That is all. As Murphy shouted out and fell, Stapley went, quick and silent like a panther, up the stairs—quick and silent, with the cunning of a wild animal, just as Barbara, a few weeks later, stole up after him. He softly shut his oak—the oak is always discreet—and sat shivering, almost breathless, in the dark, listening to the tramp of feet and the anxious buzz of tongues underneath.
When everything was still he stole out and went to Dulwich.
Augusta had a blue gown—it was the Boat Race day—and Stapley was a Cambridge man.
She wore blue constantly afterward. This was one of his plaintive injuries when he babbled out everything at the trial. Blue at the theater that night when his face betrayed him to the vigilant eye of Barbara. Blue when she came to the court to give evidence against him. I wonder if she wears blue when she goes to see him at Broadmoor. Some women would do that in the hope of a cure; though, as you say, they probably don’t allow visits at Broadmoor, and a cure wouldn’t be of any real help in Stapley’s case.
[HOPKINS.]
ORCHARD was artistic—and talked about it. How tiresome such people are! He split the world into two factions—the artist and the rank, impossible Philistine. Religious bigots talk in the same way—of professing Christians and the unregenerate. I knew a dear old lady once who thought that we had a perfect right to stone some Mohammedan missionaries who came to England.
In the middle of a country walk Orchard would stop, with a deep gulp of admiration, and ask you to admire the view. He raved of autumn tints, apple blossoms, bare boughs. He pretended to like a fog. He painted landscapes—or seascapes, according to your imagination—on the panels of his walls; he stenciled his ceilings, and produced an idealized portrait of his laundress.
He had all the delightful courage and egotism of the amateur. He boasted that he had only once been to the Academy—that temple of mediocrity. He told you coolly that there was only one English artist of talent—and he was Whiffin. “Never heard of Whiffin! Who is Whiffin? You astonish me. My dear fellow,” he would say pityingly, “there is only Whiffin.”
The others—men whom the ignorant regard as leading—he disposed of glibly. This one was color-blind; he thought that was common knowledge. That one employed a ghost; the fellow could hardly hold a brush himself. Another only painted flesh tints; you can’t have a picture all flesh. “My dear fellow, I assure you there is no one but Whiffin. He is the coming man. I’m surprised you don’t know his work. Galleries! A man like Whiffin wouldn’t exhibit at the galleries.”