Mrs. Sheerug stood, a burlesque figure of untidy optimism, smiling severely in the doorway. She was clad in her muddled plum-colored dressing-gown; her gray hair was disordered and sprayed about her neck; her tired blue eyes, peering above the silver-rimmed spectacles, took in the room with twinkling merriment. She came to the foot of the bed with the ponderous dignity of a Cochin-China hen, important with feathers.
“Yes, my dear sir,” she said, “you may not know it, but I, too, consider myself a genius. I believe all my family to be geniuses—that’s why I never interfere with the liberty of my children. Even my husband, he’s a genius in his fashion—a stifled fashion, I tell him; I let him go his own way in case it may develop. Genius must not be thwarted—so we all live our lives separately in this house and—and, as I dare say you know, run into debt. There’s a kind of righteousness about that—running into debt; the present won’t acknowledge our greatness, so we make it pay for our future. But, my dear sir, I caught you indulging in self-pity. It’s the worst of all crimes. You men are always getting sorry for yourselves. Look at me—I’ve not succeeded. I ask you, do I show it?”
“If to be always smiling—-” Mr. Gurney broke off.
“This is really a remarkable meeting, Mrs. Sheerug—three geniuses in one room! Oh, yes, if Teddy’s not told you yet, he will soon: he’s quite certain that he’s going to be a very big man. Aren’t you, Teddy?”
The little boy wriggled his toes beneath the counterpane and watched them working. “I have ideas,” he said seriously.
“What did I tell you?”
Mrs. Sheerug signified by the closing of her eyes that she considered it injudicious to discuss little boys in their presence. When she opened them again it was to discuss herself.
“As between artists, Mr. Gurney, I want your frank opinion. If you don’t like my work, say so.”
“Your work!” He looked about. “Oh, this!” His eyes fell on the unfinished woolwork picture on the easel. “It has—it has a kind of power,” he said—“the power of amateurishness and oddity. You’re familiar with the impelling crudity of Blake’s sketches? Well, it’s something like that What I mean is this: your colors are all impossible, your drawing’s all wrong and there’s no attempt at accuracy. And yet—— The result is something so different from ordinary conceptions that it’s almost impressive.”
Mrs. Sheerug, not sure whether she was being praised or blamed, shook her head with dignity. “You’re trying to let me down lightly, Mr. Gurney.”