Her Serene Highness: A Novel — Story, Setting & Ideas

Everybody looked round, and the auctioneer replied, “It’s just been sold.”

There was a laugh, Grafton looked so wild and strange. Leaning on the arm of the nurse he went to the settlement desk. “To whom was that picture sold?” he said to the clerk.

“On a cable from Paris, Mr. Grafton,” interrupted one of the members of the auction firm. “We’ve had a standing order from Candace Brothers for five years to let them know if the picture came or was likely to come into the market. And they’ve cabled every six months to remind us. When Mr. Acton decided to sell, we sent word. They ordered us to buy, with fifteen thousand dollars as the limit.”

Grafton was furious; he would gladly have paid twenty. “And what did it go for?” he asked.

“Seventeen hundred,” replied the dealer. “Everybody was suspicious of it. We would have got it for five hundred, if it hadn’t been for an artist; he bid it up to his limit.”

“I must sit,” said Grafton to his nurse. “This is too much--too much.”

He was little the worse for his imprudence, and was able to sail on the steamer that carried the picture. He beat it to Paris, and went at once to Candace Brothers, strolling in as if he had no purpose beyond killing time by looking about. He slowly led the conversation round to a point where Louis Candace, to whom he was talking, would naturally begin to think of the Acton sale.

“We’re getting in several pictures from New York,” said Candace--“from the Acton sale.”

“I was ill while it was on,” said Grafton, carelessly. “What did you take?”

“A Rousseau, a Corot, a Wyant, and a--Velasquez.” He hesitated before speaking the last name, and looked confused as Grafton slightly elevated his eyebrows. “Of course,” he hurried on, “we strongly suspect the Velasquez; in fact, we know it’s not genuine. But we’re delighted to get it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Grafton. “I know you too well to suspect that it will be sold as a Velasquez.”

“But certainly not. Even if we did that sort of thing, we couldn’t deceive any of your rich countrymen or any of the English with it. The story is too well known. No; we bought it for His Royal Highness the Grand Duke of Zweitenbourg. It is--or he thinks it is--a portrait of one of his Spanish ancestors. His agent tells me that it is the only known work of a remarkable young Spaniard who was soon afterwards killed at the siege of Barcelona, early in the eighteenth century. They are not even sure of his name. The Grand Duke was most anxious to get it. For years we have been sending him semiannual bulletins on Monsieur Acton’s health and financial condition.”

Grafton’s heart sank. Here was a true collector--a past-master of the art. “If I hadn’t been a mere novice,” thought Grafton, “I, too, would have had bulletins on Acton, and a standing order. As it is, my trouble has only begun,” for, being himself a true collector, with all the fatalism of the collector’s temperament, he was not despairing, was only the more resolute in face of these new difficulties.

“His Royal Highness,” continued Candace, “wants the picture because it fills one of the gaps in his gallery of ancestral portraits.” Under skilful questioning, Candace yielded the further information that the keeper of the Grand Duke’s privy purse, Baron Zeppstein, would arrive the following Thursday personally to escort the picture to Zweitenbourg.

It reached Paris on Tuesday, and Grafton took Jack Campbell, whom he found at the Ritz, round to Candace’s on Wednesday morning. Campbell, having been thoroughly coached, made offers for several pictures, all too low, then pretended to fall in love with the Spaniard. He insisted that it was a Velasquez--Grafton seemed to be disgusted with him, somewhat ashamed of him. When Candace told him that the picture was sold, he had them send a telegram to the Grand Duke offering eight thousand dollars for it. A curt refusal to sell at any price came a few hours later.

Campbell and Grafton were there the next morning when Baron Zeppstein came. As he was voluble, and appreciative of the rare pleasure of an attentive listener, Grafton rapidly ingratiated himself, and soon had him flowing on the subject of “my royal master.”