For, though it was his whim
to dine in his rooms alone, and though he had no fixed plans for the
evening, Lanyard was too thoroughly cosmopolitan not to do in Cockaigne as
the Cockneys do.
Besides, in this uncertain life one never knows what the next hour will
bring forth; whereas if one is in evening dress after six o'clock, one is
armoured against every emergency.
At seven he sat down to the morbid sort of a meal one gets in London
lodgings: a calm soup; a segment of vague fish smothered painlessly in a
pale pink blanket of sauce; a cut from the joint, rare and lukewarm;
potatoes boiled dead; sad sea-kale; nonconformist pudding; conservative
biscuit, and radical cheese.
With the aid and abetment of a bottle of excellent Montrachet, however, one
contrived to worry through.
Meanwhile, Lanyard inspected his recent purchase, which occupied a place of
honour, propped up on the arms of the chair on his right.
It was seldom that Lanyard entertained a guest of such equivocal character.
Wagging a reproving head--"My friend," he harangued the canvas, "you are
lucky to have been sold. Sorry I can't say as much for myself."
It was really too bad it wasn't a bit better. It wasn't often that one
encountered so genuine a counterfeit. The hand of an artist had painted it,
but never the hand of Corot. Everything Corot was accustomed to put into
his painting was there, except himself. The abode had been prepared in all
respects as the master would have had it, but his spirit had not entered
into it, it remained without life.
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