The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition
by
Rudyard Kipling
Part 12 out of 18
for that collar by return of post, and was not pleased when she learned that it
took time to make. When at last Dick forwarded the gift, she forgot to thank
him for it.
Many holidays had come and gone since that day, and Dick had grown into a lanky
hobbledehoy more than ever conscious of his bad clothes. Not for a moment had
Mrs. Jennett relaxed her tender care of him, but the average canings of a
public school--Dick fell under punishment about three times a month--filled him
with contempt for her powers. "She doesn't hurt," he explained to Maisie, who
urged him to rebellion, "and she is kinder to you after she has whacked me."
Dick shambled through the days unkempt in body and savage in soul, as the
smaller boys of the school learned to know, for when the spirit moved him he
would hit them, cunningly and with science. The same spirit made him more than
once try to tease Maisie, but the girl refused to be made unhappy. "We are both
miserable as it is," said she. "What is the use of trying to make things worse?
Let's find things to do, and forget things."
The pistol was the outcome of that search. It could only be used on the
muddiest foreshore of the beach, far away from the bathing-machines and
pierheads, below the grassy slopes of Fort Keeling. The tide ran out nearly two
miles on that coast, and the many-coloured mud-banks, touched by the sun, sent
up a lamentable smell of dead weed. It was late in the afternoon when Dick and
Maisie arrived on their ground, Amomma trotting patiently behind them.
"Mf!" said Maisie, sniffing the air. "I wonder what makes the sea so smelly? I
don'tlike 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'tworry 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'tbe 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'tknow 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'tthey?"
"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 tomorrow 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-eyed 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-
shell 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'tsay 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 very closely together, for they ate from the same dish, they shared
the same water-bottle, and, most binding tie of all, their mails went off
together. It was Dick who managed to make gloriously drunk a telegraph-clerk in
a palm hut far beyond the Second Cataract, and, while the man lay in bliss on
the floor, possessed himself of some laboriously acquired exclusive
information, forwarded by a confiding correspondent of an opposition syndicate,
made a careful duplicate of the matter, and brought the result to Torpenhow,
who said that all was fair in love or war correspondence, and built an
excellent descriptive article from his rival's riotous waste of words. It was
Torpenhow who--but the tale of their adventures, together and apart, from
Philae to the waste wilderness of Herawi and Muella, would fill many books.
They had been penned into a square side by side, in deadly fear of being shot
by over-excited soldiers; they had fought with baggage-camels in the chill
dawn; they had jogged along in silence under blinding sun on indefatigable
little Egyptian horses; and they had floundered on the shallows of the Nile
when the whale-boat in which they had found a berth chose to hit a hidden rock
and rip out half her bottom-planks.
Now they were sitting on the sand-bank, and the whale-boats were bringing up
the remainder of the column.
"Yes," said Torpenhow, as he put the last rude stitches into his over-long-
neglected gear, "it has been a beautiful business."
"The patch or the campaign?" said Dick. "Don't think much of either, myself."
"You want the Euryalus brought up above the Third Cataract, don't you? and
eighty-one-ton guns at Jakdul? Now, I'm quite satisfied with my breeches." He
turned round gravely to exhibit himself, after the manner of a clown.
"It's very pretty. Specially the lettering on the sack. G.B.T. Government
Bullock Train. That's a sack from India."
"It's my initials,--Gilbert Belling Torpenhow. I stole the cloth on purpose.
What the mischief are the camel-corps doing yonder?" Torpenhow shaded his eyes
and looked across the scrub-strewn gravel.
A bugle blew furiously, and the men on the bank hurried to their arms and
accoutrements.
"'Pisan soldiery surprised while bathing,'" remarked Dick, calmly.
"D'you remember the picture? It's by Michael Angelo; all beginners copy it.
That scrub's alive with enemy."
The camel-corps on the bank yelled to the infantry to come to them, and a
hoarse shouting down the river showed that the remainder of the column had wind
of the trouble and was hastening to take share in it. As swiftly as a reach of
still water is crisped by the wind, the rock-strewn ridges and scrub-topped
hills were troubled and alive with armed men.
Mercifully, it occurred to these to stand far off for a time, to shout and
gesticulate joyously. One man even delivered himself of a long story. The
camel-corps did not fire. They were only too glad of a little breathing-space,
until some sort of square could be formed. The men on the sand-bank ran to
their side; and the whale-boats, as they toiled up within shouting distance,
were thrust into the nearest bank and emptied of all save the sick and a few
men to guard them. The Arab orator ceased his outcries, and his friends howled.
"They look like the Mahdi's men," said Torpenhow, elbowing himself into the
crush of the square; "but what thousands of 'em there are! The tribes hereabout
aren't against us, I know."
"Then the Mahdi's taken another town," said Dick, "and set all these yelping
devils free to show us up. Lend us your glass."
"Our scouts should have told us of this. We"ve been trapped," said a subaltern.
"Aren't the camel guns ever going to begin? Hurry up, you men!"
There was no need of any order. The men flung themselves panting against the
sides of the square, for they had good reason to know that whoso was left
outside when the fighting began would very probably die in an extremely
unpleasant fashion. The little hundred-and-fifty-pound camel-guns posted at one
corner of the square opened the ball as the square moved forward by its right
to get possession of a knoll of rising ground. All had fought in this manner
many times before, and there was no novelty in the entertainment; always the
same hot and stifling formation, the smell of dust and leather, the same
boltlike rush of the enemy, the same pressure on the weakest side, the few
minutes of hand-to-hand scuffle, and then the silence of the desert, broken
only by the yells of those whom their handful of cavalry attempted to 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 and the
tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing interest, for men
measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these things, counting
mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen pebble and branch. There was
no semblance of any concerted fighting. For aught the men knew, the enemy might
be attempting all four sides of the square at once. Their business was to
destroy what lay in front of them, to bayonet in the back those who passed over
them, and, dying, to drag down the slayer till he could be knocked on the head
by some avenging gun-butt.
Dick waited with Torpenhow and a young doctor till the stress grew unendurable.
It was hopeless to attend to the wounded till the attack was repulsed, so the
three moved forward gingerly towards the weakest side of the square. There was
a rush from without, the short hough-hough of the stabbing spears, and a man on
a horse, followed by thirty or forty others, dashed through, yelling and
hacking. The right flank of the square sucked in after them, and the other
sides sent help. The wounded, who knew that they had but a few hours more to
live, caught at the enemy's feet and brought them down, or, staggering into a
discarded rifle, fired blindly into the scuffle that raged in the centre of the
square.
Dick was conscious that somebody had cut him violently across his helmet, that
he had fired his revolver into a black, foam-flecked face which forthwith
ceased to bear any resemblance to a face, and that Torpenhow had gone down
under an Arab whom he had tried to "collar low," and was turning over and over
with his captive, feeling for the man's eyes. The doctor jabbed at a venture
with a bayonet, and a helmetless soldier fired over Dick's shoulder: the flying
grains of powder stung his cheek. It was to Torpenhow that Dick turned by
instinct. The representative of the Central Southern Syndicate had shaken
himself clear of his enemy, and rose, wiping his thumb on his trousers. The
Arab, both hands to his forehead, screamed aloud, then snatched up his spear
and rushed at Torpenhow, who was panting under shelter of Dick's revolver. Dick
fired twice, and the man dropped limply. His upturned face lacked one eye. The
musketry-fire redoubled, but cheers mingled with it. The rush had failed and
the enemy were flying. If the heart of the square were shambles, the ground
beyond was a butcher's shop. Dick thrust his way forward between the maddened
men. The remnant of the enemy were retiring, as the few--the very few--English
cavalry rode down the laggards.
Beyond the lines of the dead, a broad blood-stained Arab spear cast aside in
the retreat lay across a stump of scrub, and beyond this again the illimitable
dark levels of the desert. The sun caught the steel and turned it into a red
disc. Some one behind him was saying, "Ah, get away, you brute!" Dick raised
his revolver and pointed towards the desert. His eye was held by the red splash
in the distance, and the clamour about him seemed to die down to a very far-
away whisper, like the whisper of a level sea. There was the revolver and the
red light. . . . and the voice of some one scaring something away, exactly as
had fallen somewhere before,--a darkness that stung. He fired at random, and
the bullet went out across the desert as he muttered, "Spoilt my aim. There
aren't any more cartridges. We shall have to run home." He put his hand to his
head and brought it away covered with blood.
"Old man, you're cut rather badly," said Torpenhow. "I owe you something for
this business. Thanks. Stand up! I say, you can't be ill here."
Throughout the night, when the troops were encamped by the whale-boats, a black
figure danced in the strong moonlight on the sand-bar and shouted that Khartoum
the accursed one was dead,--was dead,--was dead,--that two steamers were rock-
staked on the Nile outside the city, and that of all their crews there remained
not one; and Khartoum was dead,--was dead,--was dead! But Torpenhow took no
heed. He was watching Dick, who called aloud to the restless Nile for Maisie,--
and again Maisie! "Behold a phenomenon," said Torpenhow, rearranging the
blanket. "Here is a man, presumably human, who mentions the name of one woman
only. And I've seen a good deal of delirium, too.--Dick, here's some fizzy
drink."
"Thank you, Maisie," said Dick.
CHAPTER III
So he thinks he shall take to the sea again
For one more cruise with his buccaneers,
To singe the beard of the King of Spain, And capture another Dean of Jaen
And sell him in Algiers.
--Dutch Picture. Longfellow
THE SOUDAN campaign and Dick's broken head had been some months ended and
mended, and the Central Southern Syndicate had paid Dick a certain sum on
account for work done, which work they were careful to assure him was not
altogether up to their standard. Dick heaved the letter into the Nile at Cairo,
cashed the draft in the same town, and bade a warm farewell to Torpenhow at the
station.
"I am going to lie up for a while and rest," said Torpenhow. "I don't know
where I shall live in London, but if God brings us to meet, we shall meet.
Are you staying here on the off-chance of another row? There will be none till
the Southern Soudan is reoccupied by our troops. Mark that. Goodbye; 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 tonight. 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 to the light and spoke of
twenty different things in the same breath.
"But you're looking tucked up," he concluded.
"Got anything to eat?" said Dick, his eye roaming round the room.
"I shall be having breakfast in a minute. What do you say to sausages?"
"No, anything but sausages! Torp, I've been starving on that accursed horse-
flesh for thirty days and thirty nights."
"Now, what lunacy has been your latest?"
Dick spoke of the last few weeks with unbridled speech. Then he opened his
coat; there was no waistcoat below. "I ran it fine, awfully fine, but I've just
scraped through."
"You haven't much sense, but you've got a backbone, anyhow. Eat, and talk
afterwards." Dick fell upon eggs and bacon and gorged till he could gorge no
more. Torpenhow handed him a filled pipe, and he smoked as men smoke who for
three weeks have been deprived of good tobacco.
"Ouf!" said he. "That's heavenly! Well?"
"Why in the world didn't you come to me?"
"Couldn't; I owe you too much already, old man. Besides I had a sort of
superstition that this temporary starvation--that's what it was, and it hurt--
would bring me luck later. It's over and done with now, and none of the
syndicate know how hard up I was. Fire away. What's the exact state of affairs
as regards myself?"
"You had my wire? You've caught on here. People like your work immensely. I
don't know why, but they do. They say you have a fresh touch and a new way of
drawing things. And, because they're chiefly home-bred English, they say you
have insight. You're wanted by half a dozen papers; you're wanted to illustrate
books."
Dick grunted scornfully.
"You're wanted to work up your smaller sketches and sell them to the dealers.
They seem to think the money sunk in you is a good investment. Good Lord! who
can account for the fathomless folly of the public?"
"They're a remarkably sensible people."
"They are subject to fits, if that's what you mean; and you happen to be the
object of the latest fit among those who are interested in what they call Art.
Just now you're a fashion, a phenomenon, or whatever you please. I appeared to
be the only person who knew anything about you here, and I have been showing
the most useful men a few of the sketches you gave me from time to time. Those
coming after your work on the Central Southern Syndicate appear to have done
your business. You're in luck."
"Huh! call it luck! Do call it luck, when a man has been kicking about the
world like a dog, waiting for it to come! I'll luck 'em later on. I want a
place to work first."
"Come here," said Torpenhow, crossing the landing. "This place is a big box
room really, but it will do for you. There's your skylight, or your north
light, or whatever window you call it, and plenty of room to thrash about in,
and a bedroom beyond. What more do you need?"
"Good enough," said Dick, looking round the large room that took up a third of
a top story in the rickety chambers overlooking the Thames. A pale yellow sun
shone through the skylight and showed the much dirt of the place. Three steps
led from the door to the landing, and three more to Torpenhow's room. The well
of the staircase disappeared into darkness, pricked by tiny gas-jets, and there
were sounds of men talking and doors slamming seven flights below, in the warm
gloom.
"Do they give you a free hand here?" said Dick, cautiously. He was Ishmael
enough to know the value of liberty.
"Anything you like; latch-keys and license unlimited. We are permanent tenants
for the most part here. 'Tisn't a place I would recommend for a Young Men's
Christian Association, but it will serve. I took these rooms for you when I
wired."
"You're a great deal too kind, old man."
"You didn't suppose you were going away from me, did you?" Torpenhow put his
hand on Dick's shoulder, and the two walked up and down the room, henceforward
to be called the studio, in sweet and silent communion. They heard rapping at
Torpenhow's door. "That's some ruffian come up for a drink," said Torpenhow;
and he raised his voice cheerily. There entered no one more ruffianly than a
portly middle-aged gentleman in a satin-faced frockcoat. His lips were parted
and pale, and there were deep pouches under the eyes.
"Weak heart," said Dick to himself, and, as he shook hands, "very weak heart.
His pulse is shaking his fingers."
The man introduced himself as the head of the Central Southern Syndicate and
"one of the most ardent admirers of your work, Mr. Heldar. I assure you, in the
name of the syndicate, that we are immensely indebted to you; and I trust, Mr.
Heldar, you won't forget that we were largely instrumental in bringing you
before the public." He panted because of the seven flights of stairs.
Dick glanced at Torpenhow, whose left eyelid lay for a moment dead on his
cheek.
"I shan't forget," said Dick, every instinct of defence roused in him.
"You've paid me so well that I couldn't, you know. By the way, when I am
settled in this place I should like to send and get my sketches. There must be
nearly a hundred and fifty of them with you."
"That is er--is what I came to speak about. I fear we can't allow it exactly,
Mr. Heldar. In the absence of any specified agreement, the sketches are our
property, of course."
"Do you mean to say that you are going to keep them?"
"Yes; and we hope to have your help, on your own terms, Mr. Heldar, to assist
us in arranging a little exhibition, which, backed by our name and the
influence we naturally command among the press, should be of material service
to you. Sketches such as yours----"
"Belong to me. You engaged me by wire, you paid me the lowest rates you dared.
You can't mean to keep them! Good God alive, man, they're all I've got in the
world!"
Torpenhow watched Dick"s face and whistled.
Dick walked up and down, thinking. He saw the whole of his little stock in
trade, the first weapon of his equipment, annexed at the outset of his campaign
by an elderly gentleman whose name Dick had not caught aright, who said that he
represented a syndicate, which was a thing for which Dick had not the least
reverence. The injustice of the proceedings did not much move him; he had seen
the strong hand prevail too often in other places to be squeamish over the
moral aspects of right and wrong.
But he ardently desired the blood of the gentleman in the frockcoat, and when
he spoke again, 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 thing's soft all over--like a woman."
There are few things more poignantly humiliating than being handled by a man
who does not intend to strike. The head of the syndicate began to breathe
heavily. Dick walked round him, pawing him, as a cat paws a soft hearth-rug.
Then he traced with his forefinger the leaden pouches underneath the eyes, and
shook his head. "You were going to steal my things,--mine, mine, mine!--you,
who don't know when you may die. Write a note to your office,--you say you're
the head of it,--and order them to give Torpenhow my sketches,--every one of
them. Wait a minute: your hand's shaking. Now!" He thrust a pocket-book before
him. The note was written. Torpenhow took it and departed without a word, while
Dick walked round and round the spellbound captive, giving him such advice as
he conceived best for the welfare of his soul. When Torpenhow returned with a
gigantic portfolio, he heard Dick say, almost soothingly, "Now, I hope this
will be a lesson to you; and if you worry me when I have settled down to work
with any nonsense about actions for assault, believe me, I'll catch you and
manhandle you, and you'll die. You haven't very long to live, anyhow. Go!
Imshi, Vootsak,--get out!" The man departed, staggering and dazed. Dick drew a
long breath: "Phew! what a lawless lot these people are! The first thing a poor
orphan meets is gang robbery, organised burglary! Think of the hideous
blackness of that man's mind! Are my sketches all right, Torp?"
"Yes; one hundred and forty-seven of them. Well, I must say, Dick, you've begun
well."
"He was interfering with me. It only meant a few pounds to him, but it was
everything to me. I don't think he'll bring an action. I gave him some medical
advice gratis about the state of his body. It was cheap at the little flurry it
cost him. Now, let's look at my things."
Two minutes later Dick had thrown himself down on the floor and was deep in the
portfolio, chuckling lovingly as he turned the drawings over and thought of the
price at which they had been bought.
The afternoon was well advanced when Torpenhow came to the door and saw Dick
dancing a wild saraband under the skylight.
"I builded better than I knew, Torp," he said, without stopping the dance.
"They're good! They're damned good! They'll go like flame! I shall have an
exhibition of them on my own brazen hook. And that man would have cheated me
out of it! Do you know that I'm sorry now that I didn't actually hit him?"
"Go out," said Torpenhow,--"go out and pray to be delivered from the sin of
arrogance, which you never will be. Bring your things up from whatever place
you're staying in, and we"ll try to make this barn a little more shipshape."
"And then--oh, then," said Dick, still capering, "we will spoil the Egyptians!"
CHAPTER IV
The wolf-cub at even lay hid in the corn,
When the smoke of the cooking hung gray:
He knew where the doe made a couch for her fawn,
And he looked to his strength for his prey.
But the moon swept the smoke-wreaths away.
And he turned from his meal in the villager"s close,
And he bayed to the moon as she rose.
--In Seonee.
"WELL, and how does success taste?" said Torpenhow, some three months later. He
had just returned to chambers after a holiday in the country.
"Good," said Dick, as he sat licking his lips before the easel in the studio.
"I want more,--heaps more. The lean years have passed, and I approve of these
fat ones."
"Be careful, old man. That way lies bad work."
Torpenhow was sprawling in a long chair with a small fox-terrier asleep on his
chest, while Dick was preparing a canvas. A dais, a background, and a lay-
figure were the only fixed objects in the place. They rose from a wreck of
oddments that began with felt-covered water-bottles, belts, and regimental
badges, and ended with a small bale of second-hand uniforms and a stand of
mixed arms. The mark of muddy feet on the dais showed that a military model had
just gone away. The watery autumn sunlight was falling, and shadows sat in the
corners of the studio.
"Yes," said Dick, deliberately, "I like the power; I like the fun; I like the
fuss; and above all I like the money. I almost like the people who make the
fuss and pay the money. Almost. But they're a queer gang,--an amazingly queer
gang!"
"They have been good enough to you, at any rate. That tin-pot exhibition of
your sketches must have paid. Did you see that the papers called it the 'Wild
Work Show'?"
"Never mind. I sold every shred of canvas I wanted to; and, on my word, I
believe it was because they believed I was a self-taught flagstone artist. I
should have got better prices if I worked my things on wool or scratched them
on camel-bone instead of using mere black and white and colour. Verily, they
are a queer gang, these people. Limited isn't the word to describe 'em. I met
a fellow the other day who told me that it was impossible that shadows on white
sand should be blue,--ultramarine,--as they are. I found out, later, that the
man had been as far as Brighton beach; but he knew all about Art, confound him.
He gave me a lecture on it, and recommended me to go to school to learn
technique. I wonder what old Kami would have said to that."
"When were you under Kami, man of extraordinary beginnings?"
"I studied with him for two years in Paris. He taught by personal magnetism.
All he ever said was, 'Continuez, mes enfants,' and you had to make the best
you could of that. He had a divine touch, and he knew something about colour.
Kami used to dream colour; I swear he could never have seen the genuine
article; but he evolved it; and it was good."
"Recollect some of those views in the Soudan?" said Torpenhow, with a provoking
drawl.
Dick squirmed in his place. "Don't! It makes me want to get out there again.
What colour that was! Opal and umber and amber and claret and brick-red and
sulphur--cockatoo-crest-sulphur--against brown, with a nigger-black rock
sticking up in the middle of it all, and a decorative frieze of camels
festooning in front of a pure pale turquoise sky." He began to walk up and
down. "And yet, you know, if you try to give these people the thing as God gave
it, keyed down to their comprehension and according to the powers He has given
you----"
"Modest man! Go on."
"Half a dozen epicene young pagans who haven't even been to Algiers will tell
you, first, that your notion is borrowed, and, secondly, that it isn't Art."
"This comes of my leaving town for a month. Dickie, you've been promenading
among the toy-shops and hearing people talk."
"I couldn't help it," said Dick, penitently. "You weren't here, and it was
lonely these long evenings. A man can't work for ever."
"A man might have gone to a pub, and got decently drunk."
"I wish I had; but I forgathered with some men of sorts. They said they were
artists, and I knew some of them could draw,--but they wouldn't draw. They
gave me tea,--tea at five in the afternoon!--and talked about Art and the state
of their souls. As if their souls mattered. I've heard more about Art and seen
less of her in the last six months than in the whole of my life. Do you
remember Cassavetti, who worked for some continental syndicate, out with the
desert column? He was a regular Christmas-tree of contraptions when he took the
field in full fig, with his water-bottle, lanyard, revolver, writing-case,
housewife, gig-lamps, and the Lord knows what all. He used to fiddle about with
'em and show us how they worked; but he never seemed to do much except fudge
his reports from the Nilghai. See?"
"Dear old Nilghai! He's in town, fatter than ever. He ought to be up here this
evening. I see the comparison perfectly. You should have kept clear of all that
man-millinery. Serves you right; and I hope it will unsettle your mind."
"It won't. It has taught me what Art--holy sacred Art--means."
"You've learnt something while I've been away. What is Art?"
"Give 'em what they know, and when you've done it once do it again."
Dick dragged forward a canvas laid face to the wall. "Here's a sample of real
Art. It's going to be a facsimile reproduction for a weekly. I called it 'His
Last Shot.' It"s worked up from the little water-colour I made outside El
Maghrib. Well, I lured my model, a beautiful rifleman, up here with drink; I
drored him, and I redrored him, and I redrored him, and I made him a flushed,
dishevelled, bedevilled scallawag, with his helmet at the back of his head, and
the living fear of death in his eye, and the blood oozing out of a cut over his
ankle-bone. He wasn't pretty, but he was all soldier and very much man."
"Once more, modest child!"
Dick laughed. "Well, it's only to you I'm talking. I did him just as well as I
knew how, making allowance for the slickness of oils. Then the art-manager of
that abandoned paper said that his subscribers wouldn't like it. It was brutal
and coarse and violent,--man being naturally gentle when he's fighting for his
life. They wanted something more restful, with a little more colour. I could
have said a good deal, but you might as well talk to a sheep as an art-manager.
I took my 'Last Shot' back. Behold the result! I put him into a lovely red coat
without a speck on it. That is Art. I polished his boots,--observe the high
light on the toe. That is Art. I cleaned his rifle,--rifles are always clean on
service,--because that is Art. I pipeclayed his helmet,--pipeclay is always
used on active service, and is indispensable to Art. I shaved his chin, I
washed his hands, and gave him an air of fatted peace. Result, military
tailor's pattern-plate. Price, thank Heaven, twice as much as for the first
sketch, which was moderately decent."
"And do you suppose you're going to give that thing out as your work?"
"Why not? I did it. Alone I did it, in the interests of sacred, home-bred Art
and Dickenson's Weekly."
Torpenhow smoked in silence for a while. Then came the verdict, delivered from
rolling clouds: "If you were only a mass of blathering vanity, Dick, I wouldn't
mind,--I'd let you go to the deuce on your own mahl-stick; but when I consider
what you are to me, and when I find that to vanity you add the twopenny-
halfpenny pique of a twelve-year-old girl, then I bestir myself in your behalf.
Thus!"
The canvas ripped as Torpenhow"s booted foot shot through it, and the terrier
jumped down, thinking rats were about.
"If you have any bad language to use, use it. You have not. I continue. You are
an idiot, because no man born of woman is strong enough to take liberties with
his public, even though they be--which they ain't--all you say they are."
"But they don't know any better. What can you expect from creatures born and
bred in this light?" Dick pointed to the yellow fog. "If they want furniture-
polish, let them have furniture-polish, so long as they pay for it. They are
only men and women. You talk as if they were gods."
"That sounds very fine, but it has nothing to do with the case. They are they
people you have to do work for, whether you like it or not. They are your
masters. Don'tbe 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 what the
certainty of cash means to a man who has always wanted it badly. Nothing will
pay me for some of my life's joys; on that Chinese pig-boat, for instance, when
we ate bread and jam for every meal, because Ho-Wang wouldn't allow us
anything better, and it all tasted of pig,--Chinese pig. I've worked for this,
I've sweated and I've starved for this, line on line and month after month. And
now I've got it I am going to make the most of it while it lasts. Let them pay-
-they've no knowledge."
"What does Your Majesty please to want? You can't smoke more than you do; you
won't drink; you're a gross feeder; and you dress in the dark, by the look of
you. You wouldn't keep a horse the other day when I suggested, because, you
said, it might fall lame, and whenever you cross the street you take a hansom.
Even you are not foolish enough to suppose that theatres and all the live
things you can 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. Goodbye, Dick."
"Goodbye, 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 tomorrow, if there is no working light. I walk from the
Marble Arch down and back again; that is my little excursion. But of course I
shall see you again." She stepped into the omnibus and was swallowed up by the
fog.
"Well--I--am--damned!" exclaimed Dick, and returned to the chambers.
Torpenhow and the Nilghai found him sitting on the steps to the studio door,
repeating the phrase with an awful gravity.
"You'll be more damned when I'm done with you," said the Nilghai, upheaving his
bulk from behind Torpenhow's shoulder and waving a sheaf of half-dry
manuscript. "Dick, it is of common report that you are suffering from swelled
head."
"Halloo, Nilghai. Back again? How are the Balkans and all the little Balkans?
One side of your face is out of drawing, as usual."
"Never mind that. I am commissioned to smite you in print. Torpenhow refuses
from false delicacy. I've been overhauling the pot-boilers in your studio. They
are simply disgraceful."
"Oho! that"s it, is it? If you think you can slate me, you're wrong. You can
only describe, and you need as much room to turn in, on paper, as a P. and O.
cargo-boat. But continue, and be swift. I'm going to bed."
"H'm! h'm! h'm! The first part only deals with your pictures. Here"s the
peroration: 'For work done without conviction, for power wasted on
trivialities, for labour expended with levity for the deliberate purpose of
winning the easy applause of a fashion-driven public----"
"That's "His Last Shot," second edition. Go on."
"----'public, there remains but one end,--the oblivion that is preceded by
toleration and cenotaphed with contempt. From that fate Mr. Heldar has yet to
prove himself out of danger."
"Wow--wow--wow--wow--wow!" said Dick, profanely. "It's a clumsy ending and vile
journalese, but it's quite true. And yet,"--he sprang to his feet and snatched
at the manuscript,--"you scarred, deboshed, battered old gladiator! you're sent
out when a war begins, to minister to the blind, brutal, British public's
bestial thirst for blood. They have no arenas now, but they must have special
correspondents. You're a fat gladiator who comes up through a trap-door and
talks of what he's seen. You stand on precisely the same level as an energetic
bishop, an affable actress, a devastating cyclone, or--mine own sweet self. And
you presume to lecture me about my work! Nilghai, if it were worth while I'd
caricature you in four papers!"
The Nilghai winced. He had not thought of this.
"As it is, I shall take this stuff and tear it small--so!" The manuscript
fluttered in slips down the dark well of the staircase. "Go home, Nilghai,"
said Dick; "go home to your lonely little bed, and leave me in peace. I am
about to turn in till to morrow."
"Why, it isn't seven yet!" said Torpenhow, with amazement.
"It shall be two in the morning, if I choose," said Dick, backing to the studio
door. "I go to grapple with a serious crisis, and I shan't want any dinner."
The door shut and was locked.
"What can you do with a man like that?" said the Nilghai.
"Leave him alone. He's as mad as a hatter."
At eleven there was a kicking on the studio door. "Is the Nilghai with you
still?" said a voice from within. "Then tell him he might have condensed the
whole of his lumbering nonsense into an epigram: 'Only the free are bond, and
only the bond are free.' Tell him he's an idiot, Torp, and tell him I'm
another."
"All right. Come out and have supper. You're smoking on an empty stomach."
There was no answer.
CHAPTER V
"I have a thousand men," said he,
"To wait upon my will,
And towers nine upon the Tyne,
And three upon the Till."
"And what care I for you men," said she,
"Or towers from Tyne to Till,
"Sith you must go with me," she said,
"To wait upon my will?"
--Sir Hoggie and the Fairies
Next morning Torpenhow found Dick sunk in deepest repose of tobacco.
"Well, madman, how d'you feel?"
"I don't know. I'm trying to find out."
"You had much better do some work."
"Maybe; but I'm in no hurry. I've made a discovery. Torp, there's too much Ego
in my Cosmos."
"Not really! Is this revelation due to my lectures, or the Nilghai's?"
"It came to me suddenly, all on my own account. Much too much Ego; and now I'm
going to work."
He turned over a few half-finished sketches, drummed on a new canvas, cleaned
three brushes, set Binkie to bite the toes of the lay figure, rattled through
his collection of arms and accoutrements, and then went out abruptly, declaring
that he had done enough for the day.
"This is positively indecent," said Torpenhow, "and the first time that Dick
has ever broken up a light morning. Perhaps he has found out that he has a
soul, or an artistic temperament, or something equally valuable. That comes of
leaving him alone for a month. Perhaps he has been going out of evenings. I
must look to this." He rang for the bald-headed old housekeeper, whom nothing
could astonish or annoy.
"Beeton, did Mr. Heldar dine out at all while I was out of town?"
"Never laid 'is dress-clothes out once, sir, all the time. Mostly 'e dined in;
but 'e brought some most remarkable young gentlemen up 'ere after theatres once
or twice. Remarkable fancy they was. You gentlemen on the top floor does very
much as you likes, but it do seem to me, sir, droppin' a walkin'-stick down
five flights o' stairs an' then goin' down four abreast to pick it up again at
half-past two in the mornin', singin' 'Bring back the whiskey, Willie
darlin','--not once or twice, but scores o' times,--isn't charity to the other
tenants. What I say is, 'Do as you would be done by.' That's my motto."
"Of course! of course! I'm afraid the top floor isn't the quietest in the
house."
"I make no complaints, sir. I have spoke to Mr. Heldar friendly, an' he
laughed, an' did me a picture of the missis that is as good as a coloured
print. It 'asn't the high shine of a photograph, but what I say is, 'Never look
a gift-horse in the mouth."'Mr. Heldar's dress-clothes 'aven't been on him for
weeks."
"Then it's all right," said Torpenhow to himself. "Orgies are healthy, and Dick
has a head of his own, but when it comes to women making eyes I'm not so
certain,--Binkie, never you be a man, little dorglums. They're contrary brutes,
and they do things without any reason."
Dick had turned northward across the Park, but he was walking in the spirit on
the mud-flats with Maisie. He laughed aloud as he remembered the day when he
had decked Amomma's horns with the ham-frills, and Maisie, white with rage, had
cuffed him. How long those four years seemed in review, and how closely Maisie
was connected with every hour of them! Storm across the sea, and Maisie in a
gray dress on the beach, sweeping her drenched hair out of her eyes and
laughing at the homeward race of the fishing-smacks; hot sunshine on the mud-
flats, and Maisie sniffing scornfully, with her chin in the air; Maisie flying
before the wind that threshed the foreshore and drove the sand like small shot
about her ears; Maisie, very composed and independent, telling lies to Mrs.
Jennett while Dick supported her with coarser perjuries; Maisie picking her way
delicately from stone to stone, a pistol in her hand and her teeth firm-set;
and Maisie in a gray dress sitting on the grass between the mouth of a cannon
and a nodding yellow sea-poppy. The pictures passed before him one by one, and
the last stayed the longest.
Dick was perfectly happy with a quiet peace that was as new to his mind as it
was foreign to his experiences. It never occurred to him that there might be
other calls upon his time than loafing across the Park in the forenoon.
"There's a good working light now," he said, watching his shadow placidly.
"Some poor devil ought to be grateful for this. And there's Maisie."
She was walking towards him from the Marble Arch, and he saw that no mannerism
of her gait had been changed. It was good to find her still Maisie, and, so to
speak, his next-door neighbour. No greeting passed between them, because there
had been none in the old days.
"What are you doing out of your studio at this hour?" said Dick, as one who was
entitled to ask.
"Idling. Just idling. I got angry with a chin and scraped it out. Then I left
it in a little heap of paint-chips and came away."
"I know what palette-knifing means. What was the piccy?"
"A fancy head that wouldn't come right,--horrid thing!"
"I don't like working over scraped paint when I'm doing flesh. The grain comes
up woolly as the paint dries."
"Not if you scrape properly." Maisie waved her hand to illustrate her methods.
There was a dab of paint on the white cuff. Dick laughed.
"You're as untidy as ever."
"That comes well from you. Look at your own cuff."
"By Jove, yes! It's worse than yours. I don't think we've much altered in
anything. Let's see, though." He looked at Maisie critically. The pale blue
haze of an autumn day crept between the tree-trunks of the Park and made a
background for the gray dress, the black velvet toque above the black hair, and
the resolute profile.
"No, there's nothing changed. How good it is! D'you remember when I fastened
your hair into the snap of a hand-bag?"
Maisie nodded, with a twinkle in her eyes, and turned her full face to Dick.
"Wait a minute," said he. "That mouth is down at the corners a little. Who's
been worrying you, Maisie?"
"No one but myself. I never seem to get on with my work, and yet I try hard
enough, and Kami says----"
"'Continuez, mesdemoiselles. Continuez toujours, mes enfants.' Kami is
depressing. I beg your pardon."
"Yes, that's what he says. He told me last summer that I was doing better and
he'd let me exhibit this year."
"Not in this place, surely?"
"Of course not. The Salon."
"You fly high."
"I've been beating my wings long enough. Where do you exhibit, Dick?"
"I don't exhibit. I sell."
"What is your line, then?"
"Haven't you heard?" Dick's eyes opened. Was this thing possible? He cast about
for some means of conviction. They were not far from the Marble Arch. "Come up
Oxford Street a little and I'll show you."
A small knot of people stood round a print-shop that Dick knew well.
"Some reproduction of my work inside," he said, with suppressed triumph. Never
before had success tasted so sweet upon the tongue. "You see the sort of things
I paint. D'you like it?"
Maisie looked at the wild whirling rush of a field-battery going into action
under fire. Two artillery-men stood behind her in the crowd.
"They've chucked the off lead-'orse" said one to the other. "'E's tore up
awful, but they're makin' good time with the others. That lead-driver drives
better nor you, Tom. See 'ow cunnin' 'e's nursin' 'is 'orse."
"Number Three'll be off the limber, next jolt," was the answer.
"No, 'e won"t. See 'ow 'is foot's braced against the iron? 'E's all right."
Dick watched Maisie's face and swelled with joy--fine, rank, vulgar triumph.
She was more interested in the little crowd than in the picture.
That was something that she could understand.
"And I wanted it so! Oh, I did want it so!" she said at last, under her breath.
"Me,--all me!" said Dick, placidly. "Look at their faces. It hits 'em. They
don't know what makes their eyes and mouths open; but I know. And I know my
work's right."
"Yes. I see. Oh, what a thing to have come to one!"
"Come to one, indeed! I had to go out and look for it. What do you think?"
"I call it success. Tell me how you got it."
They returned to the Park, and Dick delivered himself of the saga of his own
doings, with all the arrogance of a young man speaking to a woman.
From the beginning he told the tale, the I--I--I's flashing through the records
as telegraph-poles fly past the traveller. Maisie listened and nodded her head.
The histories of strife and privation did not move her a hair's-breadth. At the
end of each canto he would conclude, "And that gave me some notion of handling
colour," or light, or whatever it might be that he had set out to pursue and
understand. He led her breathless across half the world, speaking as he had
never spoken in his life before.
And in the flood-tide of his exaltation there came upon him a great desire to
pick up this maiden who nodded her head and said, "I understand. Go on,"--to
pick her up and carry her away with him, because she was Maisie, and because
she understood, and because she was his right, and a woman to be desired above
all women.
Then he checked himself abruptly. "And so I took all I wanted," he said, "and I
had to fight for it. Now you tell."
Maisie's tale was almost as gray as her dress. It covered years of patient toil
backed by savage pride that would not be broken though dealers laughed, and
fogs delayed work, and Kami was unkind and even sarcastic, and girls in other
studios were painfully polite. It had a few bright spots, in pictures accepted
at provincial exhibitions, but it wound up with the oft repeated wail, "And so
you see, Dick, I had no success, though I worked so hard."
Then pity filled Dick. Even thus had Maisie spoken when she could not hit the
breakwater, half an hour before she had kissed him. And that had happened
yesterday.
"Never mind," he said. "I'll tell you something, if you'll believe it." The
words were shaping themselves of their own accord. "The whole thing, lock,
stock, and barrel, isn't worth one big yellow sea-poppy below Fort Keeling."
Maisie flushed a little. "It's all very well for you to talk, but you've had
the success and I haven't."
"Let me talk, then. I know you'll understand. Maisie, dear, it sounds a bit
absurd, but those ten years never existed, and I've come back again. It really
is just the same. Can't you see? You're alone now and I'm alone. What's the use
of worrying? Come to me instead, darling."
Maisie poked the gravel with her parasol. They were sitting on a bench.
"I understand," she said slowly. "But I've got my work to do, and I must do
it."
"Do it with me, then, dear. I won't interrupt."
"No, I couldn't. It's my work,--mine,--mine,--mine! I've been alone all my life
in myself, and I'm not going to belong to anybody except myself. I remember
things as well as you do, but that doesn't count. We were babies then, and we
didn't know what was before us. Dick, don't be selfish. I think I see my way to
a little success next year. Don't take it away from me."
"I beg your pardon, darling. It's my fault for speaking stupidly. I can't
expect you to throw up all your life just because I'm back. I'll go to my own
place and wait a little."
"But, Dick, I don't want you to--go--out of--my life, now you've just come
back."
"I'm at your orders; forgive me." Dick devoured the troubled little face with
his eyes. There was triumph in them, because he could not conceive that Maisie
should refuse sooner or later to love him, since he loved her.
"It's wrong of me," said Maisie, more slowly than before; "it's wrong and
selfish; but, oh, I've been so lonely! No, you misunderstand. Now I've seen you
again,--it's absurd, but I want to keep you in my life."
"Naturally. We belong."
"We don't; but you always understood me, and there is so much in my work that
you could help me in. You know things and the ways of doing things. You must."
"I do, I fancy, or else I don't know myself. Then you won't care to lose sight
of me altogether, and--you want me to help you in your work?"
"Yes; but remember, Dick, nothing will ever come of it. That's why I feel so
selfish. Can't things stay as they are? I do want your help."
"You shall have it. But let's consider. I must see your pics first, and
overhaul your sketches, and find out about your tendencies. You should see what
the papers say about my tendencies! Then I'll give you good advice, and you
shall paint according. Isn't that it, Maisie?"
Again there was triumph in Dick's eye.
"It's too good of you,--much too good. Because you are consoling yourself with
what will never happen, and I know that, and yet I want to keep you. Don't
blame me later, please."
"I'm going into the matter with my eyes open. Moreover the Queen can do no
wrong. It isn't your selfishness that impresses me. It's your audacity in
proposing to make use of me."
"Pooh! You're only Dick,--and a print-shop."
"Very good: that's all I am. But, Maisie, you believe, don't you, that I love
you? I don't want you to have any false notions about brothers and sisters."
Maisie looked up for a moment and dropped her eyes.
"It's absurd, but--I believe. I wish I could send you away before you get angry
with me. But--but the girl that lives with me is red-haired, and an
impressionist, and all our notions clash."
"So do ours, I think. Never mind. Three months from today we shall be laughing
at this together."
Maisie shook her head mournfully. "I knew you wouldn't understand, and it will
only hurt you more when you find out. Look at my face, Dick, and tell me what
you see."
They stood up and faced each other for a moment. The fog was gathering, and it
stifled the roar of the traffic of London beyond the railings. Dick brought all
his painfully acquired knowledge of faces to bear on the eyes, mouth, and chin
underneath the black velvet toque.
"It's the same Maisie, and it's the same me," he said. "We've both nice little
wills of our own, and one or other of us has to be broken. Now about the
future. I must come and see your pictures some day,--I suppose when the red-
haired girl is on the premises."
"Sundays are my best times. You must come on Sundays. There are such heaps of
things I want to talk about and ask your advice about. Now I must get back to
work."
"Try to find out before next Sunday what I am," said Dick. "Don't take my word
for anything I've told you. Good-bye, darling, and bless you."
Maisie stole away like a little gray mouse. Dick watched her till she was out
of sight, but he did not hear her say to herself, very soberly, "I'm a wretch,-
-a horrid, selfish wretch. But it's Dick, and Dick will understand."
No one has yet explained what actually happens when an irresistible force meets
the immovable post, though many have thought deeply, even as Dick thought. He
tried to assure himself that Maisie would be led in a few weeks by his mere
presence and discourse to a better way of thinking. Then he remembered much too
distinctly her face and all that was written on it.
"If I know anything of heads," he said, "there's everything in that face but
love. I shall have to put that in myself; and that chin and mouth won't be won
for nothing. But she's right. She knows what she wants, and she's going to get
it. What insolence! Me! Of all the people in the wide world, to use me! But
then she's Maisie. There's no getting over that fact; and it's good to see her
again. This business must have been simmering at the back of my head for years.
. . . She'll use me as I used Binat at Port Said. She's quite right. It will
hurt a little. I shall have to see her every Sunday,--like a young man courting
a housemaid. She's sure to come around; and yet--that mouth isn't a yielding
mouth. I shall be wanting to kiss her all the time, and I shall have to look at
her pictures,--I don't even know what sort of work she does yet,--and I shall
have to talk about Art,--Woman's Art! Therefore, particularly and perpetually,
damn all varieties of Art. It did me a good turn once, and now it's in my way.
I'll go home and do some Art."
Half-way to the studio, Dick was smitten with a terrible thought. The figure of
a solitary woman in the fog suggested it.
"She's all alone in London, with a red-haired impressionist girl, who probably
has the digestion of an ostrich. Most red-haired people have. Maisie's a
bilious little body. They'll eat like lone women,--meals at all hours, and tea
with all meals. I remember how the students in Paris used to pig along. She may
fall ill at any minute, and I shan't be able to help. Whew! this is ten times
worse than owning a wife."
Torpenhow entered the studio at dusk, and looked at Dick with eyes full of the
austere love that springs up between men who have tugged at the same oar
together and are yoked by custom and use and the intimacies of toil. This is a
good love, and, since it allows, and even encourages, strife, recrimination,
and brutal sincerity, does not die, but grows, and is proof against any absence
and evil conduct.
Dick was silent after he handed Torpenhow the filled pipe of council. He
thought of Maisie and her possible needs. It was a new thing to think of
anybody but Torpenhow, who could think for himself. Here at last was an outlet
for that cash balance. He could adorn Maisie barbarically with jewelry,--a
thick gold necklace round that little neck, bracelets upon the rounded arms,
and rings of price upon her hands,--the cool, temperate, ringless hands that he
had taken between his own. It was an absurd thought, for Maisie would not even
allow him to put one ring on one finger, and she would laugh at golden
trappings. It would be better to sit with her quietly in the dusk, his arm
around her neck and her face on his shoulder, as befitted husband and wife.
Torpenhow's boots creaked that night, and his strong voice jarred. Dick's brows
contracted and he murmured an evil word because he had taken all his success as
a right and part payment for past discomfort, and now he was checked in his
stride by a woman who admitted all the success and did not instantly care for
him.
"I say, old man," said Torpenhow, who had made one or two vain attempts at
conversation, "I haven't put your back up by anything I've said lately, have
I?"
"You! No. How could you?"
"Liver out of order?"
"The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a liver. I'm only a bit worried
about things in general. I suppose it's my soul."
"The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a soul. What business have you with
luxuries of that kind?"
"It came of itself. Who's the man that says that we're all islands shouting
lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding?"
"He's right, whoever he is,--except about the misunderstanding. I don't think
we could misunderstand each other."
The blue smoke curled back from the ceiling in clouds. Then Torpenhow,
insinuatingly--"Dick, is it a woman?"
"Be hanged if it's anything remotely resembling a woman; and if you begin to
talk like that, I'll hire a red-brick studio with white paint trimmings, and
begonias and petunias and blue Hungarias to play among three-and-sixpenny pot-
palms, and I'll mount all my pics in aniline-dye plush plasters, and I'll
invite every woman who maunders over what her guide-books tell her is Art, and
you shall receive 'em, Torp,--in a snuff-brown velvet coat with yellow trousers
and an orange tie. You'll like that?"
"Too thin, Dick. A better man than you once denied with cursing and swearing.
You've overdone it, just as he did. It's no business of mine, of course, but
it's comforting to think that somewhere under the stars there's saving up for
you a tremendous thrashing. Whether it'll come from heaven or earth, I don't
know, but it's bound to come and break you up a little. You want hammering."
Dick shivered. "All right," said he. "When this island is disintegrated, it
will call for you."
"I shall come round the corner and help to disintegrate it some more. We're
talking nonsense. Come along to a theatre."
CHAPTER VI
"And you may lead a thousand men,
Nor ever draw the rein,
But ere ye lead the Faery Queen
'Twill burst your heart in twain."
He has slipped his foot from the stirrup-bar,
The bridle from his hand,
And he is bound by hand and foot
To the Queen 'o Faery-land.
----Sir Hoggie and the Fairies.
Some weeks later, on a very foggy Sunday, Dick was returning across the Park to
his studio. "This," he said, "is evidently the thrashing that Torp meant. It
hurts more than I expected; but the Queen can do no wrong; and she certainly
has some notion of drawing."
He had just finished a Sunday visit to Maisie,--always under the green eyes of
the red-haired impressionist girl, whom he learned to hate at sight,--and was
tingling with a keen sense of shame. Sunday after Sunday, putting on his best
clothes, he had walked over to the untidy house north of the Park, first to see
Maisie's pictures, and then to criticise and advise upon them as he realised
that they were productions on which advice would not be wasted. Sunday after
Sunday, and his love grew with each visit, he had been compelled to cram his
heart back from between his lips when it prompted him to kiss Maisie several
times and very much indeed. Sunday after Sunday, the head above the heart had
warned him that Maisie was not yet attainable, and that it would be better to
talk as connectedly as possible upon the mysteries of the craft that was all in
all to her. Therefore it was his fate to endure weekly torture in the studio
built out over the clammy back garden of a frail stuffy little villa where
nothing was ever in its right place and nobody every called,--to endure and to
watch Maisie moving to and fro with the teacups. He abhorred tea, but, since it
gave him a little longer time in her presence, he drank it devoutly, and the
red-haired girl sat in an untidy heap and eyed him without speaking. She was
always watching him.
Once, and only once, when she had left the studio, Maisie showed him an album
that held a few poor cuttings from provincial papers,--the briefest of hurried
notes on some of her pictures sent to outlying exhibitions. Dick stooped and
kissed the paint-smudged thumb on the open page. "Oh, my love, my love," he
muttered, "do you value these things? Chuck 'em into the waste-paper basket!"
"Not till I get something better," said Maisie, shutting the book.
Then Dick, moved by no respect for his public and a very deep regard for the
maiden, did deliberately propose, in order to secure more of these coveted
cuttings, that he should paint a picture which Maisie should sign.
"That's childish," said Maisie, "and I didn't think it of you. It must be my
work. Mine,--mine,--mine!"
"Go and design decorative medallions for rich brewers" houses. You are
thoroughly good at that." Dick was sick and savage.
"Better things than medallions, Dick," was the answer, in tones that recalled a
gray-eyed atom's fearless speech to Mrs. Jennett. Dick would have abased
himself utterly, but that other girl trailed in.
Next Sunday he laid at Maisie's feet small gifts of pencils that could almost
draw of themselves and colours in whose permanence he believed, and he was
ostentatiously attentive to the work in hand. It demanded, among other things,
an exposition of the faith that was in him.
Torpenhow's hair would have stood on end had he heard the fluency with which
Dick preached his own gospel of Art.
A month before, Dick would have been equally astonished; but it was Maisie's
will and pleasure, and he dragged his words together to make plain to her
comprehension all that had been hidden to himself of the whys and wherefores of
work. There is not the least difficulty in doing a thing if you only know how
to do it; the trouble is to explain your method.
"I could put this right if I had a brush in my hand," said Dick, despairingly,
over the modelling of a chin that Maisie complained would not "look flesh,"--it
was the same chin that she had scraped out with the palette knife,--"but I find
it almost impossible to teach you. There's a queer grim Dutch touch about your
painting that I like; but I've a notion that you're weak in drawing. You
foreshorten as though you never used the model, and you've caught Kami's pasty
way of dealing with flesh in shadow. Then, again, though you don't know it
yourself, you shirk hard work. Suppose you spend some of your time on line
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.
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