Silence Observed Read Online Free PDF

experience so vivid. Would you care for another glass of that Madeira? I don’t consider it positively bad.”
    Appleby pushed away his glass.
    “I think not, thank you. And then you had in the young gentlewoman?”
    “We had her in – as soon as I’d taken breath and given the situation a little thought. You see, it didn’t lack its tricky side.”
    “Connected with the fact that the picture was worth a lot of money?”
    “Certainly. The picture market is a crackpot affair, as you know. And never more so than of late, with ignoramuses pouring out meaningless money for Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and what-have-you. But even poor old Rembrandt hasn’t quite had his day. This thing – propped up before us by Jimmy Heffer’s bowler hat – would fetch almost as much under the hammer as anything that hung on the walls of the building we were gorping and gaping in.”
    “I can’t imagine you doing anything so inelegant,” Appleby said.
    “I assure you I was doing exactly that. And it’s all very well, you know, telling any casual caller that their picture’s really very pretty, and undoubtedly painted by hand. You can even be quite light-hearted about saying it looks as if they’ve got hold of an Etty or a Maclise. But when it comes to a woman strolling in with a shattering Old Master, a little circumspection is probably wise. Before I gave a formal opinion, for example, the routine sort of tests ought to be made, even although I knew they were superfluous. And I ought to know something about the thing’s provenance.”
    “That would be wise, even in quite minor affairs.” Appleby was thinking of poor Charles Gribble’s discomfiture over Manallace.
    “Exactly. And I ought to satisfy myself that this enquiry about the Rembrandt was being made by, or with the sanction of, the legal owner. All this was fairly elementary, but it took me a moment or two to get it clear in my head before I told Jimmy to ring his bell and have the lady in.”
    Gulliver paused, and Appleby glanced round the smoking room. His friend’s voice was silvery and resonant, so that anybody might be having the benefit of this odd story. But in fact they were quite alone.
    “It must have been an interesting moment,” Appleby said. “The entrance of the proprietor of this rather tremendous object.”
    “Well, yes. But – do you know? – I was still so absorbed in the tremendous object itself that it was seconds before I looked round when the door opened. And, even then, it wasn’t the woman I found myself looking at. It was Jimmy. And the way he was looking made the moment not so much interesting as laughable. He had gorped and gaped, as I said, at the Old Man, just as I had. But he was in a very ecstasy of gorping and gaping now. I remarked – didn’t I? – that the lad had taste. Well, it was getting at him. Rembrandt had been knocked clean out of his head. And you might say that Botticelli had taken his place.”
    “Botticelli?”
    “Yes, indeed. The girl, you see, was quite astounding. One looked at once for dancing waves and a great scallop shell under her feet. One found something positively improbable in the fact that she had clothes on.”
    “Dear me!”
    “But you mustn’t suppose me to mean that there was anything lascivious about her. It was just that she had that sort of beauty. Precisely that sort of beauty. She had stepped from the walls of the Ufizzi, you might say, and slipped into a well-made coat and skirt.”
    Appleby vindicated the philistinism which Gulliver had earlier attributed to him by finding this funny. In fact he threw back his head and laughed.
    “Quite so, quite so.” Gulliver laughed too. “But there it was. The birth of Venus.”
    Appleby shook his head more soberly.
    “I don’t believe it,” he said. “Botticelli’s lady is undoubtedly pleasing as a bit of paint. But she’s not remotely human. She’s as weightless as a space traveller. And, if there’s ballet on Mount