A Comedy of Masks Part 13

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 debris 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 unb.u.t.toned 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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, a.s.similated 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 att.i.tude 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, d.i.c.k," 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 pa.s.s a vote of censure, and depose him, and he has to stand drinks. The compet.i.tion 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, d.i.c.k? 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 circ.u.mstance that the laddie's just sold a picture."

"Good business!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 b.u.t.toned 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, d.i.c.k?"

"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, d.i.c.k, I don't think it has. Lady Garnett told me more than a week ago."

"Oh," said d.i.c.k 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----"