Being a man of naturally retiring and modest disposition, Mr. Watkins determined to make this visit incog., and after due consideration of the conditions of his enterprise, he selected the role of a landscape artist and the unassuming surname of Smith. He preceded his assistant, who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his stay at Hammerpond. Now the village of Hammerpond is perhaps one of the prettiest little corners in Sussex; many thatched houses still survive, the flint-built church with its tall spire nestling under the down is one of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beech-woods and bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer call “bits.” So that Mr. Watkins, on his arrival with two virgin canvases, a brand-new easel, a paintbox, portmanteau, an ingenious little ladder made in sections (after the pattern of the late lamented master Charles Peace), crowbar, and wire coils, found himself welcomed with effusion and some curiosity by half-a-dozen other brethren of the brush. It rendered the disguise he had chosen unexpectedly plausible, but it inflicted upon him a considerable amount of aesthetic conversation for which he was very imperfectly prepared.
“Have you exhibited very much?” said Young Porson in the bar-parlour of the “Coach and Horses,” where Mr. Watkins was skilfully accumulating local information on the night of his arrival.
“Very little,” said Mr. Watkins, “just a snack here and there.”
“Academy?”
“In course. And the Crystal Palace.”
“Did they hang you well?” said Porson.
“Don’t rot,” said Mr. Watkins; “I don’t like it.”
“I mean did they put you in a good place?”
“Whadyer mean?” said Mr. Watkins suspiciously. “One ’ud think you were trying to make out I’d been put away.”
Porson had been brought up by aunts, and was a gentlemanly young man even for an artist; he did not know what being “put away” meant, but he thought it best to explain that he intended nothing of the sort. As the question of hanging seemed a sore point with Mr. Watkins, he tried to divert the conversation a little.
“Do you do figure-work at all?”
“No, never had a head for figures,” said Mr. Watkins, “my miss—Mrs. Smith, I mean, does all that.”
“She paints too!” said Porson. “That’s rather jolly.”
“Very,” said Mr. Watkins, though he really did not think so, and, feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp, added, “I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight.”
“Really!” said Porson. “That’s rather a novel idea.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Watkins, “I thought it rather a good notion when it occurred to me. I expect to begin tomorrow night.”
“What! You don’t mean to paint in the open, by night?”
“I do, though.”
“But how will you see your canvas?”
“Have a bloomin’ cop’s—” began Mr. Watkins, rising too quickly to the question, and then realising this, bawled to Miss Durgan for another glass of beer. “I’m goin’ to have a thing called a dark lantern,” he said to Porson.
“But it’s about new moon now,” objected Porson. “There won’t be any moon.”
“There’ll be the house,” said Watkins, “at any rate. I’m goin’, you see, to paint the house first and the moon afterwards.”
“Oh!” said Porson, too staggered to continue the conversation.
“They doo say,” said old Durgan, the landlord, who had maintained a respectful silence during the technical conversation, “as there’s no less than three p’licemen from ’Azelworth on dewty every night in the house—‘count of this Lady Aveling ’n her jewellery. One’m won fower-and-six last night, off second footman—tossin’.”
Towards sunset next day Mr. Watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant pathway through the beech-woods to Hammerpond Park, and pitched his apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. Here he was observed by Mr. Raphael Sant, who was returning across the park from a study of the chalk-pits. His curiosity having been fired by Porson’s account of the new arrival, he turned aside with the idea of discussing nocturnal art.
Mr. Watkins was apparently unaware of his approach. A friendly conversation with Lady Hammerpond’s butler had just terminated, and that individual, surrounded by the three pet dogs which it was his duty to take for an airing after dinner had been served, was receding in the distance. Mr. Watkins was mixing colour with an air of great industry. Sant, approaching more nearly, was surprised to see the colour in question was as harsh and brilliant an emerald green as it is possible to imagine. Having cultivated an extreme sensibility to colour from his earliest years, he drew the air in sharply between his teeth at the very first glimpse of this brew. Mr. Watkins turned round. He looked annoyed.
“What on earth are you going to do with that beastly green?” said Sant.
Mr. Watkins realised that his zeal to appear busy in the eyes of the butler had evidently betrayed him into some technical error. He looked at Sant and hesitated.
“Pardon my rudeness,” said Sant; “but really, that green is altogether too amazing. It came as a shock. What do you mean to do with it?”
Mr. Watkins was collecting his resources. Nothing could save the situation but decision. “If you come here interrupting my work,” he said, “I’m a-goin’ to paint your face with it.”
Sant retired, for he was a humourist and a peaceful man. Going down the hill he met Porson and Wainwright. “Either that man is a genius or he is a dangerous lunatic,” said he. “Just go up and look at his green.” And he continued his way, his countenance brightened by a pleasant anticipation of a cheerful affray round an easel in the gloaming, and the shedding of much green paint.
But to Porson and Wainwright Mr. Watkins was less aggressive, and explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture. It was, he admitted in response to a remark, an absolutely new
