“I don’t talk about it,” said Cornpepper, after ten minutes of general tragic anecdotage, from which he gathered there was quite a rush into black and white—a subject concerning which both the journalists seemed fully posted. “I just go on working; I don’t care whether I sell or not. The dealers I hate and despise; they have no measure of Art but what it’ll fetch. I will have nothing to do with them. The world will come to me sooner or later. You never hear me grumbling about the market.”
“The more I hear of the troubles of you chaps,” said Rapper, “the more surprised I am that I, with nothing like your talents, should be the one to get the commissions, as if I had any need of the shiners. I’m going to Birmingham again next week to do a municipal duffer in his robes. Even when I studied art in Brussels—”
“The real reason we’re coming to black and white,” broke in the spectacled Scotchman, “is that we’re all born color-blind. The dulness of our surroundings, the long centuries of homes without decorations, with unbeautiful furniture and crockery, have told, and now—”
There was a roar of laughter. “Stow that, Mack!” cried Rapper.
“You can’t keep Mack off shop,” cried Cornpepper. “I’m sick of this talk about principles. Art, life, nature, realism, the decorative! The decorative indeed! For what is Art? It isn’t studio-pictures, it’s—”
“It’s half-past ten,” groaned Jimmy, trying to shake off the detaining hands of his friends. “Where’s Sandstone? Why hasn’t he turned up? He goes my way.”
“I don’t know,” said Cornpepper. “He’s been quarrelling with the man who published his lithographs. What a quarrelsome beggar he is! I believe he’s quarrelled with Clinch now. By-the-way, where is Clinch? He said he was coming.”
Everybody supposed simultaneously that Clinch was drunk, and their light-hearted acceptance of the idea jarred upon Matt, who again became conscious of a curious aloofness from the company, from which he seemed as cut off on the moral side as from the despised bourgeoisie on the artistic side. What a strange isolation! The thought made him feel lonely, and then—by reaction—strong.
Even Rocks laughed. “I prefer Philip drunk to Philip sober,” he said. “It’s the only time he uses drawing-room English.”
“How can I sup with my wife at the Monico?” persisted Jimmy, plaintively. “The beastly place closes at eleven on Sundays.”