The Light That Failed

‘I don’t think it affects Dick much. You might as well call a young wolf a lion and expect him to take the compliment in exchange for a shin-bone.

Dick’s soul is in the bank. He’s working for cash.’

‘Now he has thrown up war work, I suppose he doesn’t see that the obligations of the service are just the same, only the proprietors are changed.’

‘How should he know? He thinks he is his own master.’

‘Does he? I could undeceive him for his good, if there’s any virtue in print. He wants the whiplash.’

‘Lay it on with science, then. I’d flay him myself, but I like him too much.’

‘I’ve no scruples. He had the audacity to try to cut me out with a woman at Cairo once. I forgot that, but I remember now.’

‘Did he cut you out?’

‘You’ll see when I have dealt with him. But, after all, what’s the good? Leave him alone and he’ll come home, if he has any stuff in him, dragging or wagging his tail behind him. There’s more in a week of life than in a lively weekly. None the less I’ll slate him. I’ll slate him ponderously in the Cataclysm.’

‘Good luck to you; but I fancy nothing short of a crowbar would make Dick wince. His soul seems to have been fired before we came across him.

He’s intensely suspicious and utterly lawless.’

‘Matter of temper,’ said the Nilghai. ‘It’s the same with horses. Some you wallop and they work, some you wallop and they jib, and some you wallop and they go out for a walk with their hands in their pockets.’

‘That’s exactly what Dick has done,’ said Torpenhow. ‘Wait till he comes back. In the meantime, you can begin your slating here. I’ll show you some of his last and worst work in his studio.’

Dick had instinctively sought running water for a comfort to his mood of mind. He was leaning over the Embankment wall, watching the rush of the Thames through the arches of Westminster Bridge. He began by thinking of Torpenhow’s advice, but, as of custom, lost himself in the study of the faces flocking past. Some had death written on their features, and Dick marvelled that they could laugh. Others, clumsy and coarse-built for the most part, were alight with love; others were merely drawn and lined with work; but there was something, Dick knew, to be made out of them all. The poor at least should suffer that he might learn, and the rich should pay for the output of his learning. Thus his credit in the world and his cash balance at the bank would be increased. So much the better for him. He had suffered. Now he would take toll of the ills of others.

The fog was driven apart for a moment, and the sun shone, a blood-red wafer, on the water. Dick watched the spot till he heard the voice of the tide between the piers die down like the wash of the sea at low tide. A girl hard pressed by her lover shouted shamelessly, ‘Ah, get away, you beast!’ and a shift of the same wind that had opened the fog drove across Dick’s face the black smoke of a river-steamer at her berth below the wall. He was blinded for the moment, then spun round and found himself face to face with – Maisie.

There was no mistaking. The years had turned the child to a woman, but they had not altered the dark-gray eyes, the thin scarlet lips, or the firmly modelled mouth and chin; and, that all should be as it was of old, she wore a closely fitting gray dress.

Since the human soul is finite and not in the least under its own command, Dick, advancing, said ‘Halloo!’ after the manner of schoolboys, and Maisie answered, ‘Oh, Dick, is that you?’ Then, against his will, and before the brain newly released from considerations of the cash balance had time to dictate to the nerves, every pulse of Dick’s body throbbed furiously and his palate dried in his mouth. The fog shut down again, and Maisie’s face was pearl-white through it. No word was spoken, but Dick fell into step at her side, and the two paced the Embankment together, keeping the step as perfectly as in their afternoon excursions to the mud-flats. Then Dick, a little hoarsely – ‘What has happened to Amomma?’

‘He died, Dick. Not cartridges; over-eating. He was always greedy. Isn’t it funny?’

‘Yes. No. Do you mean Amomma?’

‘Ye – es. No. This. Where have you come from?’

‘Over there,’ He pointed eastward through the fog. ‘And you?’

‘Oh, I’m in the north, – the black north, across all the Park. I am very busy.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I paint a great deal. That’s all I have to do.’

‘Why, what’s happened? You had three hundred a year.’

‘I have that still. I am painting; that’s all.’

‘Are you alone, then?’

‘There’s a girl living with me. Don’t walk so fast, Dick; you’re out of step.’

‘Then you noticed it too?’

‘Of course I did. You’re always out of step.’

‘So I am. I’m sorry. You went on with the painting?’

‘Of course. I said I should. I was at the Slade, then at Merton’s inSt. John’s Wood, the big studio, then I pepper-potted, – I mean I went to the National, – and now I’m working under Kami.’

‘But Kami is in Paris surely?’

‘No; he has his teaching studio in Vitry-sur-Marne. I work with him in the summer, and I live in London in the winter. I’m a householder.’

‘Do you sell much?’

‘Now and again, but not often. There is my ‘bus. I must take it or lose half an hour. Good-bye, Dick.’

‘Good-bye, Maisie. Won’t you tell me where you live? I must see you again; and perhaps I could help you. I – I paint a little myself.’

‘I may be in the Park to-morrow, if there is no working light. I walk from the Marble Arch down and back again; that is my little excursion. But of course I shall see you again.’ She stepped into the omnibus and was swallowed up by the fog.

‘Well – I – am – damned!’ exclaimed Dick, and returned to the chambers.

Torpenhow and the Nilghai found him sitting on the steps to the studio door, repeating the phrase with an awful gravity.

‘You’ll be more damned when I’m done with you,’ said the Nilghai, upheaving his bulk from behind Torpenhow’s shoulder and waving a sheaf of half-dry manuscript. ‘Dick, it is of common report that you are suffering from swelled head.’

‘Halloo, Nilghai. Back again? How are the Balkans and all the little Balkans? One side of your face is out of drawing, as usual.’

‘Never mind that. I am commissioned to smite you in print. Torpenhow refuses from false delicacy. I’ve been overhauling the pot-boilers in your studio. They are simply disgraceful.’

‘Oho! that’s it, is it? If you think you can slate me, you’re wrong. You can only describe, and you need as much room to turn in, on paper, as a P. and O. cargo-boat. But continue, and be swift. I’m going to bed.’

‘H’m! h’m! h’m! The first part only deals with your pictures. Here’s the peroration: “For work done without conviction, for power wasted on trivialities, for labour expended with levity for the deliberate purpose of winning the easy applause of a fashion-driven public – ” ‘That’s “His Last Shot,” second edition. Go on.’

‘ – “public, there remains but one end, – the oblivion that is preceded by toleration and cenotaphed with contempt. From that fate Mr. Heldar has yet to prove himself out of danger.”’

‘Wow – wow – wow – wow – wow!’ said Dick, profanely. ‘It’s a clumsy ending and vile journalese, but it’s quite true. And yet,’ – he sprang to his feet and snatched at the manuscript, – ‘you scarred, deboshed, battered old gladiator! you’re sent out when a war begins, to minister to the blind, brutal, British public’s bestial thirst for blood. They have no arenas now, but they must have special correspondents. You’re a fat gladiator who comes up through a trap-door and talks of what he’s seen. You stand on precisely the same level as an energetic bishop, an affable actress, a devastating cyclone, or – mine own sweet self. And you presume to lecture me about my work! Nilghai, if it were worth while I’d caricature you in four papers!’

The Nilghai winced. He had not thought of this.

‘As it is, I shall take this stuff and tear it small – so!’ The manuscript fluttered in slips down the dark well of the staircase. ‘Go home, Nilghai,’ said Dick; ‘go home to your lonely little bed, and leave me in peace. I am about to turn in till to-morrow.’

‘Why, it isn’t seven yet!’ said Torpenhow, with amazement.

‘It shall be two in the morning, if I choose,’ said Dick, backing to the studio door. ‘I go to grapple with a serious crisis, and I shan’t want any dinner.’

The door shut and was locked.

‘What can you do with a man like that?’ said the Nilghai.

‘Leave him alone. He’s as mad as a hatter.’

At eleven there was a kicking on the studio door. ‘Is the Nilghai with you still?’ said a voice from within. ‘Then tell him he might have condensed the whole of his lumbering nonsense into an epigram: “Only the free are bond, and only the bond are free.” Tell him he’s an idiot, Torp, and tell him I’m another.’

‘All right. Come out and have supper. You’re smoking on an empty stomach.’

There was no answer.

CHAPTER V

     ‘I have a thousand men,’ said he,     ‘To wait upon my will,     And towers nine upon the Tyne,     And three upon the Till.’     ‘And what care I for you men,’ said she,     ‘Or towers from Tyne to Till,     Sith you must go with me,’ she said,     ‘To wait upon my will?’Sir Hoggie and the Fairies

NEXT morning Torpenhow found Dick sunk in deepest repose of tobacco.

‘Well, madman, how d’you feel?’

‘I don’t know. I’m trying to find out.’

‘You had much better do some work.’

‘Maybe; but I’m in no hurry. I’ve made a discovery. Torp, there’s too much Ego in my Cosmos.’

‘Not really! Is this revelation due to my lectures, or the Nilghai’s?’

‘It came to me suddenly, all on my own account. Much too much Ego; and now I’m going to work.’

He turned over a few half-finished sketches, drummed on a new canvas, cleaned three brushes, set Binkie to bite the toes of the lay figure, rattled through his collection of arms and accoutrements, and then went out abruptly, declaring that he had done enough for the day.

‘This is positively indecent,’ said Torpenhow, ‘and the first time that Dick has ever broken up a light morning. Perhaps he has found out that he has a soul, or an artistic temperament, or something equally valuable.

That comes of leaving him alone for a month. Perhaps he has been going out of evenings. I must look to this.’ He rang for the bald-headed old housekeeper, whom nothing could astonish or annoy.

‘Beeton, did Mr. Heldar dine out at all while I was out of town?’

‘Never laid ‘is dress-clothes out once, sir, all the time. Mostly ‘e dined in; but ‘e brought some most remarkable young gentlemen up ‘ere after theatres once or twice. Remarkable fancy they was. You gentlemen on the top floor does very much as you likes, but it do seem to me, sir, droppin’ a walkin’-stick down five flights o’ stairs an’ then goin’ down four abreast to pick it up again at half-past two in the mornin’, singin,’ “Bring back the whiskey, Willie darlin,’” – not once or twice, but scores o’ times, – isn’t charity to the other tenants. What I say is, “Do as you would be done by.” That’s my motto.’

‘Of course! of course! I’m afraid the top floor isn’t the quietest in the house.’

‘I make no complaints, sir. I have spoke to Mr. Heldar friendly, an’ he laughed, an’ did me a picture of the missis that is as good as a coloured print. It ‘asn’t the high shine of a photograph, but what I say is, “Never look a gift-horse in the mouth.” Mr. Heldar’s dress-clothes ‘aven’t been on him for weeks.’

‘Then it’s all right,’ said Torpenhow to himself. ‘Orgies are healthy, and Dick has a head of his own, but when it comes to women making eyes I’m not so certain, – Binkie, never you be a man, little dorglums. They’re contrary brutes, and they do things without any reason.’

Dick had turned northward across the Park, but he was walking in the spirit on the mud-flats with Maisie. He laughed aloud as he remembered the day when he had decked Amomma’s horns with the ham-frills, and Maisie, white with rage, had cuffed him. How long those four years seemed in review, and how closely Maisie was connected with every hour of them! Storm across the sea, and Maisie in a gray dress on the beach, sweeping her drenched hair out of her eyes and laughing at the homeward race of the fishing-smacks; hot sunshine on the mud-flats, and Maisie sniffing scornfully, with her chin in the air; Maisie flying before the wind that threshed the foreshore and drove the sand like small shot about her ears; Maisie, very composed and independent, telling lies to Mrs. Jennett while Dick supported her with coarser perjuries; Maisie picking her way delicately from stone to stone, a pistol in her hand and her teeth firm-set; and Maisie in a gray dress sitting on the grass between the mouth of a cannon and a nodding yellow sea-poppy. The pictures passed before him one by one, and the last stayed the longest.

Dick was perfectly happy with a quiet peace that was as new to his mind as it was foreign to his experiences. It never occurred to him that there might be other calls upon his time than loafing across the Park in the forenoon.

‘There’s a good working light now,’ he said, watching his shadow placidly. ‘Some poor devil ought to be grateful for this. And there’s Maisie.’

She was walking towards him from the Marble Arch, and he saw that no mannerism of her gait had been changed. It was good to find her still Maisie, and, so to speak, his next-door neighbour. No greeting passed between them, because there had been none in the old days.

‘What are you doing out of your studio at this hour?’ said Dick, as one who was entitled to ask.

‘Idling. Just idling. I got angry with a chin and scraped it out. Then I left it in a little heap of paint-chips and came away.’

‘I know what palette-knifing means. What was the piccy?’

‘A fancy head that wouldn’t come right, – horrid thing!’

‘I don’t like working over scraped paint when I’m doing flesh. The grain comes up woolly as the paint dries.’

‘Not if you scrape properly.’ Maisie waved her hand to illustrate her methods. There was a dab of paint on the white cuff. Dick laughed.

‘You’re as untidy as ever.’

‘That comes well from you. Look at your own cuff.’

‘By Jove, yes! It’s worse than yours. I don’t think we’ve much altered in anything. Let’s see, though.’ He looked at Maisie critically. The pale blue haze of an autumn day crept between the tree-trunks of the Park and made a background for the gray dress, the black velvet toque above the black hair, and the resolute profile.

‘No, there’s nothing changed. How good it is! D’you remember when I fastened your hair into the snap of a hand-bag?’

Maisie nodded, with a twinkle in her eyes, and turned her full face to Dick.

‘Wait a minute,’ said he. ‘That mouth is down at the corners a little.

Who’s been worrying you, Maisie?’

‘No one but myself. I never seem to get on with my work, and yet I try hard enough, and Kami says – ’

‘“Continuez, mesdemoiselles. Continuez toujours, mes enfants.” Kami is depressing. I beg your pardon.’

‘Yes, that’s what he says. He told me last summer that I was doing better and he’d let me exhibit this year.’

‘Not in this place, surely?’

‘Of course not. The Salon.’

‘You fly high.’

‘I’ve been beating my wings long enough. Where do you exhibit, Dick?’

‘I don’t exhibit. I sell.’

‘What is your line, then?’

‘Haven’t you heard?’ Dick’s eyes opened. Was this thing possible? He cast about for some means of conviction. They were not far from the Marble Arch. ‘Come up Oxford Street a little and I’ll show you.’

A small knot of people stood round a print-shop that Dick knew well.

‘Some reproduction of my work inside,’ he said, with suppressed triumph. Never before had success tasted so sweet upon the tongue. ‘You see the sort of things I paint. D’you like it?’

Maisie looked at the wild whirling rush of a field-battery going into action under fire. Two artillery-men stood behind her in the crowd.

‘They’ve chucked the off lead-’orse’ said one to the other. ‘’E’s tore up awful, but they’re makin’ good time with the others. That lead-driver drives better nor you, Tom. See ‘ow cunnin’ ‘e’s nursin’ ‘is ‘orse.’

‘Number Three’ll be off the limber, next jolt,’ was the answer.

‘No, ‘e won’t. See ‘ow ‘is foot’s braced against the iron? ‘E’s all right.’

Dick watched Maisie’s face and swelled with joy – fine, rank, vulgar triumph. She was more interested in the little crowd than in the picture.

That was something that she could understand.

‘And I wanted it so! Oh, I did want it so!’ she said at last, under her breath.

‘Me, – all me!’ said Dick, placidly. ‘Look at their faces. It hits ‘em. They don’t know what makes their eyes and mouths open; but I know. And I know my work’s right.’

‘Yes. I see. Oh, what a thing to have come to one!’

‘Come to one, indeed! I had to go out and look for it. What do you think?’

‘I call it success. Tell me how you got it.’

They returned to the Park, and Dick delivered himself of the saga of his own doings, with all the arrogance of a young man speaking to a woman.

From the beginning he told the tale, the I – I – I’s flashing through the records as telegraph-poles fly past the traveller. Maisie listened and nodded her head. The histories of strife and privation did not move her a hair’s-breadth. At the end of each canto he would conclude, ‘And that gave me some notion of handling colour,’ or light, or whatever it might be that he had set out to pursue and understand. He led her breathless across half the world, speaking as he had never spoken in his life before.

And in the flood-tide of his exaltation there came upon him a great desire to pick up this maiden who nodded her head and said, ‘I understand. Go on,’ – to pick her up and carry her away with him, because she was Maisie, and because she understood, and because she was his right, and a woman to be desired above all women.

Then he checked himself abruptly. ‘And so I took all I wanted,’ he said, ‘and I had to fight for it. Now you tell.’

Maisie’s tale was almost as gray as her dress. It covered years of patient toil backed by savage pride that would not be broken thought dealers laughed, and fogs delayed work, and Kami was unkind and even sarcastic, and girls in other studios were painfully polite. It had a few bright spots, in pictures accepted at provincial exhibitions, but it wound up with the oft repeated wail, ‘And so you see, Dick, I had no success, though I worked so hard.’

Then pity filled Dick. Even thus had Maisie spoken when she could not hit the breakwater, half an hour before she had kissed him. And that had happened yesterday.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you something, if you’ll believe it.’ The words were shaping themselves of their own accord. ‘The whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, isn’t worth one big yellow sea-poppy below Fort Keeling.’

Maisie flushed a little. ‘It’s all very well for you to talk, but you’ve had the success and I haven’t.’

‘Let me talk, then. I know you’ll understand. Maisie, dear, it sounds a bit absurd, but those ten years never existed, and I’ve come back again. It really is just the same. Can’t you see? You’re alone now and I’m alone.

What’s the use of worrying? Come to me instead, darling.’

Maisie poked the gravel with her parasol. They were sitting on a bench.

‘I understand,’ she said slowly. ‘But I’ve got my work to do, and I must do it.’

‘Do it with me, then, dear. I won’t interrupt.’

‘No, I couldn’t. It’s my work, – mine, – mine, – mine! I’ve been alone all my life in myself, and I’m not going to belong to anybody except myself. I remember things as well as you do, but that doesn’t count. We were babies then, and we didn’t know what was before us. Dick, don’t be selfish. I think I see my way to a little success next year. Don’t take it away from me.’

‘I beg your pardon, darling. It’s my fault for speaking stupidly. I can’t expect you to throw up all your life just because I’m back. I’ll go to my own place and wait a little.’

‘But, Dick, I don’t want you to – go – out of – my life, now you’ve just come back.’

‘I’m at your orders; forgive me.’ Dick devoured the troubled little face with his eyes. There was triumph in them, because he could not conceive that Maisie should refuse sooner or later to love him, since he loved her.

‘It’s wrong of me,’ said Maisie, more slowly than before; ‘it’s wrong and selfish; but, oh, I’ve been so lonely! No, you misunderstand. Now I’ve seen you again, – it’s absurd, but I want to keep you in my life.’

‘Naturally. We belong.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.