chance and I took it. I told him if he would give me Glory I’d serve
him all my life as no man yet was ever served. I begged with all my
soul. He told me he would give Glory to his servants before my eyes....
“I don’t remember much afterwards; it is like a dream in fever,
half-reality, half-mists of pain. But one moment is clear; when she
fainted I heard someone laugh. It was I. From that moment I lived for
revenge.
“They tortured me too--did something to me they thought would give me
a lingering death in agony, and threw me into the street. I crawled to
a coolie’s hut and got a girl to fetch me a German surgeon. A timely
operation saved my life, and that same night I learned that Glory was
dead.
* * * * *
“The rest’s a long tale, but I can cut it short. I went to Peking and
got a place in the household of the empress; in time she took a liking
to me, and I thought and plotted and planned till at length she sent
for the Governor and told him to come without a retinue.
“I had made my arrangements. He was taken outside the town, brought in
by my servants, and bound in the cellar of a house I had bought....
“He was a month dying.
“Every day I went to my duties at the palace; every evening and morning
I spent an hour with those cold eyes. He used to beg me to kill him;
that made me laugh....
“In that month I learned the keen delight there is in torture.
“Do you know,” Shimonski broke off, “I never see a punishment now or an
execution without seeing that man in the place of the victim. His pain
thrills me. What a month it was! I soon found out what parts of the
body hurt the most when you tweaked off pieces with red-hot pincers.
You’d never guess.
“He grew old in a week.... As I pulled his nails off, his hairs fell
out.... With his tongue and teeth gone, his beard turned white and the
yellow skin of him shrivelled as I ...”
I put up my hand to ward off more, and Shimonski turned and went across
the room muttering to himself. “Glory, Glory!”
Had suffering turned his brain--or passion?
ST. PETER’S DIFFICULTY
ST. PETER’S DIFFICULTY
One day Peter was greatly disturbed. He wanted to leave the Gate of
Heaven and his duties there for a few minutes, so he called his brother
Andrew to take his place.
Andrew was very willing to play guardian, but Peter was afraid to leave
him in charge.
“Mind now,” he cautioned him, “don’t let anyone in who is not entitled
to enter. Don’t act on your own judgment. Ask the Recording Angel and
go by his assurance only, and remember that those who have a right to
get in will always get in, and a little delay will not harm them, for
son of man or daughter of Eve was never too humble. Take care now and
make no mistake.”
Andrew assured Peter again and again that he would follow his
directions to the letter, and at length Peter hastened away towards the
Throne, his business brooking no delay.
On the way he met Jesus, and after some hesitation could not help
unburdening his heart to Him:
“A dreadful thing has happened, Master,” he began, “and I want you to
believe that I am not to blame. I have been given charge of the gate
and have never left it for a moment till now, and I pledge you my word
I have never let a single person inside who has not a perfectly clean
sheet. No one can be more grateful for all the privileges of Heaven
than I am. You believe me, don’t you?”
Jesus bowed His head with smiling eyes.
“I am sure, Peter, you have been an admirable guardian,” He said, “but
what is troubling you now?”
“The other day,” began Peter, looking up at Him with sidelong intent
eyes, “the other day I met a little blind girl whom I certainly never
let into Heaven. Oh, Master, Master, someone is admitting them; I can
do nothing and I shall be blamed for someone else’s fault.”
Jesus put His hand on Peter’s shoulder: “We do not blame easily, do we,
Peter? But who do you think is letting them in?”
“I cannot sleep or eat for thinking of it,” replied Peter evasively;
“please help me.”
“How shall I help you?” asked Jesus.
“Come to-night at eleven o’clock when all is quiet and I will show you
everything.”
Jesus looked at him in some surprise, but answered simply: “I will be
with you, Peter.”
That night Peter took Jesus and guided Him by the hand all along the
rampart to the first great bastion; then he whispered to him to wait
in the shadow and he would see. And lo! a few minutes later they were
aware of a woman’s figure close to the battlements. They both saw her
unwind her girdle and let it down over the wall; in a few moments a
little hunchbacked creature climbed up, took one or two halting steps
and then cast himself down on his face before the woman and began
kissing the hem of her garment.
At once Jesus drew Peter away, and as they went towards the gate, out
of earshot, He said: “My mother!”
“Yes, it is Mary,” Peter began, “and what can I do? Those she lets
in are all deformed like that wretched hunchback; she helps only the
maimed and the halt and the blind, and some afflicted with bleeding,
putrid sores--dreadful creatures; they would shame even an earthly
city. But what am I to do, Master?”
“Peter, Peter!” said Jesus, and the luminous great eyes dwelt on him,
“you and I had not even deformity to plead for us----”
LOVE IS MY SIN
LOVE IS MY SIN
Many years ago now I was staying at a certain castle in Scotland. I
didn’t like the country; it rained without ceasing, and the rain was
bleak and cold, like the harsh, Doric accent of the people, utterly
unlike the soft Irish rain and the caressing slur of the brogue.
The host and guests went out shooting or fishing every day, usually
taking the ladies with them, and I was left to my own devices, for I
had already come to loathe the taking of life for mere sport.
The library hadn’t a modern book to boast of, so in the intervals of
sunshine I usually walked about the Italian gardens, where the lilac
bushes stood glittering like queens bediamonded.
One day, at a loose end and lonely, I resolved to explore the great
house, and went up and down stairs and along endless corridors till, in
the north wing near the roof, I heard something, and glancing into a
bare loft-like room saw a man seated on the floor with a picture on his
knees, while others stood about on easels and propped against the dais.
“May I come in?” I asked out of sheer curiosity.
He nodded his head, intent upon his work, and in I went and stood
beside him, looking down on an _Infanta_ of Velasquez.
“My name is Symonds,” I began, smiling. “I’m interested in painting and
art as a journalist. I hope you don’t mind my looking on at your work?”
“Not a bit,” he replied, smiling pleasantly out of hazel eyes. “You
won’t know my name,” he went on; “it’s Ronden; wholly undistinguished,”
he added.
Was it fancy or did I catch a shade of bitterness accentuating the last
two words? In any case my curiosity was sharpened.
“What are you doing?” I went on, noticing at the same time his curious
pallid complexion and the long sensitive fingers manipulating a sort of
palette knife.
“It’s rather a long story,” he began, “but it may interest you.
“In painting, as in all the arts, I imagine, there have been curious
changes in taste. In the eighteenth century Murillos in England fetched
a large price, while Velasquez was little thought of. Of course there
were amateurs who knew better even then, but, as a rule, Velasquez,
with his seeing eyes and poignant realism, was not much esteemed,
and his pictures were often banished to the garret, or even to the
outhouse, whereas Murillo’s fashion-plates were throned in the chief
places of the mansion.
“Now all that’s altered. Murillo has sunk in our esteem and Velasquez
has risen, so that Velasquez paintings have been dragged out of their
hiding-places and the Murillos have been relegated to bedrooms or sold
to sentimental millionaires.
“But many of the Velasquez have been damaged by exposure. Canvases rot
quickly in damp. Consequently a new trade has sprung into being.
“Was it possible to transfer a Velasquez painting to a fresh canvas?
Could that be done without injuring the original? I thought it could,
and went to work at it. I soon found that this sort of craftsmanship,
the art of transferring paint bit by bit to a fresh canvas and fixing
it there with a thin paste or gum, was more lucrative than any work I
could get, so I have been doing it for a good many years now.
“I sometimes think it is like a writer condemned to journalism to earn
a living.”
“How interesting!” I exclaimed. “Are you really able to transfer the
whole of that picture to a fresh canvas without injuring it? You might
drop a little piece of paint on the floor, might you not, and it would
all crumble into dust, wouldn’t it?”
“Surely,” he replied, and as he spoke he flicked off half a square inch
of paint on to the floor, where it immediately fell to dust.
“I have studied the painting,” he went on, smiling shrewdly, “and I can
reproduce every tone exactly.”
“Good God!” I exclaimed, “what an astonishing mastery. You almost
persuade me that if that girl’s head had come to grief you could paint
it in correctly.”
“If I had ever seen it,” he said, “and studied it, I think I could
reproduce it so that Velasquez himself would hardly know where his
brush ceased to work and mine began. Mark you, I am taking the whole
of the inspiration from Velasquez. I profess to be merely a copyist--a
craftsman, but a competent one, I hope.”
“But if you can resuscitate Velasquez,” I said, “you must earn enormous
sums.”
“A good living, at least,” he replied casually. “I’m told that
journalists often earn more than men of letters, and so we craftsmen
often earn more than great creative artists.”
“Intensely interesting,” I cried. “You must be able to solve one of my
difficulties. Of course I know hardly anything about painting, but I
have often wondered whether Rembrandt painted all those brown portraits
of his. Ever since the so-called _Night Watch_, which is really the
_Day Watch_, was cleaned, one sees how he loved brilliant colours for
their own sake. Could he have used those umber tones so exclusively?”
“Nearly all painters,” replied Ronden, “even the great masters, bought
their colours and used them without thinking much about the composition
of them; many of the paints were mixed with bitumen, and in time
bitumen conquers all the other colours and degrades them to a dull
brown. The so-called Cornish school in England have begun studying the
matter and are trying to use pure paint, just as the best Frenchmen
now are all using pure colours. But the painter’s art, which is the
only universal art, is more transitory than other arts--I suppose by
way of compensation”--he spoke as if to himself; “all colours fade or
get brown in a couple of hundred years, and the magic of the artist’s
conception is lost. You have to read the master’s message by faith and
not by sight.”
Excited as well as curious now I probed further.
“How did you come to all this knowledge and this mastery?” I asked.
He looked up at me and I seemed to sense something pathetic--sad--in
the long brown eyes.
“That’s another story,” he said, “too personal to be interesting, I’m
afraid. This world forces nearly all of us to do things we do not want
to do. But how comes it that you take such an interest in painting?”
“I take a sort of amateur interest in art,” I said; “in fact, I am on
_The Standard_ as art critic and Jack-of-all-trades. How is it I’ve
never seen you downstairs?”
“I keep away from the society crowd,” he replied casually; “they’ve
nothing I want and what I’ve got doesn’t interest them.”
“We’re in the same boat then,” I remarked. “The host and I are old
friends, but the others leave me quite cold.”...
A little later the bell rang for tea and I went downstairs out of
politeness; but not before I had engaged Ronden to go for a walk with
me on the morrow before lunch. The man attracted and interested me
peculiarly; he was very handsome, with the regular features, fine eyes
and olive skin of the best Latin type; but he was something more than
handsome; there was an air of thought about him and--why shouldn’t I
say it?--a suggestion of sadness.
Next morning we met and strolled into the park. The walk didn’t amount
to much, for in ten minutes Ronden had to confess that he suffered from
fallen arches in his insteps and could not walk far, in spite of the
supports in his boots.
“That’s why I am so pale,” he explained. “I’ve good health,” he
hastened to add, “but, like a galley-slave, I’m not allowed to get
about freely.”
Bit by bit I came to understand that this disability, to which I paid
little attention at first, was the determining factor in his life, the
infirmity making him curiously shy and introspective, while sharpening
also his faculties of observation and deduction. But at the moment I
was enthralled by his talk; attracted, too, by the morbid beauty of his
face and by something thoughtful and aloof in his personality. He would
go for minutes at a time without speaking; he did not always respond
to my talk, as acquaintances do out of courtesy. He was unaffectedly
simple and sincere always, always himself with a suggestion of
underlying melancholy.
We sat, I remember, for half-an-hour that morning under a great
bell-like chestnut, and I learned a good deal from him incidentally
about painting and the trade in the old masters. He had wide
and profound knowledge, and what I liked most about him was a
large catholicity of taste. He could get as enthusiastic about a
Botticelli as a Greco, and the old ladies of Franz Hals appealed to
him as intensely as the _mayas_ of Goya. He had no prejudices, no
inhibitions, and his personal feelings were veiled, so to speak, by his
impartiality....
Time and again I sought him out and gradually learned a good deal
about him. He told me he had two boys of twelve and fourteen, who
were at Dunstan’s famous school in Somerset, and one day he mentioned
his wife; and when, out of courtesy, I asked about her, he took out
his watch-chain and showed me a miniature of her that might have
been painted by Cosway. It was a pretty face: a fine oval, with good
features, set off by red-gold hair and long grey-blue eyes.
“No need to say ‘beautiful,’” I exclaimed, “with such features and such
colouring. Is she tall or----?”
“I might say the height of my heart,” he reddened as he spoke, “but
really she looks as tall as I do; she’s about five feet six and I am
five feet nine nearly.”
The more I knew of Ronden the more he interested me. One day I found
out that his boys were stepsons, his wife’s children by a previous
marriage.
He was rather reticent and hardly ever spoke of himself or his
surroundings. Still, in the course of a fortnight or so I came to
know him and his surroundings. He was employed steadily by a Bond
Street dealer, who paid him on the average from three thousand to four
thousand pounds a year--“just enough to live on,” he added with a touch
of bitterness.
“Lots of good writers,” I retorted, “would look on such an income with
envy; in fact I scarcely know a single author in London who makes as
much.”
“I dare say that’s true,” he replied; “you see the painter’s appeal is
universal whereas the writer is limited to those of his own tongue.”
Everywhere I tested him I found he had thought for himself.
Recalling the fact afterwards I couldn’t understand how a man and his
wife in a Knightsbridge villa could be pinched even with a couple of
thousand a year: his wife, I inferred, was probably a bad manager.
Ronden knew most of the current plays. His wife, it seemed, liked
the theatre, but never went to the opera. The majority of plays, he
confessed, bored him, and he often let his wife go out alone with
friends.
“She’s a great favourite in society,” he confided to me once, “while
I’m half a recluse,” he added ruefully, “all but lame, you know.”
One day I asked him if I could see any of his original work, and he
admitted that he had done very little. “I have all I can do to keep
the wolf from the door; but some day, when the boys are off my hands,
I shall paint half-a-dozen pictures I have had in my head for years.
The masters all seem afraid of brilliant colours,” he went on; “I love
colours. I want a picture to stab the eye with contrasts. Is there any
colour more gay than scarlet or more joyous than gold, yet what painter
has ever used them freely?”
I had set him off.
“Colour is to me pure magic,” he continued, his eyes glowing. “I often
go to Covent Garden on a spring or summer morning to see the flowers.
A bank of primroses forty feet long and ten feet high takes my breath,
hyacinths by the yard make me shout aloud with joy--masses of colour
singing to the eyes. None of the old masters knew colour. What do
I care for form or story? I love colours--colours only, colours in
contrast, colours in harmony; fair ears of corn and blue flowers; green
grass and golden buttercups--the splendour of earth’s raiment--God’s,
if you will.”
This rhapsody taught me that Ronden might prove as interesting an
artist as he was a companion. Our intimacy, however, was cut short by
my recall to town, and, once in London, the old life so enmeshed me
that Ronden and his curious personality faded from my mind. It was
fated, however, that I should come across him again years later and get
to the heart of his mystery.
* * * * *
Everyone knows the Empire lounge in London, where the prettiest of the
half world move about and watch the audience or the stage, and some
provincial ladies, too, come there, enticed by the colour and movement
and weird variety of the show.
I seldom went: the slave market, as someone has christened it, did not
interest me. Life had a more picturesque variety show to offer than
could be found on any stage.
Almost immediately after we went in we saw all eyes directed at one of
the women, who was walking with a man. When she turned I was struck by
the rare beauty of her face. I looked at her rather scrutinisingly; I
don’t know why. She was tall, five feet six or seven, with a fairly
good figure, but a face that once seen was difficult to forget. It was
really more than pretty, set off as it was by red-gold hair, the nose
small, well formed, the eyes grey-blue and large. The man with her I
knew slightly, a lieutenant in the Guards,--Wyndham.
My companion seemed even more struck than I was.
“A good-looking woman,” he cried as they passed quite close to us. “I
wonder where Wyndham found her. Splendid colouring, isn’t it? I wonder
who she is. Should we go over to Wyndham and make him introduce us?”
“As you will,” I said, “but I would like to talk that matter out with
you first. There is surely no haste; they are going to be here for some
time.”
So Chesterfield and I had our talk out. But all the time I was
wondering where I had seen that face, for I had seen it somewhere,
I felt sure; it reminded me of something, I could not quite make
out what. Again and again the two passed before us, talking very
earnestly--at least Wyndham was very much in earnest, but the lady was
perfectly self-possessed and her eyes were taking in everything that
was going on. She had evidently noticed my companion’s admiration,
for she certainly flashed a look at him as she passed that was quite
significant.
At length Chesterfield stood up and went over to them, and I followed
in his wake.
“Oh Wyndham,” he exclaimed, “I haven’t seen you for an age. Won’t you
introduce us, and can’t we have supper together or something?”
Wyndham flushed, a little embarrassed. “Delighted, I am sure,” he said.
“This is Mrs. Ronden, Lord Chesterfield.” I was introduced too, and
Wyndham went on, half shyly:
“I persuaded Mrs. Ronden to come here, though she said she thought the
Empire was barred, because Sims Reeves is going to sing to-night for
the first time in ten years.”
“Do you care for music?” Chesterfield asked the lady.
“No,” she replied, “I don’t; but Reeves had such a reputation as a
singer and lady-killer that I wanted to see him.”
Mrs. Ronden! In a flash the country house in Scotland--everything--came
before me again. So this was the goddess of Ronden’s idolatry! I
recognised even the features, curiously alike and curiously different,
as a photograph always appears when compared with the reality.
But what was Mrs. Ronden doing in the Empire lounge with young Wyndham?
Mrs. Ronden had two boys, so Ronden had told me, by a previous
marriage, boys twelve and fourteen years of age--and that was three
years ago. She could be no chicken--thirty-eight or forty at least--and
going about with a young Guardsman of twenty-three or four!
_A fisher of men?_
Clearly Chesterfield was very much interested. He asked her quite
boldly for a meeting, and then and there made up a party for an early
dinner at the Savoy three nights later and afterwards the theatre.
“May I bring my husband?” she asked.
“Of course, of course,” said Chesterfield. “I shall be delighted to
meet him. Won’t you come, Wyndham? And you?” he added, turning to me.
I excused myself. The enigma was interesting to me; but I had liked
Ronden and so I seemed to be approaching it from a wrong angle, so to
speak.
When the party separated I went my way considerably intrigued.
Mrs. Ronden had the manners of a lady--yet--every now and then her
speech betrayed her. As soon as she was at her ease a little Cockney
twang came into her pronunciation--a common twang--and she was
evidently much flattered by Chesterfield’s admiration, responding very
graciously with nods and becks and ingratiating smiles.
What did it all mean?
I was fated soon to know more. Three or four weeks later I passed
through the great waiting-room in the Savoy Hotel on my way to the
restaurant, when I saw Ronden and Mrs. Ronden. Ronden called to me and
I went over immediately. “My wife,” he said, and I bowed as if I had
not seen her before. But she took up the ball boldly:
“I met this gentleman the other night,” she said, “with Lord
Chesterfield.” And Ronden asked no further questions.
Mrs. Ronden went on to tell me that they were waiting for a Mr. Stone,
who was to be their host at dinner and afterwards take them to the
theatre.
“Allan Stone!” I exclaimed, “the Jew financier?” He was widely known in
London and I knew him particularly well.
“The same,” Ronden replied.
“Curious,” I went on, “that we should meet two or three times running
like this, not having met before in the three years.”
At that moment Stone came up and insisted that I should dine with them
and go to the theatre afterwards, but I had other fish to fry. I could
not but notice, however, that he seemed on the very best terms with
Ronden, and especially with Mrs. Ronden. Once, indeed, he put his hand
on her bare arm and I saw Ronden’s face change. I wondered how much he
understood, for, knowing Stone well and something about the lady, I had
grown slightly suspicious. But I had to secure a table for my party
and therefore rose to go. While excusing myself Ronden was sincerely
kind, as always:
“I had hoped to have seen you at our little house in Knightsbridge. I
have not forgotten our meetings in Scotland.”
I promised to call on him shortly, and before I left I had arranged to
lunch with Stone the next day; he had something very important to say
to me, he said, about a great enterprise in which he thought I could
help him.
The next day I met Stone at the Savoy and we had our business talk;
then the conversation drifted to other things.
“A curious pair, the Rondens,” he began. “I never could understand
Ronden, but she is all clear enough; rather a nuisance, too. I suppose
he is one of those poor painters who can never sell his daubs?”
“On the contrary,” I said, “he makes a great deal of money; he is
one of the best craftsmen in the trade; knows more about the old
masters and about modern paintings, too, than anyone I know. You are
underrating Ronden.”
“No one has a right to be mean with a pretty wife,” Stone went on; “and
he must be very mean with her.”
“I don’t believe there is a mean bone in Ronden’s body,” I said warmly.
“I think he makes a large income and lets her spend it royally.”
“Good God!” Stone exclaimed, “she must be like royalty then, for a
good many of us contribute to her income.”
The Jew’s tone was ineffably common and suggestive, and I could not
help taking it up.
“You ought not to speak like that from guesswork,” I said. “I know
Ronden pretty well and feel sure that he’s straight.”
“I have paid for my knowledge,” retorted Stone curtly. “I think I am
justified in talking. I can assure you that even if you have paid that
lady, and paid her pretty liberally too, she has no hesitation in
asking you for more if she wants it.”