Mr. Adrian Crooke was a successful chemist whose shop was in the neighbourhood of Victoria, but his face expressed more than is generally required in a successful chemist. It was a curious face, prematurely1 old and like parchment, but acute and decisive, with real headwork in every line of it. Nor was his conversation, when he did converse2, out of keeping with this: he had lived in many countries, and had a rich store of anecdote3 about the more quaint4 and sometimes the more sinister5 side of his work, visions of the vapour of eastern drugs or guesses at the ingredients of Renascence poisons. He himself, it need hardly be said, was a most respectable and reliable apothecary6, or he would not have had the custom of families, especially among the upper classes; but he enjoyed as a hobby, the study of the dark days and lands where his science had lain sometimes on the borders of magic and sometimes upon the borders of murder. Hence it often happened that persons, who in their serious senses were well aware of his harmless and useful habits, would leave his shop on some murky7 and foggy night, with their heads so full of wild tales of the eating of hemp8 or the poisoning of roses, they could hardly help fancying that the shop, with its glowing moon of crimson9 or saffron, like bowls of blood and sulphur, was really a house of the Black Art.
It was doubtless for such conversational10 pleasures, in part, that Hibbs However entered the shop; as well as for a small glass of the same restorative medicine which he had been taking when Leveson found him by the open window. But this did not prevent Hibbs from expressing considerable surprise and some embarrassment11 when Leveson entered the same chemist’s and asked for the same chemical. Indeed, Leveson looked harassed12 and weary enough to want it.
“You’ve been out of town, haven’t you?” said Leveson. “No luck. They got away again on some quibble. The police wouldn’t make the arrest; and even old Meadows thought it might be illegal. I’m sick of it. Where are you going?”
“I thought,” said Mr. Hibbs, “of dropping in at this Post-Futurist exhibition. I believe Lord Ivywood will be there; he is showing it to the Prophet. I don’t pretend to know much about art, but I hear it’s very fine.”
There was a long silence and Mr. Leveson said, “People always prejudiced against new ideas.”
Then there was another long silence and Mr. Hibbs said, “After all, they said the same of Whistler.”
Refreshed by this ritual, Mr. Leveson became conscious of the existence of Crooke, and said to him, cheerfully, “That’s so in your department, too, isn’t it? I suppose the greatest pioneers in chemistry were unpopular in their own time.”
“Look at the Borgias,” said Mr. Crooke. “They got themselves quite disliked.”
“You’re very flippant, you know,” said Leveson, in a fatigued13 way. “Well, so long. Are you coming, Hibbs?”
And the two gentlemen, who were both attired14 in high hats and afternoon callers’ coats, betook themselves down the street. It was a fine, sunny day, the twin of the day before that had shone so brightly on the white town of Peaceways; and their walk was a pleasant one, along a handsome street with high houses and small trees that overlooked the river all the way. For the pictures were exhibited in a small but famous gallery, a rather rococo15 building of which the entrance steps almost descended16 upon the Thames. The building was girt on both sides and behind with gaudy17 flower-beds, and on the top of the steps, in front of the Byzantine doorway18, stood their old friend, Misysra Ammon, smiling broadly, and in an unusually sumptuous19 costume. But even the sight of that fragrant20 eastern flower did not seem to revive altogether the spirits of the drooping21 Secretary.
“You have coome,” said the beaming Prophet, “to see the decoration? It is approo-ooved. I haf approo-ooved it.”
“We came to see the Post-Futurist pictures,” began Hibbs; but Leveson was silent.
“There are no pictures,” said the Turk, simply, “if there had been I could not haf approo-ooved. For those of our Religion pictures are not goo-ood; they are Idols22, my friendss. Loo-ook in there,” and he turned and darted23 a solemn forefinger24 just under his nose toward the gates of the gallery; “Loo-ook in there and you will find no Idols. No Idols at all. I have most carefully loo-ooked into every one of the frames. Every one I have approo-ooved. No trace of ze Man form. No trace of ze Animal form. All decoration as goo-ood as the goo-oodest of carpets; it harms not. Lord Ivywood smile of happiness; for I tell him Islam indeed progresses. Ze old Moslems allow to draw the picture of the vegetable. Here I hunt even for the vegetable. And there is no vegetable.”
Hibbs, whose trade was tact25, naturally did not think it wise that the eminent26 Misysra should go on lecturing from a tall flight of steps to the whole street and river, so he had slipped past with a general proposal to go in and see. The Prophet and the Secretary followed; and all entered the outer hall where Lord Ivywood stood with the white face of a statue. He was the only statue the New Moslems were allowed to worship.
On a sofa like a purple island in the middle of the sea of floor sat Enid Wimpole, talking eagerly to her cousin, Dorian; doing, in fact, her best to prevent the family quarrel, which threatened to follow hard on the incident at Westminster. In the deeper perspective of the rooms Lady Joan Brett was floating about. And if her attitude before the Post-Futurist pictures could not be called humble27, or even inquiring, it is but just to that school to say that she seemed to be quite as bored with the floor that she walked on, and the parasol she held. Bit by bit other figures or groups of that world drifted through the Exhibition of the Post-Futurists. It is a very small world, but it is just big enough and just small enough to govern a country—that is, a country with no religion. And it has all the vanity of a mob; and all the reticence28 of a secret society.
Leveson instantly went up to Lord Ivywood, pulled papers from his pocket and was plainly telling him of the escape from Peaceways. Ivywood’s face hardly changed; he was, or felt, above some things; and one of them was blaming a servant before the servant’s social superiors. But no one could say he looked less like cold marble than before.
“I made all possible inquiries29 about their subsequent route,” the Secretary was heard saying, “and the most serious feature is that they seem to have taken the road for London.”
“Quite so,” replied the statue, “they will be easier to capture here.”
Lady Enid, by a series of assurances (most of which were, I regret to say, lies) had succeeded in preventing the scandal of her cousin, Dorian, actually cutting her cousin, Phillip. But she knew very little of the masculine temper if she really thought she had prevented the profound intellectual revolt of the poet against the politician. Ever since he heard Mr. Hibbs say, “Yars! Yars!”, and order his arrest by a common policeman, the feelings of Dorian Wimpole had flowed for some four days and nights in a direction highly contrary to the ideals of Mr. Hibbs, and the sudden appearance of that blameless diplomatist quickened the mental current to a cataract30. But as he could not insult Hibbs, whom socially he did not even know; and could not insult Ivywood, with whom he had just had a formal reconciliation31, it was absolutely necessary that he should insult something else instead. All watchers for the Dawn will be deeply distressed32 to know that the Post-Futurist School of Painting received the full effects of this perverted33 wrath34. In vain did Mr. Leveson affirm from time to time, “People always prejudiced against new ideas.” Vainly did Mr. Hibbs say at the proper intervals36, “After all, they said the same of Whistler.” Not by such decent formalities was the frenzy37 of Dorian to be appeased38.
“That little Turk has more sense than you have,” he said, “he passes it as a good wall-paper. I should say it was a bad wall-paper; the sort of wall-paper that gives a sick man fever when he hasn’t got it. But to call it pictures—you might as well call it seats for the Lord Mayor’s Show. A seat isn’t a seat if you can’t see the Lord Mayor’s Show. A picture isn’t a picture if you can’t see any picture. You can sit down at home more comfortably than you can at a procession. And you can walk about at home more comfortably than you can at a picture gallery. There’s only one thing to be said for a street show or a picture show—and that is whether there is anything to be shown. Now, then! Show me something!”
“Well,” said Lord Ivywood, good humouredly, motioning toward the wall in front of him, “let me show you the ‘Portrait of an Old Lady.’”
“Well,” said Dorian, stolidly39, “which is it?”
Mr. Hibbs made a hasty gesture of identification, but was so unfortunate as to point to the picture of “Rain in the Apennines,” instead of the “Portrait of an Old Lady,” and his intervention40 increased the irritation41 of Dorian Wimpole. Most probably, as Mr. Hibbs afterward42 explained, it was because a vivacious43 movement of the elbow of Mr. Wimpole interfered44 with the exact pointing of the forefinger of Mr. Hibbs. In any case, Mr. Hibbs was sharply and horridly45 fixed46 by embarrassment; so that he had to go away to the refreshment47 bar and eat three lobster-patties, and even drink a glass of that champagne48 that had once been his ruin. But on this occasion he stopped at one glass, and returned with a full diplomatic responsibility.
He returned to find that Dorian Wimpole had forgotten all the facts of time, place, and personal pride, in an argument with Lord Ivywood, exactly as he had forgotten such facts in an argument with Patrick Dalroy, in a dark wood with a donkey-cart. And Phillip Ivywood was interested als............