It occurred to Lightmark one evening, as he groped through the gloom
of his studio, on his way to bed, after assisting at a very charming
social gathering at the Sylvesters', that as soon as he was married
he would have to cut Brodonowski's. The reasons he gave himself were
plausible enough, and, indeed, he would have found himself the only
Benedict among this horde of wild bachelors. The informal circle was
of such recent association that, so far, no precedent for matrimony
had occurred, and it was more than doubtful how the experiment might
be received. In any case, he told himself, he could not be expected
to introduce people like Oswyn and McAllister to his wife--or,
rather, to Mrs. Sylvester's daughter. Oswyn was plainly impossible,
and McAllister's devotion to tobacco so inordinate that it had come
to be a matter of common belief that he smoked short pipes in his
sleep.
Then he had dismissed the subject; the long, pleasant holiday in
Switzerland intervened, and it was only on his return, late in the
autumn, that the question again presented itself, as he turned from
the threshold of the house in Park Street, where he had been dining,
and half unconsciously took the familiar short cut towards Turk
Street. He paused for a deliberate instant when he had hailed the
first passing hansom, and then told the man to drive to Piccadilly
Circus.
"I _must_ go there a few times more, if only to break it off gently,"
he reflected, "and I want to see old Rainham. It is stupid of me not
to have written to him--yes, stupid! Wonder if he has heard? I
mustn't give _him_ up, at any rate. We'll--we'll ask him to dinner,
and all that sort of thing. And what the deuce am I going to send to
the Academy? Thank goodness, I have enough Swiss sketches to work up
for the other galleries to last me for years. But the Academy----"
Then he lost himself in contemplative enjoyment of the familiar
vista of Regent Street, the curved, dotted lines of crocus-coloured
lamps, fading in the evening fog, the flitting, ruby-eyed cabs, and
the calm, white arc-lights, set irregularly about the circus,
dulling the grosser gas. He owned to himself that he had secretly
yearned for London; that his satisfaction on leaving the vast city
was never so great as his joy on again setting foot upon her
pavements.
The atmosphere of the long, low room, with its anomalous dark
ceiling and grotesquely-decorated walls, was heavily laden with the
incense of tobacco and a more subtile odour, which numbered among
its factors whisky and absinthe. The slippered, close-cropped
waiter, who, by popular report, could speak five languages, and
usually employed a mixture of two or three, was still clearing away
the débris of protracted dinners; and a few men sat about, in
informal groups, playing dominoes, chatting, or engrossed in their
Extra Specials. The fire shone cheerfully beneath the high mantel,
and the pleasant lamplight lent a mellow glow, which was vaguely
suggestive of Dutch interiors, as it flickered on the dark wooden
floor, and glanced from the array of china on the dresser in the
corner.
When Lightmark entered, closing the door briskly on the foggy, chill
October night, he was greeted warmly and demonstratively. The
fraternity which made Brodonowski's its head-quarters generously
admired his genius, and, for the most part, frankly envied his
good-fortune. The younger men respected him as a man who had seen
life; and the narratives with which he occasionally favoured them
produced in such of his hearers feelings very different to those
which older men, like Oswyn, expressed by a turn of the eyebrow or a
shrug. They were always ready enough to welcome him, to gather round
him, and to drink with him; and this, perhaps, expresses the limits
of their relation.
"Lightmark, by Jove!" cried one of them, waving his pipe in the air,
as the new-comer halted in the low doorway, smiling in a rather
bewildered manner as he unbuttoned his overcoat. "Welcome to the
guerilla camp! And a dress suit! These walls haven't enclosed such a
thing since you went away. This is indeed an occasion!"
Lightmark passed from group to group, deftly parrying, and returning
the chorus of friendly thrusts, and shaking hands with the
affability which was so characteristic a feature of his attitude
toward them. The man he looked for, the friend whom he intended to
honour with a somewhat tardy confidence of his happiness, was not
there. When he asked for Rainham, he was told that "the dry-docker,"
as these flippant youngsters familiarly designated the silent man,
whom they secretly revered, had gone for an after-dinner stroll, or
perchance to the theatre, with Oswyn.
"With Oswyn?" queried Lightmark, with the shadow of a frown.
"Oh, Oswyn and he are getting very thick!" said Copal. "They are
almost as inseparable as you two used to be. I'm afraid you will
find yourself cut out. Three is an awkward number, you know. But
when did you come back? When are you going to show us your sketches?
And how long did you stay in Paris?... You _didn't_ stop in Paris?
This won't do, you know. I say, Dupuis, here's a man who didn't stop
in Paris! Ask him if he wants to insult you."
"Ah, mon cher!" expostulated the Frenchman, looking up from his game
of dominoes, "I would not stop in London if I could help it."
"Oh, shut up, Copal!" said Lightmark good-humouredly. "I was with
ladies--Dupuis will sympathize with me there, eh, _mon vieux_?--and
they wanted to stay at Lucerne until the last minute. So we came
straight through."
"Then you haven't seen Sarah in 'Cleopatra,' and we were relying on
you for an unvarnished account. Ladies, too! See here, my boy, you
won't get any good out of touring about the Continent with ladies.
Hang it all! I believe it'll come true, after all?"
"Very likely--what?"
"Oh, well, they said--I didn't believe it, but they said that you
were going to desert the camp, and prance about with corpulent
R.A.'s in Hanover Square."
"And so would we all, if we got the chance," said McAllister
cynically.
And after the general outcry which followed this suggestion, the
conversation drifted back to the old discussion of the autumn shows,
the pastels at the Grosvenor, and the most recent additions to the
National Gallery.
When at last Rainham came into the room, following, with his
habitual half-timid air, the shambling figure of the painter Oswyn,
it struck Lightmark that he had grown older, and that he had, as it
were, assimilated some of the intimate disreputability of the place:
it would no longer have been possible to single him out as a foreign
unit in the circle, or to detect in his mental attitude any of the
curiosity of the casual seeker after new impressions, the Philistine
in Bohemia. There was nothing but pleasure in the slight
manifestation of surprise which preceded his frank greeting of
Lightmark, a greeting thoroughly English in its matter-of-fact want
of demonstrativeness, and the avoidance of anything likely to
attract the attention of others.
Oswyn seemed less at his ease; there was an extra dash of nervous
brusqueness in the sarcastic welcome which he offered to the
new-comer; and although there was a vacant seat in the little
circle, of which Copal and Lightmark formed the nucleus, and to
which Rainham had joined himself, he shuffled off to his favourite
corner, and buried himself in "Gil Blas" and an abnormally thick
cloud of tobacco-smoke.
Rainham gazed after him for a moment or two with a puzzled
expression.
"Amiable as ever!" said Lightmark, with a laugh. "Poor old beggar!
Have a cigarette? You ought to give up pipes. Haven't you been told
that cigarettes are--what is it?--'the perfect type----?'"
"Oh, chestnuts!" interposed Copal, "that's at least six months old.
And it's rot, too! Do you know what McAllister calls them? Spittle
and tissue. Brutal, but expressive. But I say, old man, won't Mrs.
Thingumy drop on you for smoking in your dress-coat? Or--or---- No,
break it to me gently. You don't mean to say that you possess _two_?
I really feel proud of having my studio next door to you."
"Copal is becoming quite an humorist," Lightmark suggested in an
impartial manner. "What a wag it is! Keep it up, my boy. By the way,
Mrs. Grumbit has been talking about your 'goings on,' as she calls
them: she's apparently very much exercised in her mind as to the
state of your morals. She told me she had to take you in with the
matutinal milk three times last week. She wants me to talk to you
like a father. It won't do, you know."
"I should like to hear you, Dick," said Rainham lazily. "Fire away!
But who is Mrs. Grumbit?"
"Oh, she's our housekeeper--the lady who dusts the studio, you know,
and gives the models tea and good advice. She's very particular as
to the models: she won't let us paint from any who don't come up to
her standard of propriety. And the worst of it is that the properest
girls are always the ugliest. I don't know----"
"Before you proceed with this highly original disquisition,"
interrupted Copal, "I think you ought to be warned that we have
recently formed a Society for the Protection of Reputations, models'
and actresses' in particular. It was McAllister's idea. You now have
the honour of being in the headquarters, the committee-room of the
society, and anything like slander, or even truth, will be made an
example of."
"Don't you find it rather difficult to spread your sheltering wings
over what doesn't exist?" hazarded Lightmark amusedly.
"Ah, I knew you would say that! You see, that's just where we come
in. We talk about their morals and reputations until they begin to
imagine they have some, and they unconsciously get induced to live
up to them. See? It's rather mixed, but it works beautifully. Ask
the vice-president! Rainham holds that proud office. I may remark
that I am treasurer, and the subscription is half a guinea, which
goes towards the expenses of providing light refreshments for
the,--the beneficiaries."
"This is really very interesting! Rainham vice-president, too! I
thought he looked rather--rather worn by the cares of the office.
You must make me a member at once. But who's president?"
"President? Who _is_ president, McAllister? I really forget. You see,
whenever the president is caught speaking too candidly of any of our
clients' characters, we pass a vote of censure, and depose him, and
he has to stand drinks. The competition isn't so keen as it used to
be. If you would like to stand--for the office, I mean--I dare say
there will be an opening soon.... Well, I must be off: I'm afraid
of Mrs. Grumbit, and--yes, by Jove!--I've forgotten my latchkey
again! Of course you're not coming yet, Dick? Come and breakfast
with me to-morrow. Good-night, you fellows!"
"Copal has been in great form to-night," said Lightmark, after the
door had closed on him, getting up and stretching himself. "What
does it mean? Joy at my return? Fatted calf?"
"No doubt, my boy, no doubt," growled McAllister humorously, on his
way to the door. "But you must bear in mind, too, the circumstance
that the laddie's just sold a picture."
"Good business!" ejaculated Lightmark, as he reflected to himself
that perhaps that despaired-of fiver would be repaid after all.
About midnight most of the men left. Rainham remained, and
Lightmark, who professed himself too lazy to move. Rainham lapsed
into his familiar state of half-abstraction, while his friend
cross-examined a young sculptor fresh from Rome.
At the next table Oswyn was holding forth, with eager gesticulations
and the excitement of the hour in his eyes, on the subject of a
picture which he contemplated painting in oils for exhibition at the
Salon next year. Rainham had heard it all before; still, he listened
with a keen appreciation of the wonderful touch with which the
little, dishevelled artist enlarged on the capabilities of his
choice, the possibilities of colour and treatment. The picture was
to be painted at the dock, and the painter had already achieved a
daringly suggestive impression in pastels of the familiar night-scene
which he now described: the streaming, vivid torches, their rays
struggling and drowning in the murky water, glimmering faintly
in the windows of the black warehouse barely suggested at the side;
the alert, swarming sailors, busy with ropes and tackle; and in the
middle the dark, steep leviathan, fresh from the sea-storms,
growing, as it were, out of the impenetrable chaos of the foggy
background, in which the river-lights gleamed like opals set in dull
ebony.
When the tide of inspiration failed the speaker, as it soon did,
Lightmark continued to look at him askance, with an air of absent
consideration turning to uneasiness. There was a general silence,
broken only by the occasional striking of a match and the knocking
of pipe against boot-heel. Soon the young sculptor discovered that
he had missed his last train, and fled incontinently. Oswyn settled
himself back in his chair, as one who has no regard for time, and
rolled a cigarette, the animation with which he had spoken now only
perceptible in the points of colour in either cheek. Rainham and
Lightmark left him a few minutes later, the last of the revellers,
drawing the cat with the charred end of a match on the back of an
envelope, and too deeply engrossed to notice their departure.
The fog had vanished, and the moon shone softly, through a white
wreath of clouds, over the straggling line of house-tops. The
narrow, squalid, little street was deserted, and the sound of wheels
in the busier thoroughfare at the end was very intermittent.
Lightmark buttoned his gloves deliberately, and drew a long breath
of the night air before he broke the silence.
"It's on occasions like this that I wish Bloomsbury and Kensington
lay in the same direction--from here, you know; we should save a
fortune in cab-fares.... But--but that wasn't what I wanted to say.
Philip, my dear fellow, congratulate me."
He paused for a minute looking at the other curiously, with
something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather
away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one
of the opposite windows.
"I know," he said simply. "I _do_ congratulate you--from the bottom
of my heart. And I hope you will make her happy." Then he turned and
looked Lightmark in the face. "I suppose you _do_ love her, Dick?"
"I suppose I do. But how the deuce did you know anything about it? I
have been blaming myself, needlessly it appears, for not letting you
hear of it. Has it--has it been in the papers?"
Rainham laughed in spite of himself.
"Approaching marriage of a celebrated artist? No, Dick, I don't
think it has. Lady Garnett told me more than a week ago."
"Oh," said Dick blankly. "I--I'm much obliged to her. I thought
perhaps it was the Colonel; I wrote to him, you know, and I thought
he was a discreet old bird. But how did Lady Garnett know?"
"She seemed to think it was no secret," said Rainham, with a
suggestion of apology in his tone; "and, of course, she knows that I
am----"
"My best friend," interposed the other impulsively. "So you are. And
I ought to have told you; I was a brute. And I feel like the devil
about it.... Well, it can't be helped. Will you have this cab, or
shall I?"
Rainham drew back with a gesture of abnegation, as the driver reined
the horse back upon its haunches with a clatter.
"I'm going to walk, I think. Only up to Bloomsbury, you know.
Good-night, Dick. I hope you'll be very happy, both of you."
When the cab drove off, Rainham stood still for a minute and watched
it out of sight. Then he started and seemed to pull himself
together.
"I wish I knew!" he said aloud to himself, as he stepped rapidly
towards the East. "Well, we'll be off to Bordighera now, _mon vieux_.
We've lost Dick, I think, and we've lost----"
The soliloquy died away in a sigh and a pathetic shrug.