"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 d.i.c.k, profanely. "It"s a clumsy ending and vile journalese, but it"s quite true. And yet,"--he sprang to his feet and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the ma.n.u.script,--"you scarred, deboshed, battered old gladiator! you"re sent out when a war begins, to minister to the blind, brutal, British public"s b.e.s.t.i.a.l 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 ma.n.u.script fluttered in slips down the dark well of the staircase. "Go home, Nilghai," said d.i.c.k; "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 d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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."
d.i.c.k 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 foresh.o.r.e and drove the sand like small shot about her ears; Maisie, very composed and independent, telling lies to Mrs. Jennett while d.i.c.k supported her with coa.r.s.er 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 gra.s.s between the mouth of a cannon and a nodding yellow sea-poppy. The pictures pa.s.sed before him one by one, and the last stayed the longest.
d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sed between them, because there had been none in the old days.
"What are you doing out of your studio at this hour?" said d.i.c.k, as one who was ent.i.tled to ask.
"Idling. Just idling. I got angry with a chin and sc.r.a.ped 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 sc.r.a.ped paint when I"m doing flesh. The grain comes up woolly as the paint dries."
"Not if you sc.r.a.pe properly." Maisie waved her hand to ill.u.s.trate her methods. There was a dab of paint on the white cuff. d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k.
"Wait a minute," said he. "That mouth is down at the corners a little.