Chapter 68
"Well, he's become Lionel Houston this year, and he's talked about with Dorothy a good deal. Of course he's very rich, but I do hope there's nothing in what people say. Poor Dorothy!"
"She'll survive even the divorce court," Sylvia said. "I wish I knew what had become of Lily. She might have danced in my show. I suppose it's too late now, though. Poor Lily! I say, we're getting very compa.s.sionate, you and I, Olive. Are you and Jack going to have any more kids?"
"Sylvia darling," Olive exclaimed, with a blush.
Sylvia had intended to stay a week or two with the Airdales, and, after having set in motion the preliminaries of her undertaking, to go down to Dulwich and visit Mrs. Madden, but she thought she would get hold of Ronnie Walker first, and with this object went to the Cafe Royal, where she should be certain of finding either him or a friend who would know where he was.
Sylvia had scarcely time to look round her in the swirl of gilt and smoke and chatter before Ronald Walker himself, wearing now a long pale beard, greeted her.
"My dear Ronald, what's the matter? Are you tired of women? You look more like a grate than a great man," Sylvia exclaimed. "Cut it off and give it to your landlady to stuff her fireplace this summer."
"What shall we drink?" he asked, imperturbably.
"I've been absinthe for so long that really--"
"It's a vermouth point," added Ronald.
"Ronnie, you devil, I can't go on, it's too whisky. Well, of course after that we ought both to drink port and brandy. Don't you find it difficult to clean your beard?"
"I'm not a messy feeder," said Ronnie.
"You don't paint with it, then?"
"Only Cubist pictures."
Sylvia launched out into an account of her work, and demanded his help for the painting of the scene.
"I want the back-cloth to be a city, not to represent a city, mark you, but to be a city."
She told him about New York as beheld from the Metropolitan Tower, and exacted from the chosen painter the ability to make the audience think that.
"I'm too old-fas.h.i.+oned for you, my dear," said Ronald.
"Oh, you, my dear man, of course. If I asked you for a city, you'd give me a view from a Pierrot's window of a Harlequin who'd stolen the first five numbers of the Yellow Book from a Pantaloon who kept a second-hand bookshop in a street-scene by Steinlen, and whose daughter, Columbine, having died of grief at being deserted by the New English Art Club, had been turned into a book-plate. No, I want some fierce young genius of to-day."
Over their drinks they
"They are real?" she whispered to her host.
"Oh yes, they're quite real, and in deadly earnest. Each of them represents a school and each of them thinks I've been converted to his point of view. I'll introduce Morphew."
He beckoned to a tall young man in black, who looked like a rolled-up umbrella with a jade handle.
"Morphew, this is Miss Scarlett. She's nearly as advanced as you are.
Sylvia, this is Morphew, the Azurist."
Walker maliciously withdrew when he had made the introduction.
"Ought I to know what an Azurist is?" Sylvia asked. She felt that it was an unhappy opening for the conversation, but she did not want to hurt his religious feelings if Azurism was a religion, and if it was a trade she might be excused for not knowing what it was, such a rare trade must it be.
Mr. Morphew smiled in a superior way. "I think most people have heard about me by now."
"Ah, but I've been abroad."
"Several of my affirmations have been translated and published in France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, and Holland,"
said Mr. Morphew, in a tone that seemed to imply that if Sylvia had not grasped who he was by now she never would, in which case it was scarcely worth his while to go on talking to her.
"Oh dear! What a pity!" she exclaimed. "I was in Montenegro all last year, so I must have missed them. I don't _think_ you're known in Montenegro yet. It's such a small country, I should have been sure to hear about anything like that.
"Like what?" thought Sylvia, turning up her mind's eyes to heaven.
Mr. Morphew was evidently not sure what sort of language was spoken in Montenegro, and thought it wiser to instruct Sylvia than to expose his own ignorance.
"What color is that?" he suddenly demanded, pointing to the orange coverlet of a settee.
"Orange," said Sylvia. "Perhaps it's inclining to some shade of brown."
"Orange! Brown!" Mr. Morphew scoffed. "It's blue."
"Oh, but it's not!" she contradicted. "There's nothing blue about it."
"Blue," repeated Mr. Morphew. "All is blue. The Azurists deny that there is anything but blue. Blue," he continued in a rapt voice. "Blue! I was a Blanchist at first; but when we quarreled most of the Blanchists followed me. I shall publish the nineteenth affirmation of the Azurists next week. If you give me your address I'll send you a copy. We're going to give the Ovists h.e.l.l in a new magazine that we're bringing out. We find that affirmations are not enough."
"Will it be an ordinary magazine?" Sylvia asked. "Will you have stories, for instance?"
"We don't admit that stories exist. Life-rays exist. There will be life-rays in our magazine."
"I suppose they'll be pretty blue," said Sylvia.
"All life-rays are blue."
"I suppose you don't mind wet weather?" she suggested. "Because it must be rather difficult to know when it's going to clear up."
"There are degrees of blue," Mr. Morphew explained.
"I see. Life isn't just one vast, reckless blue. Well, thank you very much for being so patient with my old-fas.h.i.+oned optical ideas. I do hope you'll go to America and tell them that their leaves turn blue in autumn. Anyway, you'll feel quite at home crossing the ocean, though some people won't even admit that's blue."
Sylvia left the Azurist and rejoined Ronald.
"Well," he laughed. "You look quite frightened."
"My dear, I've just done a bolt from the blue. You are a beast to rag my enthusiasms. Isn't there anybody here whose serious view of himself I can indorse?"
"Well, there's Pattison, the Ovist. He maintains that everything resolves itself into ovals."
"I think I should almost prefer Azurism," said Sylvia. "What about the Blanchists?"
"Oh, you wouldn't like them! They maintain that there's no such thing as color; their pictures depend on the angle at which they're hung."