'I beg your pardon, papa; I'm afraid I am interrupting you.'
'Not at all--not at all, I assure you; come in. I will have a cigarette;
there is nothing like reconsidering one's work through the smoke of a
cigarette. The most beautiful pictures I have ever seen I have seen in
the smoke of a cigarette; nothing can beat those, particularly if you
are lying back looking up at a dirty ceiling.'
War and women were the two poles of Arthur's mind. _Cain shielding his
Wife from Wild Beasts_ had often been painted, numberless _Bridals of
Triermain_; and as for the _Rape of the Sabines_, it seemed as if it
could never be sufficiently accomplished. Opposite the door was a huge
design representing Samson and Delilah; opposite the fireplace, _Julius
Caesar overturning the Altars of the Druids_ occupied nearly the entire
wall. Nymphs and tigers were scattered in between; canvases were also
propped against almost every piece of furniture.
At last Alice's eyes were suddenly caught by a picture representing
three women bathing. It was a very rough sketch, but, before she had
time to examine it, Arthur turned it against the wall. Why he hid two
pictures from her she could not help wondering. It could not be for
propriety's sake, for there were nudities on every side of her.
Then, lying upon the sofa, he explained how So-and-so had told him, when
he was a boy in London, that no one since Michael Angelo had been able
to design as he could; how he had modelled a colossal statue of Lucifer
before he was sixteen, how he had painted a picture of the Battle of
Arbela, forty feet by twenty, before he was eighteen; but that was of no
use, the world nowadays only cared for execution, and he could not wait
until he had got the bit of ribbon in Delilah's hair to look exactly
like silk.
Alice listened to her father babbling, her heart and her mind at
variance. A want of knowledge of painting might blind her to the effects
of his pictures (there was in them all a certain crude merit of design),
but it was impossible not to see that they were lacking in something, in
what she could not say, having no knowledge of painting. Nor was she
sure that her father believed in his pictures, though he had just
declared they had all the beauties of Raphael and other beauties
besides. He had a trick of never appearing to thoroughly believe in them
and in himself. She listened interested and amused, not knowing how to
take him. She had been away at school for nearly ten years, coming home
for rare holidays, and was, therefore, without any real knowledge of her
parents. She understood her father even less than her mother; but she
was certain that if he were not a great genius he might have been one,
and she resolved to find out Lord Dungory's opinions on her father. But
the opportunity for five minutes quiet chat behind her mother's back did
not present itself. As soon as he arrived her mother sent her out of the
room on some pretext more or less valid, and at the end of the week the
gowns that had been ordered in Dublin arrived: ecstasy consumed the
house, and she heard him say that he would give a great dinner-party to
show them off.