"Two lines in Poe--
"Neither the angels in Heaven above nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee."
It came out of the sea--all by itself. I drew that fight, fought out in green water over the naked, choking soul, and the woman served as the model for the devils and the angels both--sea-devils and sea-angels, and the soul half drowned between them. It doesn"t sound much, but when there was a good light on the lower deck it looked very fine and creepy.
It was seven by fourteen feet, all done in shifting light for shifting light."
"Did the woman inspire you much?" said Torpenhow.
"She and the sea between them--immensely. There was a heap of bad drawing in that picture. I remember I went out of my way to foreshorten for sheer delight of doing it, and I foreshortened d.a.m.nably, but for all that it"s the best thing I"ve ever done; and now I suppose the ship"s broken up or gone down. Whew! What a time that was!"
"What happened after all?"
"It all ended. They were loading her with wool when I left the ship, but even the stevedores kept the picture clear to the last. The eyes of the demons scared them, I honestly believe."
"And the woman?"
"She was scared too when it was finished. She used to cross herself before she went down to look at it. Just three colours and no chance of getting any more, and the sea outside and unlimited love-making inside, and the fear of death atop of everything else, O Lord!" He had ceased to look at the sketch, but was staring straight in front of him across the room.
"Why don"t you try something of the same kind now?" said the Nilghai.
"Because those things come not by fasting and prayer. When I find a cargo-boat and a Jewess-Cuban and another notion and the same old life, I may."
"You won"t find them here," said the Nilghai.
"No, I shall not." d.i.c.k shut the sketch-book with a bang. "This room"s as hot as an oven. Open the window, some one."
He leaned into the darkness, watching the greater darkness of London below him. The chambers stood much higher than the other houses, commanding a hundred chimneys--crooked cowls that looked like sitting cats as they swung round, and other uncouth brick and zinc mysteries supported by iron stanchions and clamped by 8-pieces. Northward the lights of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square threw a copper-coloured glare above the black roofs, and southward by all the orderly lights of the Thames. A train rolled out across one of the railway bridges, and its thunder drowned for a minute the dull roar of the streets. The Nilghai looked at his watch and said shortly, "That"s the Paris night-mail. You can book from here to St. Petersburg if you choose."
d.i.c.k crammed head and shoulders out of the window and looked across the river. Torpenhow came to his side, while the Nilghai pa.s.sed over quietly to the piano and opened it. Binkie, making himself as large as possible, spread out upon the sofa with the air of one who is not to be lightly disturbed.
"Well," said the Nilghai to the two pairs of shoulders, "have you never seen this place before?"
A steam-tug on the river hooted as she towed her barges to wharf. Then the boom of the traffic came into the room. Torpenhow nudged d.i.c.k.
"Good place to bank in--bad place to bunk in, d.i.c.kie, isn"t it?"
d.i.c.k"s chin was in his hand as he answered, in the words of a general not without fame, still looking out on the darkness--""My G.o.d, what a city to loot!""
Binkie found the night air tickling his whiskers and sneezed plaintively.
"We shall give the Binkie-dog a cold," said Torpenhow. "Come in," and they withdrew their heads. "You"ll be buried in Kensal Green, d.i.c.k, one of these days, if it isn"t closed by the time you want to go there--buried within two feet of some one else, his wife and his family."
"Allah forbid! I shall get away before that time comes. Give a man room to stretch his legs, Mr. Binkie." d.i.c.k flung himself down on the sofa and tweaked Binkie"s velvet ears, yawning heavily the while.
"You"ll find that wardrobe-case very much out of tune," Torpenhow said to the Nilghai. "It"s never touched except by you."
"A piece of gross extravagance," d.i.c.k grunted. "The Nilghai only comes when I"m out."
"That"s because you"re always out. Howl, Nilghai, and let him hear."
"The life of the Nilghai is fraud and slaughter, His writings are watered d.i.c.kens and water; But the voice of the Nilghai raised on high Makes even the Mahdieh glad to die!"
d.i.c.k quoted from Torpenhow"s letterpress in the Nungapunga Book.
"How do they call moose in Canada, Nilghai?"
The man laughed. Singing was his one polite accomplishment, as many Press-tents in far-off lands had known.
"What shall I sing?" said he, turning in the chair.
""Moll Roe in the Morning,"" said Torpenhow, at a venture.
"No," said d.i.c.k, sharply, and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a pretty one, but d.i.c.k had heard it many times before without wincing.
Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and troubles the hearts of the gipsies of the sea--
"Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies, Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain."
d.i.c.k turned uneasily on the sofa, for he could hear the bows of the Barralong crashing into the green seas on her way to the Southern Cross.
Then came the chorus--
"We"ll rant and we"ll roar like true British sailors, We"ll rant and we"ll roar across the salt seas, Until we take soundings in the Channel of Old England From Ushant to Scilly "tis forty-five leagues."
"Thirty-five-thirty-five," said d.i.c.k, petulantly. "Don"t tamper with Holy Writ. Go on, Nilghai."
"The first land we made it was called the Deadman," and they sang to the end very vigourously.
"That would be a better song if her head were turned the other way--to the Ushant light, for instance," said the Nilghai.
"Flinging his arms about like a mad windmill," said Torpenhow. "Give us something else, Nilghai. You"re in fine fog-horn form tonight."
"Give us the "Ganges Pilot"; you sang that in the square the night before El-Maghrib. By the way, I wonder how many of the chorus are alive tonight," said d.i.c.k.
Torpenhow considered for a minute. "By Jove! I believe only you and I.
Raynor, Vicery, and Deenes--all dead; Vincent caught smallpox in Cairo, carried it here and died of it. Yes, only you and I and the Nilghai."
"Umph! And yet the men here who"ve done their work in a well-warmed studio all their lives, with a policeman at each corner, say that I charge too much for my pictures."
"They are buying your work, not your insurance policies, dear child,"
said the Nilghai.
"I gambled with one to get at the other. Don"t preach. Go on with the "Pilot." Where in the world did you get that song?"
"On a tombstone," said the Nilghai. "On a tombstone in a distant land. I made it an accompaniment with heaps of base chords."
"Oh, Vanity! Begin." And the Nilghai began--
"I have slipped my cable, messmates, I"m drifting down with the tide, I have my sailing orders, while yet at anchor ride. And never on fair June morning have I put out to sea With clearer conscience or better hope, or a heart more light and free.