“All the same,” said Mr. Clew courageously, “I like that bowl of roses in the window with the landscape behind. Number twenty-nine.” He looked in the catalogue. “And there’s a really charming little verse about it:
‘O beauty of the rose, Goodness as well as perfume exhaling! Who gazes on these flowers, On this blue hill and ripening field—he knows Where duty leads and that the nameless Powers In a rose can speak their will.’
Really charming!” Mr. Clew made another mark with his pencil.
“But commonplace, commonplace.” Mr. Mallard shook his head. “And in any case a verse can’t justify a bad picture. What an unsubtle harmony of colour! And how uninteresting the composition is! That receding diagonal—it’s been worked to death.” He too made a mark in his catalogue—a cross and a little circle, arranged like the skull and cross-bones on a pirate’s flag. Mr. Mallard’s catalogues were always covered with these little marks: they were his symbols of condemnation.
Mr. Albemarle, meanwhile, had moved away to greet the new arrivals. To the critic of the _Daily Cinema_ he had to explain that there were no portraits of celebrities. The reporter from the _Evening Planet_ had to be told which were the best pictures.
“Mr. Lypiatt,” he dictated, “is a poet and philosopher as well as a painter. His catalogue is a—h’m—declaration of faith.”
The reporter took it down in shorthand. “And very nice too,” he said. “I’m most grateful to you, sir, most grateful.” And he hurried away, to get to the Cattle Show before the King should arrive. Mr. Albemarle affably addressed himself to the critic of the _Morning Globe_.
“I _al_ways regard this gallery,” said a loud and cheerful voice, full of bulls and canaries in chorus, “as positively a _mauvais lieu_. Such exhibitions!” And Mr. Mercaptan shrugged his shoulders expressively. He halted to wait for his companion.
Mrs. Viveash had lagged behind, reading the catalogue as she slowly walked along. “It’s a complete book,” she said, “full of poems and essays and short stories even, so far as I can see.”
“Oh, the usual cracker mottoes.” Mr. Mercaptan laughed. “I know the sort of thing. ‘Look after the past and the future will look after itself.’ ‘God squared minus Man squared equals Art-plus-life times Art-minus-Life.’ ‘The Higher the Art the fewer the morals’—only that’s too nearly good sense to have been invented by Lypiatt. But I know the sort of thing. I could go on like that for ever.” Mr. Mercaptan was delighted with himself.