In her eagerness Olive Ashley had darted past him into the library, without waiting for the assistance of the librarian, who continued to stare into the depths of the distance with blind but shining eyes. She lugged down a lumbering volume from one of the lower shelves and laid it open at a blazoned page on which the letters seemed to have come to life and to be crawling about like gilded dragons. In one corner was the image of the many-headed monster of the Apocalypse; and even to the careless eye of her companion, its tint glowed across the ages with a red that had the purity of flame.
“Do you mean,” he asked, “that I am to go hunting that particular animal through the streets of London?”
“I mean you are to go hunting that particular paint,” she said, “and as you say you can get anything in the streets of London, you oughtn’t to hunt far, I suppose. There was a man called Hendry, in the Haymarket, who used to sell it when I was a child; but I can’t get that sort of fine fourteenth century red at any artist’s colourmen’s round here.”
“Well, I’ve been painting the town red myself in a quiet way, for the last few hours,” said Murrel modestly, “but I suppose it wasn’t a fine fourteenth century red. It was only a twentieth century red, like Braintree’s tie. I told him at the time that the tie might begin to ignite the town.”
“Braintree!” said Olive rather sharply. “Was Mr. Braintree with you when you–when you painted it red?”
“I can’t say he was what you call an uproariously festive boon companion,” said Murrel apologetically. “These red revolutionists seem to have had awfully little practice in looking on the wine when it is red. By the way, couldn’t I go hunting for that, don’t you think? Suppose I brought you back a dozen of port, a few dozens of burgundy, some of claret, flasks of Chianti, casks of curious Spanish wines, and so on–don’t you think you could get the right colour? Mixing your drinks, like mixing your paints, might perhaps–”
“But what was Mr. Braintree doing there?” asked Olive with some severity.
“He was being educated,” replied Murrel virtuously. “He was taking a course; following out that course of instruction which your own educational enthusiasm marked out for him. You said he wanted to be introduced to a larger world and hear discussions about things he had never heard of. I’m sure that discussion we had at the Pig and Whistle was one that he’d never heard before in his life.”
“You know perfectly well,” she retorted a little crossly, “that I never wanted him to go to those horrid places. I meant him to have real discussions with intellectual people about important things.”
“My dear girl,” replied Murrel quietly, “don’t you see yet what that means? Braintree can knock all your heads off at that sort of discussion. He’s got ten times more idea of why he thinks what he does think than most of what you call cultured people. He’s read quite as much and remembers much more of what he’s read. And he has got some tests of whether it’s true or not, which he can instantly apply. The tests may be quite wrong, but he can apply them and produce the result at once. Don’t you ever feel how vague we all are?”