The Collectors | Page 6

worth anything, the dealer promised he
should be liberally paid. Naturally Campbell Corot's professional
dander was up, and he produced in a week a Corotish 'Dance of
Nymphs,' if anything, more specious than the last. For this Beilstein
gave him twenty-five dollars, and within a month you might have seen
it under the skylight of a country museum, where it is still reverently
explained to successive generations of school-children.
"If Campbell Corot had been a stronger character, he might have made
some stand against the fraudulent success his second manner was
achieving. But, unhappily, in those experimental years he had acquired

an experimental knowledge of the whisky of Cedar Street. His irregular
and spend-thrift ways had put him out of all lines of employment.
Besides, he was consumed by an artist's desire to create a kind of
picture that he could not hope to sell as his own. Nor did the voice of
the tempter, Beilstein, fail to make itself heard. He offered an unfailing
market for the little canvases at twenty-five and fifty dollars, according
to size. There was a patron to supply unlimited colours and stretchers, a
pocket that never refused to advance a small bill when thirst or lesser
need found Campbell Corot penniless. Almost inevitably he passed
from occasional to habitual forgery, consoling himself with the thought
that he never signed the pictures and, before the law at least, was
blameless. But signed they all were somewhere between their furtive
entrance at Beilstein's basement and their appearance on his walls or in
the auction rooms. Of course it wasn't the blackguard Beilstein who
forged the five magic letters; he would never take the risk, 'Blast his
dirty soul!' cried Campbell Corot aloud, as he seethed with the memory
of his shame. He rose as if for summary vengeance, to the amazement
of the quiet topers in the room. For some time his utterance had been
getting both excited and thick, and now I saw with a certain chagrin
that the Glengyle had done its work only too well. It was a question not
of hearing his story out, but of getting him home before worse befell.
By mingled threats and blandishments I got him away from Nickerson's,
and after an adventurous passage down Cedar Street, I deposited him
before his attic door, in a doubtful frame of mind, being alternately
possessed by the desire to send Beilstein to hell and to pray for the
eternal welfare of the only genuine Corot."
"You certainly make queer acquaintances," ejaculated the Patron
uneasily.
"Hurry up and tell us the rest; it's growing late," insisted the Antiquary,
as he beckoned for the bill.
"I saw Campbell Corot only once more, but occasionally I saw his
work, and it told a sad tale of deterioration. The sunrises and nymphals
no longer deceived anybody, having fallen nearly to the average level
of auction-room impressionism. I was not surprised, then, when

running into him near Nickerson's one day I felt that drink and poverty
were speeding their work. He tried to pass me unrecognised, but I
stopped him, and once more the invitation to a nip proved irresistible.
My curiosity was keen to learn his attitude toward his own work and
that of his master, and I attempted to draw him out with a crass
compliment. He denied me gently. 'The best things I do, or rather did,
young feller, are jest a little poorer than his worst. Between ourselves,
he painted some pretty bum things. Some I suppose he did, like me, by
lamplight. Some he sketched with one hand while he was lighting that
there long pipe with the other. Sometimes, I guess, he was in a hurry
for the money. Now, when I'm painting my level best, like I used to
could, mine are about like that. But people don't know the difference
about him or about me; and mine, as I told your Jew friend, are plenty
good enough for every-day purposes. Used to be, anyway. Nobody can
paint like his best. Think of it, young feller, you and me is painters and
know what it means--jest a little dirty paint on white canvas, and you
see the creeping of the sunrise over the land, the breathing of the mist
from the fields, and the twinkling of the dew in the young leaves.
Nobody but him could paint that, and I guess he never knowed how he
done it; he jest felt it in his brush, it seems to me.'
"After this outburst little more was to be got from him. In a word, he
had gone to pieces and knew it. Beilstein had cast him off; the works in
the third manner hung heavy in the auction places. Leaning over the
table, he asked me, 'Who was the gent that