"Christian!" said the man at the other side. "Don't go in for that bastard incongruity called Christian art, for goodness' sake: and don't put questions of that sort in Scarfield's rooms. He's what they call an eclectic, don't you know—mixes up styles and things in a way that makes you shudder. A priceless Tanagra there and a heavy-jowelled Botticelli over it—saints and angels, what a mixture! I could show you——"
"A lot of sweepings of the excavations," said John, in the boy's ear.
"Oh, will you, please?" said the lad. He was eager to follow wherever the learned might lead.
"Influence is the great thing," said another, whose name was Sutton. "Give us only a little time and we'll move the world. But nobody half owns the power of it yet. I was speaking to some of those fellows by the river the other day. I told them they didn't see their power. Why, they've got the lever in their hands to upset everything, if they choose! Talk of a House of Lords! I told them they're all hereditary legislators by right of their knotty fists and the sweat of their brows!"
"Let 'em wath it off first," said Scarfield, solemnly, from his chair.
"Why should they wash it off? We must meet the people on their own ground. Would you let a little squeamish prejudice or nicety come between you and the masters of the world?"
"I take a little exception to that," said another. "Why shouldn't they all learn to be gentlemen in their habits? Oxford fellows scattered here and there in every workshop and trades union, and so forth—that is what would do good. I said so to Bristowe up at the People's Palace, as they call it. I said, 'Get a few Oxford men to sit in the reading-room and mix with those fellows.' You would see a transformation in no time."
"We took a lot to Florence, don't you remember, Bailey?" said a third young man; "all excited with what they were going to see: but they were rather puzzled, though, when we got there. We had to talk ourselves hoarse explaining—and I doubt if they were much the wiser."
"Don't say so, Harry! Lady Betty had them out to her villa to tea, and how they did stare and gaze at the landscape—don't you remember?—and then at her, in her shimmering silks, like a lady of King Arthur's court—her face full of expression, and that reminiscent expressiveness in particular, which is the special portion of——"
"Woman is the great mystery after all," said a thoughtful young man.