"But hang it all, what could I do? They were in my place," I broke out.
He chuckled, enjoying my discomfiture. Then his eyes fell on those absurd
and solemn chairs again.
"Look at 'em--the Art Shades in conference!" he chuckled. "That
rush-seated one, it was talking half an hour ago about 'Scherzos in
Silver and Grey!' ... Nice, fresh green stuff!"
To shut him up I told him that he would find cigarettes and tobacco on
the table.
"'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'!" he chuckled again as he took a
cigarette....
All this, perhaps, needs some explanation. It had been the usual thing,
usual in those days, twenty years ago--smarming about Art and the Arts
and so forth. They--"we," as apparently Andriaovsky had lingered behind
for the purpose of reminding me--had perhaps talked a little more
soaringly than the ordinary, that was all. There had been Jamison in the
wicker chair, full to the lips and running over with the Colour
Suggestions of the late Edward Calvert; Gibbs, in a pulpy state of
adoration of the less legitimate side of the painting of Watts; and
Magnani, who had advanced that an Essential Oneness underlies all the
Arts, and had triumphantly proved his thesis by analogy with the Law of
the Co-relation of Forces. A book called Music and Morals had appeared
about that time, and on it they--we--had risen to regions of kite-high
lunacy about Colour Symphonies, orgies of formless colour thrown on a
magic-lantern screen--vieux jeu enough at this time of day. A young
newspaper man, too, had made mental notes of our adjectives, for use in
his weekly (I nearly spelt it "weakly") half-column of Art Criticism;
and--and here was Andriaovsky, grinning at the chairs, and mimicking
it all with diabolical glee.
"'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'--'Word Pastels'--' Lyrics in Stone!'"
he chuckled. "And what was it the fat fellow said?' A Siren Song in
Marble!' Phew!... Well, I'll get along. I shall just be in time to get
a pint of bitter to wash it all down if I'm quick... Bah!" he broke out
suddenly. "Good men build up Form and Forms--keep the Arts each after
its kind--raise up the dikes so that we shan't all be swept away by night
and nothingness--and these rats come nosing and burrowing and undermining
it all!... _Et tu, Brute!_"
"Well, when you've finished rubbing it in--" I grunted.
"As if _you_ didn't know better!... Is that your way of getting back on
'em, now that you've chucked drawing and gone in for writing books?
Phew I... Well, I'll go and get my pint of beer--"
But he didn't go for his pint of beer. Instead, he began to prowl about
my room, pryingly, nosingly, touching things here and there. I watched
him as he passed from one thing to another. He was very little, and very,
very shabby. His trousers were frayed, and the sole of one of his boots
flapped distressingly. His old bowler hat--he had not thought it
necessary to wait until he got outside before thrusting it on the back of
his head--was so limp in substance that I verily believed that had he run
incautiously downstairs he would have found when he got to the bottom
that its crown had sunk in of its own weight. In spite of his remark
about the pint of beer, I doubt if he had the price of one in his pocket.
"What's this, Brutus--a concertina?" he suddenly asked, stopping before
the collapsible case in which I kept my rather old dress suit.