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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Light That Failed, by Rudyard Kipling
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+Title: The Light That Failed
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+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
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+Prepared by David Reed haradda@aol.com or davidr@inconnect.com
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+
+The Light That Failed
+
+by 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, 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 wa 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 led 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 b 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 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 ver 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 purse. 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 ant
+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 spash 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 starying 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 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 tot he 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. Than 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
+they 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 you 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 owhat 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 by 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.' 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 stgudio
+door, repeating the phrase with an awful gravity.
+
+'You'll be more damned when I'm done with you,' said the Nilghai,
+upheaving his bulk from behind Torpenhow's shoulder and waving a
+sheaf of half-dry manuscript. 'Dick, it is of common report that you are
+suffering from swelled head.'
+
+'Halloo, Nilghai. Back again? How are the Balkans and all the little
+Balkans? One side of your face is out of drawing, as usual.'
+
+'Never mind that. I am commissioned to smite you in print. Torpenhow
+refuses from false delicacy. I've been overhauling the pot-boilers in your
+studio. They are simply disgraceful.'
+
+'Oho! that's it, is it? If you think you can slate me, you're wrong. You
+can only describe, and you need as much room to turn in, on paper, as a
+P. and O. cargo-boat. But continue, and be swift. I'm going to bed.'
+
+'H'm! h'm! h'm! The first part only deals with your pictures. Here's the
+peroration: "For work done without conviction, for power wasted on
+trivialities, for labour expended with levity for the deliberate purpose of
+winning the easy applause of a fashion-driven public----"
+'That's "His Last Shot," second edition. Go on.'
+
+'----"public, there remains but one end,--the oblivion that is preceded by
+toleration and cenotaphed with contempt. From that fate Mr. Heldar has
+yet to prove himself out of danger.'
+
+'Wow--wow--wow--wow--wow!' said Dick, profanely. 'It's a clumsy ending
+and vile journalese, but it's quite true. And yet,'--he sprang to his feet
+and snatched at the manuscript,--'you scarred, deboshed, battered old
+gladiator! you're sent out when a war begins, to minister to the blind,
+brutal, British public's bestial thirst for blood. They have no arenas now,
+but they must have special correspondents. You're a fat gladiator who
+comes up through a trap-door and talks of what he's seen. You stand on
+precisely the same level as an energetic bishop, an affable actress, a
+devastating cyclone, or--mine own sweet self. And you presume to lecture
+me about my work! Nilghai, if it were worth while I'd caricature you in
+four papers!'
+
+The Nilghai winced. He had not thought of this.
+
+'As it is, I shall take this stuff and tear it small--so!' The manuscript
+fluttered in slips down the dark well of the staircase. 'Go home, Nilghai,'
+
+said Dick; 'go home to your lonely little bed, and leave me in peace. I am
+about to turn in till to-morrow.'
+
+'Why, it isn't seven yet!' said Torpenhow, with amazement.
+
+'It shall be two in the morning, if I choose,' said Dick, backing to the
+studio door. 'I go to grapple with a serious crisis, and I shan't want any
+dinner.'
+
+The door shut and was locked.
+
+'What can you do with a man like that?' said the Nilghai.
+
+'Leave him alone. He's as mad as a hatter.'
+
+At eleven there was a kicking on the studio door. 'Is the Nilghai with you
+still?' said a voice from within. 'Then tell him he might have condensed
+the whole of his lumbering nonsense into an epigram: "Only the free are
+bond, and only the bond are free." Tell him he's an idiot, Torp, and tell
+him I'm another.'
+
+'All right. Come out and have supper. You're smoking on an empty
+stomach.'
+
+There was no answer.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+'I have a thousand men,' said he,
+'To wait upon my will,
+And towers nine upon the Tyne,
+And three upon the Till.'?
+
+'And what care I for you men,' said she,
+'Or towers from Tyne to Till,
+Sith you must go with me,' she said,
+'To wait upon my will?'
+
+Sir Hoggie and the Fairies 
+
+NEXT morning Torpenhow found Dick sunk in deepest repose of
+tobacco.
+
+'Well, madman, how d'you feel?'
+
+'I don't know. I'm trying to find out.'
+
+'You had much better do some work.'
+
+'Maybe; but I'm in no hurry. I've made a discovery. Torp, there's too
+much Ego in my Cosmos.'
+
+'Not really! Is this revelation due to my lectures, or the Nilghai's?'
+
+'It came to me suddenly, all on my own account. Much too much Ego;
+and now I'm going to work.'
+
+He turned over a few half-finished sketches, drummed on a new canvas,
+cleaned three brushes, set Binkie to bite the toes of the lay figure, rattled
+through his collection of arms and accoutrements, and then went out
+abruptly, declaring that he had done enough for the day.
+
+'This is positively indecent,' said Torpenhow, 'and the first time that
+Dick has ever broken up a light morning. Perhaps he has found out that
+he has a soul, or an artistic temperament, or something equally valuable.
+
+That comes of leaving him alone for a month. Perhaps he has been going
+out of evenings. I must look to this.' He rang for the bald-headed old
+housekeeper, whom nothing could astonish or annoy.
+
+'Beeton, did Mr. Heldar dine out at all while I was out of town?'
+
+'Never laid 'is dress-clothes out once, sir, all the time. Mostly 'e dined in;
+but 'e brought some most remarkable young gentlemen up 'ere after
+theatres once or twice. Remarkable fancy they was. You gentlemen on
+the top floor does very much as you likes, but it do seem to me, sir,
+droppin' a walkin'-stick down five flights o' stairs an' then goin' down
+four abreast to pick it up again at half-past two in the mornin', singin'
+
+"Bring back the whiskey, Willie darlin,'"--not once or twice, but scores
+o' times,--isn't charity to the other tenants. What I say is, "Do as you
+would be done by." That's my motto.'
+
+'Of course! of course! I'm afraid the top floor isn't the quietest in the
+house.'
+
+'I make no complaints, sir. I have spoke to Mr. Heldar friendly, an' he
+laughed, an' did me a picture of the missis that is as good as a coloured
+print. It 'asn't the high shine of a photograph, but what I say is, "Never
+look a gift-horse in the mouth." Mr. Heldar's dress-clothes 'aven't been
+on him for weeks.'
+
+'Then it's all right,' said Torpenhow to himself. 'Orgies are healthy, and
+Dick has a head of his own, but when it comes to women making eyes I'm
+not so certain,--Binkie, never you be a man, little dorglums. They're
+contrary brutes, and they do things without any reason.'
+
+Dick had turned northward across the Park, but he was walking in the
+spirit on the mud-flats with Maisie. He laughed aloud as he remembered
+the day when he had decked Amomma's horns with the ham-frills, and
+Maisie, white with rage, had cuffed him. How long those four years
+seemed in review, and how closely Maisie was connected with every hour
+of them! Storm across the sea, and Maisie in a gray dress on the beach,
+sweeping her drenched hair out of her eyes and laughing at the
+homeward race of the fishing-smacks; hot sunshine on the mud-flats, and
+Maisie sniffing scornfully, with her chin in the air; Maisie flying before
+the wind that threshed the foreshore and drove the sand like small shot
+about her ears; Maisie, very composed and independent, telling lies to
+Mrs. Jennett while Dick supported her with coarser perjuries; Maisie
+picking her way delicately from stone to stone, a pistol in her hand and
+her teeth firm-set; and Maisie in a gray dress sitting on the grass
+between the mouth of a cannon and a nodding yellow sea-poppy. The
+pictures passed before him one by one, and the last stayed the longest.
+
+Dick was perfectly happy with a quiet peace that was as new to his mind
+as it was foreign to his experiences. It never occurred to him that there
+might be other calls upon his time than loafing across the Park in the
+forenoon.
+
+'There's a good working light now,' he said, watching his shadow
+placidly. 'Some poor devil ought to be grateful for this. And there's
+Maisie.'
+
+She was walking towards him from the Marble Arch, and he saw that no
+mannerism of her gait had been changed. It was good to find her still
+Maisie, and, so to speak, his next-door neighbour. No greeting passed
+between them, because there had been none in the old days.
+
+'What are you doing out of your studio at this hour?' said Dick, as one
+who was entitled to ask.
+
+'Idling. Just idling. I got angry with a chin and scraped it out. Then I left
+it in a little heap of paint-chips and came away.'
+
+'I know what palette-knifing means. What was the piccy?'
+
+'A fancy head that wouldn't come right,--horrid thing!'
+
+'I don't like working over scraped paint when I'm doing flesh. The grain
+comes up woolly as the paint dries.'
+
+'Not if you scrape properly.' Maisie waved her hand to illustrate her
+methods. There was a dab of paint on the white cuff. Dick laughed.
+
+'You're as untidy as ever.'
+
+'That comes well from you. Look at your own cuff.'
+
+'By Jove, yes! It's worse than yours. I don't think we've much altered in
+anything. Let's see, though.' He looked at Maisie critically. The pale blue
+haze of an autumn day crept between the tree-trunks of the Park and
+made a background for the gray dress, the black velvet toque above the
+black hair, and the resolute profile.
+
+'No, there's nothing changed. How good it is! D'you remember when I
+fastened your hair into the snap of a hand-bag?'
+
+Maisie nodded, with a twinkle in her eyes, and turned her full face to
+Dick.
+
+'Wait a minute,' said he. 'That mouth is down at the corners a little.
+
+Who's been worrying you, Maisie?'
+
+'No one but myself. I never seem to get on with my work, and yet I try
+hard enough, and Kami says----'
+
+'"Continuez, mesdemoiselles. Continuez toujours, mes enfants." Kami is
+depressing. I beg your pardon.'
+
+'Yes, that's what he says. He told me last summer that I was doing better
+and he'd let me exhibit this year.'
+
+'Not in this place, surely?'
+
+'Of course not. The Salon.'
+
+'You fly high.'
+
+'I've been beating my wings long enough. Where do you exhibit, Dick?'
+
+'I don't exhibit. I sell.'
+
+'What is your line, then?'
+
+'Haven't you heard?' Dick's eyes opened. Was this thing possible? He
+cast about for some means of conviction. They were not far from the
+Marble Arch. 'Come up Oxford Street a little and I'll show you.'
+
+A small knot of people stood round a print-shop that Dick knew well.
+
+'Some reproduction of my work inside,' he said, with suppressed
+triumph. Never before had success tasted so sweet upon the tongue. 'You
+see the sort of things I paint. D'you like it?'
+
+Maisie looked at the wild whirling rush of a field-battery going into
+action under fire. Two artillery-men stood behind her in the crowd.
+
+'They've chucked the off lead-'orse' said one to the other. ''E's tore up
+awful, but they're makin' good time with the others. That lead-driver
+drives better nor you, Tom. See 'ow cunnin' 'e's nursin' 'is 'orse.'
+
+'Number Three'll be off the limber, next jolt,' was the answer.
+
+'No, 'e won't. See 'ow 'is foot's braced against the iron? 'E's all right.'
+
+Dick watched Maisie's face and swelled with joy--fine, rank, vulgar
+triumph. She was more interested in the little crowd than in the picture.
+
+That was something that she could understand.
+
+'And I wanted it so! Oh, I did want it so!' she said at last, under her
+breath.
+
+'Me,--all me!' said Dick, placidly. 'Look at their faces. It hits 'em. They
+don't know what makes their eyes and mouths open; but I know. And I
+know my work's right.'
+
+'Yes. I see. Oh, what a thing to have come to one!'
+
+'Come to one, indeed! I had to go out and look for it. What do you think?'
+
+'I call it success. Tell me how you got it.'
+
+They returned to the Park, and Dick delivered himself of the saga of his
+own doings, with all the arrogance of a young man speaking to a woman.
+
+From the beginning he told the tale, the I--I--I's flashing through the
+records as telegraph-poles fly past the traveller. Maisie listened and
+nodded her head. The histories of strife and privation did not move her a
+hair's-breadth. At the end of each canto he would conclude, 'And that
+gave me some notion of handling colour,' or light, or whatever it might
+be that he had set out to pursue and understand. He led her breathless
+across half the world, speaking as he had never spoken in his life before.
+
+And in the flood-tide of his exaltation there came upon him a great desire
+to pick up this maiden who nodded her head and said, 'I understand. Go
+on,'--to pick her up and carry her away with him, because she was
+Maisie, and because she understood, and because she was his right, and a
+woman to be desired above all women.
+
+Then he checked himself abruptly. 'And so I took all I wanted,' he said,
+'and I had to fight for it. Now you tell.'
+
+Maisie's tale was almost as gray as her dress. It covered years of patient
+toil backed by savage pride that would not be broken thought dealers
+laughed, and fogs delayed work, and Kami was unkind and even
+sarcastic, and girls in other studios were painfully polite. It had a few
+bright spots, in pictures accepted at provincial exhibitions, but it wound
+up with the oft repeated wail, 'And so you see, Dick, I had no success,
+though I worked so hard.'
+
+Then pity filled Dick. Even thus had Maisie spoken when she could not
+hit the breakwater, half an hour before she had kissed him. And that had
+happened yesterday.
+
+'Never mind,' he said. 'I'll tell you something, if you'll believe it.' The
+words were shaping themselves of their own accord. 'The whole thing,
+lock, stock, and barrel, isn't worth one big yellow sea-poppy below Fort
+Keeling.'
+
+Maisie flushed a little. 'It's all very well for you to talk, but you've had
+the success and I haven't.'
+
+'Let me talk, then. I know you'll understand. Maisie, dear, it sounds a bit
+absurd, but5 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,--thie 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 grin, 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 lone. 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 and 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 it 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 said; 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 though, 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.'
+
+The 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 you 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 ever 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 quit
+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 the 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 he 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 know 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-had 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 angles 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.'
+
+'Tempe 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 filed 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 lover
+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 should told him that it was not seemly to charge of 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 Bessic,--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'' 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
+thin, 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 god 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 our 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 precis 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,--rangint, 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?' aid 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 mind,--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 it 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 lecture 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 f 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 flue 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,
+Topr! 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 rail-way 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 ma 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
+patch 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 mor 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 noting 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 hear--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 Trafalgal 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 b reeze 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 caf‚-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, 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 says 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 to 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 you 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 clamouring 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 stare 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 out side--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 in
+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 believed
+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 Project Gutenberg Etext The Light That Failed, by Rudyard Kipling
+