As the clock struck five Rainham looked up with an air of relief,
flipping negligently across the table the heap of papers which had
occupied him since lunch-time.
"We must go into this some other time, Bullen," he remarked with a
certain petulance. "I confess things look rather bad; but I suppose
they can hold over till to-morrow?"
The foreman assented dubiously, gathering together the despised
sheets, and preparing for departure.
"I've done my best, sir," he said a little sullenly; "but it is
difficult for things to go smoothly when the master is always away;
and you never will take no notice of business letters, you know,
sir."
"Yes, yes," said Rainham wearily; "I am sure you have, Bullen. If I
go into the Bankruptcy Court, as you so frequently prophesy, it will
be entirely my own fault. In the meantime you might tell your wife
to send me up some tea--for two, Bullen, please. Mr. Oswyn will be
up presently."
The man retired, shutting the door with some ardour. Rainham rose,
and, with the little, expansive shrug with which he usually
discarded his commercial worries, wandered towards the window. The
dock was empty and desolate: the rain, which had prevailed with a
persistent dreariness since the morning, built morasses at regular
intervals along the dock-side, splashed unceasingly into the
stagnant green water which collected in slack seasons within the
dock-gates. The dockman stood, one disconsolate figure in the
general blankness, with his high boots and oilskins, smoking a short
clay pipe by the door of the engine-room; and further out, under the
dripping dome of an umbrella, sat Oswyn in a great pea-jacket,
smoking, painting the mist, the rain, the white river with its few
blurred barges and its background of dreary warehouses, in a supreme
disregard of the dank discomfort of his surroundings.
Rainham had tapped three times against the streaming pane before he
succeeded in attracting his attention, and then the painter only
responded to the wonted signal by an impatient, deprecating flourish
of the hand which held the palette. The tea was already simmering on
the rickety table in the bow-window, when Oswyn, staggering under
his impedimenta, climbed the staircase, and shouldered his way
familiarly into the room.
"How fearfully wet you must be!" said his host lazily from the
depths of an arm-chair. "Help yourself to a pair of slippers and a
dry coat, and have some tea. It's strong enough even for you by this
time."
The other had disembarrassed himself of his dripping jacket and
overalls, and now kicked off his shoes, with a short laugh. He was
never a great talker in the daytime, and the dreary charm of the
river world outside was still upon him. He dropped the sketch upon
which he had been working rather contemptuously against the wall,
where Rainham could see it, and selected a pair of slippers from
quite a small heap in the corner by the fireplace.
"I don't mind _your_ seeing my work, because you don't talk about it,"
he said, glancing at Rainham quickly. "I hate people who try to say
complimentary things; they don't often mean them, and when they do
they talk absolute rot."
"Yes," said the other sympathetically. "Shall I put a slice of lemon
in your tea? I suppose I must live up to my reputation and say
nothing about your sketch. But I must have it when it's finished!
It's always most embarrassing to have to pay personal compliments,
though I suppose some people like them."
The painter grunted inarticulately between two sips of tea.
"Like them! Don't your society artists and authors simply wallow in
them? Have you got any cigarettes, or papers? I dropped mine into a
puddle. Ah, thanks.... That's a pretty face. Whose is it?"
The cigarette case, which Rainham handed to his guest, was a
well-worn leather one, a somewhat ladylike article, with a
photograph fitted into the dividing flap inside. Before answering
the question he looked at the photograph absently for a moment, when
the case had been returned to him.
"It's not a very good photograph. It's meant for--for Mrs.
Lightmark, when she was a little girl. She gave me the case with the
portrait years ago, in Florence."
Oswyn glanced at him curiously and shrewdly through a thin haze of
blue smoke, watching him restore the faded, little receptacle almost
reverentially to the breast-pocket of his coat.
"Have you been to the Chamber of Horrors?" he asked suddenly, after
a silent pause, broken only by the ceaseless lashing of the window
by the raindrops.
Rainham looked up with a start, half puzzled, seeking and finding an
explanation in the faint, conscious humour which loosened the lines
about the speaker's mouth.
"The Chamber of---- Do you mean the R.A.? You do, you most
irreverent of mortals! No, I have not been yet. Will you go with
me?"
"Heaven forbid! I have been once."
"You have? And they didn't scalp you?"
"I didn't stay long enough, I suppose. I only went to see one
picture--Lightmark's."
"Ah, that's just what I want to see! And you know I still have a
weakness for the show. I expect you would like the new Salon
better."
"There are good things there," said Oswyn tersely, "and a great many
abominations as well. I was over in Paris last week."
Rainham glanced at him over his cup with a certain surprise.
"I didn't know you ever went there now," he remarked.
"No, I never go if I can help it. I hate Paris; it is _triste_ as a
well, and full of ghosts. Ghosts! It's a city of the dead. But I had
a picture there this time, and I went to look at it."
"In the new Salon?"
"In the new Salon. It was a little gray, dusky thing, three foot by
two, and their flaming miles of canvas murdered it. I am not a
scene-painter," he went on a little savagely. "I don't paint with a
broom, and I have no ambition to do the sun, or an eruption of
Vesuvius. So I doubt if I shall exhibit there again until the vogue
alters. Oh, they are clever enough, those fellows! even the
trickiest of them can draw, which is the last thing they learn here,
and one or two are men of genius. But I should dearly like to set
them down, _en plein air_ too, if they insist upon it, with the
palette of Velasquez. I went out and wandered in the Morgue
afterwards, and I confess its scheme of colour rested my eyes."
"Do I know your picture?" asked Rainham to change the subject,
finding him a little grim. "Is it the thing you were doing here?"
Oswyn's head rested on one thin, colour-stained hand which shaded
his eyes.
"No," he said with a suggestion of constraint, "it was an old sketch
which I had worked up--not the thing you knew. I shall not finish
that----"
"Not finish it!" cried Rainham. "But of course you must! why, it was
superb; it promised a masterpiece!"
"To tell you the truth," said Oswyn, "I can't finish it. I have
painted it out."
Rainham glanced at him with an air of consternation, of reproach.
"My dear fellow," he said, "you are impossible! What in the world
possessed you to do such a mad thing?"
The painter hesitated a moment, looking at him irresolutely beneath
his heavy, knitted brows.
"I meant to tell you," he said, after a while; "but on the whole I
think I would rather not. It is rather an unpleasant subject,
Rainham, and if you don't mind we will change it."
Oswyn had risen from his chair, with his wonted restlessness, and
was gazing out upon the lazy, evening life of the great river. The
monotonous accompaniment to their conversation, which had been so
long sustained by the drip and splash outside, had grown
intermittent, and now all but ceased; while a faint tinge of
yellowish white upon the ripples, and a feathery rift in the gray
dome of sky, announced a final effort on the part of the setting
sun.
The yard door swung noisily on its hinges, and a light step and
voice became audible, and the sound of familiar conference with the
dockman. Rainham lifted his head inquiringly, and Oswyn, shrugging
his shoulders, left the window and regained his seat, picking up his
sketch on the way.
"Yes," he said in answer to a more direct inquiry on the other's
part, "I think it was Lightmark."
Almost as he spoke there was a step on the stair, followed by a
boisterous knock at the door, and Dick entered effusively.
"Well, _mon vieux_, how goes it? Why, you're all in the dark! They
didn't tell me you were engaged.... Oh, is that you, Oswyn? How do
you do?"
"Quite an unexpected pleasure?" suggested Oswyn sardonically,
nodding over his shoulder at the new-comer from his seat by the
fire.
Rainham's greeting had been far more cordial, and he still held his
friend's hand between his own, gazing inquiringly into his face as
if he wished to read something there.
"Yes, I am back, you see," he said presently, when Dick had found
himself a chair. "I have been here two days, and I was just
beginning to think of looking you up. I was very sorry to miss you
at Bordighera. How is Eve? It's very good of you to come all this
way to see me; you must be pretty busy."
"Oh, Eve is tremendously well! Thanks, no, I won't have any tea, but
you might give me a whisky-and-soda. I had to come down into these
wilds to look at a yacht which we think of taking for the summer.
Quite a small one," he added half apologetically, as he detected the
faint, amused surprise in the other's expression; "and as I found
myself here, with a few minutes to spare before my train goes, I
thought I would look in on the off chance of finding you. How is
business just now? The dock didn't strike me as looking much like
work as I came in. Pretty stagnant, eh?"
Rainham shook his head.
"Oh, it's much as usual--perhaps a little more so! Bullen continues
to threaten me with bankruptcy, but I am getting used to it.
Threatened men live long, you know."
"Oh, you're all right!" answered Dick genially. "As long as Bullen
looks after you, you won't come to grief."
While the two were thus occupied in reuniting the chain of old
associations, Oswyn had been silently, almost surreptitiously,
preparing for departure; and he now came forward awkwardly, with his
hat in one hand and the tools of his trade under his arm.
"May I leave some of these things, here, or will they be in your
way?"
"But you're not going?" said Rainham, rising from his seat with a
constraining gesture; "why, don't you remember we were going to dine
together? Dick will stay too, _n'est ce pas_? It will be like old
times. Mrs. Bullen has been preparing quite a feast, I assure you!"
Oswyn paused irresolutely.
"Don't let me drive you away," said Dick. "In any case I'm going
myself in a few minutes. Yes," he added, turning to Rainham, "I'm
very sorry, but I've got to take my wife out to dinner, and I shall
have to catch a train in, let me see, about ten minutes."
"Really? Well, then, clearly you must sit down again, Oswyn; I won't
be left alone at any price. That's right. Now, Dick, tell me what
you have been doing, and especially all about your Academy picture;
I haven't seen even a critique of it. Of course it's a success? Have
you sold it?"
"Oh, spare my modesty!" protested Lightmark somewhat clumsily, with
a quick glance at Oswyn. "It's all right, but we mustn't talk shop."
"Yes, for God's sake spare his modesty!" supplemented the other
painter almost brutally. "Look at his blushes. It isn't so bad as
all that, Lightmark."
"I don't even know the subject," pursued Rainham. "You might at
least tell me what it was. Was it the canvas which you wouldn't show
me, just before I went away--at the studio? The one about which you
made such a mystery----?"
"Oh bosh, old man!" interrupted Dick hurriedly, "I never made any
mystery. It--it wasn't that. It's quite an ordinary subject, one of
the river scenes which I sketched here. You had better go and see
it. And come and see us. You know the address. I must be off!"
"Wait a minute," interposed Oswyn, with a cadence in his voice which
struck Rainham as the signal of something surpassing his wonted
eccentricity. "Don't go yet. I said just now, Rainham, that I
wouldn't tell you why I had painted out that picture, the picture
which I had been fool enough to talk about so much, which I had
intended to make a masterpiece. Well, I have changed my mind. I
think you ought to know. Perhaps you would prefer to tell him?" he
added, turning savagely to Lightmark, and speaking fast and loud
with the curious muscular tremor which betokens difficult restraint.
"No? Of course you will have the impudence to pretend that the
conception was yours. Yes, curse you! you are quite capable of
swearing that it was all yours--subject and treatment too.... But
you can't deny that you heard me talking of the thing night after
night at the club, when I have no doubt you hadn't even begun on
your bastard imitation. One of the pictures of the year as they call
it, as you and your damned crew of flatterers and critics call it...."
He stopped for breath, clutching at the table with one hand and
letting the other, which had been upraised in denunciation, fall at
his side. He had meant to be calm, to limit himself strictly to an
explanation; but in the face of his wrong and the wrong-doer the
man's passionate nature had broken loose. Now, when he already half
repented of the violence with which he had profaned the house of his
friend, his eyes fell upon Rainham, and he felt abashed before the
expression of pain which he had called into the other's face.
"I don't know what all this means," said Rainham wearily, turning
from Oswyn to Dick as he spoke; "but surely it is all wrong? Be
quiet, Dick; you needn't say anything. If Oswyn is accusing you of
plagiarism, of stealing his ideas, I can't believe it. I can't
believe you meant to wrong him. The same thing must have occurred to
both of you. Why, Oswyn, surely you see that? You have both been
painting here, and you were both struck in the same way. Nothing
could be simpler."
Now Lightmark seemed to assume a more confident attitude, to become
more like himself; and he was about to break the chain of silence,
which had held him almost voiceless throughout Oswyn's attack, when
Rainham again interrupted him.
"I am sure you needn't say anything, Dick. We all know Oswyn; he--he
wasn't serious. Go and catch your train, and forget all about it."
The first words which Rainham spoke recalled to Oswyn the powerful
reason which had determined him to preserve his old neutrality, and
to make an offering of silence upon the altar of his regard for the
only man with whom he could feel that he had something in common. If
his vengeance could have vented itself upon a single victim, it
would have fallen, strong and sure; but it was clear to his calmer
self that this could not be; the consequences would be too
far-reaching, and might even recoil upon himself. After all, what
did it matter? There was a certain luxury in submission to
injustice, a pleasure in watching the bolt of Nemesis descend when
his hands were guiltless of the launching. And as he struggled with
himself, hunting in retrospect for some excuse for what his passion
railed at as weakness, a last straw fell into the scale, for he
thought of the faded portrait in the cigarette-case.