. He had suffered greatly, and he had begun to
think about religion; also he had made a good deal of money in Egyptians
(for all this was before the slump). And he was pretty well ashamed of
his pastiches; so, one way and another, the seeing of that picture did
not have the effect upon him which you might have expected; for you, the
reader, have read this story in five minutes (if you have had the patience
to get so far), but he, Mr. Hammer, had been changing and changing for
years, and I tell you he did not care a dump what happened to the wretched
thing. Only when the Australian, who was good and simple and kind and
hearty, showed him the picture and asked him proudly to guess what he had
given for it, then Mr. Hammer looked at him with a look in his eyes full
of that not mortal sadness which accompanies irremediable despair.
    "I do not know," he answered gently and with a sob in his voice.
    "I paid for that picture," said the Australian, in the accent and language
of his native clime, "no less a sum than £7500 … and I'd pay it again
to-morrow!" Saying this, the Australian hit the table with the palm, of
his hand in a manner so manly that an aged retainer who was putting coals
upon the fire allowed the