local color than as liquor. He had but one companion on the
bench, and that a new one, for the little market place was empty at
that hour, and he had lately, for the rest, been much alone. He was
not unhappy, for he resembled his great countryman, Walt Whitman, in
carrying a kind of universe with him like an open umbrella; but he was
not only alone, but lonely. For Ashe had gone abruptly up to London,
and since his return had been occupied obscurely with legal matters,
doubtless bearing on the murder. And Treherne had long since taken up
his position openly, at the great house, as the husband of the great
lady, and he and she were occupied with sweeping reforms on the estate.
The lady especially, being of the sort whose very dreams "drive at
practice," was landscape gardening as with the gestures of a giantess.
It was natural, therefore, that so sociable a spirit as Paynter should
fall into speech with the one other stranger who happened to be staying
at the inn, evidently a bird of passage like himself. This man, who was
smoking a pipe on the bench beside him, with his knapsack before him on
the table, was an artist come to sketch on that romantic coast; a tall
man in a velvet jacket, with a shock of tow-colored hair, a long fair
beard, but eyes of dark brown, the effect of which contrast reminded
Paynter vaguely, he hardly knew why, of a Russian. The stranger carried
his knapsack into many picturesque corners; he obtained permission to
set up his easel in that high garden where the late Squire had held his
al fresco banquets. But Paynter had never had an opportunity of judging
of the artist's work, nor did he find it easy to get the artist even to
talk of his art. Cyprian himself was always ready to talk of any art,
and he talked of it excellently, but with little response. He gave his
own reasons for preferring the Cubists to the cult of Picasso, but his
new friend seemed to have but a faint interest in either. He insinuated
that perhaps the Neo-Primitives were after all only thinning their line,
while the true Primitives were rather tightening it; but the stranger
seemed to receive the insinuation without any marked reaction of
feeling. When Paynter had even gone back as far into the past as the
Post-Impressionists to find a common ground, and not found it, other
memories began to creep back into his mind. He was just reflecting,
rather darkly, that after all the tale of the peacock trees needed a
mysterious stranger