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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Light that Failed, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Light that Failed
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+Release Date: October, 2001 [eBook #2876]
+[Most recently updated: February 1, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Reed, and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIGHT THAT FAILED ***
+
+[Illustration] 
+
+
+
+
+The Light that Failed
+
+by Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+Contents
+
+ DEDICATION
+ PREFACE
+ CHAPTER I
+ CHAPTER II
+ CHAPTER III
+ CHAPTER IV
+ CHAPTER V
+ CHAPTER VI
+ CHAPTER VII
+ CHAPTER VIII
+ CHAPTER IX
+ CHAPTER X
+ CHAPTER XI
+ CHAPTER XII
+ CHAPTER XIII
+ CHAPTER XIV
+ CHAPTER XV
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+If I were hanged on the highest hill,
+    _Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!_
+I know whose love would follow me still,
+    _Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!_
+
+If I were drowned  in the deepest sea,
+    _Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!_
+I know whose tears would come down to me,
+    _Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!_
+
+If I were damned of body and soul,
+I know whose prayers would make me whole,
+    _Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!_
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This is the story of _The Light that Failed_ as it was originally
+conceived by the writer.
+
+RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+So we settled it all when the storm was done
+    As comf’y as comf’y could be;
+And I was to wait in the barn, my dears,
+    Because I was only three;
+And Teddy would run to the rainbow’s foot,
+    Because he was five and a man;
+And that’s how it all began, my dears,
+    And that’s how it all began.
+
+—_Big Barn Stories_.
+
+
+“What do you think she’d do if she caught us? We oughtn’t to have it,
+you know,” said Maisie.
+
+“Beat me, and lock you up in your bedroom,” Dick answered, without
+hesitation. “Have you got the cartridges?”
+
+“Yes; they’re in my pocket, but they are joggling horribly. Do pin-fire
+cartridges go off of their own accord?”
+
+“Don’t know. Take the revolver, if you are afraid, and let me carry
+them.”
+
+“I’m _not_ afraid.” Maisie strode forward swiftly, a hand in her pocket
+and her chin in the air. Dick followed with a small pin-fire revolver.
+
+The children had discovered that their lives would be unendurable
+without pistol-practice. After much forethought and self-denial, Dick
+had saved seven shillings and sixpence, the price of a badly
+constructed Belgian revolver. Maisie could only contribute half a crown
+to the syndicate for the purchase of a hundred cartridges. “You can
+save better than I can, Dick,” she explained; “I like nice things to
+eat, and it doesn’t matter to you. Besides, boys ought to do these
+things.”
+
+Dick grumbled a little at the arrangement, but went out and made the
+purchase, which the children were then on their way to test. Revolvers
+did not lie in the scheme of their daily life as decreed for them by
+the guardian who was incorrectly supposed to stand in the place of a
+mother to these two orphans. Dick had been under her care for six
+years, during which time she had made her profit of the allowances
+supposed to be expended on his clothes, and, partly through
+thoughtlessness, partly through a natural desire to pain,—she was a
+widow of some years anxious to marry again,—had made his days
+burdensome on his young shoulders.
+
+Where he had looked for love, she gave him first aversion and then
+hate.
+
+Where he growing older had sought a little sympathy, she gave him
+ridicule. The many hours that she could spare from the ordering of her
+small house she devoted to what she called the home-training of Dick
+Heldar. Her religion, manufactured in the main by her own intelligence
+and a keen study of the Scriptures, was an aid to her in this matter.
+At such times as she herself was not personally displeased with Dick,
+she left him to understand that he had a heavy account to settle with
+his Creator; wherefore Dick learned to loathe his God as intensely as
+he loathed Mrs. Jennett; and this is not a wholesome frame of mind for
+the young. Since she chose to regard him as a hopeless liar, when dread
+of pain drove him to his first untruth, he naturally developed into a
+liar, but an economical and self-contained one, never throwing away the
+least unnecessary fib, and never hesitating at the blackest, were it
+only plausible, that might make his life a little easier. The treatment
+taught him at least the power of living alone,—a power that was of
+service to him when he went to a public school and the boys laughed at
+his clothes, which were poor in quality and much mended. In the
+holidays he returned to the teachings of Mrs. Jennett, and, that the
+chain of discipline might not be weakened by association with the
+world, was generally beaten, on one account or another, before he had
+been twelve hours under her roof.
+
+The autumn of one year brought him a companion in bondage, a
+long-haired, gray-eyed little atom, as self-contained as himself, who
+moved about the house silently and for the first few weeks spoke only
+to the goat that was her chiefest friend on earth and lived in the
+back-garden. Mrs. Jennett objected to the goat on the grounds that he
+was un-Christian,—which he certainly was. “Then,” said the atom,
+choosing her words very deliberately, “I shall write to my
+lawyer-peoples and tell them that you are a very bad woman. Amomma is
+mine, mine, mine!” Mrs. Jennett made a movement to the hall, where
+certain umbrellas and canes stood in a rack. The atom understood as
+clearly as Dick what this meant. “I have been beaten before,” she said,
+still in the same passionless voice; “I have been beaten worse than you
+can ever beat me. If you beat me I shall write to my lawyer-peoples and
+tell them that you do not give me enough to eat. I am not afraid of
+you.” Mrs. Jennett did not go into the hall, and the atom, after a
+pause to assure herself that all danger of war was past, went out, to
+weep bitterly on Amomma’s neck.
+
+Dick learned to know her as Maisie, and at first mistrusted her
+profoundly, for he feared that she might interfere with the small
+liberty of action left to him. She did not, however; and she
+volunteered no friendliness until Dick had taken the first steps. Long
+before the holidays were over, the stress of punishment shared in
+common drove the children together, if it were only to play into each
+other’s hands as they prepared lies for Mrs. Jennett’s use. When Dick
+returned to school, Maisie whispered, “Now I shall be all alone to take
+care of myself; but,” and she nodded her head bravely, “I can do it.
+You promised to send Amomma a grass collar. Send it soon.” A week later
+she asked for that collar by return of post, and was not pleased when
+she learned that it took time to make. When at last Dick forwarded the
+gift, she forgot to thank him for it.
+
+Many holidays had come and gone since that day, and Dick had grown into
+a lanky hobbledehoy more than ever conscious of his bad clothes. Not
+for a moment had Mrs. Jennett relaxed her tender care of him, but the
+average canings of a public school—Dick fell under punishment about
+three times a month—filled him with contempt for her powers. “She
+doesn’t hurt,” he explained to Maisie, who urged him to rebellion, “and
+she is kinder to you after she has whacked me.” Dick shambled through
+the days unkempt in body and savage in soul, as the smaller boys of the
+school learned to know, for when the spirit moved him he would hit
+them, cunningly and with science. The same spirit made him more than
+once try to tease Maisie, but the girl refused to be made unhappy. “We
+are both miserable as it is,” said she. “What is the use of trying to
+make things worse? Let’s find things to do, and forget things.”
+
+The pistol was the outcome of that search. It could only be used on the
+muddiest foreshore of the beach, far away from the bathing-machines and
+pierheads, below the grassy slopes of Fort Keeling. The tide ran out
+nearly two miles on that coast, and the many-coloured mud-banks,
+touched by the sun, sent up a lamentable smell of dead weed. It was
+late in the afternoon when Dick and Maisie arrived on their ground,
+Amomma trotting patiently behind them.
+
+“Mf!” said Maisie, sniffing the air. “I wonder what makes the sea so
+smelly? I don’t like it!”
+
+“You never like anything that isn’t made just for you,” said Dick
+bluntly. “Give me the cartridges, and I’ll try first shot. How far does
+one of these little revolvers carry?”
+
+“Oh, half a mile,” said Maisie, promptly. “At least it makes an awful
+noise. Be careful with the cartridges; I don’t like those jagged
+stick-up things on the rim. Dick, do be careful.”
+
+“All right. I know how to load. I’ll fire at the breakwater out there.”
+
+He fired, and Amomma ran away bleating. The bullet threw up a spurt of
+mud to the right of the wood-wreathed piles.
+
+“Throws high and to the right. You try, Maisie. Mind, it’s loaded all
+round.”
+
+Maisie took the pistol and stepped delicately to the verge of the mud,
+her hand firmly closed on the butt, her mouth and left eye screwed up.
+
+Dick sat down on a tuft of bank and laughed. Amomma returned very
+cautiously. He was accustomed to strange experiences in his afternoon
+walks, and, finding the cartridge-box unguarded, made investigations
+with his nose. Maisie fired, but could not see where the bullet went.
+
+“I think it hit the post,” she said, shading her eyes and looking out
+across the sailless sea.
+
+“I know it has gone out to the Marazion Bell-buoy,” said Dick, with a
+chuckle. “Fire low and to the left; then perhaps you’ll get it. Oh,
+look at Amomma!—he’s eating the cartridges!”
+
+Maisie turned, the revolver in her hand, just in time to see Amomma
+scampering away from the pebbles Dick threw after him. Nothing is
+sacred to a billy-goat. Being well fed and the adored of his mistress,
+Amomma had naturally swallowed two loaded pin-fire cartridges. Maisie
+hurried up to assure herself that Dick had not miscounted the tale.
+
+“Yes, he’s eaten two.”
+
+“Horrid little beast! Then they’ll joggle about inside him and blow up,
+and serve him right.... Oh, Dick! have I killed you?”
+
+Revolvers are tricky things for young hands to deal with. Maisie could
+not explain how it had happened, but a veil of reeking smoke separated
+her from Dick, and she was quite certain that the pistol had gone off
+in his face. Then she heard him sputter, and dropped on her knees
+beside him, crying, “Dick, you aren’t hurt, are you? I didn’t mean it.”
+
+“Of course you didn’t, said Dick, coming out of the smoke and wiping
+his cheek. “But you nearly blinded me. That powder stuff stings
+awfully.” A neat little splash of gray lead on a stone showed where the
+bullet had gone. Maisie began to whimper.
+
+“Don’t,” said Dick, jumping to his feet and shaking himself. “I’m not a
+bit hurt.”
+
+“No, but I might have killed you,” protested Maisie, the corners of her
+mouth drooping. “What should I have done then?”
+
+“Gone home and told Mrs. Jennett.” Dick grinned at the thought; then,
+softening, “Please don’t worry about it. Besides, we are wasting time.
+
+We’ve got to get back to tea. I’ll take the revolver for a bit.”
+
+Maisie would have wept on the least encouragement, but Dick’s
+indifference, albeit his hand was shaking as he picked up the pistol,
+restrained her. She lay panting on the beach while Dick methodically
+bombarded the breakwater. “Got it at last!” he exclaimed, as a lock of
+weed flew from the wood.
+
+“Let me try,” said Maisie, imperiously. “I’m all right now.”
+
+They fired in turns till the rickety little revolver nearly shook
+itself to pieces, and Amomma the outcast—because he might blow up at
+any moment—browsed in the background and wondered why stones were
+thrown at him. Then they found a balk of timber floating in a pool
+which was commanded by the seaward slope of Fort Keeling, and they sat
+down together before this new target.
+
+“Next holidays,” said Dick, as the now thoroughly fouled revolver
+kicked wildly in his hand, “we’ll get another pistol,—central
+fire,—that will carry farther.”
+
+“There won’t be any next holidays for me,” said Maisie. “I’m going
+away.”
+
+“Where to?”
+
+“I don’t know. My lawyers have written to Mrs. Jennett, and I’ve got to
+be educated somewhere,—in France, perhaps,—I don’t know where; but I
+shall be glad to go away.”
+
+“I shan’t like it a bit. I suppose I shall be left. Look here, Maisie,
+is it really true you’re going? Then these holidays will be the last I
+shall see anything of you; and I go back to school next week. I wish——”
+
+The young blood turned his cheeks scarlet. Maisie was picking
+grass-tufts and throwing them down the slope at a yellow sea-poppy
+nodding all by itself to the illimitable levels of the mud-flats and
+the milk-white sea beyond.
+
+“I wish,” she said, after a pause, “that I could see you again
+sometime.
+
+You wish that, too?”
+
+“Yes, but it would have been better if—if—you had—shot straight over
+there—down by the breakwater.”
+
+Maisie looked with large eyes for a moment. And this was the boy who
+only ten days before had decorated Amomma’s horns with cut-paper
+ham-frills and turned him out, a bearded derision, among the public
+ways! Then she dropped her eyes: this was not the boy.
+
+“Don’t be stupid,” she said reprovingly, and with swift instinct
+attacked the side-issue. “How selfish you are! Just think what I should
+have felt if that horrid thing had killed you! I’m quite miserable
+enough already.”
+
+“Why? Because you’re going away from Mrs. Jennett?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“From me, then?”
+
+No answer for a long time. Dick dared not look at her. He felt, though
+he did not know, all that the past four years had been to him, and this
+the more acutely since he had no knowledge to put his feelings in
+words.
+
+“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose it is.”
+
+“Maisie, you must know. _I’m_ not supposing.”
+
+“Let’s go home,” said Maisie, weakly.
+
+But Dick was not minded to retreat.
+
+“I can’t say things,” he pleaded, “and I’m awfully sorry for teasing
+you about Amomma the other day. It’s all different now, Maisie, can’t
+you see? And you might have told me that you were going, instead of
+leaving me to find out.”
+
+“You didn’t. I did tell. Oh, Dick, what’s the use of worrying?”
+
+“There isn’t any; but we’ve been together years and years, and I didn’t
+know how much I cared.”
+
+“I don’t believe you ever did care.”
+
+“No, I didn’t; but I do,—I care awfully now, Maisie,” he
+gulped,—“Maisie, darling, say you care too, please.”
+
+“I do, indeed I do; but it won’t be any use.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I am going away.”
+
+“Yes, but if you promise before you go. Only say—will you?” A second
+“darling’ came to his lips more easily than the first. There were few
+endearments in Dick’s home or school life; he had to find them by
+instinct. Dick caught the little hand blackened with the escaped gas of
+the revolver.
+
+“I promise,” she said solemnly; “but if I care there is no need for
+promising.”
+
+“And do you care?” For the first time in the past few minutes their
+eyes met and spoke for them who had no skill in speech....
+
+“Oh, Dick, don’t! Please don’t! It was all right when we said
+good-morning; but now it’s all different!” Amomma looked on from afar.
+
+He had seen his property quarrel frequently, but he had never seen
+kisses exchanged before. The yellow sea-poppy was wiser, and nodded its
+head approvingly. Considered as a kiss, that was a failure, but since
+it was the first, other than those demanded by duty, in all the world
+that either had ever given or taken, it opened to them new worlds, and
+every one of them glorious, so that they were lifted above the
+consideration of any worlds at all, especially those in which tea is
+necessary, and sat still, holding each other’s hands and saying not a
+word.
+
+“You can’t forget now,” said Dick, at last. There was that on his cheek
+that stung more than gunpowder.
+
+“I shouldn’t have forgotten anyhow,” said Maisie, and they looked at
+each other and saw that each was changed from the companion of an hour
+ago to a wonder and a mystery they could not understand. The sun began
+to set, and a night-wind thrashed along the bents of the foreshore.
+
+“We shall be awfully late for tea,” said Maisie. “Let’s go home.”
+
+“Let’s use the rest of the cartridges first,” said Dick; and he helped
+Maisie down the slope of the fort to the sea,—a descent that she was
+quite capable of covering at full speed. Equally gravely Maisie took
+the grimy hand. Dick bent forward clumsily; Maisie drew the hand away,
+and Dick blushed.
+
+“It’s very pretty,” he said.
+
+“Pooh!” said Maisie, with a little laugh of gratified vanity. She stood
+close to Dick as he loaded the revolver for the last time and fired
+over the sea with a vague notion at the back of his head that he was
+protecting Maisie from all the evils in the world. A puddle far across
+the mud caught the last rays of the sun and turned into a wrathful red
+disc. The light held Dick’s attention for a moment, and as he raised
+his revolver there fell upon him a renewed sense of the miraculous, in
+that he was standing by Maisie who had promised to care for him for an
+indefinite length of time till such date as—— A gust of the growing
+wind drove the girl’s long black hair across his face as she stood with
+her hand on his shoulder calling Amomma “a little beast,” and for a
+moment he was in the dark,—a darkness that stung. The bullet went
+singing out to the empty sea.
+
+“Spoilt my aim,” said he, shaking his head. “There aren’t any more
+cartridges; we shall have to run home.” But they did not run. They
+walked very slowly, arm in arm. And it was a matter of indifference to
+them whether the neglected Amomma with two pin-fire cartridges in his
+inside blew up or trotted beside them; for they had come into a golden
+heritage and were disposing of it with all the wisdom of all their
+years.
+
+“And I shall be——” quoth Dick, valiantly. Then he checked himself: “I
+don’t know what I shall be. I don’t seem to be able to pass any exams,
+but I can make awful caricatures of the masters. Ho! Ho!”
+
+“Be an artist, then,” said Maisie. “You’re always laughing at my trying
+to draw; and it will do you good.”
+
+“I’ll never laugh at anything you do,” he answered. “I’ll be an artist,
+and I’ll do things.”
+
+“Artists always want money, don’t they?”
+
+“I’ve got a hundred and twenty pounds a year of my own. My guardians
+tell me I’m to have it when I come of age. That will be enough to begin
+with.”
+
+“Ah, I’m rich,” said Maisie. “I’ve got three hundred a year all my own
+when I’m twenty-one. That’s why Mrs. Jennett is kinder to me than she
+is to you. I wish, though, that I had somebody that belonged to
+me,—just a father or a mother.”
+
+“You belong to me,” said Dick, “for ever and ever.”
+
+“Yes, we belong—for ever. It’s very nice.” She squeezed his arm. The
+kindly darkness hid them both, and, emboldened because he could only
+just see the profile of Maisie’s cheek with the long lashes veiling the
+gray eyes, Dick at the front door delivered himself of the words he had
+been boggling over for the last two hours.
+
+“And I—love you, Maisie,” he said, in a whisper that seemed to him to
+ring across the world,—the world that he would to-morrow or the next
+day set out to conquer.
+
+There was a scene, not, for the sake of discipline, to be reported,
+when Mrs. Jennett would have fallen upon him, first for disgraceful
+unpunctuality, and secondly for nearly killing himself with a forbidden
+weapon.
+
+“I was playing with it, and it went off by itself,” said Dick, when the
+powder-pocked cheek could no longer be hidden, “but if you think you’re
+going to lick me you’re wrong. You are never going to touch me again.
+
+Sit down and give me my tea. You can’t cheat us out of that, anyhow.”
+
+Mrs. Jennett gasped and became livid. Maisie said nothing, but
+encouraged Dick with her eyes, and he behaved abominably all that
+evening. Mrs. Jennett prophesied an immediate judgment of Providence
+and a descent into Tophet later, but Dick walked in Paradise and would
+not hear. Only when he was going to bed Mrs. Jennett recovered and
+asserted herself. He had bidden Maisie good-night with down-dropped
+eyes and from a distance.
+
+“If you aren’t a gentleman you might try to behave like one,” said Mrs.
+
+Jennett, spitefully. “You’ve been quarrelling with Maisie again.”
+
+This meant that the usual good-night kiss had been omitted. Maisie,
+white to the lips, thrust her cheek forward with a fine air of
+indifference, and was duly pecked by Dick, who tramped out of the room
+red as fire. That night he dreamed a wild dream. He had won all the
+world and brought it to Maisie in a cartridge-box, but she turned it
+over with her foot, and, instead of saying “Thank you,” cried—“Where is
+the grass collar you promised for Amomma? Oh, how selfish you are!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Then we brought the lances down, then the bugles blew,
+When we went to Kandahar, ridin’ two an’ two,
+    Ridin’, ridin’, ridin’, two an’ two,
+        Ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra,
+All the way to Kandahar, ridin’ two an’ two.
+
+—_Barrack-Room Ballad_.
+
+
+“I’m not angry with the British public, but I wish we had a few
+thousand of them scattered among these rooks. They wouldn’t be in such
+a hurry to get at their morning papers then. Can’t you imagine the
+regulation householder—Lover of Justice, Constant Reader,
+Paterfamilias, and all that lot—frizzling on hot gravel?”
+
+“With a blue veil over his head, and his clothes in strips. Has any man
+here a needle? I’ve got a piece of sugar-sack.”
+
+“I’ll lend you a packing-needle for six square inches of it then. Both
+my knees are worn through.”
+
+“Why not six square acres, while you’re about it? But lend me the
+needle, and I’ll see what I can do with the selvage. I don’t think
+there’s enough to protect my royal body from the cold blast as it is.
+What are you doing with that everlasting sketch-book of yours, Dick?”
+
+“Study of our Special Correspondent repairing his wardrobe,” said Dick,
+gravely, as the other man kicked off a pair of sorely worn
+riding-breeches and began to fit a square of coarse canvas over the
+most obvious open space. He grunted disconsolately as the vastness of
+the void developed itself.
+
+“Sugar-bags, indeed! Hi! you pilot man there! lend me all the sails for
+that whale-boat.”
+
+A fez-crowned head bobbed up in the stern-sheets, divided itself into
+exact halves with one flashing grin, and bobbed down again. The man of
+the tattered breeches, clad only in a Norfolk jacket and a gray flannel
+shirt, went on with his clumsy sewing, while Dick chuckled over the
+sketch.
+
+Some twenty whale-boats were nuzzling a sand-bank which was dotted with
+English soldiery of half a dozen corps, bathing or washing their
+clothes. A heap of boat-rollers, commissariat-boxes, sugar-bags, and
+flour- and small-arm-ammunition-cases showed where one of the
+whale-boats had been compelled to unload hastily; and a regimental
+carpenter was swearing aloud as he tried, on a wholly insufficient
+allowance of white lead, to plaster up the sun-parched gaping seams of
+the boat herself.
+
+“First the bloomin’ rudder snaps,” said he to the world in general;
+“then the mast goes; an’ then, s’ “help me, when she can’t do nothin’
+else, she opens ’erself out like a cock-eyes Chinese lotus.”
+
+“Exactly the case with my breeches, whoever you are,” said the tailor,
+without looking up. “Dick, I wonder when I shall see a decent shop
+again.”
+
+There was no answer, save the incessant angry murmur of the Nile as it
+raced round a basalt-walled bend and foamed across a rock-ridge half a
+mile upstream. It was as though the brown weight of the river would
+drive the white men back to their own country. The indescribable scent
+of Nile mud in the air told that the stream was falling and the next
+few miles would be no light thing for the whale-boats to overpass. The
+desert ran down almost to the banks, where, among gray, red, and black
+hillocks, a camel-corps was encamped. No man dared even for a day lose
+touch of the slow-moving boats; there had been no fighting for weeks
+past, and throughout all that time the Nile had never spared them.
+Rapid had followed rapid, rock rock, and island-group island-group,
+till the rank and file had long since lost all count of direction and
+very nearly of time. They were moving somewhere, they did not know why,
+to do something, they did not know what. Before them lay the Nile, and
+at the other end of it was one Gordon, fighting for the dear life, in a
+town called Khartoum. There were columns of British troops in the
+desert, or in one of the many deserts; there were yet more columns
+waiting to embark on the river; there were fresh drafts waiting at
+Assioot and Assuan; there were lies and rumours running over the face
+of the hopeless land from Suakin to the Sixth Cataract, and men
+supposed generally that there must be some one in authority to direct
+the general scheme of the many movements. The duty of that particular
+river-column was to keep the whale-boats afloat in the water, to avoid
+trampling on the villagers’ crops when the gangs “tracked’ the boats
+with lines thrown from midstream, to get as much sleep and food as was
+possible, and, above all, to press on without delay in the teeth of the
+churning Nile.
+
+With the soldiers sweated and toiled the correspondents of the
+newspapers, and they were almost as ignorant as their companions. But
+it was above all things necessary that England at breakfast should be
+amused and thrilled and interested, whether Gordon lived or died, or
+half the British army went to pieces in the sands. The Soudan campaign
+was a picturesque one, and lent itself to vivid word-painting. Now and
+again a “Special’ managed to get slain,—which was not altogether a
+disadvantage to the paper that employed him,—and more often the
+hand-to-hand nature of the fighting allowed of miraculous escapes which
+were worth telegraphing home at eighteenpence the word. There were many
+correspondents with many corps and columns,—from the veterans who had
+followed on the heels of the cavalry that occupied Cairo in ’82, what
+time Arabi Pasha called himself king, who had seen the first miserable
+work round Suakin when the sentries were cut up nightly and the scrub
+swarmed with spears, to youngsters jerked into the business at the end
+of a telegraph-wire to take the places of their betters killed or
+invalided.
+
+Among the seniors—those who knew every shift and change in the
+perplexing postal arrangements, the value of the seediest, weediest
+Egyptian garron offered for sale in Cairo or Alexandria, who could talk
+a telegraph-clerk into amiability and soothe the ruffled vanity of a
+newly appointed staff-officer when press regulations became
+burdensome—was the man in the flannel shirt, the black-browed
+Torpenhow. He represented the Central Southern Syndicate in the
+campaign, as he had represented it in the Egyptian war, and elsewhere.
+The syndicate did not concern itself greatly with criticisms of attack
+and the like. It supplied the masses, and all it demanded was
+picturesqueness and abundance of detail; for there is more joy in
+England over a soldier who insubordinately steps out of square to
+rescue a comrade than over twenty generals slaving even to baldness at
+the gross details of transport and commissariat.
+
+He had met at Suakin a young man, sitting on the edge of a recently
+abandoned redoubt about the size of a hat-box, sketching a clump of
+shell-torn bodies on the gravel plain.
+
+“What are you for?” said Torpenhow. The greeting of the correspondent
+is that of the commercial traveller on the road.
+
+“My own hand,” said the young man, without looking up. “Have you any
+tobacco?”
+
+Torpenhow waited till the sketch was finished, and when he had looked
+at it said, “What’s your business here?”
+
+“Nothing; there was a row, so I came. I’m supposed to be doing
+something down at the painting-slips among the boats, or else I’m in
+charge of the condenser on one of the water-ships. I’ve forgotten
+which.”
+
+“You’ve cheek enough to build a redoubt with,” said Torpenhow, and took
+stock of the new acquaintance. “Do you always draw like that?”
+
+The young man produced more sketches. “Row on a Chinese pig-boat,” said
+he, sententiously, showing them one after another.—“Chief mate dirked
+by a comprador.—Junk ashore off Hakodate.—Somali muleteer being
+flogged.—Star-shelled bursting over camp at Berbera.—Slave-dhow being
+chased round Tajurrah Bah.—Soldier lying dead in the moonlight outside
+Suakin.—throat cut by Fuzzies.”
+
+“H’m!” said Torpenhow, “can’t say I care for Verestchagin-and-water
+myself, but there’s no accounting for tastes. Doing anything now, are
+you?”
+
+“No. I’m amusing myself here.”
+
+Torpenhow looked at the aching desolation of the place. “Faith, you’ve
+queer notions of amusement. Got any money?”
+
+“Enough to go on with. Look here: do you want me to do war-work?”
+
+“_I_ don’t. My syndicate may, though. You can draw more than a little,
+and I don’t suppose you care much what you get, do you?”
+
+“Not this time. I want my chance first.”
+
+Torpenhow looked at the sketches again, and nodded. “Yes, you’re right
+to take your first chance when you can get it.”
+
+He rode away swiftly through the Gate of the Two War-Ships, rattled
+across the causeway into the town, and wired to his syndicate, “Got man
+here, picture-work. Good and cheap. Shall I arrange? Will do
+letterpress with sketches.”
+
+The man on the redoubt sat swinging his legs and murmuring, “I knew the
+chance would come, sooner or later. By Gad, they’ll have to sweat for
+it if I come through this business alive!”
+
+In the evening Torpenhow was able to announce to his friend that the
+Central Southern Agency was willing to take him on trial, paying
+expenses for three months. “And, by the way, what’s your name?” said
+Torpenhow.
+
+“Heldar. Do they give me a free hand?”
+
+“They’ve taken you on chance. You must justify the choice. You’d better
+stick to me. I’m going up-country with a column, and I’ll do what I can
+for you. Give me some of your sketches taken here, and I’ll send ’em
+along.” To himself he said, “That’s the best bargain the Central
+southern has ever made; and they got me cheaply enough.”
+
+So it came to pass that, after some purchase of horse-flesh and
+arrangements financial and political, Dick was made free of the New and
+Honourable Fraternity of war correspondents, who all possess the
+inalienable right of doing as much work as they can and getting as much
+for it as Providence and their owners shall please. To these things are
+added in time, if the brother be worthy, the power of glib speech that
+neither man nor woman can resist when a meal or a bed is in question,
+the eye of a horse-cope, the skill of a cook, the constitution of a
+bullock, the digestion of an ostrich, and an infinite adaptability to
+all circumstances. But many die before they attain to this degree, and
+the past-masters in the craft appear for the most part in dress-clothes
+when they are in England, and thus their glory is hidden from the
+multitude.
+
+Dick followed Torpenhow wherever the latter’s fancy chose to lead him,
+and between the two they managed to accomplish some work that almost
+satisfied themselves. It was not an easy life in any way, and under its
+influence the two were drawn very closely together, for they ate from
+the same dish, they shared the same water-bottle, and, most binding tie
+of all, their mails went off together. It was Dick who managed to make
+gloriously drunk a telegraph-clerk in a palm hut far beyond the Second
+Cataract, and, while the man lay in bliss on the floor, possessed
+himself of some laboriously acquired exclusive information, forwarded
+by a confiding correspondent of an opposition syndicate, made a careful
+duplicate of the matter, and brought the result to Torpenhow, who said
+that all was fair in love or war correspondence, and built an excellent
+descriptive article from his rival’s riotous waste of words. It was
+Torpenhow who—but the tale of their adventures, together and apart,
+from Philae to the waste wilderness of Herawi and Muella, would fill
+many books. They had been penned into a square side by side, in deadly
+fear of being shot by over-excited soldiers; they had fought with
+baggage-camels in the chill dawn; they had jogged along in silence
+under blinding sun on indefatigable little Egyptian horses; and they
+had floundered on the shallows of the Nile when the whale-boat in which
+they had found a berth chose to hit a hidden rock and rip out half her
+bottom-planks.
+
+Now they were sitting on the sand-bank, and the whale-boats were
+bringing up the remainder of the column.
+
+“Yes,” said Torpenhow, as he put the last rude stitches into his
+over-long-neglected gear, “it has been a beautiful business.”
+
+“The patch or the campaign?” said Dick. “Don’t think much of either,
+myself.”
+
+“You want the _Euryalus_ brought up above the Third Cataract, don’t
+you? and eighty-one-ton guns at Jakdul? Now, _I’m_ quite satisfied with
+my breeches.” He turned round gravely to exhibit himself, after the
+manner of a clown.
+
+“It’s very pretty. Specially the lettering on the sack. G.B.T.
+Government Bullock Train. That’s a sack from India.”
+
+“It’s my initials,—Gilbert Belling Torpenhow. I stole the cloth on
+purpose.
+
+What the mischief are the camel-corps doing yonder?” Torpenhow shaded
+his eyes and looked across the scrub-strewn gravel.
+
+A bugle blew furiously, and the men on the bank hurried to their arms
+and accoutrements.
+
+““Pisan soldiery surprised while bathing,”’ remarked Dick, calmly.
+
+“D’you remember the picture? It’s by Michael Angelo; all beginners copy
+it. That scrub’s alive with enemy.”
+
+The camel-corps on the bank yelled to the infantry to come to them, and
+a hoarse shouting down the river showed that the remainder of the
+column had wind of the trouble and was hastening to take share in it.
+As swiftly as a reach of still water is crisped by the wind, the
+rock-strewn ridges and scrub-topped hills were troubled and alive with
+armed men.
+
+Mercifully, it occurred to these to stand far off for a time, to shout
+and gesticulate joyously. One man even delivered himself of a long
+story. The camel-corps did not fire. They were only too glad of a
+little breathing-space, until some sort of square could be formed. The
+men on the sand-bank ran to their side; and the whale-boats, as they
+toiled up within shouting distance, were thrust into the nearest bank
+and emptied of all save the sick and a few men to guard them. The Arab
+orator ceased his outcries, and his friends howled.
+
+“They look like the Mahdi’s men,” said Torpenhow, elbowing himself into
+the crush of the square; “but what thousands of ’em there are! The
+tribes hereabout aren’t against us, I know.”
+
+“Then the Mahdi’s taken another town,” said Dick, “and set all these
+yelping devils free to show us up. Lend us your glass.”
+
+“Our scouts should have told us of this. We’ve been trapped,” said a
+subaltern. “Aren’t the camel guns ever going to begin? Hurry up, you
+men!”
+
+There was no need of any order. The men flung themselves panting
+against the sides of the square, for they had good reason to know that
+whoso was left outside when the fighting began would very probably die
+in an extremely unpleasant fashion. The little hundred-and-fifty-pound
+camel-guns posted at one corner of the square opened the ball as the
+square moved forward by its right to get possession of a knoll of
+rising ground. All had fought in this manner many times before, and
+there was no novelty in the entertainment; always the same hot and
+stifling formation, the smell of dust and leather, the same boltlike
+rush of the enemy, the same pressure on the weakest side, the few
+minutes of hand-to-hand scuffle, and then the silence of the desert,
+broken only by the yells of those whom their handful of cavalry
+attempted to pursue. They had become careless. The camel-guns spoke at
+intervals, and the square slouched forward amid the protesting of the
+camels. Then came the attack of three thousand men who had not learned
+from books that it is impossible for troops in close order to attack
+against breech-loading fire.
+
+A few dropping shots heralded their approach, and a few horsemen led,
+but the bulk of the force was naked humanity, mad with rage, and armed
+with the spear and the sword. The instinct of the desert, where there
+is always much war, told them that the right flank of the square was
+the weakest, for they swung clear of the front. The camel-guns shelled
+them as they passed and opened for an instant lanes through their
+midst, most like those quick-closing vistas in a Kentish hop-garden
+seen when the train races by at full speed; and the infantry fire, held
+till the opportune moment, dropped them in close-packing hundreds. No
+civilised troops in the world could have endured the hell through which
+they came, the living leaping high to avoid the dying who clutched at
+their heels, the wounded cursing and staggering forward, till they
+fell—a torrent black as the sliding water above a mill-dam—full on the
+right flank of the square.
+
+Then the line of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky
+overhead went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on the heated
+ground and the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing
+interest, for men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these
+things, counting mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen
+pebble and branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting.
+For aught the men knew, the enemy might be attempting all four sides of
+the square at once. Their business was to destroy what lay in front of
+them, to bayonet in the back those who passed over them, and, dying, to
+drag down the slayer till he could be knocked on the head by some
+avenging gun-butt.
+
+Dick waited with Torpenhow and a young doctor till the stress grew
+unendurable. It was hopeless to attend to the wounded till the attack
+was repulsed, so the three moved forward gingerly towards the weakest
+side of the square. There was a rush from without, the short
+_hough-hough_ of the stabbing spears, and a man on a horse, followed by
+thirty or forty others, dashed through, yelling and hacking. The right
+flank of the square sucked in after them, and the other sides sent
+help. The wounded, who knew that they had but a few hours more to live,
+caught at the enemy’s feet and brought them down, or, staggering into a
+discarded rifle, fired blindly into the scuffle that raged in the
+centre of the square.
+
+Dick was conscious that somebody had cut him violently across his
+helmet, that he had fired his revolver into a black, foam-flecked face
+which forthwith ceased to bear any resemblance to a face, and that
+Torpenhow had gone down under an Arab whom he had tried to “collar
+low,” and was turning over and over with his captive, feeling for the
+man’s eyes. The doctor jabbed at a venture with a bayonet, and a
+helmetless soldier fired over Dick’s shoulder: the flying grains of
+powder stung his cheek. It was to Torpenhow that Dick turned by
+instinct. The representative of the Central Southern Syndicate had
+shaken himself clear of his enemy, and rose, wiping his thumb on his
+trousers. The Arab, both hands to his forehead, screamed aloud, then
+snatched up his spear and rushed at Torpenhow, who was panting under
+shelter of Dick’s revolver. Dick fired twice, and the man dropped
+limply. His upturned face lacked one eye. The musketry-fire redoubled,
+but cheers mingled with it. The rush had failed and the enemy were
+flying. If the heart of the square were shambles, the ground beyond was
+a butcher’s shop. Dick thrust his way forward between the maddened men.
+The remnant of the enemy were retiring, as the few—the very few—English
+cavalry rode down the laggards.
+
+Beyond the lines of the dead, a broad blood-stained Arab spear cast
+aside in the retreat lay across a stump of scrub, and beyond this again
+the illimitable dark levels of the desert. The sun caught the steel and
+turned it into a red disc. Some one behind him was saying, “Ah, get
+away, you brute!” Dick raised his revolver and pointed towards the
+desert. His eye was held by the red splash in the distance, and the
+clamour about him seemed to die down to a very far-away whisper, like
+the whisper of a level sea. There was the revolver and the red
+light.... and the voice of some one scaring something away, exactly as
+had fallen somewhere before,—a darkness that stung. He fired at random,
+and the bullet went out across the desert as he muttered, “Spoilt my
+aim. There aren’t any more cartridges. We shall have to run home.” He
+put his hand to his head and brought it away covered with blood.
+
+“Old man, you’re cut rather badly,” said Torpenhow. “I owe you
+something for this business. Thanks. Stand up! I say, you can’t be ill
+here.”
+
+Throughout the night, when the troops were encamped by the whale-boats,
+a black figure danced in the strong moonlight on the sand-bar and
+shouted that Khartoum the accursed one was dead,—was dead,—was
+dead,—that two steamers were rock-staked on the Nile outside the city,
+and that of all their crews there remained not one; and Khartoum was
+dead,—was dead,—was dead!
+
+But Torpenhow took no heed. He was watching Dick, who called aloud to
+the restless Nile for Maisie,—and again Maisie!
+
+“Behold a phenomenon,” said Torpenhow, rearranging the blanket. “Here
+is a man, presumably human, who mentions the name of one woman only.
+And I’ve seen a good deal of delirium, too.—Dick, here’s some fizzy
+drink.”
+
+“Thank you, Maisie,” said Dick.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+So he thinks he shall take to the sea again
+    For one more cruise with his buccaneers,
+To singe the beard of the King of Spain,
+And capture another Dean of Jaen
+    And sell him in Algiers.—_A Dutch Picture_.—Longfellow
+
+
+The Soudan campaign and Dick’s broken head had been some months ended
+and mended, and the Central Southern Syndicate had paid Dick a certain
+sum on account for work done, which work they were careful to assure
+him was not altogether up to their standard. Dick heaved the letter
+into the Nile at Cairo, cashed the draft in the same town, and bade a
+warm farewell to Torpenhow at the station.
+
+“I am going to lie up for a while and rest,” said Torpenhow. “I don’t
+know where I shall live in London, but if God brings us to meet, we
+shall meet. Are you staying here on the off-chance of another row?
+There will be none till the Southern Soudan is reoccupied by our
+troops. Mark that. Good-bye; bless you; come back when your money’s
+spent; and give me your address.”
+
+Dick loitered in Cairo, Alexandria, Ismailia, and Port Said,—especially
+Port Said. There is iniquity in many parts of the world, and vice in
+all, but the concentrated essence of all the iniquities and all the
+vices in all the continents finds itself at Port Said. And through the
+heart of that sand-bordered hell, where the mirage flickers day long
+above the Bitter Lake, move, if you will only wait, most of the men and
+women you have known in this life. Dick established himself in quarters
+more riotous than respectable. He spent his evenings on the quay, and
+boarded many ships, and saw very many friends,—gracious Englishwomen
+with whom he had talked not too wisely in the veranda of Shepherd’s
+Hotel, hurrying war correspondents, skippers of the contract
+troop-ships employed in the campaign, army officers by the score, and
+others of less reputable trades.
+
+He had choice of all the races of the East and West for studies, and
+the advantage of seeing his subjects under the influence of strong
+excitement, at the gaming-tables, saloons, dancing-hells, and
+elsewhere. For recreation there was the straight vista of the Canal,
+the blazing sands, the procession of shipping, and the white hospitals
+where the English soldiers lay. He strove to set down in black and
+white and colour all that Providence sent him, and when that supply was
+ended sought about for fresh material. It was a fascinating employment,
+but it ran away with his money, and he had drawn in advance the hundred
+and twenty pounds to which he was entitled yearly. “Now I shall have to
+work and starve!” thought he, and was addressing himself to this new
+fate when a mysterious telegram arrived from Torpenhow in England,
+which said, “Come back, quick; you have caught on. Come.”
+
+A large smile overspread his face. “So soon! that’s a good hearing,”
+said he to himself. “There will be an orgy to-night. I’ll stand or fall
+by my luck. Faith, it’s time it came!” He deposited half of his funds
+in the hands of his well-known friends Monsieur and Madame Binat, and
+ordered himself a Zanzibar dance of the finest. Monsieur Binat was
+shaking with drink, but Madame smiles sympathetically—“Monsieur needs a
+chair, of course, and of course Monsieur will sketch; Monsieur amuses
+himself strangely.”
+
+Binat raised a blue-white face from a cot in the inner room. “I
+understand,” he quavered. “We all know Monsieur. Monsieur is an artist,
+as I have been.” Dick nodded. “In the end,” said Binat, with gravity,
+“Monsieur will descend alive into hell, as I have descended.” And he
+laughed.
+
+“You must come to the dance, too,” said Dick; “I shall want you.”
+
+“For my face? I knew it would be so. For my face? My God! and for my
+degradation so tremendous! I will not. Take him away. He is a devil. Or
+at least do thou, Celeste, demand of him more.” The excellent Binat
+began to kick and scream.
+
+“All things are for sale in Port Said,” said Madame. “If my husband
+comes it will be so much more. Eh, “how you call—’alf a sovereign.”
+
+The money was paid, and the mad dance was held at night in a walled
+courtyard at the back of Madame Binat’s house. The lady herself, in
+faded mauve silk always about to slide from her yellow shoulders,
+played the piano, and to the tin-pot music of a Western waltz the naked
+Zanzibari girls danced furiously by the light of kerosene lamps. Binat
+sat upon a chair and stared with eyes that saw nothing, till the whirl
+of the dance and the clang of the rattling piano stole into the drink
+that took the place of blood in his veins, and his face glistened. Dick
+took him by the chin brutally and turned that face to the light. Madame
+Binat looked over her shoulder and smiled with many teeth. Dick leaned
+against the wall and sketched for an hour, till the kerosene lamps
+began to smell, and the girls threw themselves panting on the
+hard-beaten ground. Then he shut his book with a snap and moved away,
+Binat plucking feebly at his elbow. “Show me,” he whimpered. “I too was
+once an artist, even I!” Dick showed him the rough sketch. “Am I that?”
+he screamed. “Will you take that away with you and show all the world
+that it is I,—Binat?” He moaned and wept.
+
+“Monsieur has paid for all,” said Madame. “To the pleasure of seeing
+Monsieur again.”
+
+The courtyard gate shut, and Dick hurried up the sandy street to the
+nearest gambling-hell, where he was well known. “If the luck holds,
+it’s an omen; if I lose, I must stay here.” He placed his money
+picturesquely about the board, hardly daring to look at what he did.
+The luck held.
+
+Three turns of the wheel left him richer by twenty pounds, and he went
+down to the shipping to make friends with the captain of a decayed
+cargo-steamer, who landed him in London with fewer pounds in his pocket
+than he cared to think about.
+
+A thin gray fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for
+summer was in England.
+
+“It’s a cheerful wilderness, and it hasn’t the knack of altering much,”
+Dick thought, as he tramped from the Docks westward. “Now, what must I
+do?”
+
+The packed houses gave no answer. Dick looked down the long lightless
+streets and at the appalling rush of traffic. “Oh, you rabbit-hutches!”
+said he, addressing a row of highly respectable semi-detached
+residences. “Do you know what you’ve got to do later on? You have to
+supply me with men-servants and maid-servants,”—here he smacked his
+lips,—“and the peculiar treasure of kings. Meantime I’ll find clothes
+and boots, and presently I will return and trample on you.” He stepped
+forward energetically; he saw that one of his shoes was burst at the
+side. As he stooped to make investigations, a man jostled him into the
+gutter. “All right,” he said.
+
+“That’s another nick in the score. I’ll jostle you later on.”
+
+Good clothes and boots are not cheap, and Dick left his last shop with
+the certainty that he would be respectably arrayed for a time, but with
+only fifty shillings in his pocket. He returned to streets by the
+Docks, and lodged himself in one room, where the sheets on the bed were
+almost audibly marked in case of theft, and where nobody seemed to go
+to bed at all. When his clothes arrived he sought the Central Southern
+Syndicate for Torpenhow’s address, and got it, with the intimation that
+there was still some money waiting for him.
+
+“How much?” said Dick, as one who habitually dealt in millions.
+
+“Between thirty and forty pounds. If it would be any convenience to
+you, of course we could let you have it at once; but we usually settle
+accounts monthly.”
+
+“If I show that I want anything now, I’m lost,” he said to himself.
+“All I need I’ll take later on.” Then, aloud, “It’s hardly worth while;
+and I’m going to the country for a month, too. Wait till I come back,
+and I’ll see about it.”
+
+“But we trust, Mr. Heldar, that you do not intend to sever your
+connection with us?”
+
+Dick’s business in life was the study of faces, and he watched the
+speaker keenly. “That man means something,” he said. “I’ll do no
+business till I’ve seen Torpenhow. There’s a big deal coming.” So he
+departed, making no promises, to his one little room by the Docks. And
+that day was the seventh of the month, and that month, he reckoned with
+awful distinctness, had thirty-one days in it!
+
+It is not easy for a man of catholic tastes and healthy appetites to
+exist for twenty-four days on fifty shillings. Nor is it cheering to
+begin the experiment alone in all the loneliness of London. Dick paid
+seven shillings a week for his lodging, which left him rather less than
+a shilling a day for food and drink. Naturally, his first purchase was
+of the materials of his craft; he had been without them too long. Half
+a day’s investigations and comparison brought him to the conclusion
+that sausages and mashed potatoes, twopence a plate, were the best
+food. Now, sausages once or twice a week for breakfast are not
+unpleasant. As lunch, even, with mashed potatoes, they become
+monotonous. At dinner they are impertinent. At the end of three days
+Dick loathed sausages, and, going forth, pawned his watch to revel on
+sheep’s head, which is not as cheap as it looks, owing to the bones and
+the gravy. Then he returned to sausages and mashed potatoes. Then he
+confined himself entirely to mashed potatoes for a day, and was unhappy
+because of pain in his inside. Then he pawned his waistcoat and his
+tie, and thought regretfully of money thrown away in times past. There
+are few things more edifying unto Art than the actual belly-pinch of
+hunger, and Dick in his few walks abroad,—he did not care for exercise;
+it raised desires that could not be satisfied—found himself dividing
+mankind into two classes,—those who looked as if they might give him
+something to eat, and those who looked otherwise. “I never knew what I
+had to learn about the human face before,” he thought; and, as a reward
+for his humility, Providence caused a cab-driver at a sausage-shop
+where Dick fed that night to leave half eaten a great chunk of bread.
+Dick took it,—would have fought all the world for its possession,—and
+it cheered him.
+
+The month dragged through at last, and, nearly prancing with
+impatience, he went to draw his money. Then he hastened to Torpenhow’s
+address and smelt the smell of cooking meats all along the corridors of
+the chambers. Torpenhow was on the top floor, and Dick burst into his
+room, to be received with a hug which nearly cracked his ribs, as
+Torpenhow dragged him to the light and spoke of twenty different things
+in the same breath.
+
+“But you’re looking tucked up,” he concluded.
+
+“Got anything to eat?” said Dick, his eye roaming round the room.
+
+“I shall be having breakfast in a minute. What do you say to sausages?”
+
+“No, anything but sausages! Torp, I’ve been starving on that accursed
+horse-flesh for thirty days and thirty nights.”
+
+“Now, what lunacy has been your latest?”
+
+Dick spoke of the last few weeks with unbridled speech. Then he opened
+his coat; there was no waistcoat below. “I ran it fine, awfully fine,
+but I’ve just scraped through.”
+
+“You haven’t much sense, but you’ve got a backbone, anyhow. Eat, and
+talk afterwards.” Dick fell upon eggs and bacon and gorged till he
+could gorge no more. Torpenhow handed him a filled pipe, and he smoked
+as men smoke who for three weeks have been deprived of good tobacco.
+
+“Ouf!” said he. “That’s heavenly! Well?”
+
+“Why in the world didn’t you come to me?”
+
+“Couldn’t; I owe you too much already, old man. Besides I had a sort of
+superstition that this temporary starvation—that’s what it was, and it
+hurt—would bring me luck later. It’s over and done with now, and none
+of the syndicate know how hard up I was. Fire away. What’s the exact
+state of affairs as regards myself?”
+
+“You had my wire? You’ve caught on here. People like your work
+immensely. I don’t know why, but they do. They say you have a fresh
+touch and a new way of drawing things. And, because they’re chiefly
+home-bred English, they say you have insight. You’re wanted by half a
+dozen papers; you’re wanted to illustrate books.”
+
+Dick grunted scornfully.
+
+“You’re wanted to work up your smaller sketches and sell them to the
+dealers. They seem to think the money sunk in you is a good investment.
+
+Good Lord! who can account for the fathomless folly of the public?”
+
+“They’re a remarkably sensible people.”
+
+“They are subject to fits, if that’s what you mean; and you happen to
+be the object of the latest fit among those who are interested in what
+they call Art. Just now you’re a fashion, a phenomenon, or whatever you
+please. I appeared to be the only person who knew anything about you
+here, and I have been showing the most useful men a few of the sketches
+you gave me from time to time. Those coming after your work on the
+Central Southern Syndicate appear to have done your business. You’re in
+luck.”
+
+“Huh! call it luck! Do call it luck, when a man has been kicking about
+the world like a dog, waiting for it to come! I’ll luck ’em later on. I
+want a place to work first.”
+
+“Come here,” said Torpenhow, crossing the landing. “This place is a big
+box room really, but it will do for you. There’s your skylight, or your
+north light, or whatever window you call it, and plenty of room to
+thrash about in, and a bedroom beyond. What more do you need?”
+
+“Good enough,” said Dick, looking round the large room that took up a
+third of a top story in the rickety chambers overlooking the Thames. A
+pale yellow sun shone through the skylight and showed the much dirt of
+the place. Three steps led from the door to the landing, and three more
+to Torpenhow’s room. The well of the staircase disappeared into
+darkness, pricked by tiny gas-jets, and there were sounds of men
+talking and doors slamming seven flights below, in the warm gloom.
+
+“Do they give you a free hand here?” said Dick, cautiously. He was
+Ishmael enough to know the value of liberty.
+
+“Anything you like; latch-keys and license unlimited. We are permanent
+tenants for the most part here. ’Tisn’t a place I would recommend for a
+Young Men’s Christian Association, but it will serve. I took these
+rooms for you when I wired.”
+
+“You’re a great deal too kind, old man.”
+
+“You didn’t suppose you were going away from me, did you?” Torpenhow
+put his hand on Dick’s shoulder, and the two walked up and down the
+room, henceforward to be called the studio, in sweet and silent
+communion. They heard rapping at Torpenhow’s door. “That’s some ruffian
+come up for a drink,” said Torpenhow; and he raised his voice cheerily.
+There entered no one more ruffianly than a portly middle-aged gentleman
+in a satin-faced frockcoat. His lips were parted and pale, and there
+were deep pouches under the eyes.
+
+“Weak heart,” said Dick to himself, and, as he shook hands, “very weak
+heart. His pulse is shaking his fingers.”
+
+The man introduced himself as the head of the Central Southern
+Syndicate and “one of the most ardent admirers of your work, Mr.
+Heldar. I assure you, in the name of the syndicate, that we are
+immensely indebted to you; and I trust, Mr. Heldar, you won’t forget
+that we were largely instrumental in bringing you before the public.”
+He panted because of the seven flights of stairs.
+
+Dick glanced at Torpenhow, whose left eyelid lay for a moment dead on
+his cheek.
+
+“I shan’t forget,” said Dick, every instinct of defence roused in him.
+
+“You’ve paid me so well that I couldn’t, you know. By the way, when I
+am settled in this place I should like to send and get my sketches.
+There must be nearly a hundred and fifty of them with you.”
+
+“That is er—is what I came to speak about. I fear we can’t allow it
+exactly, Mr. Heldar. In the absence of any specified agreement, the
+sketches are our property, of course.”
+
+“Do you mean to say that you are going to keep them?”
+
+“Yes; and we hope to have your help, on your own terms, Mr. Heldar, to
+assist us in arranging a little exhibition, which, backed by our name
+and the influence we naturally command among the press, should be of
+material service to you. Sketches such as yours——”
+
+“Belong to me. You engaged me by wire, you paid me the lowest rates you
+dared. You can’t mean to keep them! Good God alive, man, they’re all
+I’ve got in the world!”
+
+Torpenhow watched Dick’s face and whistled.
+
+Dick walked up and down, thinking. He saw the whole of his little stock
+in trade, the first weapon of his equipment, annexed at the outset of
+his campaign by an elderly gentleman whose name Dick had not caught
+aright, who said that he represented a syndicate, which was a thing for
+which Dick had not the least reverence. The injustice of the
+proceedings did not much move him; he had seen the strong hand prevail
+too often in other places to be squeamish over the moral aspects of
+right and wrong.
+
+But he ardently desired the blood of the gentleman in the frockcoat,
+and when he spoke again, and when he spoke again it was with a strained
+sweetness that Torpenhow knew well for the beginning of strife.
+
+“Forgive me, sir, but you have no—no younger man who can arrange this
+business with me?”
+
+“I speak for the syndicate. I see no reason for a third party to——”
+
+“You will in a minute. Be good enough to give back my sketches.”
+
+The man stared blankly at Dick, and then at Torpenhow, who was leaning
+against the wall. He was not used to ex-employees who ordered him to be
+good enough to do things.
+
+“Yes, it is rather a cold-blooded steal,” said Torpenhow, critically;
+“but I’m afraid, I am very much afraid, you’ve struck the wrong man. Be
+careful, Dick; remember, this isn’t the Soudan.”
+
+“Considering what services the syndicate have done you in putting your
+name before the world——”
+
+This was not a fortunate remark; it reminded Dick of certain vagrant
+years lived out in loneliness and strife and unsatisfied desires. The
+memory did not contrast well with the prosperous gentleman who proposed
+to enjoy the fruit of those years.
+
+“I don’t know quite what to do with you,” began Dick, meditatively. “Of
+course you’re a thief, and you ought to be half killed, but in your
+case you’d probably die. I don’t want you dead on this floor, and,
+besides, it’s unlucky just as one’s moving in. Don’t hit, sir; you’ll
+only excite yourself.”
+
+He put one hand on the man’s forearm and ran the other down the plump
+body beneath the coat. “My goodness!” said he to Torpenhow, “and this
+gray oaf dares to be a thief! I have seen an Esneh camel-driver have
+the black hide taken off his body in strips for stealing half a pound
+of wet dates, and _he_ was as tough as whipcord. This things’ soft all
+over—like a woman.”
+
+There are few things more poignantly humiliating than being handled by
+a man who does not intend to strike. The head of the syndicate began to
+breathe heavily. Dick walked round him, pawing him, as a cat paws a
+soft hearth-rug. Then he traced with his forefinger the leaden pouches
+underneath the eyes, and shook his head. “You were going to steal my
+things,—mine, mine, mine!—you, who don’t know when you may die. Write a
+note to your office,—you say you’re the head of it,—and order them to
+give Torpenhow my sketches,—every one of them. Wait a minute: your
+hand’s shaking. Now!” He thrust a pocket-book before him. The note was
+written. Torpenhow took it and departed without a word, while Dick
+walked round and round the spellbound captive, giving him such advice
+as he conceived best for the welfare of his soul. When Torpenhow
+returned with a gigantic portfolio, he heard Dick say, almost
+soothingly, “Now, I hope this will be a lesson to you; and if you worry
+me when I have settled down to work with any nonsense about actions for
+assault, believe me, I’ll catch you and manhandle you, and you’ll die.
+You haven’t very long to live, anyhow. Go! _Imshi, Vootsak_,—get out!”
+The man departed, staggering and dazed. Dick drew a long breath: “Phew!
+what a lawless lot these people are! The first thing a poor orphan
+meets is gang robbery, organised burglary! Think of the hideous
+blackness of that man’s mind! Are my sketches all right, Torp?”
+
+“Yes; one hundred and forty-seven of them. Well, I _must_ say, Dick,
+you’ve begun well.”
+
+“He was interfering with me. It only meant a few pounds to him, but it
+was everything to me. I don’t think he’ll bring an action. I gave him
+some medical advice gratis about the state of his body. It was cheap at
+the little flurry it cost him. Now, let’s look at my things.”
+
+Two minutes later Dick had thrown himself down on the floor and was
+deep in the portfolio, chuckling lovingly as he turned the drawings
+over and thought of the price at which they had been bought.
+
+The afternoon was well advanced when Torpenhow came to the door and saw
+Dick dancing a wild saraband under the skylight.
+
+“I builded better than I knew, Torp,” he said, without stopping the
+dance.
+
+“They’re good! They’re damned good! They’ll go like flame! I shall have
+an exhibition of them on my own brazen hook. And that man would have
+cheated me out of it! Do you know that I’m sorry now that I didn’t
+actually hit him?”
+
+“Go out,” said Torpenhow,—“go out and pray to be delivered from the sin
+of arrogance, which you never will be. Bring your things up from
+whatever place you’re staying in, and we’ll try to make this barn a
+little more shipshape.”
+
+“And then—oh, then,” said Dick, still capering, “we will spoil the
+Egyptians!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The wolf-cub at even lay hid in the corn,
+    When the smoke of the cooking hung gray:
+He knew where the doe made a couch for her fawn,
+    And he looked to his strength for his prey.
+    But the moon swept the smoke-wreaths away.
+And he turned from his meal in the villager’s close,
+And he bayed to the moon as she rose.
+
+—_In Seonee_.
+
+
+“Well, and how does success taste?” said Torpenhow, some three months
+later. He had just returned to chambers after a holiday in the country.
+
+“Good,” said Dick, as he sat licking his lips before the easel in the
+studio.
+
+“I want more,—heaps more. The lean years have passed, and I approve of
+these fat ones.”
+
+“Be careful, old man. That way lies bad work.”
+
+Torpenhow was sprawling in a long chair with a small fox-terrier asleep
+on his chest, while Dick was preparing a canvas. A dais, a background,
+and a lay-figure were the only fixed objects in the place. They rose
+from a wreck of oddments that began with felt-covered water-bottles,
+belts, and regimental badges, and ended with a small bale of
+second-hand uniforms and a stand of mixed arms. The mark of muddy feet
+on the dais showed that a military model had just gone away. The watery
+autumn sunlight was falling, and shadows sat in the corners of the
+studio.
+
+“Yes,” said Dick, deliberately, “I like the power; I like the fun; I
+like the fuss; and above all I like the money. I almost like the people
+who make the fuss and pay the money. Almost. But they’re a queer
+gang,—an amazingly queer gang!”
+
+“They have been good enough to you, at any rate. That tin-pot
+exhibition of your sketches must have paid. Did you see that the papers
+called it the ‘Wild Work Show’?”
+
+“Never mind. I sold every shred of canvas I wanted to; and, on my word,
+I believe it was because they believed I was a self-taught flagstone
+artist.
+
+I should have got better prices if I worked my things on wool or
+scratched them on camel-bone instead of using mere black and white and
+colour. Verily, they are a queer gang, these people. Limited isn’t the
+word to describe ’em. I met a fellow the other day who told me that it
+was impossible that shadows on white sand should be
+blue,—ultramarine,—as they are. I found out, later, that the man had
+been as far as Brighton beach; but he knew all about Art, confound him.
+He gave me a lecture on it, and recommended me to go to school to learn
+technique. I wonder what old Kami would have said to that.”
+
+“When were you under Kami, man of extraordinary beginnings?”
+
+“I studied with him for two years in Paris. He taught by personal
+magnetism. All he ever said was, ‘_Continuez, mes enfants_,’ and you
+had to make the best you could of that. He had a divine touch, and he
+knew something about colour. Kami used to dream colour; I swear he
+could never have seen the genuine article; but he evolved it; and it
+was good.”
+
+“Recollect some of those views in the Soudan?” said Torpenhow, with a
+provoking drawl.
+
+Dick squirmed in his place. “Don’t! It makes me want to get out there
+again. What colour that was! Opal and umber and amber and claret and
+brick-red and sulphur—cockatoo-crest—sulphur—against brown, with a
+nigger-black rock sticking up in the middle of it all, and a decorative
+frieze of camels festooning in front of a pure pale turquoise sky.” He
+began to walk up and down. “And yet, you know, if you try to give these
+people the thing as God gave it, keyed down to their comprehension and
+according to the powers He has given you——”
+
+“Modest man! Go on.”
+
+“Half a dozen epicene young pagans who haven’t even been to Algiers
+will tell you, first, that your notion is borrowed, and, secondly, that
+it isn’t Art.
+
+“’This comes of my leaving town for a month. Dickie, you’ve been
+promenading among the toy-shops and hearing people talk.”
+
+“I couldn’t help it,” said Dick, penitently. “You weren’t here, and it
+was lonely these long evenings. A man can’t work for ever.”
+
+“A man might have gone to a pub, and got decently drunk.”
+
+“I wish I had; but I forgathered with some men of sorts. They said they
+were artists, and I knew some of them could draw,—but they wouldn’t
+draw. They gave me tea,—tea at five in the afternoon!—and talked about
+Art and the state of their souls. As if their souls mattered. I’ve
+heard more about Art and seen less of her in the last six months than
+in the whole of my life. Do you remember Cassavetti, who worked for
+some continental syndicate, out with the desert column? He was a
+regular Christmas-tree of contraptions when he took the field in full
+fig, with his water-bottle, lanyard, revolver, writing-case, housewife,
+gig-lamps, and the Lord knows what all. He used to fiddle about with
+’em and show us how they worked; but he never seemed to do much except
+fudge his reports from the Nilghai. See?”
+
+“Dear old Nilghai! He’s in town, fatter than ever. He ought to be up
+here this evening. I see the comparison perfectly. You should have kept
+clear of all that man-millinery. Serves you right; and I hope it will
+unsettle your mind.”
+
+“It won’t. It has taught me what Art—holy sacred Art—means.”
+
+“You’ve learnt something while I’ve been away. What is Art?”
+
+“Give ’em what they know, and when you’ve done it once do it again.”
+
+Dick dragged forward a canvas laid face to the wall. “Here’s a sample
+of real Art. It’s going to be a facsimile reproduction for a weekly. I
+called it “His Last Shot.” It’s worked up from the little water-colour
+I made outside El Maghrib. Well, I lured my model, a beautiful
+rifleman, up here with drink; I drored him, and I redrored him, and I
+redrored him, and I made him a flushed, dishevelled, bedevilled
+scallawag, with his helmet at the back of his head, and the living fear
+of death in his eye, and the blood oozing out of a cut over his
+ankle-bone. He wasn’t pretty, but he was all soldier and very much
+man.”
+
+“Once more, modest child!”
+
+Dick laughed. “Well, it’s only to you I’m talking. I did him just as
+well as I knew how, making allowance for the slickness of oils. Then
+the art-manager of that abandoned paper said that his subscribers
+wouldn’t like it. It was brutal and coarse and violent,—man being
+naturally gentle when he’s fighting for his life. They wanted something
+more restful, with a little more colour. I could have said a good deal,
+but you might as well talk to a sheep as an art-manager. I took my
+“Last Shot” back. Behold the result! I put him into a lovely red coat
+without a speck on it. That is Art. I polished his boots,—observe the
+high light on the toe. That is Art. I cleaned his rifle,—rifles are
+always clean on service,—because that is Art.
+
+I pipeclayed his helmet,—pipeclay is always used on active service, and
+is indispensable to Art. I shaved his chin, I washed his hands, and
+gave him an air of fatted peace. Result, military tailor’s
+pattern-plate. Price, thank Heaven, twice as much as for the first
+sketch, which was moderately decent.”
+
+“And do you suppose you’re going to give that thing out as your work?”
+
+“Why not? I did it. Alone I did it, in the interests of sacred,
+home-bred Art and _Dickenson’s Weekly_.”
+
+Torpenhow smoked in silence for a while. Then came the verdict,
+delivered from rolling clouds: “If you were only a mass of blathering
+vanity, Dick, I wouldn’t mind,—I’d let you go to the deuce on your own
+mahl-stick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I find
+that to vanity you add the twopenny-halfpenny pique of a
+twelve-year-old girl, then I bestir myself in your behalf. Thus!”
+
+The canvas ripped as Torpenhow’s booted foot shot through it, and the
+terrier jumped down, thinking rats were about.
+
+“If you have any bad language to use, use it. You have not. I continue.
+
+You are an idiot, because no man born of woman is strong enough to take
+liberties with his public, even though they be—which they ain’t—all you
+say they are.”
+
+“But they don’t know any better. What can you expect from creatures
+born and bred in this light?” Dick pointed to the yellow fog. “If they
+want furniture-polish, let them have furniture-polish, so long as they
+pay for it.
+
+They are only men and women. You talk as if they were gods.”
+
+“That sounds very fine, but it has nothing to do with the case. They
+are the people you have to do work for, whether you like it or not.
+They are your masters. Don’t be deceived, Dickie, you aren’t strong
+enough to trifle with them,—or with yourself, which is more important.
+
+Moreover,—Come back, Binkie: that red daub isn’t going anywhere,—unless
+you take precious good care, you will fall under the damnation of the
+check-book, and that’s worse than death. You will get drunk—you’re half
+drunk already—on easily acquired money. For that money and your own
+infernal vanity you are willing to deliberately turn out bad work.
+You’ll do quite enough bad work without knowing it. And, Dickie, as I
+love you and as I know you love me, I am not going to let you cut off
+your nose to spite your face for all the gold in England. That’s
+settled. Now swear.”
+
+“Don’t know, said Dick. “I’ve been trying to make myself angry, but I
+can’t, you’re so abominably reasonable. There will be a row on
+_Dickenson’s Weekly_, I fancy.”
+
+“Why the Dickenson do you want to work on a weekly paper? It’s slow
+bleeding of power.”
+
+“It brings in the very desirable dollars,” said Dick, his hands in his
+pockets.
+
+Torpenhow watched him with large contempt. “Why, I thought it was a
+man!” said he. “It’s a child.”
+
+“No, it isn’t,” said Dick, wheeling quickly. “You’ve no notion what the
+certainty of cash means to a man who has always wanted it badly.
+
+Nothing will pay me for some of my life’s joys; on that Chinese
+pig-boat, for instance, when we ate bread and jam for every meal,
+because Ho-Wang wouldn’t allow us anything better, and it all tasted of
+pig,—Chinese pig. I’ve worked for this, I’ve sweated and I’ve starved
+for this, line on line and month after month. And now I’ve got it I am
+going to make the most of it while it lasts. Let them pay—they’ve no
+knowledge.”
+
+“What does Your Majesty please to want? You can’t smoke more than you
+do; you won’t drink; you’re a gross feeder; and you dress in the dark,
+by the look of you. You wouldn’t keep a horse the other day when I
+suggested, because, you said, it might fall lame, and whenever you
+cross the street you take a hansom. Even you are not foolish enough to
+suppose that theatres and all the live things you can buy thereabouts
+mean Life.
+
+What earthly need have you for money?”
+
+“It’s there, bless its golden heart,” said Dick. “It’s there all the
+time.
+
+Providence has sent me nuts while I have teeth to crack ’em with. I
+haven’t yet found the nut I wish to crack, but I’m keeping my teeth
+filed.
+
+Perhaps some day you and I will go for a walk round the wide earth.”
+
+“With no work to do, nobody to worry us, and nobody to compete with?
+You would be unfit to speak to in a week. Besides, I shouldn’t go. I
+don’t care to profit by the price of a man’s soul,—for that’s what it
+would mean.
+
+Dick, it’s no use arguing. You’re a fool.”
+
+“Don’t see it. When I was on that Chinese pig-boat, our captain got
+credit for saving about twenty-five thousand very seasick little pigs,
+when our old tramp of a steamer fell foul of a timber-junk. Now, taking
+those pigs as a parallel——”
+
+“Oh, confound your parallels! Whenever I try to improve your soul, you
+always drag in some anecdote from your very shady past. Pigs aren’t the
+British public; and self-respect is self-respect the world over. Go out
+for a walk and try to catch some self-respect. And, I say, if the
+Nilghai comes up this evening can I show him your diggings?”
+
+“Surely. You’ll be asking whether you must knock at my door, next.” And
+Dick departed, to take counsel with himself in the rapidly gathering
+London fog.
+
+Half an hour after he had left, the Nilghai laboured up the staircase.
+He was the chiefest, as he was the youngest, of the war correspondents,
+and his experiences dated from the birth of the needle-gun. Saving only
+his ally, Keneu the Great War Eagle, there was no man higher in the
+craft than he, and he always opened his conversation with the news that
+there would be trouble in the Balkans in the spring. Torpenhow laughed
+as he entered.
+
+“Never mind the trouble in the Balkans. Those little states are always
+screeching. You’ve heard about Dick’s luck?”
+
+“Yes; he has been called up to notoriety, hasn’t he? I hope you keep
+him properly humble. He wants suppressing from time to time.”
+
+“He does. He’s beginning to take liberties with what he thinks is his
+reputation.”
+
+“Already! By Jove, he _has_ cheek! I don’t know about his reputation,
+but he’ll come a cropper if he tries that sort of thing.”
+
+“So I told him. I don’t think he believes it.”
+
+“They never do when they first start off. What’s that wreck on the
+ground there?”
+
+“Specimen of his latest impertinence.” Torpenhow thrust the torn edges
+of the canvas together and showed the well-groomed picture to the
+Nilghai, who looked at it for a moment and whistled.
+
+“It’s a chromo,” said he,—“a chromo-litholeomargarine fake! What
+possessed him to do it? And yet how thoroughly he has caught the note
+that catches a public who think with their boots and read with their
+elbows! The cold-blooded insolence of the work almost saves it; but he
+mustn’t go on with this. Hasn’t he been praised and cockered up too
+much? You know these people here have no sense of proportion. They’ll
+call him a second Detaille and a third-hand Meissonier while his
+fashion lasts. It’s windy diet for a colt.”
+
+“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
+in_St. 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 ’igh 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 though
+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.”
+
+“We don’t; but you always understood me, and there is so much in my
+work that you could help me in. You know things and the ways of doing
+things. You must.”
+
+“I do, I fancy, or else I don’t know myself. Then you won’t care to
+lose sight of me altogether, and—you want me to help you in your work?”
+
+“Yes; but remember, Dick, nothing will ever come of it. That’s why I
+feel so selfish. Can’t things stay as they are? I do want your help.”
+
+“You shall have it. But let’s consider. I must see your pics first, and
+overhaul your sketches, and find out about your tendencies. You should
+see what the papers say about my tendencies! Then I’ll give you good
+advice, and you shall paint according. Isn’t that it, Maisie?”
+
+Again there was triumph in Dick’s eye.
+
+“It’s too good of you,—much too good. Because you are consoling
+yourself with what will never happen, and I know that, and yet I want
+to keep you. Don’t blame me later, please.”
+
+“I’m going into the matter with my eyes open. Moreover the Queen can do
+no wrong. It isn’t your selfishness that impresses me. It’s your
+audacity in proposing to make use of me.”
+
+“Pooh! You’re only Dick,—and a print-shop.”
+
+“Very good: that’s all I am. But, Maisie, you believe, don’t you, that
+I love you? I don’t want you to have any false notions about brothers
+and sisters.”
+
+Maisie looked up for a moment and dropped her eyes.
+
+“It’s absurd, but—I believe. I wish I could send you away before you
+get angry with me. But—but the girl that lives with me is red-haired,
+and an impressionist, and all our notions clash.”
+
+“So do ours, I think. Never mind. Three months from to-day we shall be
+laughing at this together.”
+
+Maisie shook her head mournfully. “I knew you wouldn’t understand, and
+it will only hurt you more when you find out. Look at my face, Dick,
+and tell me what you see.”
+
+They stood up and faced each other for a moment. The fog was gathering,
+and it stifled the roar of the traffic of London beyond the railings.
+Dick brought all his painfully acquired knowledge of faces to bear on
+the eyes, mouth, and chin underneath the black velvet toque.
+
+“It’s the same Maisie, and it’s the same me,” he said. “We’ve both nice
+little wills of our own, and one or other of us has to be broken. Now
+about the future. I must come and see your pictures some day,—I suppose
+when the red-haired girl is on the premises.”
+
+“Sundays are my best times. You must come on Sundays. There are such
+heaps of things I want to talk about and ask your advice about. Now I
+must get back to work.”
+
+“Try to find out before next Sunday what I am,” said Dick. “Don’t take
+my word for anything I’ve told you. Good-bye, darling, and bless you.”
+
+Maisie stole away like a little gray mouse. Dick watched her till she
+was out of sight, but he did not hear her say to herself, very soberly,
+“I’m a wretch,—a horrid, selfish wretch. But it’s Dick, and Dick will
+understand.”
+
+No one has yet explained what actually happens when an irresistible
+force meets the immovable post, though many have thought deeply, even
+as Dick thought. He tried to assure himself that Maisie would be led in
+a few weeks by his mere presence and discourse to a better way of
+thinking. Then he remembered much too distinctly her face and all that
+was written on it.
+
+“If I know anything of heads,” he said, “there’s everything in that
+face but love. I shall have to put that in myself; and that chin and
+mouth won’t be won for nothing. But she’s right. She knows what she
+wants, and she’s going to get it. What insolence! Me! Of all the people
+in the wide world, to use me! But then she’s Maisie. There’s no getting
+over that fact; and it’s good to see her again. This business must have
+been simmering at the back of my head for years.... She’ll use me as I
+used Binat at Port Said.
+
+She’s quite right. It will hurt a little. I shall have to see her every
+Sunday,—like a young man courting a housemaid. She’s sure to come
+around; and yet—that mouth isn’t a yielding mouth. I shall be wanting
+to kiss her all the time, and I shall have to look at her pictures,—I
+don’t even know what sort of work she does yet,—and I shall have to
+talk about Art,—Woman’s Art! Therefore, particularly and perpetually,
+damn all varieties of Art. It did me a good turn once, and now it’s in
+my way. I’ll go home and do some Art.”
+
+Half-way to the studio, Dick was smitten with a terrible thought. The
+figure of a solitary woman in the fog suggested it.
+
+“She’s all alone in London, with a red-haired impressionist girl, who
+probably has the digestion of an ostrich. Most red-haired people have.
+
+Maisie’s a bilious little body. They’ll eat like lone women,—meals at
+all hours, and tea with all meals. I remember how the students in Paris
+used to pig along. She may fall ill at any minute, and I shan’t be able
+to help.
+
+Whew! this is ten times worse than owning a wife.”
+
+Torpenhow entered the studio at dusk, and looked at Dick with eyes full
+of the austere love that springs up between men who have tugged at the
+same oar together and are yoked by custom and use and the intimacies of
+toil. This is a good love, and, since it allows, and even encourages,
+strife, recrimination, and brutal sincerity, does not die, but grows,
+and is proof against any absence and evil conduct.
+
+Dick was silent after he handed Torpenhow the filled pipe of council.
+He thought of Maisie and her possible needs. It was a new thing to
+think of anybody but Torpenhow, who could think for himself. Here at
+last was an outlet for that cash balance. He could adorn Maisie
+barbarically with jewelry,—a thick gold necklace round that little
+neck, bracelets upon the rounded arms, and rings of price upon her
+hands,—the cool, temperate, ringless hands that he had taken between
+his own. It was an absurd thought, for Maisie would not even allow him
+to put one ring on one finger, and she would laugh at golden trappings.
+It would be better to sit with her quietly in the dusk, his arm around
+her neck and her face on his shoulder, as befitted husband and wife.
+Torpenhow’s boots creaked that night, and his strong voice jarred.
+Dick’s brows contracted and he murmured an evil word because he had
+taken all his success as a right and part payment for past discomfort,
+and now he was checked in his stride by a woman who admitted all the
+success and did not instantly care for him.
+
+“I say, old man,” said Torpenhow, who had made one or two vain attempts
+at conversation, “I haven’t put your back up by anything I’ve said
+lately, have I?”
+
+“You! No. How could you?”
+
+“Liver out of order?”
+
+“The truly healthy man doesn’t know he has a liver. I’m only a bit
+worried about things in general. I suppose it’s my soul.”
+
+“The truly healthy man doesn’t know he has a soul. What business have
+you with luxuries of that kind?”
+
+“It came of itself. Who’s the man that says that we’re all islands
+shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding?”
+
+“He’s right, whoever he is,—except about the misunderstanding. I don’t
+think we could misunderstand each other.”
+
+The blue smoke curled back from the ceiling in clouds. Then Torpenhow,
+insinuatingly—“Dick, is it a woman?”
+
+“Be hanged if it’s anything remotely resembling a woman; and if you
+begin to talk like that, I’ll hire a red-brick studio with white paint
+trimmings, and begonias and petunias and blue Hungarias to play among
+three-and-sixpenny pot-palms, and I’ll mount all my pics in aniline-dye
+plush plasters, and I’ll invite every woman who maunders over what her
+guide-books tell her is Art, and you shall receive ’em, Torp,—in a
+snuff-brown velvet coat with yellow trousers and an orange tie. You’ll
+like that?”
+
+“Too thin, Dick. A better man than you once denied with cursing and
+swearing. You’ve overdone it, just as he did. It’s no business of mine,
+of course, but it’s comforting to think that somewhere under the stars
+there’s saving up for you a tremendous thrashing. Whether it’ll come
+from heaven or earth, I don’t know, but it’s bound to come and break
+you up a little. You want hammering.”
+
+Dick shivered. “All right,” said he. “When this island is
+disintegrated, it will call for you.”
+
+“I shall come round the corner and help to disintegrate it some more.
+
+We’re talking nonsense. Come along to a theatre.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+“And you may lead a thousand men,
+    Nor ever draw the rein,
+But ere ye lead the Faery Queen
+    ’Twill burst your heart in twain.”
+
+He has slipped his foot from the stirrup-bar,
+    The bridle from his hand,
+And he is bound by hand and foot
+    To the Queen o’ Faery-land.
+
+_Sir Hoggie and the Fairies_.
+
+
+Some weeks later, on a very foggy Sunday, Dick was returning across the
+Park to his studio. “This,” he said, “is evidently the thrashing that
+Torp meant. It hurts more than I expected; but the Queen can do no
+wrong; and she certainly has some notion of drawing.”
+
+He had just finished a Sunday visit to Maisie,—always under the green
+eyes of the red-haired impressionist girl, whom he learned to hate at
+sight,—and was tingling with a keen sense of shame. Sunday after
+Sunday, putting on his best clothes, he had walked over to the untidy
+house north of the Park, first to see Maisie’s pictures, and then to
+criticise and advise upon them as he realised that they were
+productions on which advice would not be wasted. Sunday after Sunday,
+and his love grew with each visit, he had been compelled to cram his
+heart back from between his lips when it prompted him to kiss Maisie
+several times and very much indeed. Sunday after Sunday, the head above
+the heart had warned him that Maisie was not yet attainable, and that
+it would be better to talk as connectedly as possible upon the
+mysteries of the craft that was all in all to her. Therefore it was his
+fate to endure weekly torture in the studio built out over the clammy
+back garden of a frail stuffy little villa where nothing was ever in
+its right place and nobody every called,—to endure and to watch Maisie
+moving to and fro with the teacups. He abhorred tea, but, since it gave
+him a little longer time in her presence, he drank it devoutly, and the
+red-haired girl sat in an untidy heap and eyed him without speaking.
+She was always watching him.
+
+Once, and only once, when she had left the studio, Maisie showed him an
+album that held a few poor cuttings from provincial papers,—the
+briefest of hurried notes on some of her pictures sent to outlying
+exhibitions. Dick stooped and kissed the paint-smudged thumb on the
+open page. “Oh, my love, my love,” he muttered, “do you value these
+things? Chuck ’em into the waste-paper basket!”
+
+“Not till I get something better,” said Maisie, shutting the book.
+
+Then Dick, moved by no respect for his public and a very deep regard
+for the maiden, did deliberately propose, in order to secure more of
+these coveted cuttings, that he should paint a picture which Maisie
+should sign.
+
+“That’s childish,” said Maisie, “and I didn’t think it of you. It must
+be my work. Mine,—mine,—mine!”
+
+“Go and design decorative medallions for rich brewers’ houses. You are
+thoroughly good at that.” Dick was sick and savage.
+
+“Better things than medallions, Dick,” was the answer, in tones that
+recalled a gray-eyed atom’s fearless speech to Mrs. Jennett. Dick would
+have abased himself utterly, but that other girl trailed in.
+
+Next Sunday he laid at Maisie’s feet small gifts of pencils that could
+almost draw of themselves and colours in whose permanence he believed,
+and he was ostentatiously attentive to the work in hand. It demanded,
+among other things, an exposition of the faith that was in him.
+
+Torpenhow’s hair would have stood on end had he heard the fluency with
+which Dick preached his own gospel of Art.
+
+A month before, Dick would have been equally astonished; but it was
+Maisie’s will and pleasure, and he dragged his words together to make
+plain to her comprehension all that had been hidden to himself of the
+whys and wherefores of work. There is not the least difficulty in doing
+a thing if you only know how to do it; the trouble is to explain your
+method.
+
+“I could put this right if I had a brush in my hand,” said Dick,
+despairingly, over the modelling of a chin that Maisie complained would
+not “look flesh,”—it was the same chin that she had scraped out with
+the palette knife,—“but I find it almost impossible to teach you.
+There’s a queer grim, Dutch touch about your painting that I like; but
+I’ve a notion that you’re weak in drawing. You foreshorten as though
+you never used the model, and you’ve caught Kami’s pasty way of dealing
+with flesh in shadow. Then, again, though you don’t know it yourself,
+you shirk hard work. Suppose you spend some of your time on line alone.
+Line doesn’t allow of shirking. Oils do, and three square inches of
+flashy, tricky stuff in the corner of a pic sometimes carry a bad thing
+off,—as I know. That’s immoral. Do line-work for a little while, and
+then I can tell more about your powers, as old Kami used to say.”
+
+Maisie protested; she did not care for the pure line.
+
+“I know,” said Dick. “You want to do your fancy heads with a bunch of
+flowers at the base of the neck to hide bad modelling.” The red-haired
+girl laughed a little. “You want to do landscapes with cattle knee-deep
+in grass to hide bad drawing. You want to do a great deal more than you
+can do. You have sense of colour, but you want form. Colour’s a
+gift,—put it aside and think no more about it,—but form you can be
+drilled into.
+
+Now, all your fancy heads—and some of them are very good—will keep you
+exactly where you are. With line you must go forward or backward, and
+it will show up all your weaknesses.”
+
+“But other people——” began Maisie.
+
+“You mustn’t mind what other people do. If their souls were your soul,
+it would be different. You stand and fall by your own work, remember,
+and it’s waste of time to think of any one else in this battle.”
+
+Dick paused, and the longing that had been so resolutely put away came
+back into his eyes. He looked at Maisie, and the look asked as plainly
+as words, Was it not time to leave all this barren wilderness of canvas
+and counsel and join hands with Life and Love?
+
+Maisie assented to the new programme of schooling so adorably that Dick
+could hardly restrain himself from picking her up then and there and
+carrying her off to the nearest registrar’s office. It was the implicit
+obedience to the spoken word and the blank indifference to the unspoken
+desire that baffled and buffeted his soul. He held authority in that
+house,—authority limited, indeed, to one-half of one afternoon in
+seven, but very real while it lasted. Maisie had learned to appeal to
+him on many subjects, from the proper packing of pictures to the
+condition of a smoky chimney. The red-haired girl never consulted him
+about anything.
+
+On the other hand, she accepted his appearances without protest, and
+watched him always. He discovered that the meals of the establishment
+were irregular and fragmentary. They depended chiefly on tea, pickles,
+and biscuit, as he had suspected from the beginning. The girls were
+supposed to market week and week about, but they lived, with the help
+of a charwoman, as casually as the young ravens. Maisie spent most of
+her income on models, and the other girl revelled in apparatus as
+refined as her work was rough. Armed with knowledge, dear-bought from
+the Docks, Dick warned Maisie that the end of semi-starvation meant the
+crippling of power to work, which was considerably worse than death.
+
+Maisie took the warning, and gave more thought to what she ate and
+drank. When his trouble returned upon him, as it generally did in the
+long winter twilights, the remembrance of that little act of domestic
+authority and his coercion with a hearth-brush of the smoky
+drawing-room chimney stung Dick like a whip-lash.
+
+He conceived that this memory would be the extreme of his sufferings,
+till one Sunday, the red-haired girl announced that she would make a
+study of Dick’s head, and that he would be good enough to sit still,
+and—quite as an afterthought—look at Maisie. He sat, because he could
+not well refuse, and for the space of half an hour he reflected on all
+the people in the past whom he had laid open for the purposes of his
+own craft. He remembered Binat most distinctly,—that Binat who had once
+been an artist and talked about degradation.
+
+It was the merest monochrome roughing in of a head, but it presented
+the dumb waiting, the longing, and, above all, the hopeless enslavement
+of the man, in a spirit of bitter mockery.
+
+“I’ll buy it,” said Dick, promptly, “at your own price.”
+
+“My price is too high, but I dare say you’ll be as grateful if——” The
+wet sketch, fluttered from the girl’s hand and fell into the ashes of
+the studio stove. When she picked it up it was hopelessly smudged.
+
+“Oh, it’s all spoiled!” said Maisie. “And I never saw it. Was it like?”
+
+“Thank you,” said Dick under his breath to the red-haired girl, and he
+removed himself swiftly.
+
+“How that man hates me!” said the girl. “And how he loves you, Maisie!”
+
+“What nonsense? I knew Dick’s very fond of me, but he had his work to
+do, and I have mine.”
+
+“Yes, he is fond of you, and I think he knows there is something in
+impressionism, after all. Maisie, can’t you see?”
+
+“See? See what?”
+
+“Nothing; only, I know that if I could get any man to look at me as
+that man looks at you, I’d—I don’t know what I’d do. But he hates me.
+Oh, how he hates me!”
+
+She was not altogether correct. Dick’s hatred was tempered with
+gratitude for a few moments, and then he forgot the girl entirely. Only
+the sense of shame remained, and he was nursing it across the Park in
+the fog. “There’ll be an explosion one of these days,” he said
+wrathfully. “But it isn’t Maisie’s fault; she’s right, quite right, as
+far as she knows, and I can’t blame her. This business has been going
+on for three months nearly.
+
+Three months!—and it cost me ten years’ knocking about to get at the
+notion, the merest raw notion, of my work. That’s true; but then I
+didn’t have pins, drawing-pins, and palette-knives, stuck into me every
+Sunday.
+
+Oh, my little darling, if ever I break you, somebody will have a very
+bad time of it. No, she won’t. I’d be as big a fool about her as I am
+now. I’ll poison that red-haired girl on my wedding-day,—she’s
+unwholesome,—and now I’ll pass on these present bad times to Torp.”
+
+Torpenhow had been moved to lecture Dick more than once lately on the
+sin of levity, and Dick had listened and replied not a word. In the
+weeks between the first few Sundays of his discipline he had flung
+himself savagely into his work, resolved that Maisie should at least
+know the full stretch of his powers. Then he had taught Maisie that she
+must not pay the least attention to any work outside her own, and
+Maisie had obeyed him all too well. She took his counsels, but was not
+interested in his pictures.
+
+“Your things smell of tobacco and blood,” she said once. “Can’t you do
+anything except soldiers?”
+
+“I could do a head of you that would startle you,” thought Dick,—this
+was before the red-haired girl had brought him under the
+guillotine,—but he only said, “I am very sorry,” and harrowed
+Torpenhow’s soul that evening with blasphemies against Art. Later,
+insensibly and to a large extent against his own will, he ceased to
+interest himself in his own work.
+
+For Maisie’s sake, and to soothe the self-respect that it seemed to him
+he lost each Sunday, he would not consciously turn out bad stuff, but,
+since Maisie did not care even for his best, it were better not to do
+anything at all save wait and mark time between Sunday and Sunday.
+Torpenhow was disgusted as the weeks went by fruitless, and then
+attacked him one Sunday evening when Dick felt utterly exhausted after
+three hours’ biting self-restraint in Maisie’s presence. There was
+Language, and Torpenhow withdrew to consult the Nilghai, who had come
+in to talk continental politics.
+
+“Bone-idle, is he? Careless, and touched in the temper?” said the
+Nilghai.
+
+“It isn’t worth worrying over. Dick is probably playing the fool with a
+woman.”
+
+“Isn’t that bad enough?”
+
+“No. She may throw him out of gear and knock his work to pieces for a
+while. She may even turn up here some day and make a scene on the
+staircase: one never knows. But until Dick speaks of his own accord you
+had better not touch him. He is no easy-tempered man to handle.”
+
+“No; I wish he were. He is such an aggressive, cocksure, you-be-damned
+fellow.”
+
+“He’ll get that knocked out of him in time. He must learn that he can’t
+storm up and down the world with a box of moist tubes and a slick
+brush.
+
+You’re fond of him?”
+
+“I’d take any punishment that’s in store for him if I could; but the
+worst of it is, no man can save his brother.”
+
+“No, and the worser of it is, there is no discharge in this war. Dick
+must learn his lesson like the rest of us. Talking of war, there’ll be
+trouble in the Balkans in the spring.”
+
+“That trouble is long coming. I wonder if we could drag Dick out there
+when it comes off?”
+
+Dick entered the room soon afterwards, and the question was put to him.
+
+“Not good enough,” he said shortly. “I’m too comf’y where I am.”
+
+“Surely you aren’t taking all the stuff in the papers seriously?” said
+the Nilghai. “Your vogue will be ended in less than six months,—the
+public will know your touch and go on to something new,—and where will
+you be then?”
+
+“Here, in England.”
+
+“When you might be doing decent work among us out there? Nonsense! I
+shall go, the Keneu will be there, Torp will be there, Cassavetti will
+be there, and the whole lot of us will be there, and we shall have as
+much as ever we can do, with unlimited fighting and the chance for you
+of seeing things that would make the reputation of three
+Verestchagins.”
+
+“Um!” said Dick, pulling at his pipe.
+
+“You prefer to stay here and imagine that all the world is gaping at
+your pictures? Just think how full an average man’s life is of his own
+pursuits and pleasures. When twenty thousand of him find time to look
+up between mouthfuls and grunt something about something they aren’t
+the least interested in, the net result is called fame, reputation, or
+notoriety, according to the taste and fancy of the speller my lord.”
+
+“I know that as well as you do. Give me credit for a little gumption.”
+
+“Be hanged if I do!”
+
+“_Be_ hanged, then; you probably will be,—for a spy, by excited Turks.
+Heigh-ho! I’m weary, dead weary, and virtue has gone out of me.” Dick
+dropped into a chair, and was fast asleep in a minute.
+
+“That’s a bad sign,” said the Nilghai, in an undertone.
+
+Torpenhow picked the pipe from the waistcoat where it was beginning to
+burn, and put a pillow behind the head. “We can’t help; we can’t help,”
+he said. “It’s a good ugly sort of old cocoanut, and I’m fond of it.
+There’s the scar of the wipe he got when he was cut over in the
+square.”
+
+“Shouldn’t wonder if that has made him a trifle mad.”
+
+“I should. He’s a most businesslike madman.”
+
+Then Dick began to snore furiously.
+
+“Oh, here, no affection can stand this sort of thing. Wake up, Dick,
+and go and sleep somewhere else, if you intend to make a noise about
+it.”
+
+“When a cat has been out on the tiles all night,” said the Nilghai, in
+his beard, “I notice that she usually sleeps all day. This is natural
+history.”
+
+Dick staggered away rubbing his eyes and yawning. In the night-watches
+he was overtaken with an idea, so simple and so luminous that he
+wondered he had never conceived it before. It was full of craft. He
+would seek Maisie on a week-day,—would suggest an excursion, and would
+take her by train to Fort Keeling, over the very ground that they two
+had trodden together ten years ago.
+
+“As a general rule,” he explained to his chin-lathered reflection in
+the morning, “it isn’t safe to cross an old trail twice. Things remind
+one of things, and a cold wind gets up, and you feel sad; but this is
+an exception to every rule that ever was. I’ll go to Maisie at once.”
+
+Fortunately, the red-haired girl was out shopping when he arrived, and
+Maisie in a paint-spattered blouse was warring with her canvas. She was
+not pleased to see him; for week-day visits were a stretch of the bond;
+and it needed all his courage to explain his errand.
+
+“I know you’ve been working too hard,” he concluded, with an air of
+authority. “If you do that, you’ll break down. You had much better
+come.”
+
+“Where?” said Maisie, wearily. She had been standing before her easel
+too long, and was very tired.
+
+“Anywhere you please. We’ll take a train to-morrow and see where it
+stops. We’ll have lunch somewhere, and I’ll bring you back in the
+evening.”
+
+“If there’s a good working light to-morrow, I lose a day.” Maisie
+balanced the heavy white chestnut palette irresolutely.
+
+Dick bit back an oath that was hurrying to his lips. He had not yet
+learned patience with the maiden to whom her work was all in all.
+
+“You’ll lose ever so many more, dear, if you use every hour of working
+light. Overwork’s only murderous idleness. Don’t be unreasonable. I’ll
+call for you to-morrow after breakfast early.”
+
+“But surely you are going to ask——”
+
+“No, I am not. I want you and nobody else. Besides, she hates me as
+much as I hate her. She won’t care to come. To-morrow, then; and pray
+that we get sunshine.”
+
+Dick went away delighted, and by consequence did no work whatever.
+
+He strangled a wild desire to order a special train, but bought a great
+gray kangaroo cloak lined with glossy black marten, and then retired
+into himself to consider things.
+
+“I’m going out for the day to-morrow with Dick,” said Maisie to the
+red-haired girl when the latter returned, tired, from marketing in the
+Edgware road.
+
+“He deserves it. I shall have the studio floor thoroughly scrubbed
+while you’re away. It’s very dirty.”
+
+Maisie had enjoyed no sort of holiday for months and looked forward to
+the little excitement, but not without misgivings.
+
+“There’s nobody nicer than Dick when he talks sensibly, she thought,
+but I’m sure he’ll be silly and worry me, and I’m sure I can’t tell him
+anything he’d like to hear. If he’d only be sensible, I should like him
+so much better.”
+
+Dick’s eyes were full of joy when he made his appearance next morning
+and saw Maisie, gray-ulstered and black-velvet-hatted, standing in the
+hallway. Palaces of marble, and not sordid imitation of grained wood,
+were surely the fittest background for such a divinity. The red-haired
+girl drew her into the studio for a moment and kissed her hurriedly.
+
+Maisie’s eyebrows climbed to the top of her forehead; she was
+altogether unused to these demonstrations. “Mind my hat,” she said,
+hurrying away, and ran down the steps to Dick waiting by the hansom.
+
+“Are you quite warm enough! Are you sure you wouldn’t like some more
+breakfast? Put the cloak over you knees.”
+
+“I’m quite comf’y, thanks. Where are we going, Dick? Oh, do stop
+singing like that. People will think we’re mad.”
+
+“Let ’em think,—if the exertion doesn’t kill them. They don’t know who
+we are, and I’m sure I don’t care who they are. My faith, Maisie,
+you’re looking lovely!”
+
+Maisie stared directly in front of her and did not reply. The wind of a
+keen clear winter morning had put colour into her cheeks. Overhead, the
+creamy-yellow smoke-clouds were thinning away one by one against a
+pale-blue sky, and the improvident sparrows broke off from water-spout
+committees and cab-rank cabals to clamour of the coming of spring.
+
+“It will be lovely weather in the country,” said Dick.
+
+“But where are we going?”
+
+“Wait and see.”
+
+They stopped at Victoria, and Dick sought tickets. For less than half
+the fraction of an instant it occurred to Maisie, comfortably settled
+by the waiting-room fire, that it was much more pleasant to send a man
+to the booking-office than to elbow one’s own way through the crowd.
+Dick put her into a Pullman,—solely on account of the warmth there; and
+she regarded the extravagance with grave scandalised eyes as the train
+moved out into the country.
+
+“I wish I knew where we are going,” she repeated for the twentieth
+time.
+
+The name of a well-remembered station flashed by, towards the end of
+the run, and Maisie was delighted.
+
+“Oh, Dick, you villain!”
+
+“Well, I thought you might like to see the place again. You haven’t
+been here since the old times, have you?”
+
+“No. I never cared to see Mrs. Jennett again; and she was all that was
+ever there.”
+
+“Not quite. Look out a minute. There’s the windmill above the
+potato-fields; they haven’t built villas there yet; d’you remember when
+I shut you up in it?”
+
+“Yes. How she beat you for it! I never told it was you.”
+
+“She guessed. I jammed a stick under the door and told you that I was
+burying Amomma alive in the potatoes, and you believed me. You had a
+trusting nature in those days.”
+
+They laughed and leaned to look out, identifying ancient landmarks with
+many reminiscences. Dick fixed his weather eye on the curve of Maisie’s
+cheek, very near his own, and watched the blood rise under the clear
+skin. He congratulated himself upon his cunning, and looked that the
+evening would bring him a great reward.
+
+When the train stopped they went out to look at an old town with new
+eyes. First, but from a distance, they regarded the house of Mrs.
+Jennett.
+
+“Suppose she should come out now, what would you do?” said Dick, with
+mock terror.
+
+“I should make a face.”
+
+“Show, then,” said Dick, dropping into the speech of childhood.
+
+Maisie made that face in the direction of the mean little villa, and
+Dick laughed.
+
+““This is disgraceful,”’ said Maisie, mimicking Mrs. Jennett’s tone.
+
+““Maisie, you run in at once, and learn the collect, gospel, and
+epistle for the next three Sundays. After all I’ve taught you, too, and
+three helps every Sunday at dinner! Dick’s always leading you into
+mischief. If you aren’t a gentleman, Dick, you might at least—“’
+
+The sentence ended abruptly. Maisie remembered when it had last been
+used.
+
+““Try to behave like one,”’ said Dick, promptly. “Quite right. Now
+we’ll get some lunch and go on to Fort Keeling,—unless you’d rather
+drive there?”
+
+“We must walk, out of respect to the place. How little changed it all
+is!”
+
+They turned in the direction of the sea through unaltered streets, and
+the influence of old things lay upon them. Presently they passed a
+confectioner’s shop much considered in the days when their joint
+pocket-money amounted to a shilling a week.
+
+“Dick, have you any pennies?” said Maisie, half to herself.
+
+“Only three; and if you think you’re going to have two of ’em to buy
+peppermints with, you’re wrong. She says peppermints aren’t ladylike.”
+
+Again they laughed, and again the colour came into Maisie’s cheeks as
+the blood boiled through Dick’s heart. After a large lunch they went
+down to the beach and to Fort Keeling across the waste, wind-bitten
+land that no builder had thought it worth his while to defile. The
+winter breeze came in from the sea and sang about their ears.
+
+“Maisie,” said Dick, “your nose is getting a crude Prussian blue at the
+tip.
+
+I’ll race you as far as you please for as much as you please.”
+
+She looked round cautiously, and with a laugh set off, swiftly as the
+ulster allowed, till she was out of breath.
+
+“We used to run miles,” she panted. “It’s absurd that we can’t run
+now.”
+
+“Old age, dear. This it is to get fat and sleek in town. When I wished
+to pull your hair you generally ran for three miles, shrieking at the
+top of your voice. I ought to know, because those shrieks of yours were
+meant to call up Mrs. Jennett with a cane and——”
+
+“Dick, I never got you a beating on purpose in my life.”
+
+“No, of course you never did. Good heavens! look at the sea.”
+
+“Why, it’s the same as ever!” said Maisie.
+
+Torpenhow had gathered from Mr. Beeton that Dick, properly dressed and
+shaved, had left the house at half-past eight in the morning with a
+travelling-rug over his arm. The Nilghai rolled in at mid-day for chess
+and polite conversation.
+
+“It’s worse than anything I imagined,” said Torpenhow.
+
+“Oh, the everlasting Dick, I suppose! You fuss over him like a hen with
+one chick. Let him run riot if he thinks it’ll amuse him. You can whip
+a young pup off feather, but you can’t whip a young man.”
+
+“It isn’t a woman. It’s one woman; and it’s a girl.”
+
+“Where’s your proof?”
+
+“He got up and went out at eight this morning,—got up in the middle of
+the night, by Jove! a thing he never does except when he’s on service.
+
+Even then, remember, we had to kick him out of his blankets before the
+fight began at El-Maghrib. It’s disgusting.”
+
+“It looks odd; but maybe he’s decided to buy a horse at last. He might
+get up for that, mightn’t he?”
+
+“Buy a blazing wheelbarrow! He’d have told us if there was a horse in
+the wind. It’s a girl.”
+
+“Don’t be certain. Perhaps it’s only a married woman.”
+
+“Dick has some sense of humour, if you haven’t. Who gets up in the gray
+dawn to call on another man’s wife? It’s a girl.”
+
+“Let it be a girl, then. She may teach him that there’s somebody else
+in the world besides himself.”
+
+“She’ll spoil his hand. She’ll waste his time, and she’ll marry him,
+and ruin his work for ever. He’ll be a respectable married man before
+we can stop him, and—he’ll never go on the long trail again.”
+
+“All quite possible, but the earth won’t spin the other way when that
+happens.... No! ho! I’d give something to see Dick “go wooing with the
+boys.” Don’t worry about it. These things be with Allah, and we can
+only look on. Get the chessmen.”
+
+The red-haired girl was lying down in her own room, staring at the
+ceiling. The footsteps of people on the pavement sounded, as they grew
+indistinct in the distance, like a many-times-repeated kiss that was
+all one long kiss. Her hands were by her side, and they opened and shut
+savagely from time to time.
+
+The charwoman in charge of the scrubbing of the studio knocked at her
+door: “Beg y’ pardon, miss, but in cleanin’ of a floor there’s two, not
+to say three, kind of soap, which is yaller, an’ mottled, an’
+disinfectink.
+
+Now, jist before I took my pail into the passage I though it would be
+pre’aps jest as well if I was to come up ’ere an’ ask you what sort of
+soap you was wishful that I should use on them boards. The yaller soap,
+miss——”
+
+There was nothing in the speech to have caused the paroxysm of fury
+that drove the red-haired girl into the middle of the room, almost
+shouting—
+
+“Do you suppose _I_ care what you use? Any kind will do!—_any_ kind!”
+
+The woman fled, and the red-haired girl looked at her own reflection in
+the glass for an instant and covered her face with her hands. It was as
+though she had shouted some shameless secret aloud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Roses red and roses white
+Plucked I for my love’s delight.
+She would none of all my posies,—
+Bade me gather her blue roses.
+
+Half the world I wandered through,
+Seeking where such flowers grew;
+Half the world unto my quest
+Answered but with laugh and jest.
+
+It may be beyond the grave
+She shall find what she would have.
+Mine was but an idle quest,—
+Roses white and red are best!—_Blue Roses_.
+
+
+The sea had not changed. Its waters were low on the mud-banks, and the
+Marazion Bell-buoy clanked and swung in the tide-way. On the white
+beach-sand dried stumps of sea-poppy shivered and chattered.
+
+“I don’t see the old breakwater,” said Maisie, under her breath.
+
+“Let’s be thankful that we have as much as we have. I don’t believe
+they’ve mounted a single new gun on the fort since we were here. Come
+and look.”
+
+They came to the glacis of Fort Keeling, and sat down in a nook
+sheltered from the wind under the tarred throat of a forty-pounder
+cannon.
+
+“Now, if Ammoma were only here!” said Maisie.
+
+For a long time both were silent. Then Dick took Maisie’s hand and
+called her by her name.
+
+She shook her head and looked out to sea.
+
+“Maisie, darling, doesn’t it make any difference?”
+
+“No!” between clenched teeth. “I’d—I’d tell you if it did; but it
+doesn’t, Oh, Dick, please be sensible.”
+
+“Don’t you think that it ever will?”
+
+“No, I’m sure it won’t.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+Maisie rested her chin on her hand, and, still regarding the sea, spoke
+hurriedly—“I know what you want perfectly well, but I can’t give it to
+you, Dick. It isn’t my fault; indeed, it isn’t. If I felt that I could
+care for any one——But I don’t feel that I care. I simply don’t
+understand what the feeling means.”
+
+“Is that true, dear?”
+
+“You’ve been very good to me, Dickie; and the only way I can pay you
+back is by speaking the truth. I daren’t tell a fib. I despise myself
+quite enough as it is.”
+
+“What in the world for?”
+
+“Because—because I take everything that you give me and I give you
+nothing in return. It’s mean and selfish of me, and whenever I think of
+it it worries me.”
+
+“Understand once for all, then, that I can manage my own affairs, and
+if I choose to do anything you aren’t to blame. You haven’t a single
+thing to reproach yourself with, darling.”
+
+“Yes, I have, and talking only makes it worse.”
+
+“Then don’t talk about it.”
+
+“How can I help myself? If you find me alone for a minute you are
+always talking about it; and when you aren’t you look it. You don’t
+know how I despise myself sometimes.”
+
+“Great goodness!” said Dick, nearly jumping to his feet. “Speak the
+truth now, Maisie, if you never speak it again! Do I—does this worrying
+bore you?”
+
+“No. It does not.”
+
+“You’d tell me if it did?”
+
+“I should let you know, I think.”
+
+“Thank you. The other thing is fatal. But you must learn to forgive a
+man when he’s in love. He’s always a nuisance. You must have known
+that?”
+
+Maisie did not consider the last question worth answering, and Dick was
+forced to repeat it.
+
+“There were other men, of course. They always worried just when I was
+in the middle of my work, and wanted me to listen to them.”
+
+“Did you listen?”
+
+“At first; and they couldn’t understand why I didn’t care. And they
+used to praise my pictures; and I thought they meant it. I used to be
+proud of the praise, and tell Kami, and—I shall never forget—once Kami
+laughed at me.”
+
+“You don’t like being laughed at, Maisie, do you?”
+
+“I hate it. I never laugh at other people unless—unless they do bad
+work.
+
+Dick, tell me honestly what you think of my pictures generally,—of
+everything of mine that you’ve seen.”
+
+““Honest, honest, and honest over!”’ quoted Dick from a catchword of
+long ago. “Tell me what Kami always says.”
+
+Maisie hesitated. “He—he says that there is feeling in them.”
+
+“How dare you tell me a fib like that? Remember, I was under Kami for
+two years. I know exactly what he says.”
+
+“It isn’t a fib.”
+
+“It’s worse; it’s a half-truth. Kami says, when he puts his head on one
+side,—so,—‘_Il y a du sentiment, mais il n’y a pas de parti pris_.’” He
+rolled the _r_ threateningly, as Kami used to do.
+
+“Yes, that is what he says; and I’m beginning to think that he is
+right.”
+
+“Certainly he is.” Dick admitted that two people in the world could do
+and say no wrong. Kami was the man.
+
+“And now you say the same thing. It’s so disheartening.”
+
+“I’m sorry, but you asked me to speak the truth. Besides, I love you
+too much to pretend about your work. It’s strong, it’s patient
+sometimes,—not always,—and sometimes there’s power in it, but there’s
+no special reason why it should be done at all. At least, that’s how it
+strikes me.”
+
+“There’s no special reason why anything in the world should ever be
+done. You know that as well as I do. I only want success.”
+
+“You’re going the wrong way to get it, then. Hasn’t Kami ever told you
+so?”
+
+“Don’t quote Kami to me. I want to know what you think. My work’s bad,
+to begin with.”
+
+“I didn’t say that, and I don’t think it.”
+
+“It’s amateurish, then.”
+
+“That it most certainly is not. You’re a work-woman, darling, to your
+boot-heels, and I respect you for that.”
+
+“You don’t laugh at me behind my back?”
+
+“No, dear. You see, you are more to me than any one else. Put this
+cloak thing round you, or you’ll get chilled.”
+
+Maisie wrapped herself in the soft marten skins, turning the gray
+kangaroo fur to the outside.
+
+“This is delicious,” she said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully along the
+fur.
+
+“Well? Why am I wrong in trying to get a little success?”
+
+“Just because you try. Don’t you understand, darling? Good work has
+nothing to do with—doesn’t belong to—the person who does it. It’s put
+into him or her from outside.”
+
+“But how does that affect——”
+
+“Wait a minute. All we can do is to learn how to do our work, to be
+masters of our materials instead of servants, and never to be afraid of
+anything.”
+
+“I understand that.”
+
+“Everything else comes from outside ourselves. Very good. If we sit
+down quietly to work out notions that are sent to us, we may or we may
+not do something that isn’t bad. A great deal depends on being master
+of the bricks and mortar of the trade. But the instant we begin to
+think about success and the effect of our work—to play with one eye on
+the gallery—we lose power and touch and everything else. At least
+that’s how I have found it. Instead of being quiet and giving every
+power you possess to your work, you’re fretting over something which
+you can neither help no hinder by a minute. See?”
+
+“It’s so easy for you to talk in that way. People like what you do.
+Don’t you ever think about the gallery?”
+
+“Much too often; but I’m always punished for it by loss of power. It’s
+as simple as the Rule of Three. If we make light of our work by using
+it for our own ends, our work will make light of us, and, as we’re the
+weaker, we shall suffer.”
+
+“I don’t treat my work lightly. You know that it’s everything to me.”
+
+“Of course; but, whether you realise it or not, you give two strokes
+for yourself to one for your work. It isn’t your fault, darling. I do
+exactly the same thing, and know that I’m doing it. Most of the French
+schools, and all the schools here, drive the students to work for their
+own credit, and for the sake of their pride. I was told that all the
+world was interested in my work, and everybody at Kami’s talked
+turpentine, and I honestly believed that the world needed elevating and
+influencing, and all manner of impertinences, by my brushes. By Jove, I
+actually believed that! When my little head was bursting with a notion
+that I couldn’t handle because I hadn’t sufficient knowledge of my
+craft, I used to run about wondering at my own magnificence and getting
+ready to astonish the world.”
+
+“But surely one can do that sometimes?”
+
+“Very seldom with malice aforethought, darling. And when it’s done it’s
+such a tiny thing, and the world’s so big, and all but a millionth part
+of it doesn’t care. Maisie, come with me and I’ll show you something of
+the size of the world. One can no more avoid working than eating,—that
+goes on by itself,—but try to see what you are working for. I know such
+little heavens that I could take you to,—islands tucked away under the
+Line.
+
+You sight them after weeks of crashing through water as black as black
+marble because it’s so deep, and you sit in the fore-chains day after
+day and see the sun rise almost afraid because the sea’s so lonely.”
+
+“Who is afraid?—you, or the sun?”
+
+“The sun, of course. And there are noises under the sea, and sounds
+overhead in a clear sky. Then you find your island alive with hot moist
+orchids that make mouths at you and can do everything except talk.
+
+There’s a waterfall in it three hundred feet high, just like a sliver
+of green jade laced with silver; and millions of wild bees live up in
+the rocks; and you can hear the fat cocoanuts falling from the palms;
+and you order an ivory-white servant to sling you a long yellow hammock
+with tassels on it like ripe maize, and you put up your feet and hear
+the bees hum and the water fall till you go to sleep.”
+
+“Can one work there?”
+
+“Certainly. One must do something always. You hang your canvas up in a
+palm tree and let the parrots criticise. When they scuffle you heave a
+ripe custard-apple at them, and it bursts in a lather of cream. There
+are hundreds of places. Come and see them.”
+
+“I don’t quite like that place. It sounds lazy. Tell me another.”
+
+“What do you think of a big, red, dead city built of red sandstone,
+with raw green aloes growing between the stones, lying out neglected on
+honey-coloured sands? There are forty dead kings there, Maisie, each in
+a gorgeous tomb finer than all the others. You look at the palaces and
+streets and shops and tanks, and think that men must live there, till
+you find a wee gray squirrel rubbing its nose all alone in the
+market-place, and a jewelled peacock struts out of a carved doorway and
+spreads its tail against a marble screen as fine pierced as point-lace.
+Then a monkey—a little black monkey—walks through the main square to
+get a drink from a tank forty feet deep. He slides down the creepers to
+the water’s edge, and a friend holds him by the tail, in case he should
+fall in.”
+
+“Is that all true?”
+
+“I have been there and seen. Then evening comes, and the lights change
+till it’s just as though you stood in the heart of a king-opal. A
+little before sundown, as punctually as clockwork, a big bristly wild
+boar, with all his family following, trots through the city gate,
+churning the foam on his tusks. You climb on the shoulder of a blind
+black stone god and watch that pig choose himself a palace for the
+night and stump in wagging his tail. Then the night-wind gets up, and
+the sands move, and you hear the desert outside the city singing, “Now
+I lay me down to sleep,” and everything is dark till the moon rises.
+Maisie, darling, come with me and see what the world is really like.
+It’s very lovely, and it’s very horrible,—but I won’t let you see
+anything horrid,—and it doesn’t care your life or mine for pictures or
+anything else except doing its own work and making love. Come, and I’ll
+show you how to brew sangaree, and sling a hammock, and—oh, thousands
+of things, and you’ll see for yourself what colour means, and we’ll
+find out together what love means, and then, maybe, we shall be allowed
+to do some good work. Come away!”
+
+“Why?” said Maisie.
+
+“How can you do anything until you have seen everything, or as much as
+you can? And besides, darling, I love you. Come along with me. You have
+no business here; you don’t belong to this place; you’re half a
+gipsy,—your face tells that; and I—even the smell of open water makes
+me restless. Come across the sea and be happy!”
+
+He had risen to his feet, and stood in the shadow of the gun, looking
+down at the girl. The very short winter afternoon had worn away, and,
+before they knew, the winter moon was walking the untroubled sea. Long
+ruled lines of silver showed where a ripple of the rising tide was
+turning over the mud-banks. The wind had dropped, and in the intense
+stillness they could hear a donkey cropping the frosty grass many yards
+away. A faint beating, like that of a muffled drum, came out of the
+moon-haze.
+
+“What’s that?” said Maisie, quickly. “It sounds like a heart beating.
+Where is it?”
+
+Dick was so angry at this sudden wrench to his pleadings that he could
+not trust himself to speak, and in this silence caught the sound.
+Maisie from her seat under the gun watched him with a certain amount of
+fear. She wished so much that he would be sensible and cease to worry
+her with over-sea emotion that she both could and could not understand.
+She was not prepared, however, for the change in his face as he
+listened.
+
+“It’s a steamer,” he said,—“a twin-screw steamer, by the beat. I can’t
+make her out, but she must be standing very close in-shore. Ah!” as the
+red of a rocket streaked the haze, “she’s standing in to signal before
+she clears the Channel.”
+
+“Is it a wreck?” said Maisie, to whom these words were as Greek.
+
+Dick’s eyes were turned to the sea. “Wreck! What nonsense! She’s only
+reporting herself. Red rocket forward—there’s a green light aft now,
+and two red rockets from the bridge.”
+
+“What does that mean?”
+
+“It’s the signal of the Cross Keys Line running to Australia. I wonder
+which steamer it is.” The note of his voice had changed; he seemed to
+be talking to himself, and Maisie did not approve of it. The moonlight
+broke the haze for a moment, touching the black sides of a long steamer
+working down Channel. “Four masts and three funnels—she’s in deep
+draught, too. That must be the _Barralong_, or the _Bhutia_. No, the
+_Bhutia_ has a clopper bow. It’s the _Barralong_, to Australia. She’ll
+lift the Southern Cross in a week,—lucky old tub!—oh, lucky old tub!”
+
+He stared intently, and moved up the slope of the fort to get a better
+view, but the mist on the sea thickened again, and the beating of the
+screws grew fainter. Maisie called to him a little angrily, and he
+returned, still keeping his eyes to seaward. “Have you ever seen the
+Southern Cross blazing right over your head?” he asked. “It’s superb!”
+
+“No,” she said shortly, “and I don’t want to. If you think it’s so
+lovely, why don’t you go and see it yourself?”
+
+She raised her face from the soft blackness of the marten skins about
+her throat, and her eyes shone like diamonds. The moonlight on the gray
+kangaroo fur turned it to frosted silver of the coldest.
+
+“By Jove, Maisie, you look like a little heathen idol tucked up there.”
+The eyes showed that they did not appreciate the compliment. “I’m
+sorry,” he continued. “The Southern Cross isn’t worth looking at unless
+someone helps you to see. That steamer’s out of hearing.”
+
+“Dick,” she said quietly, “suppose I were to come to you now,—be quiet
+a minute,—just as I am, and caring for you just as much as I do.”
+
+“Not as a brother, though? You said you didn’t—in the Park.”
+
+“I never had a brother. Suppose I said, “Take me to those places, and
+in time, perhaps, I might really care for you,” what would you do?”
+
+“Send you straight back to where you came from, in a cab. No, I
+wouldn’t; I’d let you walk. But you couldn’t do it, dear. And I
+wouldn’t run the risk. You’re worth waiting for till you can come
+without reservation.”
+
+“Do you honestly believe that?”
+
+“I have a hazy sort of idea that I do. Has it never struck you in that
+light?”
+
+“Ye—es. I feel so wicked about it.”
+
+“Wickeder than usual?”
+
+“You don’t know all I think. It’s almost too awful to tell.”
+
+“Never mind. You promised to tell me the truth—at least.”
+
+“It’s so ungrateful of me, but—but, though I know you care for me, and
+I like to have you with me, I’d—I’d even sacrifice you, if that would
+bring me what I want.”
+
+“My poor little darling! I know that state of mind. It doesn’t lead to
+good work.”
+
+“You aren’t angry? Remember, I do despise myself.”
+
+“I’m not exactly flattered,—I had guessed as much before,—but I’m not
+angry. I’m sorry for you. Surely you ought to have left a littleness
+like that behind you, years ago.”
+
+“You’ve no right to patronise me! I only want what I have worked for so
+long. It came to you without any trouble, and—and I don’t think it’s
+fair.”
+
+“What can I do? I’d give ten years of my life to get you what you want.
+
+But I can’t help you; even I can’t help.”
+
+A murmur of dissent from Maisie. He went on—“And I know by what you
+have just said that you’re on the wrong road to success. It isn’t got
+at by sacrificing other people,—I’ve had that much knocked into me; you
+must sacrifice yourself, and live under orders, and never think for
+yourself, and never have real satisfaction in your work except just at
+the beginning, when you’re reaching out after a notion.”
+
+“How can you believe all that?”
+
+“There’s no question of belief or disbelief. That’s the law, and you
+take it or refuse it as you please. I try to obey, but I can’t, and
+then my work turns bad on my hands. Under any circumstances, remember,
+four-fifths of everybody’s work must be bad. But the remnant is worth
+the trouble for it’s own sake.”
+
+“Isn’t it nice to get credit even for bad work?”
+
+“It’s much too nice. But—— May I tell you something? It isn’t a pretty
+tale, but you’re so like a man that I forget when I’m talking to you.”
+
+“Tell me.”
+
+“Once when I was out in the Soudan I went over some ground that we had
+been fighting on for three days. There were twelve hundred dead; and we
+hadn’t time to bury them.”
+
+“How ghastly!”
+
+“I had been at work on a big double-sheet sketch, and I was wondering
+what people would think of it at home. The sight of that field taught
+me a good deal. It looked just like a bed of horrible toadstools in all
+colours, and—I’d never seen men in bulk go back to their beginnings
+before. So I began to understand that men and women were only material
+to work with, and that what they said or did was of no consequence.
+See? Strictly speaking, you might just as well put your ear down to the
+palette to catch what your colours are saying.”
+
+“Dick, that’s disgraceful!”
+
+“Wait a minute. I said, strictly speaking. Unfortunately, everybody
+must be either a man or a woman.”
+
+“I’m glad you allow that much.”
+
+“In your case I don’t. You aren’t a woman. But ordinary people, Maisie,
+must behave and work as such. That’s what makes me so savage.” He
+hurled a pebble towards the sea as he spoke. “I know that it is outside
+my business to care what people say; I can see that it spoils my output
+if I listen to ’em; and yet, confound it all,”—another pebble flew
+seaward,—“I can’t help purring when I’m rubbed the right way. Even when
+I can see on a man’s forehead that he is lying his way through a clump
+of pretty speeches, those lies make me happy and play the mischief with
+my hand.”
+
+“And when he doesn’t say pretty things?”
+
+“Then, belovedest,”—Dick grinned,—“I forget that I am the steward of
+these gifts, and I want to make that man love and appreciate my work
+with a thick stick. It’s too humiliating altogether; but I suppose even
+if one were an angel and painted humans altogether from outside, one
+would lose in touch what one gained in grip.”
+
+Maisie laughed at the idea of Dick as an angel.
+
+“But you seem to think,” she said, “that everything nice spoils your
+hand.”
+
+“I don’t think. It’s the law,—just the same as it was at Mrs.
+Jennett’s.
+
+Everything that is nice does spoil your hand. I’m glad you see so
+clearly.”
+
+“I don’t like the view.”
+
+“Nor I. But—have got orders: what can do? Are you strong enough to face
+it alone?”
+
+“I suppose I must.”
+
+“Let me help, darling. We can hold each other very tight and try to
+walk straight. We shall blunder horribly, but it will be better than
+stumbling apart. Maisie, can’t you see reason?”
+
+“I don’t think we should get on together. We should be two of a trade,
+so we should never agree.”
+
+“How I should like to meet the man who made that proverb! He lived in a
+cave and ate raw bear, I fancy. I’d make him chew his own arrow-heads.
+
+Well?”
+
+“I should be only half married to you. I should worry and fuss about my
+work, as I do now. Four days out of the seven I’m not fit to speak to.”
+
+“You talk as if no one else in the world had ever used a brush. D’you
+suppose that I don’t know the feeling of worry and bother and
+can’t-get-at-ness? You’re lucky if you only have it four days out of
+the seven. What difference would that make?”
+
+“A great deal—if you had it too.”
+
+“Yes, but I could respect it. Another man might not. He might laugh at
+you. But there’s no use talking about it. If you can think in that way
+you can’t care for me—yet.”
+
+The tide had nearly covered the mud-banks and twenty little ripples
+broke on the beach before Maisie chose to speak.
+
+“Dick,” she said slowly, “I believe very much that you are better than
+I am.”
+
+“This doesn’t seem to bear on the argument—but in what way?”
+
+“I don’t quite know, but in what you said about work and things; and
+then you’re so patient. Yes, you’re better than I am.”
+
+Dick considered rapidly the murkiness of an average man’s life. There
+was nothing in the review to fill him with a sense of virtue. He lifted
+the hem of the cloak to his lips.
+
+“Why,” said Maisie, making as though she had not noticed, “can you see
+things that I can’t? I don’t believe what you believe; but you’re
+right, I believe.”
+
+“If I’ve seen anything, God knows I couldn’t have seen it but for you,
+and I know that I couldn’t have said it except to you. You seemed to
+make everything clear for a minute; but I don’t practice what I preach.
+You would help me.... There are only us two in the world for all
+purposes, and—and you like to have me with you?”
+
+“Of course I do. I wonder if you can realise how utterly lonely I am!”
+
+“Darling, I think I can.”
+
+“Two years ago, when I first took the little house, I used to walk up
+and down the back-garden trying to cry. I never can cry. Can you?”
+
+“It’s some time since I tried. What was the trouble? Overwork?”
+
+“I don’t know; but I used to dream that I had broken down, and had no
+money, and was starving in London. I thought about it all day, and it
+frightened me—oh, how it frightened me!”
+
+“I know that fear. It’s the most terrible of all. It wakes me up in the
+night sometimes. You oughtn’t to know anything about it.”
+
+“How do _you_ know?”
+
+“Never mind. Is your three hundred a year safe?”
+
+“It’s in Consols.”
+
+“Very well. If any one comes to you and recommends a better
+investment,—even if I should come to you,—don’t you listen. Never shift
+the money for a minute, and never lend a penny of it,—even to the
+red-haired girl.”
+
+“Don’t scold me so! I’m not likely to be foolish.”
+
+“The earth is full of men who’d sell their souls for three hundred a
+year; and women come and talk, and borrow a five-pound note here and a
+ten-pound note there; and a woman has no conscience in a money debt.
+Stick to your money, Maisie, for there’s nothing more ghastly in the
+world than poverty in London. It’s scared me. By Jove, it put the fear
+into _me!_ And one oughtn’t to be afraid of anything.”
+
+To each man is appointed his particular dread,—the terror that, if he
+does not fight against it, must cow him even to the loss of his
+manhood. Dick’s experience of the sordid misery of want had entered
+into the deeps of him, and, lest he might find virtue too easy, that
+memory stood behind him, tempting to shame, when dealers came to buy
+his wares. As the Nilghai quaked against his will at the still green
+water of a lake or a mill-dam, as Torpenhow flinched before any white
+arm that could cut or stab and loathed himself for flinching, Dick
+feared the poverty he had once tasted half in jest. His burden was
+heavier than the burdens of his companions.
+
+Maisie watched the face working in the moonlight.
+
+“You’ve plenty of pennies now,” she said soothingly.
+
+“I shall never have enough,” he began, with vicious emphasis. Then,
+laughing, “I shall always be three-pence short in my accounts.”
+
+“Why threepence?”
+
+“I carried a man’s bag once from Liverpool Street Station to
+Blackfriar’s Bridge. It was a sixpenny job,—you needn’t laugh; indeed
+it was,—and I wanted the money desperately. He only gave me threepence;
+and he hadn’t even the decency to pay in silver. Whatever money I make,
+I shall never get that odd threepence out of the world.”
+
+This was not language befitting the man who had preached of the
+sanctity of work. It jarred on Maisie, who preferred her payment in
+applause, which, since all men desire it, must be of her right. She
+hunted for her little purse and gravely took out a threepenny bit.
+
+“There it is,” she said. “I’ll pay you, Dickie; and don’t worry any
+more; it isn’t worth while. Are you paid?”
+
+“I am,” said the very human apostle of fair craft, taking the coin.
+“I’m paid a thousand times, and we’ll close that account. It shall live
+on my watch-chain; and you’re an angel, Maisie.”
+
+“I’m very cramped, and I’m feeling a little cold. Good gracious! the
+cloak is all white, and so is your moustache! I never knew it was so
+chilly.”
+
+A light frost lay white on the shoulder of Dick’s ulster. He, too, had
+forgotten the state of the weather. They laughed together, and with
+that laugh ended all serious discourse.
+
+They ran inland across the waste to warm themselves, then turned to
+look at the glory of the full tide under the moonlight and the intense
+black shadows of the furze bushes. It was an additional joy to Dick
+that Maisie could see colour even as he saw it,—could see the blue in
+the white of the mist, the violet that is in gray palings, and all
+things else as they are,—not of one hue, but a thousand. And the
+moonlight came into Maisie’s soul, so that she, usually reserved,
+chattered of herself and of the things she took interest in,—of Kami,
+wisest of teachers, and of the girls in the studio,—of the Poles, who
+will kill themselves with overwork if they are not checked; of the
+French, who talk at great length of much more than they will ever
+accomplish; of the slovenly English, who toil hopelessly and cannot
+understand that inclination does not imply power; of the Americans,
+whose rasping voices in the hush of a hot afternoon strain tense-drawn
+nerves to breaking-point, and whose suppers lead to indigestion; of
+tempestuous Russians, neither to hold nor to bind, who tell the girls
+ghost-stories till the girls shriek; of stolid Germans, who come to
+learn one thing, and, having mastered that much, stolidly go away and
+copy pictures for evermore. Dick listened enraptured because it was
+Maisie who spoke. He knew the old life.
+
+“It hasn’t changed much,” he said. “Do they still steal colours at
+lunch-time?”
+
+“Not steal. Attract is the word. Of course they do. I’m good—I only
+attract ultramarine; but there are students who’d attract flake-white.”
+
+“I’ve done it myself. You can’t help it when the palettes are hung up.
+
+Every colour is common property once it runs down,—even though you do
+start it with a drop of oil. It teaches people not to waste their
+tubes.”
+
+“I should like to attract some of your colours, Dick. Perhaps I might
+catch your success with them.”
+
+“I mustn’t say a bad word, but I should like to. What in the world,
+which you’ve just missed a lovely chance of seeing, does success or
+want of success, or a three-storied success, matter compared with—— No,
+I won’t open that question again. It’s time to go back to town.”
+
+“I’m sorry, Dick, but——”
+
+“You’re much more interested in that than you are in me.”
+
+“I don’t know, I don’t think I am.”
+
+“What will you give me if I tell you a sure short-cut to everything you
+want,—the trouble and the fuss and the tangle and all the rest? Will
+you promise to obey me?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“In the first place, you must never forget a meal because you happen to
+be at work. You forgot your lunch twice last week,” said Dick, at a
+venture, for he knew with whom he was dealing.”
+
+“No, no,—only once, really.”
+
+“That’s bad enough. And you mustn’t take a cup of tea and a biscuit in
+place of a regular dinner, because dinner happens to be a trouble.”
+
+“You’re making fun of me!”
+
+“I never was more in earnest in my life. Oh, my love, my love, hasn’t
+it dawned on you yet what you are to me? Here’s the whole earth in a
+conspiracy to give you a chill, or run over you, or drench you to the
+skin, or cheat you out of your money, or let you die of overwork and
+underfeeding, and I haven’t the mere right to look after you. Why, I
+don’t even know if you have sense enough to put on warm things when the
+weather’s cold.”
+
+“Dick, you’re the most awful boy to talk to—really! How do you suppose
+I managed when you were away?”
+
+“I wasn’t here, and I didn’t know. But now I’m back I’d give everything
+I have for the right of telling you to come in out of the rain.”
+
+“Your success too?”
+
+This time it cost Dick a severe struggle to refrain from bad words.
+
+“As Mrs. Jennett used to say, you’re a trial, Maisie! You’ve been
+cooped up in the schools too long, and you think every one is looking
+at you.
+
+There aren’t twelve hundred people in the world who understand
+pictures. The others pretend and don’t care. Remember, I’ve seen twelve
+hundred men dead in toadstool-beds. It’s only the voice of the tiniest
+little fraction of people that makes success. The real world doesn’t
+care a tinker’s—doesn’t care a bit. For aught you or I know, every man
+in the world may be arguing with a Maisie of his own.”
+
+“Poor Maisie!”
+
+“Poor Dick, I think. Do you believe while he’s fighting for what’s
+dearer than his life he wants to look at a picture? And even if he did,
+and if all the world did, and a thousand million people rose up and
+shouted hymns to my honour and glory, would that make up to me for the
+knowledge that you were out shopping in the Edgware Road on a rainy day
+without an umbrella? Now we’ll go to the station.”
+
+“But you said on the beach——” persisted Maisie, with a certain fear.
+
+Dick groaned aloud: “Yes, I know what I said. My work is everything I
+have, or am, or hope to be, to me, and I believe I’ve learnt the law
+that governs it; but I’ve some lingering sense of fun left,—though
+you’ve nearly knocked it out of me. I can just see that it isn’t
+everything to all the world. Do what I say, and not what I do.”
+
+Maisie was careful not to reopen debatable matters, and they returned
+to London joyously. The terminus stopped Dick in the midst of an
+eloquent harangue on the beauties of exercise. He would buy Maisie a
+horse,—such a horse as never yet bowed head to bit,—would stable it,
+with a companion, some twenty miles from London, and Maisie, solely for
+her health’s sake should ride with him twice or thrice a week.
+
+“That’s absurd,” said she. “It wouldn’t be proper.”
+
+“Now, who in all London to-night would have sufficient interest or
+audacity to call us two to account for anything we chose to do?”
+
+Maisie looked at the lamps, the fog, and the hideous turmoil. Dick was
+right; but horseflesh did not make for Art as she understood it.
+
+“You’re very nice sometimes, but you’re very foolish more times. I’m
+not going to let you give me horses, or take you out of your way
+to-night. I’ll go home by myself. Only I want you to promise me
+something. You won’t think any more about that extra threepence, will
+you? Remember, you’ve been paid; and I won’t allow you to be spiteful
+and do bad work for a little thing like that. You can be so big that
+you mustn’t be tiny.”
+
+This was turning the tables with a vengeance. There remained only to
+put Maisie into her hansom.
+
+“Good-bye,” she said simply. “You’ll come on Sunday. It has been a
+beautiful day, Dick. Why can’t it be like this always?”
+
+“Because love’s like line-work: you must go forward or backward; you
+can’t stand still. By the way, go on with your line-work. Good-night,
+and, for my—for my sake, take care of yourself.”
+
+He turned to walk home, meditating. The day had brought him nothing
+that he hoped for, but—surely this was worth many days—it had brought
+him nearer to Maisie. The end was only a question of time now, and the
+prize well worth the waiting. By instinct, once more, he turned to the
+river.
+
+“And she understood at once,” he said, looking at the water. “She found
+out my pet besetting sin on the spot, and paid it off. My God, how she
+understood! And she said I was better than she was! Better than she
+was!” He laughed at the absurdity of the notion. “I wonder if girls
+guess at one-half a man’s life. They can’t, or—they wouldn’t marry us.”
+He took her gift out of his pocket, and considered it in the light of a
+miracle and a pledge of the comprehension that, one day, would lead to
+perfect happiness. Meantime, Maisie was alone in London, with none to
+save her from danger. And the packed wilderness was very full of
+danger.
+
+Dick made his prayer to Fate disjointedly after the manner of the
+heathen as he threw the piece of silver into the river. If any evil
+were to befal, let him bear the burden and let Maisie go unscathed,
+since the threepenny piece was dearest to him of all his possessions.
+It was a small coin in itself, but Maisie had given it, and the Thames
+held it, and surely the Fates would be bribed for this once.
+
+The drowning of the coin seemed to cut him free from thought of Maisie
+for the moment. He took himself off the bridge and went whistling to
+his chambers with a strong yearning for some man-talk and tobacco after
+his first experience of an entire day spent in the society of a woman.
+There was a stronger desire at his heart when there rose before him an
+unsolicited vision of the _Barralong_ dipping deep and sailing free for
+the Southern Cross.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+And these two, as I have told you,
+Were the friends of Hiawatha,
+Chibiabos, the musician,
+And the very strong man, Kwasind.
+
+—_Hiawatha_.
+
+
+Torpenhow was paging the last sheets of some manuscript, while the
+Nilghai, who had come for chess and remained to talk tactics, was
+reading through the first part, commenting scornfully the while.
+
+“It’s picturesque enough and it’s sketchy,” said he; “but as a serious
+consideration of affairs in Eastern Europe, it’s not worth much.”
+
+“It’s off my hands at any rate.... Thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
+thirty-nine slips altogether, aren’t there? That should make between
+eleven and twelve pages of valuable misinformation. Heigho!” Torpenhow
+shuffled the writing together and hummed—
+
+Young lambs to sell, young lambs to sell,
+If I’d as much money as I could tell,
+I never would cry, Young lambs to sell!
+
+
+Dick entered, self-conscious and a little defiant, but in the best of
+tempers with all the world.
+
+“Back at last?” said Torpenhow.
+
+“More or less. What have you been doing?”
+
+“Work. Dickie, you behave as though the Bank of England were behind
+you. Here’s Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday gone and you haven’t done a
+line. It’s scandalous.”
+
+“The notions come and go, my children—they come and go like our
+“baccy,” he answered, filling his pipe. “Moreover,” he stooped to
+thrust a spill into the grate, “Apollo does not always stretch his——
+Oh, confound your clumsy jests, Nilghai!”
+
+“This is not the place to preach the theory of direct inspiration,”
+said the Nilghai, returning Torpenhow’s large and workmanlike bellows
+to their nail on the wall. “We believe in cobblers’ wax. _La!_—where
+you sit down.”
+
+“If you weren’t so big and fat,” said Dick, looking round for a weapon,
+“I’d——”
+
+“No skylarking in my rooms. You two smashed half my furniture last time
+you threw the cushions about. You might have the decency to say How
+d’you do? to Binkie. Look at him.”
+
+Binkie had jumped down from the sofa and was fawning round Dick’s knee,
+and scratching at his boots.
+
+“Dear man!” said Dick, snatching him up, and kissing him on the black
+patch above his right eye. “Did ums was, Binks? Did that ugly Nilghai
+turn you off the sofa? Bite him, Mr. Binkie.” He pitched him on the
+Nilghai’s stomach, as the big man lay at ease, and Binkie pretended to
+destroy the Nilghai inch by inch, till a sofa cushion extinguished him,
+and panting he stuck out his tongue at the company.
+
+“The Binkie-boy went for a walk this morning before you were up, Torp.
+
+I saw him making love to the butcher at the corner when the shutters
+were being taken down—just as if he hadn’t enough to eat in his own
+proper house,” said Dick.
+
+“Binks, is that a true bill?” said Torpenhow, severely. The little dog
+retreated under the sofa cushion, and showed by the fat white back of
+him that he really had no further interest in the discussion.
+
+“Strikes me that another disreputable dog went for a walk, too,” said
+the Nilghai. “What made you get up so early? Torp said you might be
+buying a horse.”
+
+“He knows it would need three of us for a serious business like that.
+No, I felt lonesome and unhappy, so I went out to look at the sea, and
+watch the pretty ships go by.”
+
+“Where did you go?”
+
+“Somewhere on the Channel. Progly or Snigly, or some watering-place was
+its name; I’ve forgotten; but it was only two hours’ run from London
+and the ships went by.”
+
+“Did you see anything you knew?”
+
+“Only the _Barralong_ outwards to Australia, and an Odessa grain-boat
+loaded down by the head. It was a thick day, but the sea smelt good.”
+
+“Wherefore put on one’s best trousers to see the _Barralong?_” said
+Torpenhow, pointing.
+
+“Because I’ve nothing except these things and my painting duds.
+Besides, I wanted to do honour to the sea.”
+
+“Did She make you feel restless?” asked the Nilghai, keenly.
+
+“Crazy. Don’t speak of it. I’m sorry I went.”
+
+Torpenhow and the Nilghai exchanged a look as Dick, stooping, busied
+himself among the former’s boots and trees.
+
+“These will do,” he said at last; “I can’t say I think much of your
+taste in slippers, but the fit’s the thing.” He slipped his feet into a
+pair of sock-like sambhur-skin foot coverings, found a long chair, and
+lay at length.
+
+“They’re my own pet pair,” Torpenhow said. “I was just going to put
+them on myself.”
+
+“All your reprehensible selfishness. Just because you see me happy for
+a minute, you want to worry me and stir me up. Find another pair.”
+
+“Good for you that Dick can’t wear your clothes, Torp. You two live
+communistically,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“Dick never has anything that I can wear. He’s only useful to sponge
+upon.”
+
+“Confound you, have you been rummaging round among my clothes, then?”
+said Dick. “I put a sovereign in the tobacco-jar yesterday. How do you
+expect a man to keep his accounts properly if you——”
+
+Here the Nilghai began to laugh, and Torpenhow joined him.
+
+“Hid a sovereign yesterday! You’re no sort of financier. You lent me a
+fiver about a month back. Do you remember?” Torpenhow said.
+
+“Yes, of course.”
+
+“Do you remember that I paid it you ten days later, and you put it at
+the bottom of the tobacco?”
+
+“By Jove, did I? I thought it was in one of my colour-boxes.”
+
+“You thought! About a week ago I went into your studio to get some
+“baccy and found it.”
+
+“What did you do with it?”
+
+“Took the Nilghai to a theatre and fed him.”
+
+“You couldn’t feed the Nilghai under twice the money—not though you
+gave him Army beef. Well, I suppose I should have found it out sooner
+or later. What is there to laugh at?”
+
+“You’re a most amazing cuckoo in many directions,” said the Nilghai,
+still chuckling over the thought of the dinner. “Never mind. We had
+both been working very hard, and it was your unearned increment we
+spent, and as you’re only a loafer it didn’t matter.”
+
+“That’s pleasant—from the man who is bursting with my meat, too. I’ll
+get that dinner back one of these days. Suppose we go to a theatre
+now.”
+
+“Put our boots on,—and dress,—_and_ wash?” The Nilghai spoke very
+lazily.
+
+“I withdraw the motion.”
+
+“Suppose, just for a change—as a startling variety, you know—we, that
+is to say _we_, get our charcoal and our canvas and go on with our
+work.”
+
+Torpenhow spoke pointedly, but Dick only wriggled his toes inside the
+soft leather moccasins.
+
+“What a one-ideaed clucker that is! If I had any unfinished figures on
+hand, I haven’t any model; if I had my model, I haven’t any spray, and
+I never leave charcoal unfixed overnight; and if I had my spray and
+twenty photographs of backgrounds, I couldn’t do anything to-night. I
+don’t feel that way.”
+
+“Binkie-dog, he’s a lazy hog, isn’t he?” said the Nilghai.
+
+“Very good, I _will_ do some work,” said Dick, rising swiftly. “I’ll
+fetch the Nungapunga Book, and we’ll add another picture to the Nilghai
+Saga.”
+
+“Aren’t you worrying him a little too much?” asked the Nilghai, when
+Dick had left the room.
+
+“Perhaps, but I know what he can turn out if he likes. It makes me
+savage to hear him praised for past work when I know what he ought to
+do. You and I are arranged for——”
+
+“By Kismet and our own powers, more’s the pity. I have dreamed of a
+good deal.”
+
+“So have I, but we know our limitations now. I’m dashed if I know what
+Dick’s may be when he gives himself to his work. That’s what makes me
+so keen about him.”
+
+“And when all’s said and done, you will be put aside—quite rightly—for
+a female girl.”
+
+“I wonder... Where do you think he has been to-day?”
+
+“To the sea. Didn’t you see the look in his eyes when he talked about
+her? He’s as restless as a swallow in autumn.”
+
+“Yes; but did he go alone?”
+
+“I don’t know, and I don’t care, but he has the beginnings of the
+go-fever upon him. He wants to up-stakes and move out. There’s no
+mistaking the signs. Whatever he may have said before, he has the call
+upon him now.”
+
+“It might be his salvation,” Torpenhow said.
+
+“Perhaps—if you care to take the responsibility of being a saviour.”
+
+Dick returned with the big clasped sketch-book that the Nilghai knew
+well and did not love too much. In it Dick had drawn all manner of
+moving incidents, experienced by himself or related to him by the
+others, of all the four corners of the earth. But the wider range of
+the Nilghai’s body and life attracted him most. When truth failed he
+fell back on fiction of the wildest, and represented incidents in the
+Nilghai’s career that were unseemly,—his marriages with many African
+princesses, his shameless betrayal, for Arab wives, of an army corps to
+the Mahdi, his tattooment by skilled operators in Burmah, his interview
+(and his fears) with the yellow headsman in the blood-stained
+execution-ground of Canton, and finally, the passings of his spirit
+into the bodies of whales, elephants, and toucans. Torpenhow from time
+to time had added rhymed descriptions, and the whole was a curious
+piece of art, because Dick decided, having regard to the name of the
+book which being interpreted means “naked,” that it would be wrong to
+draw the Nilghai with any clothes on, under any circumstances.
+Consequently the last sketch, representing that much-enduring man
+calling on the War Office to press his claims to the Egyptian medal,
+was hardly delicate. He settled himself comfortably on Torpenhow’s
+table and turned over the pages.
+
+“What a fortune you would have been to Blake, Nilghai!” he said.
+“There’s a succulent pinkness about some of these sketches that’s more
+than life-like. “The Nilghai surrounded while bathing by the
+Mahdieh”—that was founded on fact, eh?”
+
+“It was very nearly my last bath, you irreverent dauber. Has Binkie
+come into the Saga yet?”
+
+“No; the Binkie-boy hasn’t done anything except eat and kill cats.
+Let’s see. Here you are as a stained-glass saint in a church. Deuced
+decorative lines about your anatomy; you ought to be grateful for being
+handed down to posterity in this way. Fifty years hence you’ll exist in
+rare and curious facsimiles at ten guineas each. What shall I try this
+time? The domestic life of the Nilghai?”
+
+“Hasn’t got any.”
+
+“The undomestic life of the Nilghai, then. Of course. Mass-meeting of
+his wives in Trafalgar Square. That’s it. They came from the ends of
+the earth to attend Nilghai’s wedding to an English bride. This shall
+be an epic. It’s a sweet material to work with.”
+
+“It’s a scandalous waste of time,” said Torpenhow.
+
+“Don’t worry; it keeps one’s hand in—specially when you begin without
+the pencil.” He set to work rapidly. “That’s Nelson’s Column. Presently
+the Nilghai will appear shinning up it.”
+
+“Give him some clothes this time.”
+
+“Certainly—a veil and an orange-wreath, because he’s been married.”
+
+“Gad, that’s clever enough!” said Torpenhow over his shoulder, as Dick
+brought out of the paper with three twirls of the brush a very fat back
+and labouring shoulder pressed against stone.
+
+“Just imagine,” Dick continued, “if we could publish a few of these
+dear little things every time the Nilghai subsidises a man who can
+write, to give the public an honest opinion of my pictures.”
+
+“Well, you’ll admit I always tell you when I have done anything of that
+kind. I know I can’t hammer you as you ought to be hammered, so I give
+the job to another. Young Maclagan, for instance——”
+
+“No-o—one half-minute, old man; stick your hand out against the dark of
+the wall-paper—you only burble and call me names. That left shoulder’s
+out of drawing. I must literally throw a veil over that. Where’s my
+pen-knife? Well, what about Maclagan?”
+
+“I only gave him his riding-orders to—to lambast you on general
+principles for not producing work that will last.”
+
+“Whereupon that young fool,”—Dick threw back his head and shut one eye
+as he shifted the page under his hand,—“being left alone with an
+ink-pot and what he conceived were his own notions, went and spilt them
+both over me in the papers. You might have engaged a grown man for the
+business, Nilghai. How do you think the bridal veil looks now, Torp?”
+
+“How the deuce do three dabs and two scratches make the stuff stand
+away from the body as it does?” said Torpenhow, to whom Dick’s methods
+were always new.
+
+“It just depends on where you put ’em. If Maclagan had known that much
+about his business he might have done better.”
+
+“Why don’t you put the damned dabs into something that will stay,
+then?” insisted the Nilghai, who had really taken considerable trouble
+in hiring for Dick’s benefit the pen of a young gentleman who devoted
+most of his waking hours to an anxious consideration of the aims and
+ends of Art, which, he wrote, was one and indivisible.
+
+“Wait a minute till I see how I am going to manage my procession of
+wives. You seem to have married extensively, and I must rough ’em in
+with the pencil—Medes, Parthians, Edomites.... Now, setting aside the
+weakness and the wickedness and—and the fat-headedness of deliberately
+trying to do work that will live, as they call it, I’m content with the
+knowledge that I’ve done my best up to date, and I shan’t do anything
+like it again for some hours at least—probably years. Most probably
+never.”
+
+“What! any stuff you have in stock your best work?” said Torpenhow.
+
+“Anything you’ve sold?” said the Nilghai.
+
+“Oh no. It isn’t here and it isn’t sold. Better than that, it can’t be
+sold, and I don’t think any one knows where it is. I’m sure I don’t....
+And yet more and more wives, on the north side of the square. Observe
+the virtuous horror of the lions!”
+
+“You may as well explain,” said Torpenhow, and Dick lifted his head
+from the paper.
+
+“The sea reminded me of it,” he said slowly. “I wish it hadn’t. It
+weighs some few thousand tons—unless you cut it out with a cold
+chisel.”
+
+“Don’t be an idiot. You can’t pose with us here,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“There’s no pose in the matter at all. It’s a fact. I was loafing from
+Lima to Auckland in a big, old, condemned passenger-ship turned into a
+cargo-boat and owned by a second-hand Italian firm. She was a crazy
+basket. We were cut down to fifteen ton of coal a day, and we thought
+ourselves lucky when we kicked seven knots an hour out of her. Then we
+used to stop and let the bearings cool down, and wonder whether the
+crack in the shaft was spreading.”
+
+“Were you a steward or a stoker in those days?”
+
+“I was flush for the time being, so I was a passenger, or else I should
+have been a steward, I think,” said Dick, with perfect gravity,
+returning to the procession of angry wives. “I was the only other
+passenger from Lima, and the ship was half empty, and full of rats and
+cockroaches and scorpions.”
+
+“But what has this to do with the picture?”
+
+“Wait a minute. She had been in the China passenger trade and her lower
+decks had bunks for two thousand pigtails. Those were all taken down,
+and she was empty up to her nose, and the lights came through the port
+holes—most annoying lights to work in till you got used to them. I
+hadn’t anything to do for weeks. The ship’s charts were in pieces and
+our skipper daren’t run south for fear of catching a storm. So he did
+his best to knock all the Society Islands out of the water one by one,
+and I went into the lower deck, and did my picture on the port side as
+far forward in her as I could go. There was some brown paint and some
+green paint that they used for the boats, and some black paint for
+ironwork, and that was all I had.”
+
+“The passengers must have thought you mad.”
+
+“There was only one, and it was a woman; but it gave me the notion of
+my picture.”
+
+“What was she like?” said Torpenhow.
+
+“She was a sort of Negroid-Jewess-Cuban; with morals to match. She
+couldn’t read or write, and she didn’t want to, but she used to come
+down and watch me paint, and the skipper didn’t like it, because he was
+paying her passage and had to be on the bridge occasionally.”
+
+“I see. That must have been cheerful.”
+
+“It was the best time I ever had. To begin with, we didn’t know whether
+we should go up or go down any minute when there was a sea on; and when
+it was calm it was paradise; and the woman used to mix the paints and
+talk broken English, and the skipper used to steal down every few
+minutes to the lower deck, because he said he was afraid of fire. So,
+you see, we could never tell when we might be caught, and I had a
+splendid notion to work out in only three keys of colour.”
+
+“What was the notion?”
+
+“Two lines in Poe—
+
+Neither the angels in Heaven above nor the demons down under the sea,
+Can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
+
+
+It came out of the sea—all by itself. I drew that fight, fought out in
+green water over the naked, choking soul, and the woman served as the
+model for the devils and the angels both—sea-devils and sea-angels, and
+the soul half drowned between them. It doesn’t sound much, but when
+there was a good light on the lower deck it looked very fine and
+creepy. It was seven by fourteen feet, all done in shifting light for
+shifting light.”
+
+“Did the woman inspire you much?” said Torpenhow.
+
+“She and the sea between them—immensely. There was a heap of bad
+drawing in that picture. I remember I went out of my way to foreshorten
+for sheer delight of doing it, and I foreshortened damnably, but for
+all that it’s the best thing I’ve ever done; and now I suppose the
+ship’s broken up or gone down. Whew! What a time that was!”
+
+“What happened after all?”
+
+“It all ended. They were loading her with wool when I left the ship,
+but even the stevedores kept the picture clear to the last. The eyes of
+the demons scared them, I honestly believe.”
+
+“And the woman?”
+
+“She was scared too when it was finished. She used to cross herself
+before she went down to look at it. Just three colours and no chance of
+getting any more, and the sea outside and unlimited love-making inside,
+and the fear of death atop of everything else, O Lord!” He had ceased
+to look at the sketch, but was staring straight in front of him across
+the room.
+
+“Why don’t you try something of the same kind now?” said the Nilghai.
+
+“Because those things come not by fasting and prayer. When I find a
+cargo-boat and a Jewess-Cuban and another notion and the same old life,
+I may.”
+
+“You won’t find them here,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“No, I shall not.” Dick shut the sketch-book with a bang. “This room’s
+as hot as an oven. Open the window, some one.”
+
+He leaned into the darkness, watching the greater darkness of London
+below him. The chambers stood much higher than the other houses,
+commanding a hundred chimneys—crooked cowls that looked like sitting
+cats as they swung round, and other uncouth brick and zinc mysteries
+supported by iron stanchions and clamped by 8-pieces. Northward the
+lights of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square threw a
+copper-coloured glare above the black roofs, and southward by all the
+orderly lights of the Thames. A train rolled out across one of the
+railway bridges, and its thunder drowned for a minute the dull roar of
+the streets. The Nilghai looked at his watch and said shortly, “That’s
+the Paris night-mail. You can book from here to St. Petersburg if you
+choose.”
+
+Dick crammed head and shoulders out of the window and looked across the
+river. Torpenhow came to his side, while the Nilghai passed over
+quietly to the piano and opened it. Binkie, making himself as large as
+possible, spread out upon the sofa with the air of one who is not to be
+lightly disturbed.
+
+“Well,” said the Nilghai to the two pairs of shoulders, “have you never
+seen this place before?”
+
+A steam-tug on the river hooted as she towed her barges to wharf. Then
+the boom of the traffic came into the room. Torpenhow nudged Dick.
+
+“Good place to bank in—bad place to bunk in, Dickie, isn’t it?”
+
+Dick’s chin was in his hand as he answered, in the words of a general
+not without fame, still looking out on the darkness—“‘My God, what a
+city to loot!’”
+
+Binkie found the night air tickling his whiskers and sneezed
+plaintively.
+
+“We shall give the Binkie-dog a cold,” said Torpenhow. “Come in,” and
+they withdrew their heads. “You’ll be buried in Kensal Green, Dick, one
+of these days, if it isn’t closed by the time you want to go
+there—buried within two feet of some one else, his wife and his
+family.”
+
+“Allah forbid! I shall get away before that time comes. Give a man room
+to stretch his legs, Mr. Binkie.” Dick flung himself down on the sofa
+and tweaked Binkie’s velvet ears, yawning heavily the while.
+
+“You’ll find that wardrobe-case very much out of tune,” Torpenhow said
+to the Nilghai. “It’s never touched except by you.”
+
+“A piece of gross extravagance,” Dick grunted. “The Nilghai only comes
+when I’m out.”
+
+“That’s because you’re always out. Howl, Nilghai, and let him hear.”
+
+“The life of the Nilghai is fraud and slaughter,
+His writings are watered Dickens and water;
+But the voice of the Nilghai raised on high
+Makes even the Mahdieh glad to die!”
+
+
+Dick quoted from Torpenhow’s letterpress in the Nungapunga Book.
+
+“How do they call moose in Canada, Nilghai?”
+
+The man laughed. Singing was his one polite accomplishment, as many
+Press-tents in far-off lands had known.
+
+“What shall I sing?” said he, turning in the chair.
+
+““Moll Roe in the Morning,”’ said Torpenhow, at a venture.
+
+“No,” said Dick, sharply, and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old
+chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a
+pretty one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing.
+Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together
+and troubles the hearts of the gipsies of the sea—
+
+“Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies,
+Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain.”
+
+
+Dick turned uneasily on the sofa, for he could hear the bows of the
+Barralong crashing into the green seas on her way to the Southern
+Cross.
+
+Then came the chorus—
+
+“We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true British sailors,
+We’ll rant and we’ll roar across the salt seas,
+Until we take soundings in the Channel of Old England
+From Ushant to Scilly ’tis forty-five leagues.”
+
+
+“Thirty-five-thirty-five,” said Dick, petulantly. “Don’t tamper with
+Holy Writ. Go on, Nilghai.”
+
+“The first land we made it was called the Deadman,”
+
+
+and they sang to the end very vigourously.
+
+“That would be a better song if her head were turned the other way—to
+the Ushant light, for instance,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“Flinging his arms about like a mad windmill,” said Torpenhow. “Give us
+something else, Nilghai. You’re in fine fog-horn form tonight.”
+
+“Give us the “Ganges Pilot”; you sang that in the square the night
+before El-Maghrib. By the way, I wonder how many of the chorus are
+alive to-night,” said Dick.
+
+Torpenhow considered for a minute. “By Jove! I believe only you and I.
+
+Raynor, Vicery, and Deenes—all dead; Vincent caught smallpox in Cairo,
+carried it here and died of it. Yes, only you and I and the Nilghai.”
+
+“Umph! And yet the men here who’ve done their work in a well-warmed
+studio all their lives, with a policeman at each corner, say that I
+charge too much for my pictures.”
+
+“They are buying your work, not your insurance policies, dear child,”
+said the Nilghai.
+
+“I gambled with one to get at the other. Don’t preach. Go on with the
+“Pilot.” Where in the world did you get that song?”
+
+“On a tombstone,” said the Nilghai. “On a tombstone in a distant land.
+I made it an accompaniment with heaps of base chords.”
+
+“Oh, Vanity! Begin.” And the Nilghai began—
+
+“I have slipped my cable, messmates, I’m drifting down with the tide,
+I have my sailing orders, while yet an anchor ride.
+And never on fair June morning have I put out to sea
+With clearer conscience or better hope, or a heart more light and free.
+
+“Shoulder to shoulder, Joe, my boy, into the crowd like a wedge
+Strike with the hangers, messmates, but do not cut with the edge.
+Cries Charnock, “Scatter the faggots, double that Brahmin in two,
+The tall pale widow for me, Joe, the little brown girl for you!”
+
+“Young Joe (you’re nearing sixty), why is your hide so dark?
+Katie has soft fair blue eyes, who blackened yours?—Why, hark!”
+
+
+They were all singing now, Dick with the roar of the wind of the open
+sea about his ears as the deep bass voice let itself go.
+
+“The morning gun—Ho, steady! the arquebuses to me!
+I ha’ sounded the Dutch High Admiral’s heart as my lead doth sound the
+sea.
+“Sounding, sounding the Ganges, floating down with the tide,
+Moore me close to Charnock, next to my nut-brown bride.
+My blessing to Kate at Fairlight—Holwell, my thanks to you;
+Steady! We steer for heaven, through sand-drifts cold and blue.”
+
+
+“Now what is there in that nonsense to make a man restless?” said Dick,
+hauling Binkie from his feet to his chest.
+
+“It depends on the man,” said Torpenhow.
+
+“The man who has been down to look at the sea,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“I didn’t know she was going to upset me in this fashion.”
+
+“That’s what men say when they go to say good-bye to a woman. It’s more
+easy though to get rid of three women than a piece of one’s life and
+surroundings.”
+
+“But a woman can be——” began Dick, unguardedly.
+
+“A piece of one’s life,” continued Torpenhow. “No, she can’t. His face
+darkened for a moment. “She says she wants to sympathise with you and
+help you in your work, and everything else that clearly a man must do
+for himself. Then she sends round five notes a day to ask why the
+dickens you haven’t been wasting your time with her.”
+
+“Don’t generalise,” said the Nilghai. “By the time you arrive at five
+notes a day you must have gone through a good deal and behaved
+accordingly.
+
+Shouldn’t begin these things, my son.”
+
+“I shouldn’t have gone down to the sea,” said Dick, just a little
+anxious to change the conversation. “And you shouldn’t have sung.”
+
+“The sea isn’t sending you five notes a day,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“No, but I’m fatally compromised. She’s an enduring old hag, and I’m
+sorry I ever met her. Why wasn’t I born and bred and dead in a
+three-pair back?”
+
+“Hear him blaspheming his first love! Why in the world shouldn’t you
+listen to her?” said Torpenhow.
+
+Before Dick could reply the Nilghai lifted up his voice with a shout
+that shook the windows, in “The Men of the Sea,” that begins, as all
+know, “The sea is a wicked old woman,” and after rading through eight
+lines whose imagery is truthful, ends in a refrain, slow as the
+clacking of a capstan when the boat comes unwillingly up to the bars
+where the men sweat and tramp in the shingle.
+
+“‘Ye that bore us, O restore us!
+She is kinder than ye;
+For the call is on our heart-strings!’
+Said The Men of the Sea.”
+
+
+The Nilghai sang that verse twice, with simple cunning, intending that
+Dick should hear. But Dick was waiting for the farewell of the men to
+their wives.
+
+“‘Ye that love us, can ye move us?
+She is dearer than ye;
+And your sleep will be the sweeter,’
+Said The Men of the Sea.”
+
+
+The rough words beat like the blows of the waves on the bows of the
+rickety boat from Lima in the days when Dick was mixing paints, making
+love, drawing devils and angels in the half dark, and wondering whether
+the next minute would put the Italian captain’s knife between his
+shoulder-blades. And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors’
+diseases, waked and raged, urging him who loved Maisie beyond anything
+in the world, to go away and taste the old hot, unregenerate life
+again,—to scuffle, swear, gamble, and love light loves with his
+fellows; to take ship and know the sea once more, and by her beget
+pictures; to talk to Binat among the sands of Port Said while Yellow
+“Tina mixed the drinks; to hear the crackle of musketry, and see the
+smoke roll outward, thin and thicken again till the shining black faces
+came through, and in that hell every man was strictly responsible for
+his own head, and his own alone, and struck with an unfettered arm. It
+was impossible, utterly impossible, but—
+
+“‘Oh, our fathers in the churchyard,
+She is older than ye,
+And our graves will be the greener,’
+Said The Men of the Sea.”
+
+
+“What _is_ there to hinder?” said Torpenhow, in the long hush that
+followed the song.
+
+“You said a little time since that you wouldn’t come for a walk round
+the world, Torp.”
+
+“That was months ago, and I only objected to your making money for
+travelling expenses. You’ve shot your bolt here and it has gone home.
+Go away and do some work, and see some things.”
+
+“Get some of the fat off you; you’re disgracefully out of condition,”
+said the Nilghai, making a plunge from the chair and grasping a handful
+of Dick generally over the right ribs. “Soft as putty—pure tallow born
+of over-feeding. Train it off, Dickie.”
+
+“We’re all equally gross, Nilghai. Next time you have to take the field
+you’ll sit down, wink your eyes, gasp, and die in a fit.”
+
+“Never mind. You go away on a ship. Go to Lima again, or to Brazil.
+
+There’s always trouble in South America.”
+
+“Do you suppose I want to be told where to go? Great Heavens, the only
+difficulty is to know where I’m to stop. But I shall stay here, as I
+told you before.”
+
+“Then you’ll be buried in Kensal Green and turn into adipocere with the
+others,” said Torpenhow. “Are you thinking of commissions in hand? Pay
+forfeit and go. You’ve money enough to travel as a king if you please.”
+
+“You’ve the grisliest notions of amusement, Torp. I think I see myself
+shipping first class on a six-thousand-ton hotel, and asking the third
+engineer what makes the engines go round, and whether it isn’t very
+warm in the stokehold. Ho! ho! I should ship as a loafer if ever I
+shipped at all, which I’m not going to do. I shall compromise, and go
+for a small trip to begin with.”
+
+“That’s something at any rate. Where will you go?” said Torpenhow. “It
+would do you all the good in the world, old man.”
+
+The Nilghai saw the twinkle in Dick’s eye, and refrained from speech.
+
+“I shall go in the first place to Rathray’s stable, where I shall hire
+one horse, and take him very carefully as far as Richmond Hill. Then I
+shall walk him back again, in case he should accidentally burst into a
+lather and make Rathray angry. I shall do that to-morrow, for the sake
+of air and exercise.”
+
+“Bah!” Dick had barely time to throw up his arm and ward off the
+cushion that the disgusted Torpenhow heaved at his head.
+
+“Air and exercise indeed,” said the Nilghai, sitting down heavily on
+Dick.
+
+“Let’s give him a little of both. Get the bellows, Torp.”
+
+At this point the conference broke up in disorder, because Dick would
+not open his mouth till the Nilghai held his nose fast, and there was
+some trouble in forcing the nozzle of the bellows between his teeth;
+and even when it was there he weakly tried to puff against the force of
+the blast, and his cheeks blew up with a great explosion; and the enemy
+becoming helpless with laughter he so beat them over the head with a
+soft sofa cushion that that became unsewn and distributed its feathers,
+and Binkie, interfering in Torpenhow’s interests, was bundled into the
+half-empty bag and advised to scratch his way out, which he did after a
+while, travelling rapidly up and down the floor in the shape of an
+agitated green haggis, and when he came out looking for satisfaction,
+the three pillars of his world were picking feathers out of their hair.
+
+“A prophet has no honour in his own country,” said Dick, ruefully,
+dusting his knees. “This filthy fluff will never brush off my legs.”
+
+“It was all for your own good,” said the Nilghai. “Nothing like air and
+exercise.”
+
+“All for your good,” said Torpenhow, not in the least with reference to
+past clowning. “It would let you focus things at their proper worth and
+prevent your becoming slack in this hothouse of a town. Indeed it
+would, old man. I shouldn’t have spoken if I hadn’t thought so. Only,
+you make a joke of everything.”
+
+“Before God I do no such thing,” said Dick, quickly and earnestly. “You
+don’t know me if you think that.”
+
+_I_ don’t think it,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“How can fellows like ourselves, who know what life and death really
+mean, dare to make a joke of anything? I know we pretend it, to save
+ourselves from breaking down or going to the other extreme. Can’t I
+see, old man, how you’re always anxious about me, and try to advise me
+to make my work better? Do you suppose I don’t think about that myself?
+But you can’t help me—you can’t help me—not even you. I must play my
+own hand alone in my own way.”
+
+“Hear, hear,” from the Nilghai.
+
+“What’s the one thing in the Nilghai Saga that I’ve never drawn in the
+Nungapunga Book?” Dick continued to Torpenhow, who was a little
+astonished at the outburst.
+
+Now there was one blank page in the book given over to the sketch that
+Dick had not drawn of the crowning exploit in the Nilghai’s life; when
+that man, being young and forgetting that his body and bones belonged
+to the paper that employed him, had ridden over sunburned slippery
+grass in the rear of Bredow’s brigade on the day that the troopers
+flung themselves at Caurobert’s artillery, and for aught they knew
+twenty battalions in front, to save the battered 24th German Infantry,
+to give time to decide the fate of Vionville, and to learn ere their
+remnant came back to Flavigay that cavalry can attack and crumple and
+break unshaken infantry. Whenever he was inclined to think over a life
+that might have been better, an income that might have been larger, and
+a soul that might have been considerably cleaner, the Nilghai would
+comfort himself with the thought, “I rode with Bredow’s brigade at
+Vionville,” and take heart for any lesser battle the next day might
+bring.
+
+“I know,” he said very gravely. “I was always glad that you left it
+out.”
+
+“I left it out because Nilghai taught me what the Germany army learned
+then, and what Schmidt taught their cavalry. I don’t know German.
+
+What is it? “Take care of the time and the dressing will take care of
+itself.” I must ride my own line to my own beat, old man.”
+
+“_Tempo ist richtung_. You’ve learned your lesson well,” said the
+Nilghai.
+
+“He must go alone. He speaks truth, Torp.”
+
+“Maybe I’m as wrong as I can be—hideously wrong. I must find that out
+for myself, as I have to think things out for myself, but I daren’t
+turn my head to dress by the next man. It hurts me a great deal more
+than you know not to be able to go, but I cannot, that’s all. I must do
+my own work and live my own life in my own way, because I’m responsible
+for both.
+
+Only don’t think I frivol about it, Torp. I have my own matches and
+sulphur, and I’ll make my own hell, thanks.”
+
+There was an uncomfortable pause. Then Torpenhow said blandly, “What
+did the Governor of North Carolina say to the Governor of South
+Carolina?”
+
+“Excellent notion. It is a long time between drinks. There are the
+makings of a very fine prig in you, Dick,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“I’ve liberated my mind, estimable Binkie, with the feathers in his
+mouth.” Dick picked up the still indignant one and shook him tenderly.
+
+“You’re tied up in a sack and made to run about blind, Binkie-wee,
+without any reason, and it has hurt your little feelings. Never mind.
+_Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas_, and don’t sneeze in
+my eye because I talk Latin. Good-night.”
+
+He went out of the room.
+
+“That’s distinctly one for you,” said the Nilghai. “I told you it was
+hopeless to meddle with him. He’s not pleased.”
+
+“He’d swear at me if he weren’t. I can’t make it out. He has the
+go-fever upon him and he won’t go. I only hope that he mayn’t have to
+go some day when he doesn’t want to,” said Torpenhow.
+
+
+In his own room Dick was settling a question with himself—and the
+question was whether all the world, and all that was therein, and a
+burning desire to exploit both, was worth one threepenny piece thrown
+into the Thames.
+
+“It came of seeing the sea, and I’m a cur to think about it,” he
+decided.
+
+“After all, the honeymoon will be that tour—with reservations; only...
+only I didn’t realise that the sea was so strong. I didn’t feel it so
+much when I was with Maisie. These damnable songs did it. He’s
+beginning again.”
+
+But it was only Herrick’s Nightpiece to Julia that the Nilghai sang,
+and before it was ended Dick reappeared on the threshold, not
+altogether clothed indeed, but in his right mind, thirsty and at peace.
+
+The mood had come and gone with the rising and the falling of the tide
+by Fort Keeling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+“If I have taken the common clay
+    And wrought it cunningly
+In the shape of a god that was digged a clod,
+    The greater honour to me.”
+
+“If thou hast taken the common clay,
+    And thy hands be not free
+From the taint of the soil, thou hast made thy spoil
+    The greater shame to thee.”—_The Two Potters_.
+
+
+He did no work of any kind for the rest of the week. Then came another
+Sunday. He dreaded and longed for the day always, but since the
+red-haired girl had sketched him there was rather more dread than
+desire in his mind.
+
+He found that Maisie had entirely neglected his suggestions about
+line-work. She had gone off at score filled with some absurd notion for
+a “fancy head.” It cost Dick something to command his temper.
+
+“What’s the good of suggesting anything?” he said pointedly.
+
+“Ah, but this will be a picture,—a real picture; and I know that Kami
+will let me send it to the Salon. You don’t mind, do you?”
+
+“I suppose not. But you won’t have time for the Salon.”
+
+Maisie hesitated a little. She even felt uncomfortable.
+
+“We’re going over to France a month sooner because of it. I shall get
+the idea sketched out here and work it up at Kami’s.
+
+Dick’s heart stood still, and he came very near to being disgusted with
+his queen who could do no wrong. “Just when I thought I had made some
+headway, she goes off chasing butterflies. It’s too maddening!”
+
+There was no possibility of arguing, for the red-haired girl was in the
+studio. Dick could only look unutterable reproach.
+
+“I’m sorry,” he said, “and I think you make a mistake. But what’s the
+idea of your new picture?”
+
+“I took it from a book.”
+
+“That’s bad, to begin with. Books aren’t the places for pictures.
+And——”
+
+“It’s this,” said the red-haired girl behind him. “I was reading it to
+Maisie the other day from _The City of Dreadful Night_. D’you know the
+book?”
+
+“A little. I am sorry I spoke. There are pictures in it. What has taken
+her fancy?”
+
+“The description of the Melancolia—
+
+“Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle,
+But all too impotent to lift the regal
+Robustness of her earth-born strength and pride.
+
+
+And here again. (Maisie, get the tea, dear.)
+
+“The forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams,
+The household bunch of keys, the housewife’s gown,
+    Voluminous indented, and yet rigid
+    As though a shell of burnished metal frigid,
+Her feet thick-shod to tread all weakness down.”
+
+
+There was no attempt to conceal the scorn of the lazy voice. Dick
+winced.
+
+“But that has been done already by an obscure artist by the name of
+Durer,” said he. “How does the poem run?—
+
+“Three centuries and threescore years ago,
+With phantasies of his peculiar thought.
+
+
+You might as well try to rewrite _Hamlet_. It will be a waste of time.
+
+“No, it won’t,” said Maisie, putting down the teacups with a clatter to
+reassure herself. “And I mean to do it. Can’t you see what a beautiful
+thing it would make?”
+
+“How in perdition can one do work when one hasn’t had the proper
+training? Any fool can get a notion. It needs training to drive the
+thing through,—training and conviction; not rushing after the first
+fancy.” Dick spoke between his teeth.
+
+“You don’t understand,” said Maisie. “I think I can do it.”
+
+Again the voice of the girl behind him—
+
+“Baffled and beaten back, she works on still;
+    Weary and sick of soul, she works the more.
+Sustained by her indomitable will,
+    The hands shall fashion, and the brain shall pore,
+And all her sorrow shall be turned to labour——
+
+
+I fancy Maisie means to embody herself in the picture.”
+
+“Sitting on a throne of rejected pictures? No, I shan’t, dear. The
+notion in itself has fascinated me.—Of course you don’t care for fancy
+heads, Dick.
+
+I don’t think you could do them. You like blood and bones.”
+
+“That’s a direct challenge. If you can do a Melancolia that isn’t
+merely a sorrowful female head, I can do a better one; and I will, too.
+What d’you know about Melacolias?” Dick firmly believed that he was
+even then tasting three-quarters of all the sorrow in the world.
+
+“She was a woman,” said Maisie, “and she suffered a great deal,—till
+she could suffer no more. Then she began to laugh at it all, and then I
+painted her and sent her to the Salon.”
+
+The red-haired girl rose up and left the room, laughing.
+
+Dick looked at Maisie humbly and hopelessly.
+
+“Never mind about the picture,” he said. “Are you really going back to
+Kami’s for a month before your time?”
+
+“I must, if I want to get the picture done.”
+
+“And that’s all you want?”
+
+“Of course. Don’t be stupid, Dick.”
+
+“You haven’t the power. You have only the ideas—the ideas and the
+little cheap impulses. How you could have kept at your work for ten
+years steadily is a mystery to me. So you are really going,—a month
+before you need?”
+
+“I must do my work.”
+
+“Your work—bah!... No, I didn’t mean that. It’s all right, dear. Of
+course you must do your work, and—I think I’ll say good-bye for this
+week.”
+
+“Won’t you even stay for tea? “No, thank you. Have I your leave to go,
+dear? There’s nothing more you particularly want me to do, and the
+line-work doesn’t matter.”
+
+“I wish you could stay, and then we could talk over my picture. If only
+one single picture’s a success, it draws attention to all the others. I
+know some of my work is good, if only people could see. And you needn’t
+have been so rude about it.”
+
+“I’m sorry. We’ll talk the Melancolia over some one of the other
+Sundays.
+
+There are four more—yes, one, two, three, four—before you go. Good-bye,
+Maisie.”
+
+Maisie stood by the studio window, thinking, till the red-haired girl
+returned, a little white at the corners of her lips.
+
+“Dick’s gone off,” said Maisie. “Just when I wanted to talk about the
+picture. Isn’t it selfish of him?”
+
+Her companion opened her lips as if to speak, shut them again, and went
+on reading _The City of Dreadful Night_.
+
+Dick was in the Park, walking round and round a tree that he had chosen
+as his confidante for many Sundays past. He was swearing audibly, and
+when he found that the infirmities of the English tongue hemmed in his
+rage, he sought consolation in Arabic, which is expressly designed for
+the use of the afflicted. He was not pleased with the reward of his
+patient service; nor was he pleased with himself; and it was long
+before he arrived at the proposition that the queen could do no wrong.
+
+“It’s a losing game,” he said. “I’m worth nothing when a whim of hers
+is in question. But in a losing game at Port Said we used to double the
+stakes and go on. She do a Melancolia! She hasn’t the power, or the
+insight, or the training. Only the desire. She’s cursed with the curse
+of Reuben. She won’t do line-work, because it means real work; and yet
+she’s stronger than I am. I’ll make her understand that I can beat her
+on her own Melancolia. Even then she wouldn’t care. She says I can only
+do blood and bones. I don’t believe she has blood in her veins. All the
+same I love her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her
+inordinate vanity I will. I’ll do a Melancolia that shall be something
+like a Melancolia—“the Melancolia that transcends all wit.” I’ll do it
+at once, con—bless her.”
+
+He discovered that the notion would not come to order, and that he
+could not free his mind for an hour from the thought of Maisie’s
+departure. He took very small interest in her rough studies for the
+Melancolia when she showed them next week. The Sundays were racing
+past, and the time was at hand when all the church bells in London
+could not ring Maisie back to him. Once or twice he said something to
+Binkie about “hermaphroditic futilities,” but the little dog received
+so many confidences both from Torpenhow and Dick that he did not
+trouble his tulip-ears to listen.
+
+Dick was permitted to see the girls off. They were going by the Dover
+night-boat; and they hoped to return in August. It was then February,
+and Dick felt that he was being hardly used. Maisie was so busy
+stripping the small house across the Park, and packing her canvases,
+that she had not time for thought. Dick went down to Dover and wasted a
+day there fretting over a wonderful possibility. Would Maisie at the
+very last allow him one small kiss? He reflected that he might capture
+her by the strong arm, as he had seem women captured in the Southern
+Soudan, and lead her away; but Maisie would never be led. She would
+turn her gray eyes upon him and say, “Dick, how selfish you are!” Then
+his courage would fail him. It would be better, after all, to beg for
+that kiss.
+
+Maisie looked more than usually kissable as she stepped from the
+night-mail on to the windy pier, in a gray waterproof and a little gray
+cloth travelling-cap. The red-haired girl was not so lovely. Her green
+eyes were hollow and her lips were dry. Dick saw the trunks aboard, and
+went to Maisie’s side in the darkness under the bridge. The mail-bags
+were thundering into the forehold, and the red-haired girl was watching
+them.
+
+“You’ll have a rough passage to-night,” said Dick. “It’s blowing
+outside. I suppose I may come over and see you if I’m good?”
+
+“You mustn’t. I shall be busy. At least, if I want you I’ll send for
+you. But I shall write from Vitry-sur-Marne. I shall have heaps of
+things to consult you about. Oh, Dick, you have been so good to me!—so
+good to me!”
+
+“Thank you for that, dear. It hasn’t made any difference, has it?”
+
+“I can’t tell a fib. It hasn’t—in that way. But don’t think I’m not
+grateful.”
+
+“Damn the gratitude!” said Dick, huskily, to the paddle-box.
+
+“What’s the use of worrying? You know I should ruin your life, and
+you’d ruin mine, as things are now. You remember what you said when you
+were so angry that day in the Park? One of us has to be broken.
+
+Can’t you wait till that day comes?”
+
+“No, love. I want you unbroken—all to myself.”
+
+Maisie shook her head. “My poor Dick, what can I say!”
+
+“Don’t say anything. Give me a kiss. Only one kiss, Maisie. I’ll swear
+I won’t take any more. You might as well, and then I can be sure you’re
+grateful.”
+
+Maisie put her cheek forward, and Dick took his reward in the darkness.
+
+It was only one kiss, but, since there was no time-limit specified, it
+was a long one. Maisie wrenched herself free angrily, and Dick stood
+abashed and tingling from head to toe.
+
+“Good-bye, darling. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry. Only—keep
+well and do good work,—specially the Melancolia. I’m going to do one,
+too. Remember me to Kami, and be careful what you drink. Country
+drinking-water is bad everywhere, but it’s worse in France. Write to me
+if you want anything, and good-bye. Say good-bye to the
+whatever-you-call-um girl, and—can’t I have another kiss? No. You’re
+quite right. Good-bye.”
+
+A shout told him that it was not seemly to charge up the mail-bag
+incline. He reached the pier as the steamer began to move off, and he
+followed her with his heart.
+
+“And there’s nothing—nothing in the wide world—to keep us apart except
+her obstinacy. These Calais night-boats are much too small. I’ll get
+Torp to write to the papers about it. She’s beginning to pitch
+already.”
+
+Maisie stood where Dick had left her till she heard a little gasping
+cough at her elbow. The red-haired girl’s eyes were alight with cold
+flame.
+
+“He kissed you!” she said. “How could you let him, when he wasn’t
+anything to you? How dared you to take a kiss from him? Oh, Maisie,
+let’s go to the ladies’ cabin. I’m sick,—deadly sick.”
+
+“We aren’t into open water yet. Go down, dear, and I’ll stay here. I
+don’t like the smell of the engines.... Poor Dick! He deserved
+one,—only one.
+
+But I didn’t think he’d frighten me so.”
+
+Dick returned to town next day just in time for lunch, for which he had
+telegraphed. To his disgust, there were only empty plates in the
+studio.
+
+He lifted up his voice like the bears in the fairy-tale, and Torpenhow
+entered, looking guilty.
+
+“H’sh!” said he. “Don’t make such a noise. I took it. Come into my
+rooms, and I’ll show you why.”
+
+Dick paused amazed at the threshold, for on Torpenhow’s sofa lay a girl
+asleep and breathing heavily. The little cheap sailor-hat, the
+blue-and-white dress, fitter for June than for February, dabbled with
+mud at the skirts, the jacket trimmed with imitation Astrakhan and
+ripped at the shoulder-seams, the one-and-elevenpenny umbrella, and,
+above all, the disgraceful condition of the kid-topped boots, declared
+all things.
+
+“Oh, I say, old man, this is too bad! You mustn’t bring this sort up
+here.
+
+They steal things from the rooms.”
+
+“It looks bad, I admit, but I was coming in after lunch, and she
+staggered into the hall. I thought she was drunk at first, but it was
+collapse. I couldn’t leave her as she was, so I brought her up here and
+gave her your lunch. She was fainting from want of food. She went fast
+asleep the minute she had finished.”
+
+“I know something of that complaint. She’s been living on sausages, I
+suppose. Torp, you should have handed her over to a policeman for
+presuming to faint in a respectable house. Poor little wretch! Look at
+the face! There isn’t an ounce of immorality in it. Only folly,—slack,
+fatuous, feeble, futile folly. It’s a typical head. D’you notice how
+the skull begins to show through the flesh padding on the face and
+cheek-bone?”
+
+“What a cold-blooded barbarian it is! Don’t hit a woman when she’s
+down. Can’t we do anything? She was simply dropping with starvation.
+
+She almost fell into my arms, and when she got to the food she ate like
+a wild beast. It was horrible.”
+
+“I can give her money, which she would probably spend in drinks. Is she
+going to sleep for ever?”
+
+The girl opened her eyes and glared at the men between terror and
+effrontery.
+
+“Feeling better?” said Torpenhow.
+
+“Yes. Thank you. There aren’t many gentlemen that are as kind as you
+are. Thank you.”
+
+“When did you leave service?” said Dick, who had been watching the
+scarred and chapped hands.
+
+“How did you know I was in service? I was. General servant. I didn’t
+like it.”
+
+“And how do you like being your own mistress?”
+
+“Do I look as if I liked it?”
+
+“I suppose not. One moment. Would you be good enough to turn your face
+to the window?”
+
+The girl obeyed, and Dick watched her face keenly,—so keenly that she
+made as if to hide behind Torpenhow.
+
+“The eyes have it,” said Dick, walking up and down. “They are superb
+eyes for my business. And, after all, every head depends on the eyes.
+This has been sent from heaven to make up for—what was taken away. Now
+the weekly strain’s off my shoulders, I can get to work in earnest.
+
+Evidently sent from heaven. Yes. Raise your chin a little, please.”
+
+“Gently, old man, gently. You’re scaring somebody out of her wits,”
+said Torpenhow, who could see the girl trembling.
+
+“Don’t let him hit me! Oh, please don’t let him hit me! I’ve been hit
+cruel to-day because I spoke to a man. Don’t let him look at me like
+that! He’s reg’lar wicked, that one. Don’t let him look at me like
+that, neither! Oh, I feel as if I hadn’t nothing on when he looks at me
+like that!”
+
+The overstrained nerves in the frail body gave way, and the girl wept
+like a little child and began to scream. Dick threw open the window,
+and Torpenhow flung the door back.
+
+“There you are,” said Dick, soothingly. “My friend here can call for a
+policeman, and you can run through that door. Nobody is going to hurt
+you.”
+
+The girl sobbed convulsively for a few minutes, and then tried to
+laugh.
+
+“Nothing in the world to hurt you. Now listen to me for a minute. I’m
+what they call an artist by profession. You know what artists do?”
+
+“They draw the things in red and black ink on the pop-shop labels.”
+
+“I dare say. I haven’t risen to pop-shop labels yet. Those are done by
+the Academicians. I want to draw your head.”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“Because it’s pretty. That is why you will come to the room across the
+landing three times a week at eleven in the morning, and I’ll give you
+three quid a week just for sitting still and being drawn. And there’s a
+quid on account.”
+
+“For nothing? Oh, my!” The girl turned the sovereign in her hand, and
+with more foolish tears, “Ain’t neither o’ you two gentlemen afraid of
+my bilking you?”
+
+“No. Only ugly girls do that. Try and remember this place. And, by the
+way, what’s your name?”
+
+“I’m Bessie,—Bessie—— It’s no use giving the rest. Bessie
+Broke,—Stone-broke, if you like. What’s your names? But there,—no one
+ever gives the real ones.”
+
+Dick consulted Torpenhow with his eyes.
+
+“My name’s Heldar, and my friend’s called Torpenhow; and you must be
+sure to come here. Where do you live?”
+
+“South-the-water,—one room,—five and sixpence a week. Aren’t you making
+fun of me about that three quid?”
+
+“You’ll see later on. And, Bessie, next time you come, remember, you
+needn’t wear that paint. It’s bad for the skin, and I have all the
+colours you’ll be likely to need.”
+
+Bessie withdrew, scrubbing her cheek with a ragged pocket-handkerchief.
+The two men looked at each other.
+
+“You’re a man,” said Torpenhow.
+
+“I’m afraid I’ve been a fool. It isn’t our business to run about the
+earth reforming Bessie Brokes. And a woman of any kind has no right on
+this landing.”
+
+“Perhaps she won’t come back.”
+
+“She will if she thinks she can get food and warmth here. I know she
+will, worse luck. But remember, old man, she isn’t a woman; she’s my
+model; and be careful.”
+
+“The idea! She’s a dissolute little scarecrow,—a gutter-snippet and
+nothing more.”
+
+“So you think. Wait till she has been fed a little and freed from fear.
+That fair type recovers itself very quickly. You won’t know her in a
+week or two, when that abject fear has died out of her eyes. She’ll be
+too happy and smiling for my purposes.”
+
+“But surely you’re not taking her out of charity?—to please me?”
+
+“I am not in the habit of playing with hot coals to please anybody. She
+has been sent from heaven, as I may have remarked before, to help me
+with my Melancolia.”
+
+“Never heard a word about the lady before.”
+
+“What’s the use of having a friend, if you must sling your notions at
+him in words? You ought to know what I’m thinking about. You’ve heard
+me grunt lately?”
+
+“Even so; but grunts mean anything in your language, from bad “baccy to
+wicked dealers. And I don’t think I’ve been much in your confidence for
+some time.”
+
+“It was a high and soulful grunt. You ought to have understood that it
+meant the Melancolia.” Dick walked Torpenhow up and down the room,
+keeping silence. Then he smote him in the ribs, “_Now_ don’t you see
+it? Bessie’s abject futility, and the terror in her eyes, welded on to
+one or two details in the way of sorrow that have come under my
+experience lately. Likewise some orange and black,—two keys of each.
+But I can’t explain on an empty stomach.”
+
+“It sounds mad enough. You’d better stick to your soldiers, Dick,
+instead of maundering about heads and eyes and experiences.”
+
+“Think so?” Dick began to dance on his heels, singing—
+
+“They’re as proud as a turkey when they hold the ready cash,
+    You ought to ’ear the way they laugh an’ joke;
+They are tricky an’ they’re funny when they’ve got the ready money,—
+    Ow! but see ’em when they’re all stone-broke.”
+
+
+Then he sat down to pour out his heart to Maisie in a four-sheet letter
+of counsel and encouragement, and registered an oath that he would get
+to work with an undivided heart as soon as Bessie should reappear.
+
+The girl kept her appointment unpainted and unadorned, afraid and
+overbold by turns. When she found that she was merely expected to sit
+still, she grew calmer, and criticised the appointments of the studio
+with freedom and some point. She liked the warmth and the comfort and
+the release from fear of physical pain. Dick made two or three studies
+of her head in monochrome, but the actual notion of the Melancolia
+would not arrive.
+
+“What a mess you keep your things in!” said Bessie, some days later,
+when she felt herself thoroughly at home. “I s’pose your clothes are
+just as bad.
+
+Gentlemen never think what buttons and tape are made for.”
+
+“I buy things to wear, and wear ’em till they go to pieces. I don’t
+know what Torpenhow does.”
+
+Bessie made diligent inquiry in the latter’s room, and unearthed a bale
+of disreputable socks. “Some of these I’ll mend now,” she said, “and
+some I’ll take home. D’you know, I sit all day long at home doing
+nothing, just like a lady, and no more noticing them other girls in the
+house than if they was so many flies. I don’t have any unnecessary
+words, but I put ’em down quick, I can tell you, when they talk to me.
+No; it’s quite nice these days. I lock my door, and they can only call
+me names through the keyhole, and I sit inside, just like a lady,
+mending socks. Mr. Torpenhow wears his socks out both ends at once.”
+
+“Three quid a week from me, and the delights of my society. No socks
+mended. Nothing from Torp except a nod on the landing now and again,
+and all his socks mended. Bessie is very much a woman,” thought Dick;
+and he looked at her between half-shut eyes. Food and rest had
+transformed the girl, as Dick knew they would.
+
+“What are you looking at me like that for?” she said quickly. “Don’t.
+You look reg’lar bad when you look that way. You don’t think much o’
+me, do you?”
+
+“That depends on how you behave.”
+
+Bessie behaved beautifully. Only it was difficult at the end of a
+sitting to bid her go out into the gray streets. She very much
+preferred the studio and a big chair by the stove, with some socks in
+her lap as an excuse for delay. Then Torpenhow would come in, and
+Bessie would be moved to tell strange and wonderful stories of her
+past, and still stranger ones of her present improved circumstances.
+She would make them tea as though she had a right to make it; and once
+or twice on these occasions Dick caught Torpenhow’s eyes fixed on the
+trim little figure, and because Bessie’s flittings about the room made
+Dick ardently long for Maisie, he realised whither Torpenhow’s thoughts
+were tending. And Bessie was exceedingly careful of the condition of
+Torpenhow’s linen. She spoke very little to him, but sometimes they
+talked together on the landing.
+
+“I was a great fool,” Dick said to himself. “I know what red firelight
+looks like when a man’s tramping through a strange town; and ours is a
+lonely, selfish sort of life at the best. I wonder Maisie doesn’t feel
+that sometimes. But I can’t order Bessie away. That’s the worst of
+beginning things. One never knows where they stop.”
+
+One evening, after a sitting prolonged to the last limit of the light,
+Dick was roused from a nap by a broken voice in Torpenhow’s room. He
+jumped to his feet. “Now what ought I to do? It looks foolish to go
+in.—Oh, bless you, Binkie!” The little terrier thrust Torpenhow’s door
+open with his nose and came out to take possession of Dick’s chair. The
+door swung wide unheeded, and Dick across the landing could see Bessie
+in the half-light making her little supplication to Torpenhow. She was
+kneeling by his side, and her hands were clasped across his knee.
+
+“I know,—I know,” she said thickly. “’Tisn’t right o’ me to do this,
+but I can’t help it; and you were so kind,—so kind; and you never took
+any notice o’ me. And I’ve mended all your things so carefully,—I did.
+Oh, please, ’tisn’t as if I was asking you to marry me. I wouldn’t
+think of it.
+
+But you—couldn’t you take and live with me till Miss Right comes along?
+I’m only Miss Wrong, I know, but I’d work my hands to the bare bone for
+you. And I’m not ugly to look at. Say you will!”
+
+Dick hardly recognised Torpenhow’s voice in reply—“But look here. It’s
+no use. I’m liable to be ordered off anywhere at a minute’s notice if a
+war breaks out. At a minute’s notice—dear.”
+
+“What does that matter? Until you go, then. Until you go. ’Tisn’t much
+I’m asking, and—you don’t know how good I can cook.” She had put an arm
+round his neck and was drawing his head down.
+
+“Until—I—go, then.”
+
+“Torp,” said Dick, across the landing. He could hardly steady his
+voice.
+
+“Come here a minute, old man. I’m in trouble’—“Heaven send he’ll listen
+to me!” There was something very like an oath from Bessie’s lips. She
+was afraid of Dick, and disappeared down the staircase in panic, but it
+seemed an age before Torpenhow entered the studio. He went to the
+mantelpiece, buried his head on his arms, and groaned like a wounded
+bull.
+
+“What the devil right have you to interfere?” he said, at last.
+
+“Who’s interfering with which? Your own sense told you long ago you
+couldn’t be such a fool. It was a tough rack, St. Anthony, but you’re
+all right now.”
+
+“I oughtn’t to have seen her moving about these rooms as if they
+belonged to her. That’s what upset me. It gives a lonely man a sort of
+hankering, doesn’t it?” said Torpenhow, piteously.
+
+“Now you talk sense. It does. But, since you aren’t in a condition to
+discuss the disadvantages of double housekeeping, do you know what
+you’re going to do?”
+
+“I don’t. I wish I did.”
+
+“You’re going away for a season on a brilliant tour to regain tone.
+You’re going to Brighton, or Scarborough, or Prawle Point, to see the
+ships go by. And you’re going at once. Isn’t it odd? I’ll take care of
+Binkie, but out you go immediately. Never resist the devil. He holds
+the bank. Fly from him. Pack your things and go.”
+
+“I believe you’re right. Where shall I go?”
+
+“And you call yourself a special correspondent! Pack first and inquire
+afterwards.”
+
+An hour later Torpenhow was despatched into the night for a hansom.
+
+“You’ll probably think of some place to go to while you’re moving,”
+said Dick. “On to Euston, to begin with, and—oh yes—get drunk
+to-night.”
+
+He returned to the studio, and lighted more candles, for he found the
+room very dark.
+
+“Oh, you Jezebel! you futile little Jezebel! Won’t you hate me
+to-morrow!—Binkie, come here.”
+
+Binkie turned over on his back on the hearth-rug, and Dick stirred him
+with a meditative foot.
+
+“I said she was not immoral. I was wrong. She said she could cook. That
+showed premeditated sin. Oh, Binkie, if you are a man you will go to
+perdition; but if you are a woman, and say that you can cook, you will
+go to a much worse place.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+What’s you that follows at my side?—
+    The foe that ye must fight, my lord.—
+That hirples swift as I can ride?—
+    The shadow of the night, my lord.—
+Then wheel my horse against the foe!—
+    He’s down and overpast, my lord.
+Ye war against the sunset glow;
+    The darkness gathers fast, my lord.
+
+—_The Fight of Heriot’s Ford_.
+
+
+“This is a cheerful life,” said Dick, some days later. “Torp’s away;
+Bessie hates me; I can’t get at the notion of the Melancolia; Maisie’s
+letters are scrappy; and I believe I have indigestion. What give a man
+pains across the head and spots before his eyes, Binkie? Shall us take
+some liver pills?”
+
+Dick had just gone through a lively scene with Bessie. She had for the
+fiftieth time reproached him for sending Torpenhow away. She explained
+her enduring hatred for Dick, and made it clear to him that she only
+sat for the sake of his money. “And Mr. Torpenhow’s ten times a better
+man than you,” she concluded.
+
+“He is. That’s why he went away. _I_ should have stayed and made love
+to you.”
+
+The girl sat with her chin on her hand, scowling. “To me! I’d like to
+catch you! If I wasn’t afraid o’ being hung I’d kill you. That’s what
+I’d do.
+
+D’you believe me?”
+
+Dick smiled wearily. It is not pleasant to live in the company of a
+notion that will not work out, a fox-terrier that cannot talk, and a
+woman who talks too much. He would have answered, but at that moment
+there unrolled itself from one corner of the studio a veil, as it were,
+of the flimsiest gauze. He rubbed his eyes, but the gray haze would not
+go.
+
+“This is disgraceful indigestion. Binkie, we will go to a medicine-man.
+We can’t have our eyes interfered with, for by these we get our bread;
+also mutton-chop bones for little dogs.”
+
+The doctor was an affable local practitioner with white hair, and he
+said nothing till Dick began to describe the gray film in the studio.
+
+“We all want a little patching and repairing from time to time,” he
+chirped. “Like a ship, my dear sir,—exactly like a ship. Sometimes the
+hull is out of order, and we consult the surgeon; sometimes the
+rigging, and then I advise; sometimes the engines, and we go to the
+brain-specialist; sometimes the look-out on the bridge is tired, and
+then we see an oculist. I should recommend you to see an oculist. A
+little patching and repairing from time to time is all we want. An
+oculist, by all means.”
+
+Dick sought an oculist,—the best in London. He was certain that the
+local practitioner did not know anything about his trade, and more
+certain that Maisie would laugh at him if he were forced to wear
+spectacles.
+
+“I’ve neglected the warnings of my lord the stomach too long. Hence
+these spots before the eyes, Binkie. I can see as well as I ever
+could.”
+
+As he entered the dark hall that led to the consulting-room a man
+cannoned against him. Dick saw the face as it hurried out into the
+street.
+
+“That’s the writer-type. He has the same modelling of the forehead as
+Torp. He looks very sick. Probably heard something he didn’t like.”
+
+Even as he thought, a great fear came upon Dick, a fear that made him
+hold his breath as he walked into the oculist’s waiting room, with the
+heavy carved furniture, the dark-green paper, and the sober-hued prints
+on the wall. He recognised a reproduction of one of his own sketches.
+
+Many people were waiting their turn before him. His eye was caught by a
+flaming red-and-gold Christmas-carol book. Little children came to that
+eye-doctor, and they needed large-type amusement.
+
+“That’s idolatrous bad Art,” he said, drawing the book towards himself.
+
+“From the anatomy of the angels, it has been made in Germany.” He
+opened in mechanically, and there leaped to his eyes a verse printed in
+red ink—
+
+The next good joy that Mary had,
+    It was the joy of three,
+To see her good Son Jesus Christ
+    Making the blind to see;
+Making the blind to see, good Lord,
+    And happy we may be.
+Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
+    To all eternity!
+
+
+Dick read and re-read the verse till his turn came, and the doctor was
+bending above him seated in an arm-chair. The blaze of the
+gas-microscope in his eyes made him wince. The doctor’s hand touched
+the scar of the sword-cut on Dick’s head, and Dick explained briefly
+how he had come by it. When the flame was removed, Dick saw the
+doctor’s face, and the fear came upon him again. The doctor wrapped
+himself in a mist of words. Dick caught allusions to “scar,” “frontal
+bone,” “optic nerve,” “extreme caution,” and the “avoidance of mental
+anxiety.”
+
+“Verdict?” he said faintly. “My business is painting, and I daren’t
+waste time. What do you make of it?”
+
+Again the whirl of words, but this time they conveyed a meaning.
+
+“Can you give me anything to drink?”
+
+Many sentences were pronounced in that darkened room, and the prisoners
+often needed cheering. Dick found a glass of liqueur brandy in his
+hand.
+
+“As far as I can gather,” he said, coughing above the spirit, “you call
+it decay of the optic nerve, or something, and therefore hopeless. What
+is my time-limit, avoiding all strain and worry?”
+
+“Perhaps one year.”
+
+“My God! And if I don’t take care of myself?”
+
+“I really could not say. One cannot ascertain the exact amount of
+injury inflicted by the sword-cut. The scar is an old one, and—exposure
+to the strong light of the desert, did you say?—with excessive
+application to fine work? I really could not say?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, but it has come without any warning. If you will
+let me, I’ll sit here for a minute, and then I’ll go. You have been
+very good in telling me the truth. Without any warning; without any
+warning.
+
+Thanks.”
+
+Dick went into the street, and was rapturously received by Binkie.
+
+“We’ve got it very badly, little dog! Just as badly as we can get it.
+We’ll go to the Park to think it out.”
+
+They headed for a certain tree that Dick knew well, and they sat down
+to think, because his legs were trembling under him and there was cold
+fear at the pit of his stomach.
+
+“How could it have come without any warning? It’s as sudden as being
+shot. It’s the living death, Binkie. We’re to be shut up in the dark in
+one year if we’re careful, and we shan’t see anybody, and we shall
+never have anything we want, not though we live to be a hundred!”
+Binkie wagged his tail joyously. “Binkie, we must think. Let’s see how
+it feels to be blind.” Dick shut his eyes, and flaming commas and
+Catherine-wheels floated inside the lids. Yet when he looked across the
+Park the scope of his vision was not contracted. He could see
+perfectly, until a procession of slow-wheeling fireworks defiled across
+his eyeballs.
+
+“Little dorglums, we aren’t at all well. Let’s go home. If only Torp
+were back, now!”
+
+But Torpenhow was in the south of England, inspecting dockyards in the
+company of the Nilghai. His letters were brief and full of mystery.
+
+Dick had never asked anybody to help him in his joys or his sorrows. He
+argued, in the loneliness of his studio, henceforward to be decorated
+with a film of gray gauze in one corner, that, if his fate were
+blindness, all the Torpenhows in the world could not save him. “I can’t
+call him off his trip to sit down and sympathise with me. I must pull
+through this business alone,” he said. He was lying on the sofa, eating
+his moustache and wondering what the darkness of the night would be
+like. Then came to his mind the memory of a quaint scene in the Soudan.
+A soldier had been nearly hacked in two by a broad-bladed Arab spear.
+For one instant the man felt no pain. Looking down, he saw that his
+life-blood was going from him. The stupid bewilderment on his face was
+so intensely comic that both Dick and Torpenhow, still panting and
+unstrung from a fight for life, had roared with laughter, in which the
+man seemed as if he would join, but, as his lips parted in a sheepish
+grin, the agony of death came upon him, and he pitched grunting at
+their feet. Dick laughed again, remembering the horror. It seemed so
+exactly like his own case.
+
+“But I have a little more time allowed me,” he said. He paced up and
+down the room, quietly at first, but afterwards with the hurried feet
+of fear. It was as though a black shadow stood at his elbow and urged
+him to go forward; and there were only weaving circles and floating
+pin-dots before his eyes.
+
+“We need to be calm, Binkie; we must be calm.” He talked aloud for the
+sake of distraction. “This isn’t nice at all. What shall we do? We must
+do something. Our time is short. I shouldn’t have believed that this
+morning; but now things are different. Binkie, where was Moses when the
+light went out?”
+
+Binkie smiled from ear to ear, as a well-bred terrier should, but made
+no suggestion.
+
+““Were there but world enough and time, This coyness, Binkie, were not
+crime.... But at my back I always hear——“’ He wiped his forehead, which
+was unpleasantly damp. “What can I do? What can I do? I haven’t any
+notions left, and I can’t think connectedly, but I must do something,
+or I shall go off my head.”
+
+The hurried walk recommenced, Dick stopping every now and again to drag
+forth long-neglected canvases and old note-books; for he turned to his
+work by instinct, as a thing that could not fail. “You won’t do, and
+you won’t do,” he said, at each inspection. “No more soldiers. I
+couldn’t paint ’em. Sudden death comes home too nearly, and this is
+battle and murder for me.”
+
+The day was failing, and Dick thought for a moment that the twilight of
+the blind had come upon him unaware. “Allah Almighty!” he cried
+despairingly, “help me through the time of waiting, and I won’t whine
+when my punishment comes. What can I do now, before the light goes?”
+
+There was no answer. Dick waited till he could regain some sort of
+control over himself. His hands were shaking, and he prided himself on
+their steadiness; he could feel that his lips were quivering, and the
+sweat was running down his face. He was lashed by fear, driven forward
+by the desire to get to work at once and accomplish something, and
+maddened by the refusal of his brain to do more than repeat the news
+that he was about to go blind. “It’s a humiliating exhibition,” he
+thought, “and I’m glad Torp isn’t here to see. The doctor said I was to
+avoid mental worry.
+
+Come here and let me pet you, Binkie.”
+
+The little dog yelped because Dick nearly squeezed the bark out of him.
+
+Then he heard the man speaking in the twilight, and, doglike,
+understood that his trouble stood off from him—“Allah is good, Binkie.
+Not quite so gentle as we could wish, but we’ll discuss that later. I
+think I see my way to it now. All those studies of Bessie’s head were
+nonsense, and they nearly brought your master into a scrape. I hold the
+notion now as clear as crystal,—“the Melancolia that transcends all
+wit.” There shall be Maisie in that head, because I shall never get
+Maisie; and Bess, of course, because she knows all about Melancolia,
+though she doesn’t know she knows; and there shall be some drawing in
+it, and it shall all end up with a laugh. That’s for myself. Shall she
+giggle or grin? No, she shall laugh right out of the canvas, and every
+man and woman that ever had a sorrow of their own shall—what is it the
+poem says?—
+
+“Understand the speech and feel a stir
+Of fellowship in all disastrous fight.
+
+
+“In all disastrous fight”? That’s better than painting the thing merely
+to pique Maisie. I can do it now because I have it inside me. Binkie,
+I’m going to hold you up by your tail. You’re an omen. Come here.”
+
+Binkie swung head downward for a moment without speaking.
+
+“Rather like holding a guinea-pig; but you’re a brave little dog, and
+you don’t yelp when you’re hung up. It is an omen.”
+
+Binkie went to his own chair, and as often as he looked saw Dick
+walking up and down, rubbing his hands and chuckling. That night Dick
+wrote a letter to Maisie full of the tenderest regard for her health,
+but saying very little about his own, and dreamed of the Melancolia to
+be born. Not till morning did he remember that something might happen
+to him in the future.
+
+He fell to work, whistling softly, and was swallowed up in the clean,
+clear joy of creation, which does not come to man too often, lest he
+should consider himself the equal of his God, and so refuse to die at
+the appointed time. He forgot Maisie, Torpenhow, and Binkie at his
+feet, but remembered to stir Bessie, who needed very little stirring,
+into a tremendous rage, that he might watch the smouldering lights in
+her eyes.
+
+He threw himself without reservation into his work, and did not think
+of the doom that was to overtake him, for he was possessed with his
+notion, and the things of this world had no power upon him.
+
+“You’re pleased to-day,” said Bessie.
+
+Dick waved his mahl-stick in mystic circles and went to the sideboard
+for a drink. In the evening, when the exaltation of the day had died
+down, he went to the sideboard again, and after some visits became
+convinced that the eye-doctor was a liar, since he could still see
+everything very clearly.
+
+He was of opinion that he would even make a home for Maisie, and that
+whether she liked it or not she should be his wife. The mood passed
+next morning, but the sideboard and all upon it remained for his
+comfort.
+
+Again he set to work, and his eyes troubled him with spots and dashes
+and blurs till he had taken counsel with the sideboard, and the
+Melancolia both on the canvas and in his own mind appeared lovelier
+than ever. There was a delightful sense of irresponsibility upon him,
+such as they feel who walking among their fellow-men know that the
+death-sentence of disease is upon them, and, seeing that fear is but
+waste of the little time left, are riotously happy. The days passed
+without event.
+
+Bessie arrived punctually always, and, though her voice seemed to Dick
+to come from a distance, her face was always very near. The Melancolia
+began to flame on the canvas, in the likeness of a woman who had known
+all the sorrow in the world and was laughing at it. It was true that
+the corners of the studio draped themselves in gray film and retired
+into the darkness, that the spots in his eyes and the pains across his
+head were very troublesome, and that Maisie’s letters were hard to read
+and harder still to answer. He could not tell her of his trouble, and
+he could not laugh at her accounts of her own Melancolia which was
+always going to be finished. But the furious days of toil and the
+nights of wild dreams made amends for all, and the sideboard was his
+best friend on earth.
+
+Bessie was singularly dull. She used to shriek with rage when Dick
+stared at her between half-closed eyes. Now she sulked, or watched him
+with disgust, saying very little.
+
+Torpenhow had been absent for six weeks. An incoherent note heralded
+his return. “News! great news!” he wrote. “The Nilghai knows, and so
+does the Keneu. We’re all back on Thursday. Get lunch and clean your
+accoutrements.”
+
+Dick showed Bessie the letter, and she abused him for that he had ever
+sent Torpenhow away and ruined her life.
+
+“Well,” said Dick, brutally, “you’re better as you are, instead of
+making love to some drunken beast in the street.” He felt that he had
+rescued Torpenhow from great temptation.
+
+“I don’t know if that’s any worse than sitting to a drunken beast in a
+studio. _You_ haven’t been sober for three weeks. You’ve been soaking
+the whole time; and yet you pretend you’re better than me!”
+
+“What d’you mean?” said Dick.
+
+“Mean! You’ll see when Mr. Torpenhow comes back.”
+
+It was not long to wait. Torpenhow met Bessie on the staircase without
+a sign of feeling. He had news that was more to him than many Bessies,
+and the Keneu and the Nilghai were trampling behind him, calling for
+Dick.
+
+“Drinking like a fish,” Bessie whispered. “He’s been at it for nearly a
+month.” She followed the men stealthily to hear judgment done.
+
+They came into the studio, rejoicing, to be welcomed over effusively by
+a drawn, lined, shrunken, haggard wreck,—unshaven, blue-white about the
+nostrils, stooping in the shoulders, and peering under his eyebrows
+nervously. The drink had been at work as steadily as Dick.
+
+“Is this you?” said Torpenhow.
+
+“All that’s left of me. Sit down. Binkie’s quite well, and I’ve been
+doing some good work.” He reeled where he stood.
+
+“You’ve done some of the worst work you’ve ever done in your life. Man
+alive, you’re——”
+
+Torpenhow turned to his companions appealingly, and they left the room
+to find lunch elsewhere. Then he spoke; but, since the reproof of a
+friend is much too sacred and intimate a thing to be printed, and since
+Torpenhow used figures and metaphors which were unseemly, and contempt
+untranslatable, it will never be known what was actually said to Dick,
+who blinked and winked and picked at his hands. After a time the
+culprit began to feel the need of a little self-respect. He was quite
+sure that he had not in any way departed from virtue, and there were
+reasons, too, of which Torpenhow knew nothing. He would explain.
+
+He rose, tried to straighten his shoulders, and spoke to the face he
+could hardly see.
+
+“You are right,” he said. “But I am right, too. After you went away I
+had some trouble with my eyes. So I went to an oculist, and he turned a
+gasogene—I mean a gas-engine—into my eye. That was very long ago. He
+said, “Scar on the head,—sword-cut and optic nerve.” Make a note of
+that. So I am going blind. I have some work to do before I go blind,
+and I suppose that I must do it. I cannot see much now, but I can see
+best when I am drunk. I did not know I was drunk till I was told, but I
+must go on with my work. If you want to see it, there it is.” He
+pointed to the all but finished Melancolia and looked for applause.
+
+Torpenhow said nothing, and Dick began to whimper feebly, for joy at
+seeing Torpenhow again, for grief at misdeeds—if indeed they were
+misdeeds—that made Torpenhow remote and unsympathetic, and for childish
+vanity hurt, since Torpenhow had not given a word of praise to his
+wonderful picture.
+
+Bessie looked through the keyhole after a long pause, and saw the two
+walking up and down as usual, Torpenhow’s hand on Dick’s shoulder.
+
+Hereat she said something so improper that it shocked even Binkie, who
+was dribbling patiently on the landing with the hope of seeing his
+master again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The lark will make her hymn to God,
+    The partridge call her brood,
+While I forget the heath I trod,
+    The fields wherein I stood.
+’Tis dule to know not night from morn,
+    But deeper dule to know
+I can but hear the hunter’s horn
+    That once I used to blow.
+
+—_The Only Son_.
+
+
+It was the third day after Torpenhow’s return, and his heart was heavy.
+
+“Do you mean to tell me that you can’t see to work without whiskey?
+It’s generally the other way about.”
+
+“Can a drunkard swear on his honour?” said Dick.
+
+“Yes, if he has been as good a man as you.”
+
+“Then I give you my word of honour,” said Dick, speaking hurriedly
+through parched lips. “Old man, I can hardly see your face now. You’ve
+kept me sober for two days,—if I ever was drunk,—and I’ve done no work.
+
+Don’t keep me back any more. I don’t know when my eyes may give out.
+
+The spots and dots and the pains and things are crowding worse than
+ever. I swear I can see all right when I’m—when I’m moderately screwed,
+as you say. Give me three more sittings from Bessie and all—the stuff I
+want, and the picture will be done. I can’t kill myself in three days.
+It only means a touch of D. T. at the worst.”
+
+“If I give you three days more will you promise me to stop work and—the
+other thing, whether the picture’s finished or not?”
+
+“I can’t. You don’t know what that picture means to me. But surely you
+could get the Nilghai to help you, and knock me down and tie me up. I
+shouldn’t fight for the whiskey, but I should for the work.”
+
+“Go on, then. I give you three days; but you’re nearly breaking my
+heart.”
+
+Dick returned to his work, toiling as one possessed; and the yellow
+devil of whiskey stood by him and chased away the spots in his eyes.
+The Melancolia was nearly finished, and was all or nearly all that he
+had hoped she would be. Dick jested with Bessie, who reminded him that
+he was “a drunken beast’; but the reproof did not move him.
+
+“You can’t understand, Bess. We are in sight of land now, and soon we
+shall lie back and think about what we’ve done. I’ll give you three
+months’ pay when the picture’s finished, and next time I have any more
+work in hand—but that doesn’t matter. Won’t three months’ pay make you
+hate me less?”
+
+“No, it won’t! I hate you, and I’ll go on hating you. Mr. Torpenhow
+won’t speak to me any more. He’s always looking at maps.”
+
+Bessie did not say that she had again laid siege to Torpenhow, or that
+at the end of her passionate pleading he had picked her up, given her a
+kiss, and put her outside the door with the recommendation not to be a
+little fool. He spent most of his time in the company of the Nilghai,
+and their talk was of war in the near future, the hiring of transports,
+and secret preparations among the dockyards. He did not wish to see
+Dick till the picture was finished.
+
+“He’s doing first-class work,” he said to the Nilghai, “and it’s quite
+out of his regular line. But, for the matter of that, so’s his infernal
+soaking.”
+
+“Never mind. Leave him alone. When he has come to his senses again
+we’ll carry him off from this place and let him breathe clean air. Poor
+Dick! I don’t envy you, Torp, when his eyes fail.”
+
+“Yes, it will be a case of “God help the man who’s chained to our
+Davie.” The worst is that we don’t know when it will happen, and I
+believe the uncertainty and the waiting have sent Dick to the whiskey
+more than anything else.”
+
+“How the Arab who cut his head open would grin if he knew!”
+
+“He’s at perfect liberty to grin if he can. He’s dead. That’s poor
+consolation now.”
+
+In the afternoon of the third day Torpenhow heard Dick calling for him.
+
+“All finished!” he shouted. “I’ve done it! Come in! Isn’t she a beauty?
+Isn’t she a darling? I’ve been down to hell to get her; but isn’t she
+worth it?”
+
+Torpenhow looked at the head of a woman who laughed,—a full-lipped,
+hollow-eyed woman who laughed from out of the canvas as Dick had
+intended she would.
+
+“Who taught you how to do it?” said Torpenhow. “The touch and notion
+have nothing to do with your regular work. What a face it is! What
+eyes, and what insolence!” Unconsciously he threw back his head and
+laughed with her. “She’s seen the game played out,—I don’t think she
+had a good time of it,—and now she doesn’t care. Isn’t that the idea?”
+
+“Exactly.”
+
+“Where did you get the mouth and chin from? They don’t belong to Bess.”
+
+“They’re—some one else’s. But isn’t it good? Isn’t it thundering good?
+Wasn’t it worth the whiskey? I did it. Alone I did it, and it’s the
+best I can do.” He drew his breath sharply, and whispered, “Just God!
+what could I not do ten years hence, if I can do this now!—By the way,
+what do you think of it, Bess?”
+
+The girl was biting her lips. She loathed Torpenhow because he had
+taken no notice of her.
+
+“I think it’s just the horridest, beastliest thing I ever saw,” she
+answered, and turned away.
+
+“More than you will be of that way of thinking, young woman.—Dick,
+there’s a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the
+head that I don’t understand,” said Torpenhow.
+
+That’s trick-work,” said Dick, chuckling with delight at being
+completely understood. “I couldn’t resist one little bit of sheer
+swagger. It’s a French trick, and you wouldn’t understand; but it’s got
+at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening
+of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the
+left ear. That, and deepening the shadow under the lobe of the ear. It
+was flagrant trick-work; but, having the notion fixed, I felt entitled
+to play with it,—Oh, you beauty!”
+
+“Amen! She is a beauty. I can feel it.”
+
+“So will every man who has any sorrow of his own,” said Dick, slapping
+his thigh. “He shall see his trouble there, and, by the Lord Harry,
+just when he’s feeling properly sorry for himself he shall throw back
+his head and laugh,—as she is laughing. I’ve put the life of my heart
+and the light of my eyes into her, and I don’t care what comes.... I’m
+tired,—awfully tired. I think I’ll get to sleep. Take away the whiskey,
+it has served its turn, and give Bessie thirty-six quid, and three over
+for luck. Cover the picture.”
+
+He dropped asleep in the long chair, hid face white and haggard, almost
+before he had finished the sentence. Bessie tried to take Torpenhow’s
+hand. “Aren’t you never going to speak to me any more?” she said; but
+Torpenhow was looking at Dick.
+
+“What a stock of vanity the man has! I’ll take him in hand to-morrow
+and make much of him. He deserves it.—Eh! what was that, Bess?”
+
+“Nothing. I’ll put things tidy here a little, and then I’ll go. You
+couldn’t give the that three months’ pay now, could you? He said you
+were to.”
+
+Torpenhow gave her a check and went to his own rooms. Bessie faithfully
+tidied up the studio, set the door ajar for flight, emptied half a
+bottle of turpentine on a duster, and began to scrub the face of the
+Melancolia viciously. The paint did not smudge quickly enough. She took
+a palette-knife and scraped, following each stroke with the wet duster.
+In five minutes the picture was a formless, scarred muddle of colours.
+She threw the paint-stained duster into the studio stove, stuck out her
+tongue at the sleeper, and whispered, “Bilked!” as she turned to run
+down the staircase. She would never see Torpenhow any more, but she had
+at least done harm to the man who had come between her and her desire
+and who used to make fun of her. Cashing the check was the very cream
+of the jest to Bessie. Then the little privateer sailed across the
+Thames, to be swallowed up in the gray wilderness of South-the-Water.
+
+Dick slept till late in the evening, when Torpenhow dragged him off to
+bed. His eyes were as bright as his voice was hoarse. “Let’s have
+another look at the picture,” he said, insistently as a child.
+
+“You—go—to—bed,” said Torpenhow. “You aren’t at all well, though you
+mayn’t know it. You’re as jumpy as a cat.”
+
+“I reform to-morrow. Good-night.”
+
+As he repassed through the studio, Torpenhow lifted the cloth above the
+picture, and almost betrayed himself by outcries: “Wiped out!—scraped
+out and turped out! He’s on the verge of jumps as it is. That’s
+Bess,—the little fiend! Only a woman could have done that!-with the ink
+not dry on the check, too! Dick will be raving mad to-morrow. It was
+all my fault for trying to help gutter-devils. Oh, my poor Dick, the
+Lord is hitting you very hard!”
+
+Dick could not sleep that night, partly for pure joy, and partly
+because the well-known Catherine-wheels inside his eyes had given place
+to crackling volcanoes of many-coloured fire. “Spout away,” he said
+aloud.
+
+“I’ve done my work, and now you can do what you please.” He lay still,
+staring at the ceiling, the long-pent-up delirium of drink in his
+veins, his brain on fire with racing thoughts that would not stay to be
+considered, and his hands crisped and dry. He had just discovered that
+he was painting the face of the Melancolia on a revolving dome ribbed
+with millions of lights, and that all his wondrous thoughts stood
+embodied hundreds of feet below his tiny swinging plank, shouting
+together in his honour, when something cracked inside his temples like
+an overstrained bowstring, the glittering dome broke inward, and he was
+alone in the thick night.
+
+“I’ll go to sleep. The room’s very dark. Let’s light a lamp and see how
+the Melancolia looks. There ought to have been a moon.”
+
+It was then that Torpenhow heard his name called by a voice that he did
+not know,—in the rattling accents of deadly fear.
+
+“He’s looked at the picture,” was his first thought, as he hurried into
+the bedroom and found Dick sitting up and beating the air with his
+hands.
+
+“Torp! Torp! where are you? For pity’s sake, come to me!”
+
+“What’s the matter?”
+
+Dick clutched at his shoulder. “Matter! I’ve been lying here for hours
+in the dark, and you never heard me. Torp, old man, don’t go away. I’m
+all in the dark. In the dark, I tell you!”
+
+Torpenhow held the candle within a foot of Dick’s eyes, but there was
+no light in those eyes. He lit the gas, and Dick heard the flame catch.
+The grip of his fingers on Torpenhow’s shoulder made Torpenhow wince.
+
+“Don’t leave me. You wouldn’t leave me alone now, would you? I can’t
+see. D’you understand? It’s black,—quite black,—and I feel as if I was
+falling through it all.”
+
+“Steady does it.” Torpenhow put his arm round Dick and began to rock
+him gently to and fro.
+
+“That’s good. Now don’t talk. If I keep very quiet for a while, this
+darkness will lift. It seems just on the point of breaking. H’sh!” Dick
+knit his brows and stared desperately in front of him. The night air
+was chilling Torpenhow’s toes.
+
+“Can you stay like that a minute?” he said. “I’ll get my dressing-gown
+and some slippers.”
+
+Dick clutched the bed-head with both hands and waited for the darkness
+to clear away. “What a time you’ve been!” he cried, when Torpenhow
+returned. “It’s as black as ever. What are you banging about in the
+door-way?”
+
+“Long chair,—horse-blanket,—pillow. Going to sleep by you. Lie down
+now; you’ll be better in the morning.”
+
+“I shan’t!” The voice rose to a wail. “My God! I’m blind! I’m blind,
+and the darkness will never go away.” He made as if to leap from the
+bed, but Torpenhow’s arms were round him, and Torpenhow’s chin was on
+his shoulder, and his breath was squeezed out of him. He could only
+gasp, “Blind!” and wriggle feebly.
+
+“Steady, Dickie, steady!” said the deep voice in his ear, and the grip
+tightened. “Bite on the bullet, old man, and don’t let them think
+you’re afraid,” The grip could draw no closer. Both men were breathing
+heavily.
+
+Dick threw his head from side to side and groaned.
+
+“Let me go,” he panted. “You’re cracking my ribs. We-we mustn’t let
+them think we’re afraid, must we,—all the powers of darkness and that
+lot?”
+
+“Lie down. It’s all over now.”
+
+“Yes,” said Dick, obediently. “But would you mind letting me hold your
+hand? I feel as if I wanted something to hold on to. One drops through
+the dark so.”
+
+Torpenhow thrust out a large and hairy paw from the long chair. Dick
+clutched it tightly, and in half an hour had fallen asleep. Torpenhow
+withdrew his hand, and, stooping over Dick, kissed him lightly on the
+forehead, as men do sometimes kiss a wounded comrade in the hour of
+death, to ease his departure.
+
+In the gray dawn Torpenhow heard Dick talking to himself. He was adrift
+on the shoreless tides of delirium, speaking very quickly—“It’s a
+pity,—a great pity; but it’s helped, and it must be eaten, Master
+George. Sufficient unto the day is the blindness thereof, and, further,
+putting aside all Melancolias and false humours, it is of obvious
+notoriety—such as mine was—that the queen can do no wrong. Torp doesn’t
+know that. I’ll tell him when we’re a little farther into the desert.
+
+What a bungle those boatmen are making of the steamer-ropes! They’ll
+have that four-inch hawser chafed through in a minute. I told you
+so—there she goes! White foam on green water, and the steamer slewing
+round. How good that looks! I’ll sketch it. No, I can’t. I’m afflicted
+with ophthalmia. That was one of the ten plagues of Egypt, and it
+extends up the Nile in the shape of cataract. Ha! that’s a joke, Torp.
+Laugh, you graven image, and stand clear of the hawser.... It’ll knock
+you into the water and make your dress all dirty, Maisie dear.”
+
+“Oh!” said Torpenhow. “This happened before. That night on the river.”
+
+“She’ll be sure to say it’s my fault if you get muddy, and you’re quite
+near enough to the breakwater. Maisie, that’s not fair. Ah! I knew
+you’d miss.
+
+Low and to the left, dear. But you’ve no conviction. Don’t be angry,
+darling. I’d cut my hand off if it would give you anything more than
+obstinacy. My right hand, if it would serve.”
+
+“Now we mustn’t listen. Here’s an island shouting across seas of
+misunderstanding with a vengeance. But it’s shouting truth, I fancy,”
+said Torpenhow.
+
+The babble continued. It all bore upon Maisie. Sometimes Dick lectured
+at length on his craft, then he cursed himself for his folly in being
+enslaved. He pleaded to Maisie for a kiss—only one kiss—before she went
+away, and called to her to come back from Vitry-sur-Marne, if she
+would; but through all his ravings he bade heaven and earth witness
+that the queen could do no wrong.
+
+Torpenhow listened attentively, and learned every detail of Dick’s life
+that had been hidden from him. For three days Dick raved through the
+past, and then a natural sleep. “What a strain he has been running
+under, poor chap!” said Torpenhow. “Dick, of all men, handing himself
+over like a dog! And I was lecturing him on arrogance! I ought to have
+known that it was no use to judge a man. But I did it. What a demon
+that girl must be! Dick’s given her his life,—confound him!—and she’s
+given him one kiss apparently.”
+
+“Torp,” said Dick, from the bed, “go out for a walk. You’ve been here
+too long. I’ll get up. Hi! This is annoying. I can’t dress myself. Oh,
+it’s too absurd!”
+
+Torpenhow helped him into his clothes and led him to the big chair in
+the studio. He sat quietly waiting under strained nerves for the
+darkness to lift. It did not lift that day, nor the next. Dick
+adventured on a voyage round the walls. He hit his shins against the
+stove, and this suggested to him that it would be better to crawl on
+all fours, one hand in front of him. Torpenhow found him on the floor.
+
+“I’m trying to get the geography of my new possessions,” said he.
+“D’you remember that nigger you gouged in the square? Pity you didn’t
+keep the odd eye. It would have been useful. Any letters for me? Give
+me all the ones in fat gray envelopes with a sort of crown thing
+outside. They’re of no importance.”
+
+Torpenhow gave him a letter with a black M. on the envelope flap. Dick
+put it into his pocket. There was nothing in it that Torpenhow might
+not have read, but it belonged to himself and to Maisie, who would
+never belong to him.
+
+“When she finds that I don’t write, she’ll stop writing. It’s better
+so. I couldn’t be any use to her now,” Dick argued, and the tempter
+suggested that he should make known his condition. Every nerve in him
+revolted. “I have fallen low enough already. I’m not going to beg for
+pity. Besides, it would be cruel to her.” He strove to put Maisie out
+of his thoughts; but the blind have many opportunities for thinking,
+and as the tides of his strength came back to him in the long
+employless days of dead darkness, Dick’s soul was troubled to the core.
+Another letter, and another, came from Maisie. Then there was silence,
+and Dick sat by the window, the pulse of summer in the air, and
+pictured her being won by another man, stronger than himself. His
+imagination, the keener for the dark background it worked against,
+spared him no single detail that might send him raging up and down the
+studio, to stumble over the stove that seemed to be in four places at
+once. Worst of all, tobacco would not taste in the darkness. The
+arrogance of the man had disappeared, and in its place were settled
+despair that Torpenhow knew, and blind passion that Dick confided to
+his pillow at night. The intervals between the paroxysms were filled
+with intolerable waiting and the weight of intolerable darkness.
+
+“Come out into the Park,” said Torpenhow. “You haven’t stirred out
+since the beginning of things.”
+
+“What’s the use? There’s no movement in the dark; and, besides,”—he
+paused irresolutely at the head of the stairs,—“something will run over
+me.”
+
+“Not if I’m with you. Proceed gingerly.”
+
+The roar of the streets filled Dick with nervous terror, and he clung
+to Torpenhow’s arm. “Fancy having to feel for a gutter with your foot!”
+he said petulantly, as he turned into the Park. “Let’s curse God and
+die.”
+
+“Sentries are forbidden to pay unauthorised compliments. By Jove, there
+are the Guards!”
+
+Dick’s figure straightened. “Let’s get near ’em. Let’s go in and look.
+Let’s get on the grass and run. I can smell the trees.”
+
+“Mind the low railing. That’s all right!” Torpenhow kicked out a tuft
+of grass with his heel. “Smell that,” he said. “Isn’t it good?” Dick
+sniffed luxuriously. “Now pick up your feet and run.” They approached
+as near to the regiment as was possible. The clank of bayonets being
+unfixed made Dick’s nostrils quiver.
+
+“Let’s get nearer. They’re in column, aren’t they?”
+
+“Yes. How did you know?”
+
+“Felt it. Oh, my men!—my beautiful men!” He edged forward as though he
+could see. “I could draw those chaps once. Who’ll draw ’em now?”
+
+“They’ll move off in a minute. Don’t jump when the band begins.”
+
+“Huh! I’m not a new charger. It’s the silences that hurt. Nearer,
+Torp!—nearer! Oh, my God, what wouldn’t I give to see ’em for a
+minute!—one half-minute!”
+
+He could hear the armed life almost within reach of him, could hear the
+slings tighten across the bandsman’s chest as he heaved the big drum
+from the ground.
+
+“Sticks crossed above his head,” whispered Torpenhow.
+
+“I know. _I_ know! Who should know if I don’t? H’sh!”
+
+The drum-sticks fell with a boom, and the men swung forward to the
+crash of the band. Dick felt the wind of the massed movement in his
+face, heard the maddening tramp of feet and the friction of the pouches
+on the belts. The big drum pounded out the tune. It was a music-hall
+refrain that made a perfect quickstep—
+
+He must be a man of decent height,
+    He must be a man of weight,
+He must come home on a Saturday night
+    In a thoroughly sober state;
+He must know how to love me,
+    And he must know how to kiss;
+And if he’s enough to keep us both
+    I can’t refuse him bliss.
+
+
+“What’s the matter?” said Torpenhow, as he saw Dick’s head fall when
+the last of the regiment had departed.
+
+“Nothing. I feel a little bit out of the running,—that’s all. Torp,
+take me back. Why did you bring me out?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+There were three friends that buried the fourth,
+    The mould in his mouth and the dust in his eyes
+And they went south and east, and north,—
+    The strong man fights, but the sick man dies.
+
+There were three friends that spoke of the dead,—
+    The strong man fights, but the sick man dies.—
+“And would he were with us now,” they said,
+    “The sun in our face and the wind in our eyes.”
+
+—_Ballad_.
+
+
+The Nilghai was angry with Torpenhow. Dick had been sent to bed,—blind
+men are ever under the orders of those who can see,—and since he had
+returned from the Park had fluently sworn at Torpenhow because he was
+alive, and all the world because it was alive and could see, while he,
+Dick, was dead in the death of the blind, who, at the best, are only
+burdens upon their associates. Torpenhow had said something about a
+Mrs. Gummidge, and Dick had retired in a black fury to handle and
+re-handle three unopened letters from Maisie.
+
+The Nilghai, fat, burly, and aggressive, was in Torpenhow’s rooms.
+
+Behind him sat the Keneu, the Great War Eagle, and between them lay a
+large map embellished with black-and-white-headed pins.
+
+“I was wrong about the Balkans,” said the Nilghai. “But I’m not wrong
+about this business. The whole of our work in the Southern Soudan must
+be done over again. The public doesn’t care, of course, but the
+government does, and they are making their arrangements quietly. You
+know that as well as I do.”
+
+“I remember how the people cursed us when our troops withdrew from
+Omdurman. It was bound to crop up sooner or later. But I can’t go,”
+said Torpenhow. He pointed through the open door; it was a hot night.
+“Can you blame me?”
+
+The Keneu purred above his pipe like a large and very happy cat—“Don’t
+blame you in the least. It’s uncommonly good of you, and all the rest
+of it, but every man—even you, Torp—must consider his work. I know it
+sounds brutal, but Dick’s out of the race,—down,—_gastados_, expended,
+finished, done for. He has a little money of his own. He won’t starve,
+and you can’t pull out of your slide for his sake. Think of your own
+reputation.”
+
+“Dick’s was five times bigger than mine and yours put together.”
+
+“That was because he signed his name to everything he did. It’s all
+ended now. You must hold yourself in readiness to move out. You can
+command your own prices, and you do better work than any three of us.”
+
+“Don’t tell me how tempting it is. I’ll stay here to look after Dick
+for a while. He’s as cheerful as a bear with a sore head, but I think
+he likes to have me near him.”
+
+The Nilghai said something uncomplimentary about soft-headed fools who
+throw away their careers for other fools. Torpenhow flushed angrily.
+The constant strain of attendance on Dick had worn his nerves thin.
+
+“There remains a third fate,” said the Keneu, thoughtfully. “Consider
+this, and be not larger fools than necessary. Dick is—or rather was—an
+able-bodied man of moderate attractions and a certain amount of
+audacity.”
+
+“Oho!” said the Nilghai, who remembered an affair at Cairo. “I begin to
+see,—Torp, I’m sorry.”
+
+Torpenhow nodded forgiveness: “You were more sorry when he cut you out,
+though.—Go on, Keneu.”
+
+“I’ve often thought, when I’ve seen men die out in the desert, that if
+the news could be sent through the world, and the means of transport
+were quick enough, there would be one woman at least at each man’s
+bedside.”
+
+“There would be some mighty quaint revelations. Let us be grateful
+things are as they are,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“Let us rather reverently consider whether Torp’s three-cornered
+ministrations are exactly what Dick needs just now.—What do you think
+yourself, Torp?”
+
+“I know they aren’t. But what can I do?”
+
+“Lay the matter before the board. We are all Dick’s friends here.
+You’ve been most in his life.”
+
+“But I picked it up when he was off his head.”
+
+“The greater chance of its being true. I thought we should arrive. Who
+is she?”
+
+Then Torpenhow told a tale in plain words, as a special correspondent
+who knows how to make a verbal _précis_ should tell it. The men
+listened without interruption.
+
+“Is it possible that a man can come back across the years to his
+calf-love?” said the Keneu. “Is it possible?”
+
+“I give the facts. He says nothing about it now, but he sits fumbling
+three letters from her when he thinks I’m not looking. What am I to
+do?”
+
+“Speak to him,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“Oh yes! Write to her,—I don’t know her full name, remember,—and ask
+her to accept him out of pity. I believe you once told Dick you were
+sorry for him, Nilghai. You remember what happened, eh? Go into the
+bedroom and suggest full confession and an appeal to this Maisie girl,
+whoever she is. I honestly believe he’d try to kill you; and the
+blindness has made him rather muscular.”
+
+“Torpenhow’s course is perfectly clear,” said the Keneu. “He will go to
+Vitry-sur-Marne, which is on the Bezieres-Landes Railway,—single track
+from Tourgas. The Prussians shelled it out in ’70 because there was a
+poplar on the top of a hill eighteen hundred yards from the church
+spire There’s a squadron of cavalry quartered there,—or ought to be.
+Where this studio Torp spoke about may be I cannot tell. That is Torp’s
+business. I have given him his route. He will dispassionately explain
+the situation to the girl, and she will come back to Dick,—the more
+especially because, to use Dick’s words, “there is nothing but her
+damned obstinacy to keep them apart.”’
+
+“And they have four hundred and twenty pounds a year between ’em. Dick
+never lost his head for figures, even in his delirium. You haven’t the
+shadow of an excuse for not going,” said the Nilghai.
+
+Torpenhow looked very uncomfortable. “But it’s absurd and impossible. I
+can’t drag her back by the hair.”
+
+“Our business—the business for which we draw our money—is to do absurd
+and impossible things,—generally with no reason whatever except to
+amuse the public. Here we have a reason. The rest doesn’t matter. I
+shall share these rooms with the Nilghai till Torpenhow returns. There
+will be a batch of unbridled “specials” coming to town in a little
+while, and these will serve as their headquarters. Another reason for
+sending Torpenhow away. Thus Providence helps those who help others,
+and’—here the Keneu dropped his measured speech—“we can’t have you tied
+by the leg to Dick when the trouble begins. It’s your only chance of
+getting away; and Dick will be grateful.”
+
+“He will,—worse luck! I can but go and try. I can’t conceive a woman in
+her senses refusing Dick.”
+
+“Talk that out with the girl. I have seen you wheedle an angry Mahdieh
+woman into giving you dates. This won’t be a tithe as difficult. You
+had better not be here to-morrow afternoon, because the Nilghai and I
+will be in possession. It is an order. Obey.”
+
+“Dick,” said Torpenhow, next morning, “can I do anything for you?”
+
+“No! Leave me alone. How often must I remind you that I’m blind?”
+
+“Nothing I could go for to fetch for to carry for to bring?”
+
+“No. Take those infernal creaking boots of yours away.”
+
+“Poor chap!” said Torpenhow to himself. “I must have been sitting on
+his nerves lately. He wants a lighter step.” Then, aloud, “Very well.
+Since you’re so independent, I’m going off for four or five days. Say
+good-bye at least. The housekeeper will look after you, and Keneu has
+my rooms.”
+
+Dick’s face fell. “You won’t be longer than a week at the outside? I
+know I’m touched in the temper, but I can’t get on without you.”
+
+“Can’t you? You’ll have to do without me in a little time, and you’ll
+be glad I’m gone.”
+
+Dick felt his way back to the big chair, and wondered what these things
+might mean. He did not wish to be tended by the housekeeper, and yet
+Torpenhow’s constant tenderness jarred on him. He did not exactly know
+what he wanted. The darkness would not lift, and Maisie’s unopened
+letters felt worn and old from much handling. He could never read them
+for himself as long as life endured; but Maisie might have sent him
+some fresh ones to play with. The Nilghai entered with a gift,—a piece
+of red modelling-wax. He fancied that Dick might find interest in using
+his hands. Dick poked and patted the stuff for a few minutes, and, “Is
+it like anything in the world?” he said drearily. “Take it away. I may
+get the touch of the blind in fifty years. Do you know where Torpenhow
+has gone?”
+
+The Nilghai knew nothing. “We’re staying in his rooms till he comes
+back. Can we do anything for you?”
+
+“I’d like to be left alone, please. Don’t think I’m ungrateful; but I’m
+best alone.”
+
+The Nilghai chuckled, and Dick resumed his drowsy brooding and sullen
+rebellion against fate. He had long since ceased to think about the
+work he had done in the old days, and the desire to do more work had
+departed from him. He was exceedingly sorry for himself, and the
+completeness of his tender grief soothed him. But his soul and his body
+cried for Maisie—Maisie who would understand. His mind pointed out that
+Maisie, having her own work to do, would not care. His experience had
+taught him that when money was exhausted women went away, and that when
+a man was knocked out of the race the others trampled on him. “Then at
+the least,” said Dick, in reply, “she could use me as I used Binat,—for
+some sort of a study. I wouldn’t ask more than to be near her again,
+even though I knew that another man was making love to her. Ugh! what a
+dog I am!”
+
+A voice on the staircase began to sing joyfully—
+
+“When we go—go—go away from here,
+    Our creditors will weep and they will wail,
+Our absence much regretting when they find that they’ve been getting
+    Out of England by next Tuesday’s Indian mail.”
+
+
+Following the trampling of feet, slamming of Torpenhow’s door, and the
+sound of voices in strenuous debate, some one squeaked, “And see, you
+good fellows, I have found a new water-bottle—firs’-class patent—eh,
+how you say? Open himself inside out.”
+
+Dick sprang to his feet. He knew the voice well. “That’s Cassavetti,
+come back from the Continent. Now I know why Torp went away. There’s a
+row somewhere, and—I’m out of it!”
+
+The Nilghai commanded silence in vain. “That’s for my sake,” Dick said
+bitterly. “The birds are getting ready to fly, and they wouldn’t tell
+me. I can hear Morten-Sutherland and Mackaye. Half the War
+Correspondents in London are there;—and I’m out of it.”
+
+He stumbled across the landing and plunged into Torpenhow’s room. He
+could feel that it was full of men. “Where’s the trouble?” said he. “In
+the Balkans at last? Why didn’t some one tell me?”
+
+“We thought you wouldn’t be interested,” said the Nilghai,
+shamefacedly.
+
+“It’s in the Soudan, as usual.”
+
+“You lucky dogs! Let me sit here while you talk. I shan’t be a skeleton
+at the feast.—Cassavetti, where are you? Your English is as bad as
+ever.”
+
+Dick was led into a chair. He heard the rustle of the maps, and the
+talk swept forward, carrying him with it. Everybody spoke at once,
+discussing press censorships, railway-routes, transport, water-supply,
+the capacities of generals,—these in language that would have horrified
+a trusting public,—ranging, asserting, denouncing, and laughing at the
+top of their voices. There was the glorious certainty of war in the
+Soudan at any moment. The Nilghai said so, and it was well to be in
+readiness. The Keneu had telegraphed to Cairo for horses; Cassavetti
+had stolen a perfectly inaccurate list of troops that would be ordered
+forward, and was reading it out amid profane interruptions, and the
+Keneu introduced to Dick some man unknown who would be employed as war
+artist by the Central Southern Syndicate. “It’s his first outing,” said
+the Keneu. “Give him some tips—about riding camels.”
+
+“Oh, those camels!” groaned Cassavetti. “I shall learn to ride him
+again, and now I am so much all soft! Listen, you good fellows. I know
+your military arrangement very well. There will go the Royal Argalshire
+Sutherlanders. So it was read to me upon best authority.”
+
+A roar of laughter interrupted him.
+
+“Sit down,” said the Nilghai. “The lists aren’t even made out in the
+War Office.”
+
+“Will there be any force at Suakin?” said a voice.
+
+Then the outcries redoubled, and grew mixed, thus: “How many Egyptian
+troops will they use?—God help the Fellaheen!—There’s a railway in
+Plumstead marshes doing duty as a fives-court.—We shall have the
+Suakin-Berber line built at last.—Canadian voyageurs are too careful.
+Give me a half-drunk Krooman in a whale-boat.—Who commands the Desert
+column?—No, they never blew up the big rock in the Ghineh bend. We
+shall have to be hauled up, as usual.—Somebody tell me if there’s an
+Indian contingent, or I’ll break everybody’s head.—Don’t tear the map
+in two.—It’s a war of occupation, I tell you, to connect with the
+African companies in the South.—There’s Guinea-worm in most of the
+wells on that route.” Then the Nilghai, despairing of peace, bellowed
+like a fog-horn and beat upon the table with both hands.
+
+“But what becomes of Torpenhow?” said Dick, in the silence that
+followed.
+
+“Torp’s in abeyance just now. He’s off love-making somewhere, I
+suppose,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“He said he was going to stay at home,” said the Keneu.
+
+“Is he?” said Dick, with an oath. “He won’t. I’m not much good now, but
+if you and the Nilghai hold him down I’ll engage to trample on him till
+he sees reason. He’ll stay behind, indeed! He’s the best of you all.
+There’ll be some tough work by Omdurman. We shall come there to stay,
+this time.
+
+But I forgot. I wish I were going with you.”
+
+“So do we all, Dickie,” said the Keneu.
+
+“And I most of all,” said the new artist of the Central Southern
+Syndicate.
+
+“Could you tell me——”
+
+“I’ll give you one piece of advice,” Dick answered, moving towards the
+door. “If you happen to be cut over the head in a scrimmage, don’t
+guard.
+
+Tell the man to go on cutting. You’ll find it cheapest in the end.
+Thanks for letting me look in.”
+
+“There’s grit in Dick,” said the Nilghai, an hour later, when the room
+was emptied of all save the Keneu.
+
+“It was the sacred call of the war-trumpet. Did you notice how he
+answered to it? Poor fellow! Let’s look at him,” said the Keneu.
+
+The excitement of the talk had died away. Dick was sitting by the
+studio table, with his head on his arms, when the men came in. He did
+not change his position.
+
+“It hurts,” he moaned. “God forgive me, but it hurts cruelly; and yet,
+y’know, the world has a knack of spinning round all by itself. Shall I
+see Torp before he goes?”
+
+“Oh, yes. You’ll see him,” said the Nilghai.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+The sun went down an hour ago,
+    I wonder if I face towards home;
+If I lost my way in the light of day
+    How shall I find it now night is come?
+
+—_Old Song_.
+
+
+“Maisie, come to bed.”
+
+“It’s so hot I can’t sleep. Don’t worry.”
+
+Maisie put her elbows on the window-sill and looked at the moonlight on
+the straight, poplar-flanked road. Summer had come upon Vitry-sur-Marne
+and parched it to the bone. The grass was dry-burnt in the meadows, the
+clay by the bank of the river was caked to brick, the roadside flowers
+were long since dead, and the roses in the garden hung withered on
+their stalks. The heat in the little low bedroom under the eaves was
+almost intolerable. The very moonlight on the wall of Kami’s studio
+across the road seemed to make the night hotter, and the shadow of the
+big bell-handle by the closed gate cast a bar of inky black that caught
+Maisie’s eye and annoyed her.
+
+“Horrid thing! It should be all white,” she murmured. “And the gate
+isn’t in the middle of the wall, either. I never noticed that before.”
+
+Maisie was hard to please at that hour. First, the heat of the past few
+weeks had worn her down; secondly, her work, and particularly the study
+of a female head intended to represent the Melancolia and not finished
+in time for the Salon, was unsatisfactory; thirdly, Kami had said as
+much two days before; fourthly,—but so completely fourthly that it was
+hardly worth thinking about,—Dick, her property, had not written to her
+for more than six weeks. She was angry with the heat, with Kami, and
+with her work, but she was exceedingly angry with Dick.
+
+She had written to him three times,—each time proposing a fresh
+treatment of her Melancolia. Dick had taken no notice of these
+communications. She had resolved to write no more. When she returned to
+England in the autumn—for her pride’s sake she could not return
+earlier—she would speak to him. She missed the Sunday afternoon
+conferences more than she cared to admit. All that Kami said was,
+“_Continuez, mademoiselle, continuez toujours_,” and he had been
+repeating the wearisome counsel through the hot summer, exactly like a
+cicada,—an old gray cicada in a black alpaca coat, white trousers, and
+a huge felt hat. But Dick had tramped masterfully up and down her
+little studio north of the cool green London park, and had said things
+ten times worse than _continuez_, before he snatched the brush out of
+her hand and showed her where the error lay. His last letter, Maisie
+remembered, contained some trivial advice about not sketching in the
+sun or drinking water at wayside farmhouses; and he had said that not
+once, but three times,—as if he did not know that Maisie could take
+care of herself.
+
+But what was he doing, that he could not trouble to write? A murmur of
+voices in the road made her lean from the window. A cavalryman of the
+little garrison in the town was talking to Kami’s cook. The moonlight
+glittered on the scabbard of his sabre, which he was holding in his
+hand lest it should clank inopportunely. The cook’s cap cast deep
+shadows on her face, which was close to the conscript’s. He slid his
+arm round her waist, and there followed the sound of a kiss.
+
+“Faugh!” said Maisie, stepping back.
+
+“What’s that?” said the red-haired girl, who was tossing uneasily
+outside her bed.
+
+“Only a conscript kissing the cook,” said Maisie.
+
+“They’ve gone away now.” She leaned out of the window again, and put a
+shawl over her nightgown to guard against chills. There was a very
+small night-breeze abroad, and a sun-baked rose below nodded its head
+as one who knew unutterable secrets. Was it possible that Dick should
+turn his thoughts from her work and his own and descend to the
+degradation of Suzanne and the conscript? He could not! The rose nodded
+its head and one leaf therewith. It looked like a naughty little devil
+scratching its ear.
+
+Dick could not, “because,” thought Maisie, “he is mine,—mine,—mine. He
+said he was. I’m sure I don’t care what he does. It will only spoil his
+work if he does; and it will spoil mine too.”
+
+The rose continued to nod in the futile way peculiar to flowers. There
+was no earthly reason why Dick should not disport himself as he chose,
+except that he was called by Providence, which was Maisie, to assist
+Maisie in her work. And her work was the preparation of pictures that
+went sometimes to English provincial exhibitions, as the notices in the
+scrap-book proved, and that were invariably rejected by the Salon when
+Kami was plagued into allowing her to send them up. Her work in the
+future, it seemed, would be the preparation of pictures on exactly
+similar lines which would be rejected in exactly the same way——The
+red-haired girl threshed distressfully across the sheets. “It’s too hot
+to sleep,” she moaned; and the interruption jarred.
+
+Exactly the same way. Then she would divide her years between the
+little studio in England and Kami’s big studio at Vitry-sur-Marne. No,
+she would go to another master, who should force her into the success
+that was her right, if patient toil and desperate endeavour gave one a
+right to anything. Dick had told her that he had worked ten years to
+understand his craft. She had worked ten years, and ten years were
+nothing. Dick had said that ten years were nothing,—but that was in
+regard to herself only. He had said—this very man who could not find
+time to write—that he would wait ten years for her, and that she was
+bound to come back to him sooner or later. He had said this in the
+absurd letter about sunstroke and diphtheria; and then he had stopped
+writing. He was wandering up and down moonlit streets, kissing cooks.
+She would like to lecture him now,—not in her nightgown, of course, but
+properly dressed, severely and from a height. Yet if he was kissing
+other girls he certainly would not care whether she lectured him or
+not. He would laugh at her. Very good.
+
+She would go back to her studio and prepare pictures that went, etc.,
+etc.
+
+The mill-wheel of thought swung round slowly, that no section of it
+might be slurred over, and the red-haired girl tossed and turned behind
+her.
+
+Maisie put her chin in her hands and decided that there could be no
+doubt whatever of the villainy of Dick. To justify herself, she began,
+unwomanly, to weigh the evidence. There was a boy, and he had said he
+loved her. And he kissed her,—kissed her on the cheek,—by a yellow
+sea-poppy that nodded its head exactly like the maddening dry rose in
+the garden. Then there was an interval, and men had told her that they
+loved her—just when she was busiest with her work. Then the boy came
+back, and at their very second meeting had told her that he loved her.
+Then he had—— But there was no end to the things he had done. He had
+given her his time and his powers. He had spoken to her of Art,
+housekeeping, technique, teacups, the abuse of pickles as a
+stimulant,—that was rude,—sable hair-brushes,—he had given her the best
+in her stock,—she used them daily; he had given her advice that she
+profited by, and now and again—a look. Such a look! The look of a
+beaten hound waiting for the word to crawl to his mistress’s feet. In
+return she had given him nothing whatever, except—here she brushed her
+mouth against the open-work sleeve of her nightgown—the privilege of
+kissing her once. And on the mouth, too. Disgraceful! Was that not
+enough, and more than enough? and if it was not, had he not cancelled
+the debt by not writing and—probably kissing other girls? “Maisie,
+you’ll catch a chill. Do go and lie down,” said the wearied voice of
+her companion. “I can’t sleep a wink with you at the window.”
+
+Maisie shrugged her shoulders and did not answer. She was reflecting on
+the meannesses of Dick, and on other meannesses with which he had
+nothing to do. The moonlight would not let her sleep. It lay on the
+skylight of the studio across the road in cold silver; she stared at it
+intently and her thoughts began to slide one into the other. The shadow
+of the big bell-handle in the wall grew short, lengthened again, and
+faded out as the moon went down behind the pasture and a hare came
+limping home across the road. Then the dawn-wind washed through the
+upland grasses, and brought coolness with it, and the cattle lowed by
+the drought-shrunk river. Maisie’s head fell forward on the
+window-sill, and the tangle of black hair covered her arms.
+
+“Maisie, wake up. You’ll catch a chill.”
+
+“Yes, dear; yes, dear.” She staggered to her bed like a wearied child,
+and as she buried her face in the pillows she muttered, “I think—I
+think....
+
+But he ought to have written.”
+
+Day brought the routine of the studio, the smell of paint and
+turpentine, and the monotone wisdom of Kami, who was a leaden artist,
+but a golden teacher if the pupil were only in sympathy with him.
+Maisie was not in sympathy that day, and she waited impatiently for the
+end of the work. She knew when it was coming; for Kami would gather his
+black alpaca coat into a bunch behind him, and, with faded blue eyes
+that saw neither pupils nor canvas, look back into the past to recall
+the history of one Binat. “You have all done not so badly,” he would
+say. “But you shall remember that it is not enough to have the method,
+and the art, and the power, nor even that which is touch, but you shall
+have also the conviction that nails the work to the wall. Of the so
+many I taught,”—here the students would begin to unfix drawing-pins or
+get their tubes together,—“the very so many that I have taught, the
+best was Binat. All that comes of the study and the work and the
+knowledge was to him even when he came. After he left me he should have
+done all that could be done with the colour, the form, and the
+knowledge. Only, he had not the conviction. So to-day I hear no more of
+Binat,—the best of my pupils,—and that is long ago. So to-day, too, you
+will be glad to hear no more of me. _Continuez, mesdemoiselles_, and,
+above all, with conviction.”
+
+He went into the garden to smoke and mourn over the lost Binat as the
+pupils dispersed to their several cottages or loitered in the studio to
+make plans for the cool of the afternoon.
+
+Maisie looked at her very unhappy Melancolia, restrained a desire to
+grimace before it, and was hurrying across the road to write a letter
+to Dick, when she was aware of a large man on a white troop-horse. How
+Torpenhow had managed in the course of twenty hours to find his way to
+the hearts of the cavalry officers in quarters at Vitry-sur-Marne, to
+discuss with them the certainty of a glorious revenge for France, to
+reduce the colonel to tears of pure affability, and to borrow the best
+horse in the squadron for the journey to Kami’s studio, is a mystery
+that only special correspondents can unravel.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said he. “It seems an absurd question to ask, but
+the fact is that I don’t know her by any other name: Is there any young
+lady here that is called Maisie?”
+
+“I am Maisie,” was the answer from the depths of a great sun-hat.
+
+“I ought to introduce myself,” he said, as the horse capered in the
+blinding white dust. “My name is Torpenhow. Dick Heldar is my best
+friend, and—and—the fact is that he has gone blind.”
+
+“Blind!” said Maisie, stupidly. “He can’t be blind.”
+
+“He has been stone-blind for nearly two months.”
+
+Maisie lifted up her face, and it was pearly white. “No! No! Not blind!
+I won’t have him blind!”
+
+“Would you care to see for yourself?” said Torpenhow.
+
+“Now,—at once?”
+
+“Oh, no! The Paris train doesn’t go through this place till to-night.
+There will be ample time.”
+
+“Did Mr. Heldar send you to me?”
+
+“Certainly not. Dick wouldn’t do that sort of thing. He’s sitting in
+his studio, turning over some letters that he can’t read because he’s
+blind.”
+
+There was a sound of choking from the sun-hat. Maisie bowed her head
+and went into the cottage, where the red-haired girl was on a sofa,
+complaining of a headache.
+
+“Dick’s blind!” said Maisie, taking her breath quickly as she steadied
+herself against a chair-back. “My Dick’s blind!”
+
+“What?” The girl was on the sofa no longer.
+
+“A man has come from England to tell me. He hasn’t written to me for
+six weeks.”
+
+“Are you going to him?”
+
+“I must think.”
+
+“Think! _I_ should go back to London and see him and I should kiss his
+eyes and kiss them and kiss them until they got well again! If you
+don’t go I shall. Oh, what am I talking about? You wicked little idiot!
+Go to him at once. Go!”
+
+Torpenhow’s neck was blistering, but he preserved a smile of infinite
+patience as Maisie’s appeared bareheaded in the sunshine.
+
+“I am coming,” said she, her eyes on the ground.
+
+“You will be at Vitry Station, then, at seven this evening.” This was
+an order delivered by one who was used to being obeyed. Maisie said
+nothing, but she felt grateful that there was no chance of disputing
+with this big man who took everything for granted and managed a
+squealing horse with one hand. She returned to the red-haired girl, who
+was weeping bitterly, and between tears, kisses,—very few of
+those,—menthol, packing, and an interview with Kami, the sultry
+afternoon wore away.
+
+Thought might come afterwards. Her present duty was to go to Dick,—Dick
+who owned the wondrous friend and sat in the dark playing with her
+unopened letters.
+
+“But what will you do,” she said to her companion.
+
+“I? Oh, I shall stay here and—finish your Melancolia,” she said,
+smiling pitifully. “Write to me afterwards.”
+
+That night there ran a legend through Vitry-sur-Marne of a mad
+Englishman, doubtless suffering from sunstroke, who had drunk all the
+officers of the garrison under the table, had borrowed a horse from the
+lines, and had then and there eloped, after the English custom, with
+one of those more mad English girls who drew pictures down there under
+the care of that good Monsieur Kami.
+
+“They are very droll,” said Suzanne to the conscript in the moonlight
+by the studio wall. “She walked always with those big eyes that saw
+nothing, and yet she kisses me on both cheeks as though she were my
+sister, and gives me—see—ten francs!”
+
+The conscript levied a contribution on both gifts; for he prided
+himself on being a good soldier.
+
+Torpenhow spoke very little to Maisie during the journey to Calais; but
+he was careful to attend to all her wants, to get her a compartment
+entirely to herself, and to leave her alone. He was amazed of the ease
+with which the matter had been accomplished.
+
+“The safest thing would be to let her think things out. By Dick’s
+showing,—when he was off his head,—she must have ordered him about very
+thoroughly. Wonder how she likes being under orders.”
+
+Maisie never told. She sat in the empty compartment often with her eyes
+shut, that she might realise the sensation of blindness. It was an
+order that she should return to London swiftly, and she found herself
+at last almost beginning to enjoy the situation. This was better than
+looking after luggage and a red-haired friend who never took any
+interest in her surroundings. But there appeared to be a feeling in the
+air that she, Maisie,—of all people,—was in disgrace. Therefore she
+justified her conduct to herself with great success, till Torpenhow
+came up to her on the steamer and without preface began to tell the
+story of Dick’s blindness, suppressing a few details, but dwelling at
+length on the miseries of delirium. He stopped before he reached the
+end, as though he had lost interest in the subject, and went forward to
+smoke. Maisie was furious with him and with herself.
+
+She was hurried on from Dover to London almost before she could ask for
+breakfast, and—she was past any feeling of indignation now—was bidden
+curtly to wait in a hall at the foot of some lead-covered stairs while
+Torpenhow went up to make inquiries. Again the knowledge that she was
+being treated like a naughty little girl made her pale cheeks flame. It
+was all Dick’s fault for being so stupid as to go blind.
+
+Torpenhow led her up to a shut door, which he opened very softly. Dick
+was sitting by the window, with his chin on his chest. There were three
+envelopes in his hand, and he turned them over and over. The big man
+who gave orders was no longer by her side, and the studio door snapped
+behind her.
+
+Dick thrust the letters into his pocket as he heard the sound. “Hullo,
+Torp! Is that you? I’ve been so lonely.”
+
+His voice had taken the peculiar flatness of the blind. Maisie pressed
+herself up into a corner of the room. Her heart was beating furiously,
+and she put one hand on her breast to keep it quiet. Dick was staring
+directly at her, and she realised for the first time that he was blind.
+Shutting her eyes in a railway-carriage to open them when she pleased
+was child’s play. This man was blind though his eyes were wide open.
+
+“Torp, is that you? They said you were coming.” Dick looked puzzled and
+a little irritated at the silence.
+
+“No; it’s only me,” was the answer, in a strained little whisper.
+Maisie could hardly move her lips.
+
+“H’m!” said Dick, composedly, without moving. “This is a new
+phenomenon. Darkness I’m getting used to; but I object to hearing
+voices.”
+
+Was he mad, then, as well as blind, that he talked to himself? Maisie’s
+heart beat more wildly, and she breathed in gasps. Dick rose and began
+to feel his way across the room, touching each table and chair as he
+passed. Once he caught his foot on a rug, and swore, dropping on his
+knees to feel what the obstruction might be. Maisie remembered him
+walking in the Park as though all the earth belonged to him, tramping
+up and down her studio two months ago, and flying up the gangway of the
+Channel steamer. The beating of her heart was making her sick, and Dick
+was coming nearer, guided by the sound of her breathing. She put out a
+hand mechanically to ward him off or to draw him to herself, she did
+not know which. It touched his chest, and he stepped back as though he
+had been shot.
+
+“It’s Maisie!” said he, with a dry sob. “What are you doing here?”
+
+“I came—I came—to see you, please.”
+
+Dick’s lips closed firmly.
+
+“Won’t you sit down, then? You see, I’ve had some bother with my eyes,
+and——”
+
+“I know. I know. Why didn’t you tell me?”
+
+“I couldn’t write.”
+
+“You might have told Mr. Torpenhow.”
+
+“What has he to do with my affairs?”
+
+“He—he brought me from Vitry-sur-Marne. He thought I ought to see you.”
+
+“Why, what has happened? Can I do anything for you? No, I can’t. I
+forgot.”
+
+“Oh, Dick, I’m so sorry! I’ve come to tell you, and—— Let me take you
+back to your chair.”
+
+“Don’t! I’m not a child. You only do that out of pity. I never meant to
+tell you anything about it. I’m no good now. I’m down and done for. Let
+me alone!”
+
+He groped back to his chair, his chest labouring as he sat down.
+
+Maisie watched him, and the fear went out of her heart, to be followed
+by a very bitter shame. He had spoken a truth that had been hidden from
+the girl through every step of the impetuous flight to London; for he
+was, indeed, down and done for—masterful no longer but rather a little
+abject; neither an artist stronger than she, nor a man to be looked up
+to—only some blind one that sat in a chair and seemed on the point of
+crying. She was immensely and unfeignedly sorry for him—more sorry than
+she had ever been for any one in her life, but not sorry enough to deny
+his words.
+
+So she stood still and felt ashamed and a little hurt, because she had
+honestly intended that her journey should end triumphantly; and now she
+was only filled with pity most startlingly distinct from love.
+
+“Well?” said Dick, his face steadily turned away. “I never meant to
+worry you any more. What’s the matter?”
+
+He was conscious that Maisie was catching her breath, but was as
+unprepared as herself for the torrent of emotion that followed. She had
+dropped into a chair and was sobbing with her face hidden in her hands.
+
+“I can’t—I can’t!” she cried desperately. “Indeed, I can’t. It isn’t my
+fault.
+
+I’m so sorry. Oh, Dickie, I’m so sorry.”
+
+Dick’s shoulders straightened again, for the words lashed like a whip.
+
+Still the sobbing continued. It is not good to realise that you have
+failed in the hour of trial or flinched before the mere possibility of
+making sacrifices.
+
+“I do despise myself—indeed I do. But I can’t. Oh, Dickie, you wouldn’t
+ask me—would you?” wailed Maisie.
+
+She looked up for a minute, and by chance it happened that Dick’s eyes
+fell on hers. The unshaven face was very white and set, and the lips
+were trying to force themselves into a smile. But it was the worn-out
+eyes that Maisie feared. Her Dick had gone blind and left in his place
+some one that she could hardly recognise till he spoke.
+
+“Who is asking you to do anything, Maisie? I told you how it would be.
+
+What’s the use of worrying? For pity’s sake don’t cry like that; it
+isn’t worth it.”
+
+“You don’t know how I hate myself. Oh, Dick, help me—help me!” The
+passion of tears had grown beyond her control and was beginning to
+alarm the man. He stumbled forward and put his arm round her, and her
+head fell on his shoulder.
+
+“Hush, dear, hush! Don’t cry. You’re quite right, and you’ve nothing to
+reproach yourself with—you never had. You’re only a little upset by the
+journey, and I don’t suppose you’ve had any breakfast. What a brute
+Torp was to bring you over.”
+
+“I wanted to come. I did indeed,” she protested.
+
+“Very well. And now you’ve come and seen, and I’m—immensely grateful.
+
+When you’re better you shall go away and get something to eat. What
+sort of a passage did you have coming over?”
+
+Maisie was crying more subduedly, for the first time in her life glad
+that she had something to lean against. Dick patted her on the shoulder
+tenderly but clumsily, for he was not quite sure where her shoulder
+might be.
+
+She drew herself out of his arms at last and waited, trembling and most
+unhappy. He had felt his way to the window to put the width of the room
+between them, and to quiet a little the tumult in his heart.
+
+“Are you better now?” he said.
+
+“Yes, but—don’t you hate me?”
+
+“I hate you? My God! I?”
+
+“Isn’t—isn’t there anything I could do for you, then? I’ll stay here in
+England to do it, if you like. Perhaps I could come and see you
+sometimes.”
+
+“I think not, dear. It would be kindest not to see me any more, please.
+I don’t want to seem rude, but—don’t you think—perhaps you had almost
+better go now.”
+
+He was conscious that he could not bear himself as a man if the strain
+continued much longer.
+
+“I don’t deserve anything else. I’ll go, Dick. Oh, I’m so miserable.”
+
+“Nonsense. You’ve nothing to worry about; I’d tell you if you had. Wait
+a moment, dear. I’ve got something to give you first. I meant it for
+you ever since this little trouble began. It’s my Melancolia; she was a
+beauty when I last saw her. You can keep her for me, and if ever you’re
+poor you can sell her. She’s worth a few hundreds at any state of the
+market.” He groped among his canvases. “She’s framed in black. Is this
+a black frame that I have my hand on? There she is. What do you think
+of her?”
+
+He turned a scarred formless muddle of paint towards Maisie, and the
+eyes strained as though they would catch her wonder and surprise. One
+thing and one thing only could she do for him.
+
+“Well?”
+
+The voice was fuller and more rounded, because the man knew he was
+speaking of his best work. Maisie looked at the blur, and a lunatic
+desire to laugh caught her by the throat. But for Dick’s sake—whatever
+this mad blankness might mean—she must make no sign. Her voice choked
+with hard-held tears as she answered, still gazing at the wreck—
+
+“Oh, Dick, it _is_ good!”
+
+He heard the little hysterical gulp and took it for tribute. “Won’t you
+have it, then? I’ll send it over to your house if you will.”
+
+“I? Oh yes—thank you. Ha! ha!” If she did not fly at once the laughter
+that was worse than tears would kill her. She turned and ran, choking
+and blinded, down the staircases that were empty of life to take refuge
+in a cab and go to her house across the Parks. There she sat down in
+the dismantled drawing-room and thought of Dick in his blindness,
+useless till the end of life, and of herself in her own eyes. Behind
+the sorrow, the shame, and the humiliation, lay fear of the cold wrath
+of the red-haired girl when Maisie should return. Maisie had never
+feared her companion before. Not until she found herself saying, “Well,
+he never asked me,” did she realise her scorn of herself.
+
+And that is the end of Maisie.
+
+
+For Dick was reserved more searching torment. He could not realise at
+first that Maisie, whom he had ordered to go had left him without a
+word of farewell. He was savagely angry against Torpenhow, who had
+brought upon him this humiliation and troubled his miserable peace.
+Then his dark hour came and he was alone with himself and his desires
+to get what help he could from the darkness. The queen could do no
+wrong, but in following the right, so far as it served her work, she
+had wounded her one subject more than his own brain would let him know.
+
+“It’s all I had and I’ve lost it,” he said, as soon as the misery
+permitted clear thinking. “And Torp will think that he has been so
+infernally clever that I shan’t have the heart to tell him. I must
+think this out quietly.”
+
+“Hullo!” said Torpenhow, entering the studio after Dick had enjoyed two
+hours of thought. “I’m back. Are you feeling any better?”
+
+“Torp, I don’t know what to say. Come here.” Dick coughed huskily,
+wondering, indeed, what he should say, and how to say it temperately.
+
+“What’s the need for saying anything? Get up and tramp.” Torpenhow was
+perfectly satisfied.
+
+They walked up and down as of custom, Torpenhow’s hand on Dick’s
+shoulder, and Dick buried in his own thoughts.
+
+“How in the world did you find it all out?” said Dick, at last.
+
+“You shouldn’t go off your head if you want to keep secrets, Dickie. It
+was absolutely impertinent on my part; but if you’d seen me rocketing
+about on a half-trained French troop-horse under a blazing sun you’d
+have laughed. There will be a charivari in my rooms to-night. Seven
+other devils——”
+
+“I know—the row in the Southern Soudan. I surprised their councils the
+other day, and it made me unhappy. Have you fixed your flint to go? Who
+d’you work for?”
+
+“Haven’t signed any contracts yet. I wanted to see how your business
+would turn out.”
+
+“Would you have stayed with me, then, if—things had gone wrong?” He put
+his question cautiously.
+
+“Don’t ask me too much. I’m only a man.”
+
+“You’ve tried to be an angel very successfully.”
+
+“Oh ye—es!... Well, do you attend the function to-night? We shall be
+half screwed before the morning. All the men believe the war’s a
+certainty.”
+
+“I don’t think I will, old man, if it’s all the same to you. I’ll stay
+quiet here.”
+
+“And meditate? I don’t blame you. You observe a good time if ever a man
+did.”
+
+That night there was a tumult on the stairs. The correspondents poured
+in from theatre, dinner, and music-hall to Torpenhow’s room that they
+might discuss their plan of campaign in the event of military
+operations becoming a certainty. Torpenhow, the Keneu, and the Nilghai
+had bidden all the men they had worked with to the orgy; and Mr.
+Beeton, the housekeeper, declared that never before in his checkered
+experience had he seen quite such a fancy lot of gentlemen. They waked
+the chambers with shoutings and song; and the elder men were quite as
+bad as the younger. For the chances of war were in front of them, and
+all knew what those meant.
+
+Sitting in his own room a little perplexed by the noise across the
+landing, Dick suddenly began to laugh to himself.
+
+“When one comes to think of it the situation is intensely comic.
+Maisie’s quite right—poor little thing. I didn’t know she could cry
+like that before; but now I know what Torp thinks, I’m sure he’d be
+quite fool enough to stay at home and try to console me—if he knew.
+Besides, it isn’t nice to own that you’ve been thrown over like a
+broken chair. I must carry this business through alone—as usual. If
+there isn’t a war, and Torp finds out, I shall look foolish, that’s
+all. If there is a way I mustn’t interfere with another man’s chances.
+Business is business, and I want to be alone—I want to be alone. What a
+row they’re making!”
+
+Somebody hammered at the studio door.
+
+“Come out and frolic, Dickie,” said the Nilghai.
+
+“I should like to, but I can’t. I’m not feeling frolicsome.”
+
+“Then, I’ll tell the boys and they’ll drag you like a badger.”
+
+“Please not, old man. On my word, I’d sooner be left alone just now.”
+
+“Very good. Can we send anything in to you? Fizz, for instance.
+
+Cassavetti is beginning to sing songs of the Sunny South already.”
+
+For one minute Dick considered the proposition seriously.
+
+“No, thanks, I’ve a headache already.”
+
+“Virtuous child. That’s the effect of emotion on the young. All my
+congratulations, Dick. I also was concerned in the conspiracy for your
+welfare.”
+
+“Go to the devil—oh, send Binkie in here.”
+
+The little dog entered on elastic feet, riotous from having been made
+much of all the evening. He had helped to sing the choruses; but
+scarcely inside the studio he realised that this was no place for
+tail-wagging, and settled himself on Dick’s lap till it was bedtime.
+Then he went to bed with Dick, who counted every hour as it struck, and
+rose in the morning with a painfully clear head to receive Torpenhow’s
+more formal congratulations and a particular account of the last
+night’s revels.
+
+“You aren’t looking very happy for a newly accepted man,” said
+Torpenhow.
+
+“Never mind that—it’s my own affair, and I’m all right. Do you really
+go?”
+
+“Yes. With the old Central Southern as usual. They wired, and I
+accepted on better terms than before.”
+
+“When do you start?”
+
+“The day after to-morrow—for Brindisi.”
+
+“Thank God.” Dick spoke from the bottom of his heart.
+
+“Well, that’s not a pretty way of saying you’re glad to get rid of me.
+But men in your condition are allowed to be selfish.”
+
+“I didn’t mean that. Will you get a hundred pounds cashed for me before
+you leave?”
+
+“That’s a slender amount for housekeeping, isn’t it?”
+
+“Oh, it’s only for—marriage expenses.”
+
+Torpenhow brought him the money, counted it out in fives and tens, and
+carefully put it away in the writing table.
+
+“Now I suppose I shall have to listen to his ravings about his girl
+until I go. Heaven send us patience with a man in love!” he said to
+himself.
+
+But never a word did Dick say of Maisie or marriage. He hung in the
+doorway of Torpenhow’s room when the latter was packing and asked
+innumerable questions about the coming campaign, till Torpenhow began
+to feel annoyed.
+
+“You’re a secretive animal, Dickie, and you consume your own smoke,
+don’t you?” he said on the last evening.
+
+“I—I suppose so. By the way, how long do you think this war will last?”
+
+“Days, weeks, or months. One can never tell. It may go on for years.”
+
+“I wish I were going.”
+
+“Good Heavens! You’re the most unaccountable creature! Hasn’t it
+occurred to you that you’re going to be married—thanks to me?”
+
+“Of course, yes. I’m going to be married—so I am. Going to be married.
+
+I’m awfully grateful to you. Haven’t I told you that?”
+
+“You might be going to be hanged by the look of you,” said Torpenhow.
+
+And the next day Torpenhow bade him good-bye and left him to the
+loneliness he had so much desired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him,
+    Yet at the last, ere a sword-thrust could save,
+Yet at the last, with his masters around him,
+    He of the Faith spoke as master to slave;
+Yet at the last, tho’ the Kafirs had maimed him,
+    Broken by bondage and wrecked by the reiver,—
+Yet at the last, tho’ the darkness had claimed him,
+    He called upon Allah and died a believer.
+
+—_Kizzilbashi_.
+
+
+“Beg your pardon, Mr. Heldar, but—but isn’t nothin’ going to happen?”
+said Mr. Beeton.
+
+“No!” Dick had just waked to another morning of blank despair and his
+temper was of the shortest.
+
+“’Tain’t my regular business, o’ course, sir; and what I say is, “Mind
+your own business and let other people mind theirs;” but just before
+Mr. Torpenhow went away he give me to understand, like, that you might
+be moving into a house of your own, so to speak—a sort of house with
+rooms upstairs and downstairs where you’d be better attended to, though
+I try to act just by all our tenants. Don’t I?”
+
+“Ah! That must have been a mad-house. I shan’t trouble you to take me
+there yet. Get me my breakfast, please, and leave me alone.”
+
+“I hope I haven’t done anything wrong, sir, but you know I hope that as
+far as a man can I tries to do the proper thing by all the gentlemen in
+chambers—and more particular those whose lot is hard—such as you, for
+instance, Mr. Heldar. You likes soft-roe bloater, don’t you? Soft-roe
+bloaters is scarcer than hard-roe, but what I says is, “Never mind a
+little extra trouble so long as you give satisfaction to the tenants.”’
+
+Mr. Beeton withdrew and left Dick to himself. Torpenhow had been long
+away; there was no more rioting in the chambers, and Dick had settled
+down to his new life, which he was weak enough to consider nothing
+better than death.
+
+It is hard to live alone in the dark, confusing the day and night;
+dropping to sleep through sheer weariness at mid-day, and rising
+restless in the chill of the dawn. At first Dick, on his awakenings,
+would grope along the corridors of the chambers till he heard some one
+snore. Then he would know that the day had not yet come, and return
+wearily to his bedroom.
+
+Later he learned not to stir till there was a noise and movement in the
+house and Mr. Beeton advised him to get up. Once dressed—and dressing,
+now that Torpenhow was away, was a lengthy business, because collars,
+ties, and the like hid themselves in far corners of the room, and
+search meant head-beating against chairs and trunks—once dressed, there
+was nothing whatever to do except to sit still and brood till the three
+daily meals came. Centuries separated breakfast from lunch and lunch
+from dinner, and though a man prayed for hundreds of years that his
+mind might be taken from him, God would never hear. Rather the mind was
+quickened and the revolving thoughts ground against each other as
+millstones grind when there is no corn between; and yet the brain would
+not wear out and give him rest. It continued to think, at length, with
+imagery and all manner of reminiscences. It recalled Maisie and past
+success, reckless travels by land and sea, the glory of doing work and
+feeling that it was good, and suggested all that might have happened
+had the eyes only been faithful to their duty. When thinking ceased
+through sheer weariness, there poured into Dick’s soul tide on tide of
+overwhelming, purposeless fear—dread of starvation always, terror lest
+the unseen ceiling should crush down upon him, fear of fire in the
+chambers and a louse’s death in red flame, and agonies of fiercer
+horror that had nothing to do with any fear of death. Then Dick bowed
+his head, and clutching the arms of his chair fought with his sweating
+self till the tinkle of plates told him that something to eat was being
+set before him.
+
+Mr. Beeton would bring the meal when he had time to spare, and Dick
+learned to hang upon his speech, which dealt with badly fitted
+gas-plugs, waste-pipes out of repair, little tricks for driving
+picture-nails into walls, and the sins of the charwoman or the
+housemaids. In the lack of better things the small gossip of a
+servant’’ hall becomes immensely interesting, and the screwing of a
+washer on a tap an event to be talked over for days.
+
+Once or twice a week, too, Mr. Beeton would take Dick out with him when
+he went marketing in the morning to haggle with tradesmen over fish,
+lamp-wicks, mustard, tapioca, and so forth, while Dick rested his
+weight first on one foot and then on the other and played aimlessly
+with the tins and string-ball on the counter. Then they would perhaps
+meet one of Mr. Beeton’s friends, and Dick, standing aside a little,
+would hold his peace till Mr. Beeton was willing to go on again.
+
+The life did not increase his self-respect. He abandoned shaving as a
+dangerous exercise, and being shaved in a barber’s shop meant exposure
+of his infirmity. He could not see that his clothes were properly
+brushed, and since he had never taken any care of his personal
+appearance he became every known variety of sloven. A blind man cannot
+deal with cleanliness till he has been some months used to the
+darkness. If he demand attendance and grow angry at the want of it, he
+must assert himself and stand upright. Then the meanest menial can see
+that he is blind and, therefore, of no consequence. A wise man will
+keep his eyes on the floor and sit still. For amusement he may pick
+coal lump by lump out of the scuttle with the tongs and pile it in a
+little heap in the fender, keeping count of the lumps, which must all
+be put back again, one by one and very carefully. He may set himself
+sums if he cares to work them out; he may talk to himself or to the cat
+if she chooses to visit him; and if his trade has been that of an
+artist, he may sketch in the air with his forefinger; but that is too
+much like drawing a pig with the eyes shut. He may go to his
+bookshelves and count his books, ranging them in order of their size;
+or to his wardrobe and count his shirts, laying them in piles of two or
+three on the bed, as they suffer from frayed cuffs or lost buttons.
+
+Even this entertainment wearies after a time; and all the times are
+very, very long.
+
+Dick was allowed to sort a tool-chest where Mr. Beeton kept hammers,
+taps and nuts, lengths of gas-pipes, oil-bottles, and string.
+
+“If I don’t have everything just where I know where to look for it,
+why, then, I can’t find anything when I do want it. You’ve no idea,
+sir, the amount of little things that these chambers uses up,” said Mr.
+Beeton. Fumbling at the handle of the door as he went out: “It’s hard
+on you, sir, I _do_ think it’s hard on you. Ain’t you going to do
+anything, sir?”
+
+“I’ll pay my rent and messing. Isn’t that enough?”
+
+“I wasn’t doubting for a moment that you couldn’t pay your way, sir;
+but I ’ave often said to my wife, ‘It’s ’ard on ’im because it isn’t as
+if he was an old man, nor yet a middle-aged one, but quite a young
+gentleman. _That’s_ where it comes so ’ard.’”
+
+“I suppose so,” said Dick, absently. This particular nerve through long
+battering had ceased to feel—much.
+
+“I was thinking,” continued Mr. Beeton, still making as if to go, “that
+you might like to hear my boy Alf read you the papers sometimes of an
+evening. He do read beautiful, seeing he’s only nine.”
+
+“I should be very grateful,” said Dick. “Only let me make it worth his
+while.”
+
+“We wasn’t thinking of _that_, sir, but of course it’s in your own
+’ands; but only to ’ear Alf sing ‘A Boy’s best Friend is ’is Mother!’
+Ah!”
+
+“I’ll hear him sing that too. Let him come this evening with the
+newspapers.”
+
+Alf was not a nice child, being puffed up with many school-board
+certificates for good conduct, and inordinately proud of his singing.
+Mr. Beeton remained, beaming, while the child wailed his way through a
+song of some eight eight-line verses in the usual whine of a young
+Cockney, and, after compliments, left him to read Dick the foreign
+telegrams. Ten minutes later Alf returned to his parents rather pale
+and scared.
+
+“’E said ’e couldn’t stand it no more,” he explained.
+
+“He never said you read badly, Alf?” Mrs. Beeton spoke.
+
+“No. ’E said I read beautiful. Said ’e never ’eard any one read like
+that, but ’e said ’e couldn’t abide the stuff in the papers.”
+
+“P’raps he’s lost some money in the Stocks. Were you readin’ him about
+Stocks, Alf?”
+
+“No; it was all about fightin’ out there where the soldiers is gone—a
+great long piece with all the lines close together and very hard words
+in it. ’E give me ’arf a crown because I read so well. And ’e says the
+next time there’s anything ’e wants read ’e’ll send for me.”
+
+“That’s good hearing, but I do think for all the half-crown—put it into
+the kicking-donkey money-box, Alf, and let me see you do it—he might
+have kept you longer. Why, he couldn’t have begun to understand how
+beautiful you read.”
+
+“He’s best left to hisself—gentlemen always are when they’re
+downhearted,” said Mr. Beeton.
+
+Alf’s rigorously limited powers of comprehending Torpenhow’s special
+correspondence had waked the devil of unrest in Dick. He could hear,
+through the boy’s nasal chant, the camels grunting in the squares
+behind the soldiers outside Suakin; could hear the men swearing and
+chaffing across the cooking pots, and could smell the acrid wood-smoke
+as it drifted over camp before the wind of the desert.
+
+That night he prayed to God that his mind might be taken from him,
+offering for proof that he was worthy of this favour the fact that he
+had not shot himself long ago. That prayer was not answered, and indeed
+Dick knew in his heart of hearts that only a lingering sense of humour
+and no special virtue had kept him alive. Suicide, he had persuaded
+himself, would be a ludicrous insult to the gravity of the situation as
+well as a weak-kneed confession of fear.
+
+“Just for the fun of the thing,” he said to the cat, who had taken
+Binkie’s place in his establishment, “I should like to know how long
+this is going to last. I can live for a year on the hundred pounds Torp
+cashed for me. I must have two or three thousand at least in the
+Bank—twenty or thirty years more provided for, that is to say. Then I
+fall back on my hundred and twenty a year, which will be more by that
+time. Let’s consider.
+
+Twenty-five—thirty-five—a man’s in his prime then, they
+say—forty-five—a middle-aged man just entering
+politics—fifty-five—“died at the comparatively early age of
+fifty-five,” according to the newspapers. Bah! How these Christians
+funk death! Sixty-five—we’re only getting on in years. Seventy-five is
+just possible, though. Great hell, cat O! fifty years more of solitary
+confinement in the dark! You’ll die, and Beeton will die, and Torp will
+die, and Mai—everybody else will die, but I shall be alive and kicking
+with nothing to do. I’m very sorry for myself. I should like some one
+else to be sorry for me. Evidently I’m not going mad before I die, but
+the pain’s just as bad as ever. Some day when you’re vivisected, cat O!
+they’ll tie you down on a little table and cut you open—but don’t be
+afraid; they’ll take precious good care that you don’t die. You’ll
+live, and you’ll be very sorry then that you weren’t sorry for me.
+Perhaps Torp will come back or... I wish I could go to Torp and the
+Nilghai, even though I were in their way.”
+
+Pussy left the room before the speech was ended, and Alf, as he
+entered, found Dick addressing the empty hearth-rug.
+
+“There’s a letter for you, sir,” he said. “Perhaps you’d like me to
+read it.”
+
+“Lend it to me for a minute and I’ll tell you.”
+
+The outstretched hand shook just a little and the voice was not
+over-steady. It was within the limits of human possibility that—that
+was no letter from Maisie. He knew the heft of three closed envelopes
+only too well. It was a foolish hope that the girl should write to him,
+for he did not realise that there is a wrong which admits of no
+reparation though the evildoer may with tears and the heart’s best love
+strive to mend all. It is best to forget that wrong whether it be
+caused or endured, since it is as remediless as bad work once put
+forward.
+
+“Read it, then,” said Dick, and Alf began intoning according to the
+rules of the Board School—
+
+“‘_I could have given you love, I could have given you loyalty, such as
+you never dreamed of. Do you suppose I cared what you were? But you
+chose to whistle everything down the wind for nothing. My only excuse
+for you is that you are so young._’
+
+“That’s all,” he said, returning the paper to be dropped into the fire.
+
+“What was in the letter?” asked Mrs. Beeton, when Alf returned.
+
+“I don’t know. I think it was a circular or a tract about not whistlin’
+at everything when you’re young.”
+
+“I must have stepped on something when I was alive and walking about
+and it has bounced up and hit me. God help it, whatever it is—unless it
+was all a joke. But I don’t know any one who’d take the trouble to play
+a joke on me.... Love and loyalty for nothing. It sounds tempting
+enough.
+
+I wonder whether I have lost anything really?”
+
+Dick considered for a long time but could not remember when or how he
+had put himself in the way of winning these trifles at a woman’s hands.
+
+Still, the letter as touching on matters that he preferred not to think
+about stung him into a fit of frenzy that lasted for a day and night.
+When his heart was so full of despair that it would hold no more, body
+and soul together seemed to be dropping without check through the
+darkness.
+
+Then came fear of darkness and desperate attempts to reach the light
+again. But there was no light to be reached. When that agony had left
+him sweating and breathless, the downward flight would recommence till
+the gathering torture of it spurred him into another fight as hopeless
+as the first. Followed some few minutes of sleep in which he dreamed
+that he saw. Then the procession of events would repeat itself till he
+was utterly worn out and the brain took up its everlasting
+consideration of Maisie and might-have-beens.
+
+At the end of everything Mr. Beeton came to his room and volunteered to
+take him out. “Not marketing this time, but we’ll go into the Parks if
+you like.”
+
+“Be damned if I do,” quoth Dick. “Keep to the streets and walk up and
+down. I like to hear the people round me.”
+
+This was not altogether true. The blind in the first stages of their
+infirmity dislike those who can move with a free stride and unlifted
+arms—but Dick had no earthly desire to go to the Parks. Once and only
+once since Maisie had shut her door he had gone there under Alf’s
+charge. Alf forgot him and fished for minnows in the Serpentine with
+some companions. After half an hour’s waiting Dick, almost weeping with
+rage and wrath, caught a passer-by, who introduced him to a friendly
+policeman, who led him to a four-wheeler opposite the Albert Hall. He
+never told Mr. Beeton of Alf’s forgetfulness, but... this was not the
+manner in which he was used to walk the Parks aforetime.
+
+“What streets would you like to walk down, then?” said Mr. Beeton,
+sympathetically. His own ideas of a riotous holiday meant picnicking on
+the grass of Green Park with his family, and half a dozen paper bags
+full of food.
+
+“Keep to the river,” said Dick, and they kept to the river, and the
+rush of it was in his ears till they came to Blackfriars Bridge and
+struck thence on to the Waterloo Road, Mr. Beeton explaining the
+beauties of the scenery as he went on.
+
+“And walking on the other side of the pavement,” said he, “unless I’m
+much mistaken, is the young woman that used to come to your rooms to be
+drawed. I never forgets a face and I never remembers a name, except
+paying tenants, o’ course!”
+
+“Stop her,” said Dick. “It’s Bessie Broke. Tell her I’d like to speak
+to her again. Quick, man!”
+
+Mr. Beeton crossed the road under the noses of the omnibuses and
+arrested Bessie then on her way northward. She recognised him as the
+man in authority who used to glare at her when she passed up Dick’s
+staircase, and her first impulse was to run.
+
+“Wasn’t you Mr. Heldar’s model?” said Mr. Beeton, planting himself in
+front of her. “You was. He’s on the other side of the road and he’d
+like to see you.”
+
+“Why?” said Bessie, faintly. She remembered—indeed had never for long
+forgotten—an affair connected with a newly finished picture.
+
+“Because he has asked me to do so, and because he’s most particular
+blind.”
+
+“Drunk?”
+
+“No. ’Orspital blind. He can’t see. That’s him over there.”
+
+Dick was leaning against the parapet of the bridge as Mr. Beeton
+pointed him out—a stub-bearded, bowed creature wearing a dirty
+magenta-coloured neckcloth outside an unbrushed coat. There was nothing
+to fear from such an one. Even if he chased her, Bessie thought, he
+could not follow far. She crossed over, and Dick’s face lighted up. It
+was long since a woman of any kind had taken the trouble to speak to
+him.
+
+“I hope you’re well, Mr. Heldar?” said Bessie, a little puzzled. Mr.
+Beeton stood by with the air of an ambassador and breathed responsibly.
+
+“I’m very well indeed, and, by Jove! I’m glad to see—hear you, I mean,
+Bess. You never thought it worth while to turn up and see us again
+after you got your money. I don’t know why you should. Are you going
+anywhere in particular just now?”
+
+“I was going for a walk,” said Bessie.
+
+“Not the old business?” Dick spoke under his breath.
+
+“Lor, no! I paid my premium’—Bessie was very proud of that word—“for a
+barmaid, sleeping in, and I’m at the bar now quite respectable. Indeed
+I am.”
+
+Mr. Beeton had no special reason to believe in the loftiness of human
+nature. Therefore he dissolved himself like a mist and returned to his
+gas-plugs without a word of apology. Bessie watched the flight with a
+certain uneasiness; but so long as Dick appeared to be ignorant of the
+harm that had been done to him...
+
+“It’s hard work pulling the beer-handles,” she went on, “and they’ve
+got one of them penny-in-the-slot cash-machines, so if you get wrong by
+a penny at the end of the day—but then I don’t believe the machinery is
+right. Do you?”
+
+“I’ve only seen it work. Mr. Beeton.”
+
+“He’s gone.
+
+“I’m afraid I must ask you to help me home, then. I’ll make it worth
+your while. You see.” The sightless eyes turned towards her and Bessie
+saw.
+
+“It isn’t taking you out of your way?” he said hesitatingly. “I can ask
+a policeman if it is.”
+
+“Not at all. I come on at seven and I’m off at four. That’s easy
+hours.”
+
+“Good God!—but I’m on all the time. I wish I had some work to do too.
+
+Let’s go home, Bess.”
+
+He turned and cannoned into a man on the sidewalk, recoiling with an
+oath. Bessie took his arm and said nothing—as she had said nothing when
+he had ordered her to turn her face a little more to the light. They
+walked for some time in silence, the girl steering him deftly through
+the crowd.
+
+“And where’s—where’s Mr. Torpenhow?” she inquired at last.
+
+“He has gone away to the desert.”
+
+“Where’s that?”
+
+Dick pointed to the right. “East—out of the mouth of the river,” said
+he.
+
+“Then west, then south, and then east again, all along the under-side
+of Europe. Then south again, God knows how far.” The explanation did
+not enlighten Bessie in the least, but she held her tongue and looked
+to Dick’s path till they came to the chambers.
+
+“We’ll have tea and muffins,” he said joyously. “I can’t tell you,
+Bessie, how glad I am to find you again. What made you go away so
+suddenly?”
+
+“I didn’t think you’d want me any more,” she said, emboldened by his
+ignorance.
+
+“I didn’t, as a matter of fact—but afterwards—At any rate I’m glad
+you’ve come. You know the stairs.”
+
+So Bessie led him home to his own place—there was no one to hinder—and
+shut the door of the studio.
+
+“What a mess!” was her first word. “All these things haven’t been
+looked after for months and months.”
+
+“No, only weeks, Bess. You can’t expect them to care.”
+
+“I don’t know what you expect them to do. They ought to know what
+you’ve paid them for. The dust’s just awful. It’s all over the easel.”
+
+“I don’t use it much now.”
+
+“All over the pictures and the floor, and all over your coat. I’d like
+to speak to them housemaids.”
+
+“Ring for tea, then.” Dick felt his way to the one chair he used by
+custom.
+
+Bessie saw the action and, as far as in her lay, was touched. But there
+remained always a keen sense of new-found superiority, and it was in
+her voice when she spoke.
+
+“How long have you been like this?” she said wrathfully, as though the
+blindness were some fault of the housemaids.
+
+“How?”
+
+“As you are.”
+
+“The day after you went away with the check, almost as soon as my
+picture was finished; I hardly saw her alive.”
+
+“Then they’ve been cheating you ever since, that’s all. I know their
+nice little ways.”
+
+A woman may love one man and despise another, but on general feminine
+principles she will do her best to save the man she despises from being
+defrauded. Her loved one can look to himself, but the other man, being
+obviously an idiot, needs protection.
+
+“I don’t think Mr. Beeton cheats much,” said Dick. Bessie was flouncing
+up and down the room, and he was conscious of a keen sense of enjoyment
+as he heard the swish of her skirts and the light step between.
+
+“Tea _and_ muffins,” she said shortly, when the ring at the bell was
+answered; “two teaspoonfuls and one over for the pot. I don’t want the
+old teapot that was here when I used to come. It don’t draw. Get
+another.”
+
+The housemaid went away scandalised, and Dick chuckled. Then he began
+to cough as Bessie banged up and down the studio disturbing the dust.
+
+“What are you trying to do?”
+
+“Put things straight. This is like unfurnished lodgings. How could you
+let it go so?”
+
+“How could I help it? Dust away.”
+
+She dusted furiously, and in the midst of all the pother entered Mrs.
+Beeton. Her husband on his return had explained the situation, winding
+up with the peculiarly felicitous proverb, “Do unto others as you would
+be done by.” She had descended to put into her place the person who
+demanded muffins and an uncracked teapot as though she had a right to
+both.
+
+“Muffins ready yet?” said Bess, still dusting. She was no longer a drab
+of the streets but a young lady who, thanks to Dick’s check, had paid
+her premium and was entitled to pull beer-handles with the best. Being
+neatly dressed in black she did not hesitate to face Mrs. Beeton, and
+there passed between the two women certain regards that Dick would have
+appreciated. The situation adjusted itself by eye. Bessie had won, and
+Mrs. Beeton returned to cook muffins and make scathing remarks about
+models, hussies, trollops, and the like, to her husband.
+
+“There’s nothing to be got of interfering with him, Liza,” he said.
+“Alf, you go along into the street to play. When he isn’t crossed he’s
+as kindly as kind, but when he’s crossed he’s the devil and all. We
+took too many little things out of his rooms since he was blind to be
+that particular about what he does. They ain’t no objects to a blind
+man, of course, but if it was to come into court we’d get the sack.
+Yes, I did introduce him to that girl because I’m a feelin’ man
+myself.”
+
+“Much too feelin’!” Mrs. Beeton slapped the muffins into the dish, and
+thought of comely housemaids long since dismissed on suspicion.
+
+“I ain’t ashamed of it, and it isn’t for us to judge him hard so long
+as he pays quiet and regular as he do. I know how to manage young
+gentlemen, you know how to cook for them, and what I says is, let each
+stick to his own business and then there won’t be any trouble. Take
+them muffins down, Liza, and be sure you have no words with that young
+woman. His lot is cruel hard, and if he’s crossed he do swear worse
+than any one I’ve ever served.”
+
+“That’s a little better,” said Bessie, sitting down to the tea. “You
+needn’t wait, thank you, Mrs. Beeton.”
+
+“I had no intention of doing such, I do assure you.”
+
+Bessie made no answer whatever. This, she knew, was the way in which
+real ladies routed their foes, and when one is a barmaid at a
+first-class public-house one may become a real lady at ten minutes’
+notice.
+
+Her eyes fell on Dick opposite her and she was both shocked and
+displeased. There were droppings of food all down the front of his
+coat; the mouth under the ragged ill-grown beard drooped sullenly; the
+forehead was lined and contracted; and on the lean temples the hair was
+a dusty indeterminate colour that might or might not have been called
+gray. The utter misery and self-abandonment of the man appealed to her,
+and at the bottom of her heart lay the wicked feeling that he was
+humbled and brought low who had once humbled her.
+
+“Oh! it _is_ good to hear you moving about,” said Dick, rubbing his
+hands.
+
+“Tell us all about your bar successes, Bessie, and the way you live
+now.”
+
+“Never mind that. I’m quite respectable, as you’d see by looking at me.
+_You_ don’t seem to live too well. What made you go blind that sudden?
+Why isn’t there any one to look after you?”
+
+Dick was too thankful for the sound of her voice to resent the tone of
+it.
+
+“I was cut across the head a long time ago, and that ruined my eyes. I
+don’t suppose anybody thinks it worth while to look after me any more.
+
+Why should they?—and Mr. Beeton really does everything I want.”
+
+“Don’t you know any gentlemen and ladies, then, while you was—well?”
+
+“A few, but I don’t care to have them looking at me.”
+
+“I suppose that’s why you’ve growed a beard. Take it off, it don’t
+become you.”
+
+“Good gracious, child, do you imagine that I think of what becomes of
+me these days?”
+
+“You ought. Get that taken off before I come here again. I suppose I
+can come, can’t I?”
+
+“I’d be only too grateful if you did. I don’t think I treated you very
+well in the old days. I used to make you angry.”
+
+“Very angry, you did.”
+
+“I’m sorry for it, then. Come and see me when you can and as often as
+you can. God knows, there isn’t a soul in the world to take that
+trouble except you and Mr. Beeton.”
+
+“A lot of trouble _he’s_ taking and _she_ too.” This with a toss of the
+head. “They’ve let you do anyhow and they haven’t done anything for
+you. I’ve only to look and see that much. I’ll come, and I’ll be glad
+to come, but you must go and be shaved, and you must get some other
+clothes—those ones aren’t fit to be seen.”
+
+“I have heaps somewhere,” he said helplessly.
+
+“I know you have. Tell Mr. Beeton to give you a new suit and I’ll brush
+it and keep it clean. You may be as blind as a barn-door, Mr. Heldar,
+but it doesn’t excuse you looking like a sweep.”
+
+“Do I look like a sweep, then?”
+
+“Oh, I’m sorry for you. I’m that sorry for you!” she cried impulsively,
+and took Dick’s hands. Mechanically, he lowered his head as if to
+kiss—she was the only woman who had taken pity on him, and he was not
+too proud for a little pity now. She stood up to go.
+
+“Nothing o’ that kind till you look more like a gentleman. It’s quite
+easy when you get shaved, and some clothes.”
+
+He could hear her drawing on her gloves and rose to say good-bye. She
+passed behind him, kissed him audaciously on the back of the neck, and
+ran away as swiftly as on the day when she had destroyed the
+Melancolia.
+
+“To think of me kissing Mr. Heldar,” she said to herself, “after all
+he’s done to me and all! Well, I’m sorry for him, and if he was shaved
+he wouldn’t be so bad to look at, but... Oh them Beetons, how shameful
+they’ve treated him! I know Beeton’s wearing his shirt on his back
+to-day just as well as if I’d aired it. To-morrow, I’ll see... I wonder
+if he has much of his own. It might be worth more than the bar—I
+wouldn’t have to do any work—and just as respectable as if no one
+knew.”
+
+Dick was not grateful to Bessie for her parting gift. He was acutely
+conscious of it in the nape of his neck throughout the night, but it
+seemed, among very many other things, to enforce the wisdom of getting
+shaved.
+
+He was shaved accordingly in the morning, and felt the better for it. A
+fresh suit of clothes, white linen, and the knowledge that some one in
+the world said that she took an interest in his personal appearance
+made him carry himself almost upright; for the brain was relieved for a
+while from thinking of Maisie, who, under other circumstances, might
+have given that kiss and a million others.
+
+“Let us consider,” said he, after lunch. “The girl can’t care, and it’s
+a toss-up whether she comes again or not, but if money can buy her to
+look after me she shall be bought. Nobody else in the world would take
+the trouble, and I can make it worth her while. She’s a child of the
+gutter holding brevet rank as a barmaid; so she shall have everything
+she wants if she’ll only come and talk and look after me.” He rubbed
+his newly shorn chin and began to perplex himself with the thought of
+her not coming. “I suppose I did look rather a sweep,” he went on. “I
+had no reason to look otherwise. I knew things dropped on my clothes,
+but it didn’t matter. It would be cruel if she didn’t come. She must.
+Maisie came once, and that was enough for her. She was quite right. She
+had something to work for. This creature has only beer-handles to pull,
+unless she has deluded some young man into keeping company with her.
+
+Fancy being cheated for the sake of a counter-jumper! We’re falling
+pretty low.”
+
+Something cried aloud within him:—This will hurt more than anything
+that has gone before. It will recall and remind and suggest and
+tantalise, and in the end drive you mad.
+
+“I know it, I know it!” Dick cried, clenching his hands despairingly;
+“but, good heavens! is a poor blind beggar never to get anything out of
+his life except three meals a day and a greasy waistcoat? I wish she’d
+come.”
+
+Early in the afternoon time she came, because there was no young man in
+her life just then, and she thought of material advantages which would
+allow her to be idle for the rest of her days.
+
+“I shouldn’t have known you,” she said approvingly. “You look as you
+used to look—a gentleman that was proud of himself.”
+
+“Don’t you think I deserve another kiss, then?” said Dick, flushing a
+little.
+
+“Maybe—but you won’t get it yet. Sit down and let’s see what I can do
+for you. I’m certain sure Mr. Beeton cheats you, now that you can’t go
+through the housekeeping books every month. Isn’t that true?”
+
+“You’d better come and housekeep for me then, Bessie.”
+
+“Couldn’t do it in these chambers—you know that as well as I do.”
+
+“I know, but we might go somewhere else, if you thought it worth your
+while.”
+
+“I’d try to look after you, anyhow; but I shouldn’t care to have to
+work for both of us.” This was tentative.
+
+Dick laughed.
+
+“Do you remember where I used to keep my bank-book?” said he. “Torp
+took it to be balanced just before he went away. Look and see.”
+
+“It was generally under the tobacco-jar. Ah!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Oh! Four thousand two hundred and ten pounds nine shillings and a
+penny! Oh my!”
+
+“You can have the penny. That’s not bad for one year’s work. Is that
+and a hundred and twenty pounds a year good enough?”
+
+The idleness and the pretty clothes were almost within her reach now,
+but she must, by being housewifely, show that she deserved them.
+
+“Yes; but you’d have to move, and if we took an inventory, I think we’d
+find that Mr. Beeton has been prigging little things out of the rooms
+here and there. They don’t look as full as they used.”
+
+“Never mind, we’ll let him have them. The only thing I’m particularly
+anxious to take away is that picture I used you for—when you used to
+swear at me. We’ll pull out of this place, Bess, and get away as far as
+ever we can.”
+
+“Oh yes,” she said uneasily.
+
+“I don’t know where I can go to get away from myself, but I’ll try, and
+you shall have all the pretty frocks that you care for. You’ll like
+that.
+
+Give me that kiss now, Bess. Ye gods! it’s good to put one’s arm round
+a woman’s waist again.”
+
+Then came the fulfilment of the prophecy within the brain. If his arm
+were thus round Maisie’s waist and a kiss had just been given and taken
+between them,—why then... He pressed the girl more closely to himself
+because the pain whipped him. She was wondering how to explain a little
+accident to the Melancolia. At any rate, if this man really desired the
+solace of her company—and certainly he would relapse into his original
+slough if she withdrew it—he would not be more than just a little
+vexed.
+
+It would be delightful at least to see what would happen, and by her
+teachings it was good for a man to stand in certain awe of his
+companion.
+
+She laughed nervously, and slipped out of his reach.
+
+“I shouldn’t worrit about that picture if I was you,” she began, in the
+hope of turning his attention.
+
+“It’s at the back of all my canvases somewhere. Find it, Bess; you know
+it as well as I do.”
+
+“I know—but—”
+
+“But what? You’ve wit enough to manage the sale of it to a dealer.
+
+Women haggle much better than men. It might be a matter of eight or
+nine hundred pounds to—to us. I simply didn’t like to think about it
+for a long time. It was mixed up with my life so.—But we’ll cover up
+our tracks and get rid of everything, eh? Make a fresh start from the
+beginning, Bess.”
+
+Then she began to repent very much indeed, because she knew the value
+of money. Still, it was probable that the blind man was overestimating
+the value of his work. Gentlemen, she knew, were absurdly particular
+about their things. She giggled as a nervous housemaid giggles when she
+tries to explain the breakage of a pipe.
+
+“I’m very sorry, but you remember I was—I was angry with you before Mr.
+Torpenhow went away?”
+
+“You were very angry, child; and on my word I think you had some right
+to be.”
+
+“Then I—but aren’t you sure Mr. Torpenhow didn’t tell you?”
+
+“Tell me what? Good gracious, what are you making such a fuss about
+when you might just as well be giving me another kiss?”
+
+He was beginning to learn, not for the first time in his experience,
+that kissing is a cumulative poison. The more you get of it, the more
+you want.
+
+Bessie gave the kiss promptly, whispering, as she did so, “I was so
+angry I rubbed out that picture with the turpentine. You aren’t angry,
+are you?”
+
+“What? Say that again.” The man’s hand had closed on her wrist.
+
+“I rubbed it out with turps and the knife,” faltered Bessie. “I thought
+you’d only have to do it over again. You did do it over again, didn’t
+you? Oh, let go of my wrist; you’re hurting me.”
+
+“Isn’t there anything left of the thing?”
+
+“N’nothing that looks like anything. I’m sorry—I didn’t know you’d take
+on about it; I only meant to do it in fun. You aren’t going to hit me?”
+
+“Hit you! No! Let’s think.”
+
+He did not relax his hold upon her wrist but stood staring at the
+carpet. Then he shook his head as a young steer shakes it when the lash
+of the stock-whip cross his nose warns him back to the path on to the
+shambles that he would escape. For weeks he had forced himself not to
+think of the Melancolia, because she was a part of his dead life. With
+Bessie’s return and certain new prospects that had developed
+themselves, the Melancolia—lovelier in his imagination than she had
+ever been on canvas—reappeared. By her aid he might have procured more
+money wherewith to amuse Bess and to forget Maisie, as well as another
+taste of an almost forgotten success. Now, thanks to a vicious little
+housemaid’s folly, there was nothing to look for—not even the hope that
+he might some day take an abiding interest in the housemaid. Worst of
+all, he had been made to appear ridiculous in Maisie’s eyes. A woman
+will forgive the man who has ruined her life’s work so long as he gives
+her love; a man may forgive those who ruin the love of his life, but he
+will never forgive the destruction of his work.
+
+“Tck—tck—tck,” said Dick between his teeth, and then laughed softly.
+“It’s an omen, Bessie, and—a good many things considered, it serves me
+right for doing what I have done. By Jove! that accounts for Maisie’s
+running away. She must have thought me perfectly mad—small blame to
+her! The whole picture ruined, isn’t it so? What made you do it?”
+
+“Because I was that angry. I’m not angry now—I’m awful sorry.”
+
+“I wonder.—It doesn’t matter, anyhow. I’m to blame for making the
+mistake.”
+
+“What mistake?”
+
+“Something you wouldn’t understand, dear. Great heavens! to think that
+a little piece of dirt like you could throw me out of stride!” Dick was
+talking to himself as Bessie tried to shake off his grip on her wrist.
+
+“I ain’t a piece of dirt, and you shouldn’t call me so! I did it “cause
+I hated you, and I’m only sorry now “cause you’re—’cause you’re——”
+
+“Exactly—because I’m blind. There’s nothing like tact in little
+things.”
+
+Bessie began to sob. She did not like being shackled against her will;
+she was afraid of the blind face and the look upon it, and was sorry
+too that her great revenge had only made Dick laugh.
+
+“Don’t cry,” he said, and took her into his arms. “You only did what
+you thought right.”
+
+“I—I ain’t a little piece of dirt, and if you say that I’ll never come
+to you again.”
+
+“You don’t know what you’ve done to me. I’m not angry—indeed, I’m not.
+
+Be quiet for a minute.”
+
+Bessie remained in his arms shrinking. Dick’s first thought was
+connected with Maisie, and it hurt him as white-hot iron hurts an open
+sore.
+
+Not for nothing is a man permitted to ally himself to the wrong woman.
+
+The first pang—the first sense of things lost is but the prelude to the
+play, for the very just Providence who delights in causing pain has
+decreed that the agony shall return, and that in the midst of keenest
+pleasure.
+
+They know this pain equally who have forsaken or been forsaken by the
+love of their life, and in their new wives’ arms are compelled to
+realise it.
+
+It is better to remain alone and suffer only the misery of being alone,
+so long as it is possible to find distraction in daily work. When that
+resource goes the man is to be pitied and left alone.
+
+These things and some others Dick considered while he was holding
+Bessie to his heart.
+
+“Though you mayn’t know it,” he said, raising his head, “the Lord is a
+just and a terrible God, Bess; with a very strong sense of humour. It
+serves me right—how it serves me right! Torp could understand it if he
+were here; he must have suffered something at your hands, child, but
+only for a minute or so. I saved him. Set that to my credit, some one.”
+
+“Let me go,” said Bess, her face darkening. “Let me go.”
+
+“All in good time. Did you ever attend Sunday school?”
+
+“Never. Let me go, I tell you; you’re making fun of me.”
+
+“Indeed, I’m not. I’m making fun of myself.... Thus. “He saved others,
+himself he cannot save.” It isn’t exactly a school-board text.” He
+released her wrist, but since he was between her and the door, she
+could not escape. “What an enormous amount of mischief one little woman
+can do!”
+
+“I’m sorry; I’m awful sorry about the picture.”
+
+“I’m not. I’m grateful to you for spoiling it.... What were we talking
+about before you mentioned the thing?”
+
+“About getting away—and money. Me and you going away.”
+
+“Of course. We will get away—that is to say, I will.”
+
+“And me?”
+
+“You shall have fifty whole pounds for spoiling a picture.”
+
+“Then you won’t——?”
+
+“I’m afraid not, dear. Think of fifty pounds for pretty things all to
+yourself.”
+
+“You said you couldn’t do anything without me.”
+
+“That was true a little while ago. I’m better now, thank you. Get me my
+hat.”
+
+“S’pose I don’t?”
+
+“Beeton will, and you’ll lose fifty pounds. That’s all. Get it.”
+
+Bessie cursed under her breath. She had pitied the man sincerely, had
+kissed him with almost equal sincerity, for he was not unhandsome; it
+pleased her to be in a way and for a time his protector, and above all
+there were four thousand pounds to be handled by some one. Now through
+a slip of the tongue and a little feminine desire to give a little, not
+too much, pain she had lost the money, the blessed idleness and the
+pretty things, the companionship, and the chance of looking outwardly
+as respectable as a real lady.
+
+“Now fill me a pipe. Tobacco doesn’t taste, but it doesn’t matter, and
+I’ll think things out. What’s the day of the week, Bess?”
+
+“Tuesday.”
+
+“Then Thursday’s mail-day. What a fool—what a blind fool I have been!
+Twenty-two pounds covers my passage home again. Allow ten for
+additional expenses. We must put up at Madam Binat’s for old time’s
+sake. Thirty-two pounds altogether. Add a hundred for the cost of the
+last trip—Gad, won’t Torp stare to see me!—a hundred and thirty-two
+leaves seventy-eight for _baksheesh_—I shall need it—and to play with.
+What are you crying for, Bess? It wasn’t your fault, child; it was mine
+altogether. Oh, you funny little opossum, mop your eyes and take me
+out! I want the pass-book and the check-book. Stop a minute. Four
+thousand pounds at four per cent—that’s safe interest—means a hundred
+and sixty pounds a year; one hundred and twenty pounds a year—also
+safe—is two eighty, and two hundred and eighty pounds added to three
+hundred a year means gilded luxury for a single woman. Bess, we’ll go
+to the bank.”
+
+Richer by two hundred and ten pounds stored in his money-belt, Dick
+caused Bessie, now thoroughly bewildered, to hurry from the bank to the
+P. and O. offices, where he explained things tersely.
+
+“Port Said, single first; cabin as close to the baggage-hatch as
+possible.
+
+What ship’s going?”
+
+“The _Colgong_,” said the clerk.
+
+“She’s a wet little hooker. Is it Tilbury and a tender, or Galleons and
+the docks?”
+
+“Galleons. Twelve-forty, Thursday.”
+
+“Thanks. Change, please. I can’t see very well—will you count it into
+my hand?”
+
+“If they all took their passages like that instead of talking about
+their trunks, life would be worth something,” said the clerk to his
+neighbour, who was trying to explain to a harassed mother of many that
+condensed milk is just as good for babes at sea as daily dairy. Being
+nineteen and unmarried, he spoke with conviction.
+
+“We are now,” quoth Dick, as they returned to the studio, patting the
+place where his money-belt covered ticket and money, “beyond the reach
+of man, or devil, or woman—which is much more important. I’ve had three
+little affairs to carry through before Thursday, but I needn’t ask you
+to help, Bess. Come here on Thursday morning at nine. We’ll breakfast,
+and you shall take me down to Galleons Station.”
+
+“What are you going to do?”
+
+“Going away, of course. What should I stay for?”
+
+“But you can’t look after yourself?”
+
+“I can do anything. I didn’t realise it before, but I can. I’ve done a
+great deal already. Resolution shall be treated to one kiss if Bessie
+doesn’t object.” Strangely enough, Bessie objected and Dick laughed. “I
+suppose you’re right. Well, come at nine the day after to-morrow and
+you’ll get your money.”
+
+“Shall I sure?”
+
+“I don’t bilk, and you won’t know whether I do or not unless you come.
+
+Oh, but it’s long and long to wait! Good-bye, Bessie,—send Beeton here
+as you go out.”
+
+The housekeeper came.
+
+“What are all the fittings of my rooms worth?” said Dick, imperiously.
+
+“’Tisn’t for me to say, sir. Some things is very pretty and some is
+wore out dreadful.”
+
+“I’m insured for two hundred and seventy.”
+
+“Insurance policies is no criterion, though I don’t say——”
+
+“Oh, damn your longwindedness! You’ve made your pickings out of me and
+the other tenants. Why, you talked of retiring and buying a
+public-house the other day. Give a straight answer to a straight
+question.”
+
+“Fifty,” said Mr. Beeton, without a moment’s hesitation.
+
+“Double it; or I’ll break up half my sticks and burn the rest.”
+
+He felt his way to a bookstand that supported a pile of sketch-books,
+and wrenched out one of the mahogany pillars.
+
+“That’s sinful, sir,” said the housekeeper, alarmed.
+
+“It’s my own. One hundred or——”
+
+“One hundred it is. It’ll cost me three and six to get that there
+pilaster mended.”
+
+“I thought so. What an out and out swindler you must have been to
+spring that price at once!”
+
+“I hope I’ve done nothing to dissatisfy any of the tenants, least of
+all you, sir.”
+
+“Never mind that. Get me the money to-morrow, and see that all my
+clothes are packed in the little brown bullock-trunk. I’m going.”
+
+“But the quarter’s notice?”
+
+“I’ll pay forfeit. Look after the packing and leave me alone.”
+
+Mr. Beeton discussed this new departure with his wife, who decided that
+Bessie was at the bottom of it all. Her husband took a more charitable
+view.
+
+“It’s very sudden—but then he was always sudden in his ways. Listen to
+him now!”
+
+There was a sound of chanting from Dick’s room.
+
+“We’ll never come back any more, boys,
+We’ll never come back no more;
+We’ll go to the deuce on any excuse,
+And never come back no more!
+Oh say we’re afloat or ashore, boys,
+Oh say we’re afloat or ashore;
+But we’ll never come back any more, boys,
+We’ll never come back no more!”
+
+
+“Mr. Beeton! Mr. Beeton! Where the deuce is my pistol?”
+
+“Quick, he’s going to shoot himself—’avin’ gone mad!” said Mrs. Beeton.
+
+Mr. Beeton addressed Dick soothingly, but it was some time before the
+latter, threshing up and down his bedroom, could realise the intention
+of the promises to “find everything to-morrow, sir.”
+
+“Oh, you copper-nosed old fool—you impotent Academician!” he shouted at
+last. “Do you suppose I want to shoot myself? Take the pistol in your
+silly shaking hand then. If _you_ touch it, it will go off, because
+it’s loaded. It’s among my campaign-kit somewhere—in the parcel at the
+bottom of the trunk.”
+
+Long ago Dick had carefully possessed himself of a forty-pound weight
+field-equipment constructed by the knowledge of his own experience. It
+was this put-away treasure that he was trying to find and rehandle. Mr.
+Beeton whipped the revolver out of its place on the top of the package,
+and Dick drove his hand among the _khaki_ coat and breeches, the blue
+cloth leg-bands, and the heavy flannel shirts doubled over a pair of
+swan-neck spurs. Under these and the water-bottle lay a sketch-book and
+a pigskin case of stationery.
+
+“These we don’t want; you can have them, Mr. Beeton. Everything else
+I’ll keep. Pack ’em on the top right-hand side of my trunk. When you’ve
+done that come into the studio with your wife. I want you both. Wait a
+minute; get me a pen and a sheet of notepaper.”
+
+It is not an easy thing to write when you cannot see, and Dick had
+particular reasons for wishing that his work should be clear. So he
+began, following his right hand with his left: ““The badness of this
+writing is because I am blind and cannot see my pen.” H’mph!—even a
+lawyer can’t mistake that. It must be signed, I suppose, but it needn’t
+be witnessed. Now an inch lower—why did I never learn to use a
+type-writer?—“This is the last will and testament of me, Richard
+Heldar. I am in sound bodily and mental health, and there is no
+previous will to revoke.”—That’s all right. Damn the pen! Whereabouts
+on the paper was I?—“I leave everything that I possess in the world,
+including four thousand pounds, and two thousand seven hundred and
+twenty eight pounds held for me”—oh, I can’t get this straight.” He
+tore off half the sheet and began again with the caution about the
+handwriting. Then: “I leave all the money I possess in the world
+to’—here followed Maisie’s name, and the names of the two banks that
+held the money.
+
+“It mayn’t be quite regular, but no one has a shadow of a right to
+dispute it, and I’ve given Maisie’s address. Come in, Mr. Beeton. This
+is my signature; I want you and your wife to witness it. Thanks.
+To-morrow you must take me to the landlord and I’ll pay forfeit for
+leaving without notice, and I’ll lodge this paper with him in case
+anything happens while I’m away. Now we’re going to light up the studio
+stove. Stay with me, and give me my papers as I want ’em.”
+
+No one knows until he has tried how fine a blaze a year’s accumulation
+of bills, letters, and dockets can make. Dick stuffed into the stove
+every document in the studio—saving only three unopened letters;
+destroyed sketch-books, rough note-books, new and half-finished
+canvases alike.
+
+“What a lot of rubbish a tenant gets about him if he stays long enough
+in one place, to be sure,” said Mr. Beeton, at last.
+
+“He does. Is there anything more left?” Dick felt round the walls.
+
+“Not a thing, and the stove’s nigh red-hot.”
+
+“Excellent, and you’ve lost about a thousand pounds’ worth of sketches.
+
+Ho! ho! Quite a thousand pounds’ worth, if I can remember what I used
+to be.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” politely. Mr. Beeton was quite sure that Dick had gone mad,
+otherwise he would have never parted with his excellent furniture for a
+song. The canvas things took up storage room and were much better out
+of the way.
+
+There remained only to leave the little will in safe hands: that could
+not be accomplished to to-morrow. Dick groped about the floor picking
+up the last pieces of paper, assured himself again and again that there
+remained no written word or sign of his past life in drawer or desk,
+and sat down before the stove till the fire died out and the
+contracting iron cracked in the silence of the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+With a heart of furious fancies,
+    Whereof I am commander;
+With a burning spear and a horse of air,
+    To the wilderness I wander.
+With a knight of ghosts and shadows
+    I summoned am to tourney—
+Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end,
+    Methinks it is no journey.
+
+—_Tom a’ Bedlam’s Song_.
+
+
+“Good-bye, Bess; I promised you fifty. Here’s a hundred—all that I got
+for my furniture from Beeton. That will keep you in pretty frocks for
+some time. You’ve been a good little girl, all things considered, but
+you’ve given me and Torpenhow a fair amount of trouble.”
+
+“Give Mr. Torpenhow my love if you see him, won’t you?”
+
+“Of course I will, dear. Now take me up the gang-plank and into the
+cabin. Once aboard the lugger and the maid is—and I am free, I mean.”
+
+“Who’ll look after you on this ship?”
+
+“The head-steward, if there’s any use in money. The doctor when we come
+to Port Said, if I know anything of P. and O. doctors. After that, the
+Lord will provide, as He used to do.”
+
+Bess found Dick his cabin in the wild turmoil of a ship full of
+leavetakers and weeping relatives. Then he kissed her, and laid himself
+down in his bunk until the decks should be clear. He who had taken so
+long to move about his own darkened rooms well understood the geography
+of a ship, and the necessity of seeing to his own comforts was as wine
+to him.
+
+Before the screw began to thrash the ship along the Docks he had been
+introduced to the head-steward, had royally tipped him, secured a good
+place at table, opened out his baggage, and settled himself down with
+joy in the cabin. It was scarcely necessary to feel his way as he moved
+about, for he knew everything so well. Then God was very kind: a deep
+sleep of weariness came upon him just as he would have thought of
+Maisie, and he slept till the steamer had cleared the mouth of the
+Thames and was lifting to the pulse of the Channel.
+
+The rattle of the engines, the reek of oil and paint, and a very
+familiar sound in the next cabin roused him to his new inheritance.
+
+“Oh, it’s good to be alive again!” He yawned, stretched himself
+vigorously, and went on deck to be told that they were almost abreast
+of the lights of Brighton. This is no more open water than Trafalgar
+Square is a common; the free levels begin at Ushant; but none the less
+Dick could feel the healing of the sea at work upon him already. A
+boisterous little cross-swell swung the steamer disrespectfully by the
+nose; and one wave breaking far aft spattered the quarterdeck and the
+pile of new deck-chairs. He heard the foam fall with the clash of
+broken glass, was stung in the face by a cupful, and sniffing
+luxuriously, felt his way to the smoking-room by the wheel. There a
+strong breeze found him, blew his cap off and left him bareheaded in
+the doorway, and the smoking-room steward, understanding that he was a
+voyager of experience, said that the weather would be stiff in the
+chops off the Channel and more than half a gale in the Bay. These
+things fell as they were foretold, and Dick enjoyed himself to the
+utmost. It is allowable and even necessary at sea to lay firm hold upon
+tables, stanchions, and ropes in moving from place to place. On land
+the man who feels with his hands is patently blind. At sea even a blind
+man who is not sea-sick can jest with the doctor over the weakness of
+his fellows. Dick told the doctor many tales—and these are coin of more
+value than silver if properly handled—smoked with him till unholy hours
+of the night, and so won his short-lived regard that he promised Dick a
+few hours of his time when they came to Port Said.
+
+And the sea roared or was still as the winds blew, and the engines sang
+their song day and night, and the sun grew stronger day by day, and Tom
+the Lascar barber shaved Dick of a morning under the opened
+hatch-grating where the cool winds blew, and the awnings were spread
+and the passengers made merry, and at last they came to Port Said.
+
+“Take me,” said Dick, to the doctor, “to Madame Binat’s—if you know
+where that is.”
+
+“Whew!” said the doctor, “I do. There’s not much to choose between ’em;
+but I suppose you’re aware that that’s one of the worst houses in the
+place. They’ll rob you to begin with, and knife you later.”
+
+“Not they. Take me there, and I can look after myself.”
+
+So he was brought to Madame Binat’s and filled his nostrils with the
+well-remembered smell of the East, that runs without a change from the
+Canal head to Hong-Kong, and his mouth with the villainous Lingua
+Franca of the Levant. The heat smote him between the shoulder-blades
+with the buffet of an old friend, his feet slipped on the sand, and his
+coat-sleeve was warm as new-baked bread when he lifted it to his nose.
+
+Madame Binat smiled with the smile that knows no astonishment when Dick
+entered the drinking-shop which was one source of her gains. But for a
+little accident of complete darkness he could hardly realise that he
+had ever quitted the old life that hummed in his ears. Somebody opened
+a bottle of peculiarly strong Schiedam. The smell reminded Dick of
+Monsieur Binat, who, by the way, had spoken of art and degradation.
+
+Binat was dead; Madame said as much when the doctor departed,
+scandalised, so far as a ship’s doctor can be, at the warmth of Dick’s
+reception. Dick was delighted at it. “They remember me here after a
+year. They have forgotten me across the water by this time. Madame, I
+want a long talk with you when you’re at liberty. It is good to be back
+again.”
+
+In the evening she set an iron-topped café-table out on the sands, and
+Dick and she sat by it, while the house behind them filled with riot,
+merriment, oaths, and threats. The stars came out and the lights of the
+shipping in the harbour twinkled by the head of the Canal.
+
+“Yes. The war is good for trade, my friend; but what dost thou do here?
+We have not forgotten thee.”
+
+“I was over there in England and I went blind.”
+
+“But there was the glory first. We heard of it here, even here—I and
+Binat; and thou hast used the head of Yellow “Tina—she is still
+alive—so often and so well that “Tina laughed when the papers arrived
+by the mail-boats. It was always something that we here could recognise
+in the paintings. And then there was always the glory and the money for
+thee.”
+
+“I am not poor—I shall pay you well.”
+
+“Not to me. Thou hast paid for everything.” Under her breath, “Mon
+Dieu, to be blind and so young! What horror!”
+
+Dick could not see her face with the pity on it, or his own with the
+discoloured hair at the temples. He did not feel the need of pity; he
+was too anxious to get to the front once more, and explained his
+desire.
+
+“And where? The Canal is full of the English ships. Sometimes they fire
+as they used to do when the war was here—ten years ago. Beyond Cairo
+there is fighting, but how canst thou go there without a
+correspondent’s passport? And in the desert there is always fighting,
+but that is impossible also,” said she.
+
+“I must go to Suakin.” He knew, thanks to Alf’s readings, that
+Torpenhow was at work with the column that was protecting the
+construction of the Suakin-Berber line. P. and O. steamers do not touch
+at that port, and, besides, Madame Binat knew everybody whose help or
+advice was worth anything. They were not respectable folk, but they
+could cause things to be accomplished, which is much more important
+when there is work toward.
+
+“But at Suakin they are always fighting. That desert breeds men
+always—and always more men. And they are so bold! Why to Suakin?”
+
+“My friend is there.
+
+“Thy friend! Chtt! Thy friend is death, then.”
+
+Madame Binat dropped a fat arm on the table-top, filled Dick’s glass
+anew, and looked at him closely under the stars. There was no need that
+he should bow his head in assent and say—“No. He is a man, but—if it
+should arrive... blamest thou?”
+
+“I blame?” she laughed shrilly. “Who am I that I should blame any
+one—except those who try to cheat me over their consommations. But it
+is very terrible.”
+
+“I must go to Suakin. Think for me. A great deal has changed within the
+year, and the men I knew are not here. The Egyptian lighthouse steamer
+goes down the Canal to Suakin—and the post-boats—But even then——”
+
+“Do not think any longer. _I_ know, and it is for me to think. Thou
+shalt go—thou shalt go and see thy friend. Be wise. Sit here until the
+house is a little quiet—I must attend to my guests—and afterwards go to
+bed. Thou shalt go, in truth, thou shalt go.”
+
+“To-morrow?”
+
+“As soon as may be.” She was talking as though he were a child.
+
+He sat at the table listening to the voices in the harbour and the
+streets, and wondering how soon the end would come, till Madame Binat
+carried him off to bed and ordered him to sleep. The house shouted and
+sang and danced and revelled, Madame Binat moving through it with one
+eye on the liquor payments and the girls and the other on Dick’s
+interests. To this latter end she smiled upon scowling and furtive
+Turkish officers of fellaheen regiments, was gracious to Cypriote
+commissariat underlings, and more than kind to camel agents of no
+nationality whatever.
+
+In the early morning, being then appropriately dressed in a flaming red
+silk ball-dress, with a front of tarnished gold embroidery and a
+necklace of plate-glass diamonds, she made chocolate and carried it in
+to Dick.
+
+“It is only I, and I am of discreet age, eh? Drink and eat the roll
+too. Thus in France mothers bring their sons, when those behave wisely,
+the morning chocolate.” She sat down on the side of the bed
+whispering:—“It is all arranged. Thou wilt go by the lighthouse boat.
+That is a bribe of ten pounds English. The captain is never paid by the
+Government. The boat comes to Suakin in four days. There will go with
+thee George, a Greek muleteer. Another bribe of ten pounds. I will pay;
+they must not know of thy money. George will go with thee as far as he
+goes with his mules. Then he comes back to me, for his well-beloved is
+here, and if I do not receive a telegram from Suakin saying that thou
+art well, the girl answers for George.”
+
+“Thank you.” He reached out sleepily for the cup. “You are much too
+kind, Madame.”
+
+“If there were anything that I might do I would say, stay here and be
+wise; but I do not think that would be best for thee.” She looked at
+her liquor-stained dress with a sad smile. “Nay, thou shalt go, in
+truth, thou shalt go. It is best so. My boy, it is best so.”
+
+She stooped and kissed Dick between the eyes. “That is for
+good-morning,” she said, going away. “When thou art dressed we will
+speak to George and make everything ready. But first we must open the
+little trunk. Give me the keys.”
+
+“The amount of kissing lately has been simply scandalous. I shall
+expect Torp to kiss me next. He is more likely to swear at me for
+getting in his way, though. Well, it won’t last long.—Ohe, Madame, help
+me to my toilette of the guillotine! There will be no chance of
+dressing properly out yonder.”
+
+He was rummaging among his new campaign-kit, and rowelling his hands
+with the spurs. There are two ways of wearing well-oiled ankle-jacks,
+spotless blue bands, _khaki_ coat and breeches, and a perfectly
+pipeclayed helmet. The right way is the way of the untired man, master
+of himself, setting out upon an expedition, well pleased.
+
+“Everything must be very correct,” Dick explained. “It will become
+dirty afterwards, but now it is good to feel well dressed. Is
+everything as it should be?”
+
+He patted the revolver neatly hidden under the fulness of the blouse on
+the right hip and fingered his collar.
+
+“I can do no more,” Madame said, between laughing and crying. “Look at
+thyself—but I forgot.”
+
+“I am very content.” He stroked the creaseless spirals of his leggings.
+
+“Now let us go and see the captain and George and the lighthouse boat.
+
+Be quick, Madame.”
+
+“But thou canst not be seen by the harbour walking with me in the
+daylight. Figure to yourself if some English ladies——”
+
+“There are no English ladies; and if there are, I have forgotten them.
+
+Take me there.”
+
+In spite of this burning impatience it was nearly evening ere the
+lighthouse boat began to move. Madame had said a great deal both to
+George and the captain touching the arrangements that were to be made
+for Dick’s benefit. Very few men who had the honour of her acquaintance
+cared to disregard Madame’s advice. That sort of contempt might end in
+being knifed by a stranger in a gambling hell upon surprisingly short
+provocation.
+
+For six days—two of them were wasted in the crowded Canal—the little
+steamer worked her way to Suakin, where she was to pick up the
+superintendent of the lighthouse; and Dick made it his business to
+propitiate George, who was distracted with fears for the safety of his
+light-of-love and half inclined to make Dick responsible for his own
+discomfort. When they arrived George took him under his wing, and
+together they entered the red-hot seaport, encumbered with the material
+and wastage of the Suakin-Berger line, from locomotives in disconsolate
+fragments to mounds of chairs and pot-sleepers.
+
+“If you keep with me,” said George, “nobody will ask for passports or
+what you do. They are all very busy.”
+
+“Yes; but I should like to hear some of the Englishmen talk. They might
+remember me. I was known here a long time ago—when I was some one
+indeed.”
+
+“A long time ago is a very long time ago here. The graveyards are full.
+
+Now listen. This new railway runs out so far as Tanai-el-Hassan—that is
+seven miles. Then there is a camp. They say that beyond Tanai-el-Hassan
+the English troops go forward, and everything that they require will be
+brought to them by this line.”
+
+“Ah! Base camp. I see. That’s a better business than fighting Fuzzies
+in the open.”
+
+“For this reason even the mules go up in the iron-train.”
+
+“Iron what?”
+
+“It is all covered with iron, because it is still being shot at.”
+
+“An armoured train. Better and better! Go on, faithful George.”
+
+“And I go up with my mules to-night. Only those who particularly
+require to go to the camp go out with the train. They begin to shoot
+not far from the city.”
+
+“The dears—they always used to!” Dick snuffed the smell of parched
+dust, heated iron, and flaking paint with delight. Certainly the old
+life was welcoming him back most generously.
+
+“When I have got my mules together I go up to-night, but you must first
+send a telegram of Port Said, declaring that I have done you no harm.”
+
+“Madame has you well in hand. Would you stick a knife into me if you
+had the chance?”
+
+“I have no chance,” said the Greek. “_She_ is there with that woman.”
+
+“I see. It’s a bad thing to be divided between love of woman and the
+chance of loot. I sympathise with you, George.”
+
+They went to the telegraph-office unquestioned, for all the world was
+desperately busy and had scarcely time to turn its head, and Suakin was
+the last place under sky that would be chosen for holiday-ground. On
+their return the voice of an English subaltern asked Dick what he was
+doing. The blue goggles were over his eyes and he walked with his hand
+on George’s elbow as he replied—“Egyptian Government—mules. My orders
+are to give them over to the A. C. G. at Tanai-el-Hassan. Any occasion
+to show my papers?”
+
+“Oh, certainly not. I beg your pardon. I’d no right to ask, but not
+seeing your face before I——”
+
+“I go out in the train to-night, I suppose,” said Dick, boldly. “There
+will be no difficulty in loading up the mules, will there?”
+
+“You can see the horse-platforms from here. You must have them loaded
+up early.” The young man went away wondering what sort of broken-down
+waif this might be who talked like a gentleman and consorted with Greek
+muleteers. Dick felt unhappy. To outface an English officer is no small
+thing, but the bluff loses relish when one plays it from the utter
+dark, and stumbles up and down rough ways, thinking and eternally
+thinking of what might have been if things had fallen out otherwise,
+and all had been as it was not.
+
+George shared his meal with Dick and went off to the mule-lines. His
+charge sat alone in a shed with his face in his hands. Before his
+tight-shut eyes danced the face of Maisie, laughing, with parted lips.
+There was a great bustle and clamour about him. He grew afraid and
+almost called for George.
+
+“I say, have you got your mules ready?” It was the voice of the
+subaltern over his shoulder.
+
+“My man’s looking after them. The—the fact is I’ve a touch of
+ophthalmia and can’t see very well.
+
+“By Jove! that’s bad. You ought to lie up in hospital for a while. I’ve
+had a turn of it myself. It’s as bad as being blind.”
+
+“So I find it. When does this armoured train go?”
+
+“At six o’clock. It takes an hour to cover the seven miles.”
+
+“Are the Fuzzies on the rampage—eh?”
+
+“About three nights a week. Fact is I’m in acting command of the
+night-train. It generally runs back empty to Tanai for the night.”
+
+“Big camp at Tanai, I suppose?”
+
+“Pretty big. It has to feed our desert-column somehow.”
+
+“Is that far off?”
+
+“Between thirty and forty miles—in an infernal thirsty country.”
+
+“Is the country quiet between Tanai and our men?”
+
+“More or less. I shouldn’t care to cross it alone, or with a
+subaltern’s command for the matter of that, but the scouts get through
+it in some extraordinary fashion.”
+
+“They always did.”
+
+“Have you been here before, then?”
+
+“I was through most of the trouble when it first broke out.”
+
+“In the service and cashiered,” was the subaltern’s first thought, so
+he refrained from putting any questions.
+
+“There’s your man coming up with the mules. It seems rather queer——”
+
+“That I should be mule-leading?” said Dick.
+
+“I didn’t mean to say so, but it is. Forgive me—it’s beastly
+impertinence I know, but you speak like a man who has been at a public
+school. There’s no mistaking the tone.”
+
+“I am a public school man.”
+
+“I thought so. I say, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you’re a
+little down on your luck, aren’t you? I saw you sitting with your head
+in your hands, and that’s why I spoke.”
+
+“Thanks. I am about as thoroughly and completely broke as a man need
+be.”
+
+“Suppose—I mean I’m a public school man myself. Couldn’t I perhaps—take
+it as a loan y’know and——”
+
+“You’re much too good, but on my honour I’ve as much money as I want.
+
+... I tell you what you could do for me, though, and put me under an
+everlasting obligation. Let me come into the bogie truck of the train.
+
+There is a fore-truck, isn’t there?”
+
+“Yes. How d’you know?”
+
+“I’ve been in an armoured train before. Only let me see—hear some of
+the fun I mean, and I’ll be grateful. I go at my own risk as a
+non-combatant.”
+
+The young man thought for a minute. “All right,” he said. “We’re
+supposed to be an empty train, and there’s no one to blow me up at the
+other end.”
+
+George and a horde of yelling amateur assistants had loaded up the
+mules, and the narrow-gauge armoured train, plated with three-eighths
+inch boiler-plate till it looked like one long coffin, stood ready to
+start.
+
+Two bogie trucks running before the locomotive were completely covered
+in with plating, except that the leading one was pierced in front for
+the muzzle of a machine-gun, and the second at either side for lateral
+fire.
+
+The trucks together made one long iron-vaulted chamber in which a score
+of artillerymen were rioting.
+
+“Whitechapel—last train! Ah, I see yer kissin’ in the first class
+there!” somebody shouted, just as Dick was clambering into the forward
+truck.
+
+“Lordy! ’Ere’s a real live passenger for the Kew, Tanai, Acton, and
+Ealin’ train. _Echo_, sir. Speshul edition! _Star_, sir.”—“Shall I get
+you a foot-warmer?” said another.
+
+“Thanks. I’ll pay my footing,” said Dick, and relations of the most
+amiable were established ere silence came with the arrival of the
+subaltern, and the train jolted out over the rough track.
+
+“This is an immense improvement on shooting the unimpressionable Fuzzy
+in the open,” said Dick, from his place in the corner.
+
+“Oh, but he’s still unimpressed. There he goes!” said the subaltern, as
+a bullet struck the outside of the truck. “We always have at least one
+demonstration against the night-train. Generally they attack the
+rear-truck, where my junior commands. He gets all the fun of the fair.”
+
+“Not to-night though! Listen!” said Dick. A flight of heavy-handed
+bullets was succeeded by yelling and shouts. The children of the desert
+valued their nightly amusement, and the train was an excellent mark.
+
+“Is it worth giving them half a hopper full?” the subaltern asked of
+the engine, which was driven by a Lieutenant of Sappers.
+
+“I should think so! This is my section of the line. They’ll be playing
+old Harry with my permanent way if we don’t stop ’em.”
+
+“Right O!”
+
+“_Hrrmph!_” said the machine gun through all its five noses as the
+subaltern drew the lever home. The empty cartridges clashed on the
+floor and the smoke blew back through the truck. There was
+indiscriminate firing at the rear of the train, and return fire from
+the darkness without and unlimited howling. Dick stretched himself on
+the floor, wild with delight at the sounds and the smells.
+
+“God is very good—I never thought I’d hear this again. Give ’em hell,
+men. Oh, give ’em hell!” he cried.
+
+The train stopped for some obstruction on the line ahead and a party
+went out to reconnoitre, but came back, cursing, for spades. The
+children of the desert had piled sand and gravel on the rails, and
+twenty minutes were lost in clearing it away. Then the slow progress
+recommenced, to be varied with more shots, more shoutings, the steady
+clack and kick of the machine guns, and a final difficulty with a
+half-lifted rail ere the train came under the protection of the roaring
+camp at Tanai-el-Hassan.
+
+“Now, you see why it takes an hour and a half to fetch her through,”
+said the subaltern, unshipping the cartridge-hopper above his pet gun.
+
+“It was a lark, though. I only wish it had lasted twice as long. How
+superb it must have looked from outside!” said Dick, sighing
+regretfully.
+
+“It palls after the first few nights. By the way, when you’ve settled
+about your mules, come and see what we can find to eat in my tent. I’m
+Bennil of the Gunners—in the artillery lines—and mind you don’t fall
+over my tent-ropes in the dark.”
+
+But it was all dark to Dick. He could only smell the camels, the
+hay-bales, the cooking, the smoky fires, and the tanned canvas of the
+tents as he stood, where he had dropped from the train, shouting for
+George. There was a sound of light-hearted kicking on the iron skin of
+the rear trucks, with squealing and grunting. George was unloading the
+mules.
+
+The engine was blowing off steam nearly in Dick’s ear; a cold wind of
+the desert danced between his legs; he was hungry, and felt tired and
+dirty—so dirty that he tried to brush his coat with his hands. That was
+a hopeless job; he thrust his hands into his pockets and began to count
+over the many times that he had waited in strange or remote places for
+trains or camels, mules or horses, to carry him to his business. In
+those days he could see—few men more clearly—and the spectacle of an
+armed camp at dinner under the stars was an ever fresh pleasure to the
+eye. There was colour, light, and motion, without which no man has much
+pleasure in living. This night there remained for him only one more
+journey through the darkness that never lifts to tell a man how far he
+has travelled. Then he would grip Torpenhow’s hand again—Torpenhow, who
+was alive and strong, and lived in the midst of the action that had
+once made the reputation of a man called Dick Heldar: not in the least
+to be confused with the blind, bewildered vagabond who seemed to answer
+to the same name. Yes, he would find Torpenhow, and come as near to the
+old life as might be. Afterwards he would forget everything: Bessie,
+who had wrecked the Melancolia and so nearly wrecked his life; Beeton,
+who lived in a strange unreal city full of tin-tacks and gas-plugs and
+matters that no men needed; that irrational being who had offered him
+love and loyalty for nothing, but had not signed her name; and most of
+all Maisie, who, from her own point of view, was undeniably right in
+all she did, but oh, at this distance, so tantalisingly fair.
+
+George’s hand on his arm pulled him back to the situation.
+
+“And what now?” said George.
+
+“Oh yes of course. What now? Take me to the camel-men. Take me to where
+the scouts sit when they come in from the desert. They sit by their
+camels, and the camels eat grain out of a black blanket held up at the
+corners, and the men eat by their side just like camels. Take me
+there!”
+
+The camp was rough and rutty, and Dick stumbled many times over the
+stumps of scrub. The scouts were sitting by their beasts, as Dick knew
+they would. The light of the dung-fires flickered on their bearded
+faces, and the camels bubbled and mumbled beside them at rest. It was
+no part of Dick’s policy to go into the desert with a convoy of
+supplies. That would lead to impertinent questions, and since a blind
+non-combatant is not needed at the front, he would probably be forced
+to return to Suakin.
+
+He must go up alone, and go immediately.
+
+“Now for one last bluff—the biggest of all,” he said. “Peace be with
+you, brethren!” The watchful George steered him to the circle of the
+nearest fire. The heads of the camel-sheiks bowed gravely, and the
+camels, scenting a European, looked sideways curiously like brooding
+hens, half ready to get to their feet.
+
+“A beast and a driver to go to the fighting line to-night,” said Dick.
+
+“A Mulaid?” said a voice, scornfully naming the best baggage-breed that
+he knew.
+
+“A Bisharin,” returned Dick, with perfect gravity. “A Bisharin without
+saddle-galls. Therefore no charge of thine, shock-head.”
+
+Two or three minutes passed. Then—“We be knee-haltered for the night.
+There is no going out from the camp.”
+
+“Not for money?”
+
+“H’m! Ah! English money?”
+
+Another depressing interval of silence.
+
+“How much?”
+
+“Twenty-five pounds English paid into the hand of the driver at my
+journey’s end, and as much more into the hand of the camel-sheik here,
+to be paid when the driver returns.”
+
+This was royal payment, and the sheik, who knew that he would get his
+commission on this deposit, stirred in Dick’s behalf.
+
+“For scarcely one night’s journey—fifty pounds. Land and wells and good
+trees and wives to make a man content for the rest of his days. Who
+speaks?” said Dick.
+
+“I,” said a voice. “I will go—but there is no going from the camp.”
+
+“Fool! I know that a camel can break his knee-halter, and the sentries
+do not fire if one goes in chase. Twenty-five pounds and another
+twenty-five pounds. But the beast must be a good Bisharin; I will take
+no baggage-camel.”
+
+Then the bargaining began, and at the end of half an hour the first
+deposit was paid over to the sheik, who talked in low tones to the
+driver.
+
+Dick heard the latter say: “A little way out only. Any baggage-beast
+will serve. Am I a fool to waste my cattle for a blind man?”
+
+“And though I cannot see’—Dick lifted his voice a little—“yet I carry
+that which has six eyes, and the driver will sit before me. If we do
+not reach the English troops in the dawn he will be dead.”
+
+“But where, in God’s name, are the troops?”
+
+“Unless thou knowest let another man ride. Dost thou know? Remember it
+will be life or death to thee.”
+
+“I know,” said the driver, sullenly. “Stand back from my beast. I am
+going to slip him.”
+
+“Not so swiftly. George, hold the camel’s head a moment. I want to feel
+his cheek.” The hands wandered over the hide till they found the
+branded half-circle that is the mark of the Biharin, the light-built
+riding-camel.
+
+“That is well. Cut this one loose. Remember no blessing of God comes on
+those who try to cheat the blind.”
+
+The men chuckled by the fires at the camel-driver’s discomfiture. He
+had intended to substitute a slow, saddle-galled baggage-colt.
+
+“Stand back!” one shouted, lashing the Biharin under the belly with a
+quirt. Dick obeyed as soon as he felt the nose-string tighten in his
+hand,—and a cry went up, “Illaha! Aho! He is loose.”
+
+With a roar and a grunt the Biharin rose to his feet and plunged
+forward toward the desert, his driver following with shouts and
+lamentation.
+
+George caught Dick’s arm and hurried him stumbling and tripping past a
+disgusted sentry who was used to stampeding camels.
+
+“What’s the row now?” he cried.
+
+“Every stitch of my kit on that blasted dromedary,” Dick answered,
+after the manner of a common soldier.
+
+“Go on, and take care your throat’s not cut outside—you and your
+dromedary’s.”
+
+The outcries ceased when the camel had disappeared behind a hillock,
+and his driver had called him back and made him kneel down.
+
+“Mount first,” said Dick. Then climbing into the second seat and gently
+screwing the pistol muzzle into the small of his companion’s back, “Go
+on in God’s name, and swiftly. Good-bye, George. Remember me to Madame,
+and have a good time with your girl. Get forward, child of the Pit!”
+
+A few minutes later he was shut up in a great silence, hardly broken by
+the creaking of the saddle and the soft pad of the tireless feet. Dick
+adjusted himself comfortably to the rock and pitch of the pace, girthed
+his belt tighter, and felt the darkness slide past. For an hour he was
+conscious only of the sense of rapid progress.
+
+“A good camel,” he said at last.
+
+“He was never underfed. He is my own and clean bred,” the driver
+replied.
+
+“Go on.”
+
+His head dropped on his chest and he tried to think, but the tenor of
+his thoughts was broken because he was very sleepy. In the half doze it
+seemed that he was learning a punishment hymn at Mrs. Jennett’s. He had
+committed some crime as bad as Sabbath-breaking, and she had locked him
+up in his bedroom. But he could never repeat more than the first two
+lines of the hymn—
+
+When Israel of the Lord beloved
+Out of the land of bondage came.
+
+
+He said them over and over thousands of times. The driver turned in the
+saddle to see if there were any chance of capturing the revolver and
+ending the ride. Dick roused, struck him over the head with the butt,
+and stormed himself wide awake. Somebody hidden in a clump of
+camel-thorn shouted as the camel toiled up rising ground. A shot was
+fired, and the silence shut down again, bringing the desire to sleep.
+Dick could think no longer. He was too tired and stiff and cramped to
+do more than nod uneasily from time to time, waking with a start and
+punching the driver with the pistol.
+
+“Is there a moon?” he asked drowsily.
+
+“She is near her setting.”
+
+“I wish that I could see her. Halt the camel. At least let me hear the
+desert talk.”
+
+The man obeyed. Out of the utter stillness came one breath of wind. It
+rattled the dead leaves of a shrub some distance away and ceased. A
+handful of dry earth detached itself from the edge of a rail trench and
+crumbled softly to the bottom.
+
+“Go on. The night is very cold.”
+
+Those who have watched till the morning know how the last hour before
+the light lengthens itself into many eternities. It seemed to Dick that
+he had never since the beginning of original darkness done anything at
+all save jolt through the air. Once in a thousand years he would finger
+the nailheads on the saddle-front and count them all carefully.
+Centuries later he would shift his revolver from his right hand to his
+left and allow the eased arm to drop down at his side. From the safe
+distance of London he was watching himself thus employed,—watching
+critically. Yet whenever he put out his hand to the canvas that he
+might paint the tawny yellow desert under the glare of the sinking
+moon, the black shadow of a camel and the two bowed figures atop, that
+hand held a revolver and the arm was numbed from wrist to collar-bone.
+Moreover, he was in the dark, and could see no canvas of any kind
+whatever.
+
+The driver grunted, and Dick was conscious of a change in the air.
+
+“I smell the dawn,” he whispered.
+
+“It is here, and yonder are the troops. Have I done well?”
+
+The camel stretched out its neck and roared as there came down wind the
+pungent reek of camels in the square.
+
+“Go on. We must get there swiftly. Go on.”
+
+“They are moving in their camp. There is so much dust that I cannot see
+what they do.”
+
+“Am I in better case? Go forward.”
+
+They could hear the hum of voices ahead, the howling and the bubbling
+of the beasts and the hoarse cries of the soldiers girthing up for the
+day.
+
+Two or three shots were fired.
+
+“Is that at us? Surely they can see that I am English,” Dick spoke
+angrily.
+
+“Nay, it is from the desert,” the driver answered, cowering in his
+saddle.
+
+“Go forward, my child! Well it is that the dawn did not uncover us an
+hour ago.”
+
+The camel headed straight for the column and the shots behind
+multiplied. The children of the desert had arranged that most
+uncomfortable of surprises, a dawn attack for the English troops, and
+were getting their distance by snap-shots at the only moving object
+without the square.
+
+“What luck! What stupendous and imperial luck!” said Dick. “It’s “just
+before the battle, mother.” Oh, God has been most good to me!
+
+Only’—the agony of the thought made him screw up his eyes for an
+instant—“Maisie...”
+
+“Allahu! We are in,” said the man, as he drove into the rearguard and
+the camel knelt.
+
+“Who the deuce are you? Despatches or what? What’s the strength of the
+enemy behind that ridge? How did you get through?” asked a dozen
+voices. For all answer Dick took a long breath, unbuckled his belt, and
+shouted from the saddle at the top of a wearied and dusty voice,
+“Torpenhow! Ohe, Torp! Coo-ee, Tor-pen-how.”
+
+A bearded man raking in the ashes of a fire for a light to his pipe
+moved very swiftly towards that cry, as the rearguard, facing about,
+began to fire at the puffs of smoke from the hillocks around. Gradually
+the scattered white cloudlets drew out into the long lines of banked
+white that hung heavily in the stillness of the dawn before they turned
+over wave-like and glided into the valleys. The soldiers in the square
+were coughing and swearing as their own smoke obstructed their view,
+and they edged forward to get beyond it. A wounded camel leaped to its
+feet and roared aloud, the cry ending in a bubbling grunt. Some one had
+cut its throat to prevent confusion. Then came the thick sob of a man
+receiving his death-wound from a bullet; then a yell of agony and
+redoubled firing.
+
+There was no time to ask any questions.
+
+“Get down, man! Get down behind the camel!”
+
+“No. Put me, I pray, in the forefront of the battle.” Dick turned his
+face to Torpenhow and raised his hand to set his helmet straight, but,
+miscalculating the distance, knocked it off. Torpenhow saw that his
+hair was gray on the temples, and that his face was the face of an old
+man.
+
+“Come down, you damned fool! Dickie, come off!”
+
+And Dick came obediently, but as a tree falls, pitching sideways from
+the Bisharin’s saddle at Torpenhow’s feet. His luck had held to the
+last, even to the crowning mercy of a kindly bullet through his head.
+
+Torpenhow knelt under the lee of the camel, with Dick’s body in his
+arms.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIGHT THAT FAILED ***
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