“There’s something you can do for me now, which will make me
everlastingly grateful.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you know, Reggie,” she said suddenly, “that only a few months ago
Clarence was very fond of cats?”
“Eh! Well, he still seems—er—_interested_ in them, what?”
“Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves.”
“Some fellows swear by that stuff you see advertised all over the——”
“No, that wouldn’t help him. He doesn’t need to take anything. He wants
to get rid of something.”
“I don’t quite follow. Get rid of something?”
“The ‘Venus,’” said Elizabeth.
She looked up and caught my bulging eye.
“You saw the ‘Venus,’” she said.
“Not that I remember.”
“Well, come into the dining-room.”
We went into the dining-room, and she switched on the lights.
“There,” she said.
On the wall close to the door—that may have been why I hadn’t noticed
it before; I had sat with my back to it—was a large oil-painting. It
was what you’d call a classical picture, I suppose. What I mean
is—well, you know what I mean. All I can say is that it’s funny I
_hadn’t_ noticed it.
“Is that the ‘Venus’?” I said.
She nodded.
“How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat down to
a meal?”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it would affect me much. I’d worry
through all right.”
She jerked her head impatiently.
“But you’re not an artist,” she said. “Clarence is.”
And then I began to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn’t
understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old
Artistic Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It
explains everything. It’s like the Unwritten Law, don’t you know, which
you plead in America if you’ve done anything they want to send you to
chokey for and you don’t want to go. What I mean is, if you’re
absolutely off your rocker, but don’t find it convenient to be scooped
into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a
teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and
go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence,
the Cat’s Friend, ready for anything.
And, believe me, it had hit Clarence badly.
It was this way. It seemed that old Yeardsley was an amateur artist and
that this “Venus” was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have
known. Well, when Clarence married, he had given it to him, as a
wedding present, and had hung it where it stood with his own hands. All
right so far, what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being
a professional artist and consequently some streets ahead of the dad at
the game, saw flaws in the “Venus.” He couldn’t stand it at any price.
He didn’t like the drawing. He didn’t like the expression of the face.
He didn’t like the colouring. In fact, it made him feel quite ill to
look at it. Yet, being devoted to his father and wanting to do anything
rather than give him pain, he had not been able to bring himself to
store the thing in the cellar, and the strain of confronting the
picture three times a day had begun to tell on him to such an extent
that Elizabeth felt something had to be done.
“Now you see,” she said.
“In a way,” I said. “But don’t you think it’s making rather heavy
weather over a trifle?”
“Oh, can’t you understand? Look!” Her voice dropped as if she was in
church, and she switched on another light. It shone on the picture next
to old Yeardsley’s. “There!” she said. “Clarence painted that!”
She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon,
or yell, or something. I took a steady look at Clarence’s effort. It
was another Classical picture. It seemed to me very much like the other
one.
Some sort of art criticism was evidently expected of me, so I made a
dash at it.
“Er—‘Venus’?” I said.
Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have made the same mistake. On the
evidence, I mean.
“No. ‘Jocund Spring,’” she snapped. She switched off the light. “I see
you don’t understand even now. You never had any taste about pictures.
When we used to go to the galleries together, you would far rather have
been at your club.”
This was so absolutely true, that I had no remark to make. She came up
to me, and put her hand on my arm.
“I’m sorry, Reggie. I didn’t mean to be cross. Only I do want to make
you understand that Clarence is _suffering_. Suppose—suppose—well, let
us take the case of a great musician. Suppose a great musician had to
sit and listen to a cheap vulgar tune—the same tune—day after day, day
after day, wouldn’t you expect his nerves to break! Well, it’s just
like that with Clarence. Now you see?”
“Yes, but——”
“But what? Surely I’ve put it plainly enough?”
“Yes. But what I mean is, where do I come in? What do you want me to
do?”
“I want you to steal the ‘Venus.’”