In that intricate and obscure locality, which stretches between the
Tower and Poplar, a tarry region, scarcely suspected by the majority
of Londoners, to whom the "Port of London" is an expression purely
geographical, there is, or was not many years ago, to be found a
certain dry dock called Blackpool, but better known from time
immemorial to skippers and longshoremen, and all who go down to the
sea in ships, as "Rainham's Dock."
Many years ago, in the days of the first Rainham and of wooden
ships, it had been no doubt a flourishing ship-yard; and, indeed,
models of wooden leviathans of the period, which had been turned
out, not a few, in those palmy days, were still dusty ornaments of
its somewhat antique office. But as time went on, and the age of
iron intervened, and the advance on the Clyde and the Tyne had made
Thames ship-building a thing of the past, Blackpool Dock had ceased
to be of commercial importance. No more ships were built there, and
fewer ships put in to be overhauled and painted; while even these
were for the most part of a class viewed at Lloyd's with scant
favour, which seemed, like the yard itself, to have fallen somewhat
behind the day. The original Rainham had not bequeathed his energy
along with his hoards to his descendants; and, indeed, the last of
these, Philip Rainham, a man of weak health, original Rainham had
not bequeathed his energy along with his hoards to his descendants;
and, indeed, the last of these, Philip Rainham, a man of weak
health, whose tastes, although these were veiled in obscurity, were
supposed to trench little upon shipping, let the business jog along
so much after its own fashion, that the popular view hinted at its
imminent dissolution. A dignified, scarcely prosperous quiet seemed
the normal air of Blackpool Dock, so that even when it was busiest
--and work still came in, almost by tradition, with a certain
steadiness--when the hammers of the riveters and the shipwrights
awoke the echoes from sunrise to sunset, with a ferocious regularity
which the present proprietor could almost deplore, there was still a
suggestion of mildewed antiquity about it all that was, at least to
the nostrils of the outsider, not unpleasing. And when the ships
were painted, and had departed, it resumed very easily its more
regular aspect of picturesque dilapidation. For in spite of its
sordid surroundings and its occasional lapses into bustle, Blackpool
Dock, as Rainham would sometimes remind himself, when its commercial
motive was pressed upon him too forcibly, was deeply permeated by
the spirit of the picturesque.
Certainly Mr. Richard Lightmark, a young artist, in whose work some
excellent judges were beginning already to discern, if not the hand
of the master, at least a touch remarkably happy, was inclined to
plume himself on having discovered, in his search after originality,
the artistic points of a dockyard.
It was on his first visit to Rainham, whom he had met abroad some
years before, and with whom he had contracted an alliance that
promised to be permanent, that Lightmark had decided his study
should certainly be the river. Rainham had a set of rooms in the
house of his foreman, an eighteenth-century house, full of carved
oak mantels and curious alcoves, a ramshackle structure within the
dock-gates, with a quaint balcony staircase, like the approach to a
Swiss chalet, leading down into the yard. In London these apartments
were his sole domicile; though, to his friends, none of whom lived
nearer to him than Bloomsbury, this seemed a piece of conduct too
flagrantly eccentric--on a parity with his explanation of it,
alleging necessity of living on the spot: an explanation somewhat
droll, in the face of his constant lengthy absence, during the whole
of the winter, when he handed the reins of government to his
manager, and took care of a diseased lung in a warmer climate. To
Lightmark, however, dining with his friend for the first time on
chops burnt barbarously and an inferior pudding, residence even in a
less salubrious quarter than Blackpool would have been amply
justified, in view of the many charming effects--for the most part
coldly sad and white--which the river offered, towards evening, from
the window of his friend's dining-room.
After his first visit, he availed himself eagerly of Rainham's
invitation to make his property the point of view from which he
could most conveniently transfer to canvas his impressions; and he
worked hard for months, with an industry that came upon his friend
as a surprise, at the uneven outlines of the Thames warehouses, and
the sharp-pointed masts that rose so trenchantly above them. He had
generated an habit of coming and going, as he pleased, without
consideration of his host's absences; and latterly, in the early
spring--whose caprices in England Rainham was never in a hurry to
encounter--the easel and painting tools of the assiduous artist had
become an almost constant feature of the landscape.
Now, towards the close of an exceptionally brilliant day in the
finish of May, he was putting the last touches to a picture which
had occupied him for some months, and which he hoped to have
completed for Rainham's return. As he stood on the wharf, which ran
down to the river-side, leaning back against a crane of ancient
pattern, and viewing his easel from a few yards' distance
critically, he could not contemplate the result without a certain
complacency.
"It's deuced good, after all," he said to himself, with his head
poised a little on one side. "Yes, old Rainham will like this. And,
by Jove! what matters a good deal more, the hangers will like it,
and if it's sold--and, confound it! it must be sold--it will be a
case of three figures."
He had one hand in his pocket, and instinctively--it may have been
the result of his meditation--he fell to jingling some coins in it.
They were not very many, but just then, though he was a young
gentleman keenly alive to the advantages of a full purse, their
paucity hardly troubled him. He felt, for the nonce, assured of his
facility, and doubtless had a vista of unlimited commissions and the
world at his feet, for he drew himself up to his full height of six
feet and looked out beyond the easel with a smile that had no longer
its origin in the fruition of the artist. Indeed, as he stood there,
in his light, lax dress and the fulness of his youth, he had (his
art apart) excuse for self-complacency. He was very pleasant to look
upon, with an air of having always been popular with his fellows,
and the favourite of women; this, too, was borne out by his history.
Not a beautiful man, by any means, but the best type of English
comeliness: ruddy-coloured, straight, and healthy; muscular, but
without a suggestion of brutality. His yellow moustache, a shade
lighter than his hair--which, although he wore it cropped, showed a
tendency to be curling--concealed a mouth that was his only
questionable feature. It was not the sensitive mouth of the through
and through artist, and the lines of it were vacillating. The lips,
had they not been hidden, would have surprised by their fulness,
contradicting, in some part, the curious coldness of his light blue
eyes. All said, however, he remained a singularly handsome fellow;
and the slight consciousness which he occasionally betrayed, that
his personality was pleasing, hardly detracted from it; it was,
after all, a harmless vanity that his friends could afford to
overlook. Just then his thoughts, which had wandered many leagues
from the warehouses of Blackpool, were brought up sharply by the
noise of an approaching footstep. He started slightly, but a moment
later greeted the new-comer with a pleasant smile of recognition. It
was Rainham's foreman and general manager, with whom the artist, as
with most persons with whom he was often in contact, was on
excellent, and even familiar, terms.
"Look here, Bullen," he said, twisting the easel round a little,
"the picture is practically finished. A few more strokes--I shall do
them at home--and it is ready for the Academy. How do you like it?"
Mr. Bullen bent down his burly form and honoured the little canvas
with a respectful scrutiny.
"That is Trinidad Wharf, sir, I suppose?" he suggested, pointing
with a huge forefinger at the background a little uncertainly.
"That is Trinidad Wharf, Bullen, certainly! And those masts are
from the ships in the Commercial Docks. But the river, the
atmosphere--that's the point--how do they strike you?"
"Well, it's beautiful, sir," remarked Bullen cordially; "painted
like the life, you may say. But isn't it just a little smudgy, sir?"
"That's the beauty of it, Bullen. It's impressionism, you
Philistine!--a sort of modified impressionism, you know, to suit the
hangers. 'Gad, Bullen, you ought to be a hanger yourself! Bullen,
my dear man, if it wasn't that you _do_ know how to paint a ship's
side, I would even go so far as to say that you have all the
qualifications of an Academician."
"Ah, if it comes to that, Mr. Lightmark, I dare say I could put them
up to some dodges. I am a judge of 'composition.'"
"Composition? The devil you are! Ah, you mean that infernal compound
which they cover ships' bottoms with? What an atrocious pun!" The
man looked puzzled. "Bullen, R.A., great at composition; it sounds
well," continued Lightmark gaily, just touching in the brown sail of
a barge.
"I've a nephew in the Royal Artillery, sir," said Mr. Bullen; "but I
fear he is a bad lot."
"Oh, they all are!" said Lightmark, "an abandoned crew."
His eyes wandered off to the bridge over which the road ran,
dividing the dry dock from the outer basin and wharf on which they
stood. A bevy of factory girls in extensive hats stuck with
brilliant Whitechapel feathers were passing; one of them, who was
pretty, caught Lightmark's eyes and flung him a saucy compliment,
which he returned with light badinage in kind that made the foreman
grin.
"They know a fine man when they see one, as well as my lady," he
said. Then he added, as if by an afterthought, lowering his voice a
little: "By the way, Mr. Lightmark, there was a young lady--a young
person here yesterday--making inquiries."
Lightmark bent down, frowning a little at a fly which had entangled
itself on his palette.
"Yes?" he remarked tentatively, when the offender had been removed.
"It was a young lady come after someone, who, she said, had been
here lately: a Mr. Dighton or Crichton was the name, I think. It was
the dockman she asked."
"Nobody comes here of that name that I know of," said Lightmark.
"Not to my knowledge," said Bullen.
"Curious!" remarked Lightmark gravely.
"Very, sir!" said Bullen, with equal gravity.
Lightmark looked up abruptly: the two men's eyes met, and they both
laughed, the artist a little nervously.
"What did you tell her, Bullen?"
"No such person known here, sir. I sent her away as wise as she
came. I hold with minding my own business, and asking no questions."
"An excellent maxim, Bullen!" said Lightmark, preparing to pack up
his easel. "I have long believed you to be a man of discretion.
Well, I must even be moving."
"You know the governor is back, sir?"
Lightmark dropped the paint-brush he was cleaning, with a movement
of genuine surprise.
"I never knew it," he said; "I will run up and have a yarn with him.
I thought he wasn't expected till to-morrow at the earliest?"
"Nor he was, Mr. Lightmark. But he travelled right through from
Italy, and got to London late last night. He slept at the Great
Eastern, and I went up to him in the City this morning. He hasn't
been here more than half an hour."
"Nobody told me," said Lightmark. "Gad! I am glad. I will take him
up the picture. Will you carry the other traps into the house,
Bullen?"
He packed them up, and then stood a trifle irresolutely, his hand
feeling over the coins in his pocket. Presently he produced two of
them, a sovereign and a shilling.
"By the way, Bullen!" he said, "there is a little function common in
your trade, the gift of a new hat. It costs a guinea, I am told;
though judging from the general appearance of longshoremen, the
result seems a little inadequate. Bullen, we are pretty old friends
now, and I expect I shall not be down here so often just at present.
Allow me--to give you a new hat."
The foreman's huge fist closed on the artist's slender one.
"Thank you, sir! You are such a facetious gentleman. You may depend
upon me."
"I do," said Lightmark, with a sudden lapse into seriousness, and
frowning a little.
If something had cast a shadow over the artist for the moment he
must have had a faculty of quick recovery, for there was certainly
no shade of constraint upon his handsome face when a minute later he
made his way up the balcony steps and into the office labelled
"Private," and, depositing his canvas upon the floor, treated his
friend to a prolonged handshaking.
"My dear Dick!" said Rainham, "this is a pleasant surprise. I had
not the remotest notion you were here."
"I thought you were at Bordighera, till Bullen told me of your
arrival ten minutes ago," said Lightmark, with a frank laugh. "And
how well----"
Rainham held up his hand--a very white, nervous hand with one ring
of quaint pattern on the forefinger--deprecatingly.
"My dear fellow, I know exactly what you are going to say. Don't be
conventional--don't say it. I have a fraudulent countenance if I do
look well; and I don't, and I am not. I am as bad as I ever was."
"Well, come now, Rainham, at any rate you are no worse."
"Oh, I am no worse!" admitted the dry dock proprietor. "But, then, I
could not afford to be much worse. However, my health is a subject
which palls on me after a time. Tell me about yourself."
He looked up with a smile, in which an onlooker might have detected
a spark of malice, as though Rainham were aware that his suggested
topic was not without attraction to his friend. He was a slight man
of middle height, and of no apparent distinction, and his face with
all its petulant lines of lassitude and ill-health--the wear and
tear of forty years having done with him the work of fifty--struck
one who saw Philip Rainham for the first time by nothing so much as
by his ugliness. And yet few persons who knew him would have
hesitated to allow to his nervous, suffering visage a certain
indefinable charm. The large head set on a figure markedly
ungraceful, on which the clothes seldom fitted, was shapely and
refined, although the features were indefensible, even grotesque.
And his mouth, with its constrained thin lips and the acrid lines
about it, was unmistakably a strong one. His deep-set eyes,
moreover, of a dark gray colour, gleamed from under his thick
eyebrows with a pleasant directness; while his smile, which some
people called cynical, as his habit of speech most certainly was,
was found by others extraordinarily sympathetic.
"Yes, tell me about yourself, Dick," he said again.
"I have done a picture, if that is what you mean, besides some
portraits; I have worked down here like a galley slave for the last
three months."
"And is the queer little _estaminet_ in Soho still in evidence? Do the
men of to-morrow still meet there nightly and weigh the claims of
the men of to-day?"
Lightmark smiled a trifle absently; his eyes had wandered off to his
picture in the corner.
"Oh, I believe so!" he said at last; "I dine there occasionally when
I have time. But I have been going out a good deal lately, and I
hardly ever do have time.... May I smoke, by the way?"
Rainham nodded gently, and the artist pulled out his case and
started a fragrant cigarette.
"You see, Rainham," he continued, sending a blue ring sailing across
the room, "I am not so young as I was last year, and I have seen a
good deal more of the world."
"I see, Dick," said Rainham. "Well, go on!"
"I mean," he explained, "that those men who meet at Brodonowski's
are very good fellows, and deuced clever, and all that; but I doubt
if they are the sort of men it is well to get too much mixed up
with. They are rather _outré_, you know; though, of course, they are
awfully good fellows in their way."
"Precisely!" said Rainham, "you are becoming a very Solomon, Dick!"
He sat playing idly with the ring on his forefinger, watching the
artist's smoke with the same curiously obscure smile. It had the
effect on Lightmark now, as Rainham's smile did on many people,
however innocent it might be of satiric intention, of infusing his
next remarks with the accent of apology.
"You see, Rainham, one has to think of what will help one on, as
well as what one likes. There is a man I have come to know lately--a
very good man too, a barrister--who is always dinning that into me.
He has introduced me to some very useful people, and is always
urging me not to commit myself. And Brodonowski's is rather
committal, you know. However, we must dine there together again one
day, soon, and then you will understand it."
"Oh, I understand it, Dick!" said Rainham. "But let me see the
picture while the light lasts."
"Oh, yes!" cried Lightmark eagerly. "We must not forget the
picture." He hoisted it up to a suitable light, and Rainham stood by
the bow-window, from which one almost obtained the point of view
which the artist had chosen, regarding it in a critical silence.
"What do you call it?" he asked at last.
"'The Gray River,'" said Lightmark; then a little impatiently: "But
how do you find it? Are you waiting for a tripod?"
"I don't think I shall tell you. By falling into personal criticism,
unless one is either dishonest or trivial, one runs the risk of
losing a friend."
"Oh, nonsense, man! It's not such a daub as that. I will risk your
candour."
Rainham shrugged his shoulder.
"If you will have it, Dick--only, don't think that I am to be coaxed
into compliments."
"_Is_ it bad?" asked Lightmark sceptically.
"On the contrary, it is surprisingly good. It's clever and pretty;
sure to be hung, sure to sell. Only you have come down a peg. The
sentiment about that river is very pretty, and that mist is
eminently pictorial; but it's not the river you would have painted
last year; and that mist--I have seen it in a good many pictures
now--is a mist that one can't quite believe in. It's the art that
pays, but it's not the art you talked at Brodonowski's last summer,
that is all."
Lightmark tugged at his moustache a little ruefully. Rainham had an
idea that his ups and downs were tremendous. His mind was a
mountainous country, and if he had elations, he had also depressions
as acute. Yet his elasticity was enormous, and he could throw off
troublesome intruders, in the shape of memories or regrets, with the
ease of a slow-worm casting its skin. And so now his confidence was
only shaken for a moment, and he was able to reply gaily to
Rainham's last thrust:
"My dear fellow, I expect I talked a good deal of trash last year,
after all"--a statement which the other did not find it worth while
to deny.
They had resumed their places at the table, and Lightmark, with a
half-sheet of note-paper before him, was dashing off profiles. They
were all the same--the head of a girl: a childish face with a
straight, small nose, and rough hair gathered up high above her head
in a plain knot. Rainham, leaning over, watched him with an amused
smile.
"The current infatuation, Dick, or the last but one?"
"No," he said; "only a girl I know. Awfully pretty, isn't she?"
Rainham, who was a little short-sighted, took up the paper
carelessly. He dropped it after a minute with a slight start.
"I think I know her," he said. "You have a knack of catching faces.
Is it Miss Sylvester?"
"Yes; it is Eve Sylvester," said Lightmark. "Do you know them? I see
a good deal of them now."
"I have known them a good many years," said Rainham.
"They have never spoken of you to me," said Lightmark.
"No? I dare say not. Why should they?" He was silent for a moment,
looking thoughtfully at his ring. Then he said abruptly: "I think I
know now who your friend the barrister is, Dick. I recognise the
style. It is Charles Sylvester, is it not?"
"You are a wizard," answered the other, laughing. "Yes, it is." Then
he asked: "Don't you think she is awfully pretty?"
"Miss Sylvester?... Very likely; she was a very pretty child. You
know, she had not come out last year. Are you going?"
Lightmark had pulled out his watch absently, and he leapt up as he
discovered the lateness of the hour.
"Heavens, yes! I am dining out, and I shall barely have time to
dress. I will fetch my traps to-morrow; then we might dine together
afterwards."
"As you like," said the elder man. "I have no engagements yet."
Lightmark left him with a genial nod, and a moment later Rainham saw
him through the window passing with long impetuous strides across
the bridge. Then he returned to his desk, and wrote a letter or two
until the light failed, when he pushed his chair back, and sat, pen
in hand, looking meditatively, vaguely, at the antiquated maps upon
the walls.
Presently his eye fell on Lightmark's derelict paper, with its
scribble of a girl's head. He considered it thoughtfully for some
time, starting a little, and covering it with his blotting-paper,
when Mrs. Bullen, his housekeeper, entered with a cup of tea--a
freak of his nerves which made him smile when she had gone.
Even then he left his tea for a long time, cooling and untasted,
while he sat lethargically lolling back, and regarding from time to
time the pencilled profile with his sad eyes.