A Comedy of Masks Part 14

"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, d.i.c.k. 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 d.i.c.k, I think, and we've lost----"

The soliloquy died away in a sigh and a pathetic shrug.

CHAPTER XV

A day or two later, when Rainham called in the afternoon at the Kensington studio to announce his approaching flight from England, he found Mrs. Sylvester and Eve in occupation, and a sitting in progress. His greeting of Eve was somewhat constrained. He seemed to stumble over the congratulations, the utterance of which usage and old acquaintance demanded; and he was more at his ease when the ice was fairly broken.

"I expected to find you here," he said, addressing Mrs. Sylvester.

"I have been to your house, and they told me you would probably be at the studio--_the_ studio--so I came on."

"Good boy, good boy!" said Lightmark, with as much approbation in his voice as the presence of the stick of a paint-brush between his teeth would allow. "You'll excuse our going on a little longer, won't you? It'll be too dark in a few minutes."

"You don't look well, Philip," remarked Mrs. Sylvester presently, with a well-a.s.sumed air of solicitude. "You ought to have come to Lucerne with us, instead of spending all the summer in town."

"Yes; why _didn't_ you, Philip?" cried Eve reproachfully. "It would have been so nice--oh, I'm so sorry, d.i.c.k, I didn't mean to move--you really ought to have come."

"Well, there was the dock, you see, and business and all that sort of thing. I can't always neglect business, you know."

Lightmark a.s.serted emphatically that he _didn't_ know, while, on the other hand, Mrs. Sylvester was understood to remark, with a certain air of mystery, that she could quite understand what kept Philip in town.

"Don't you think I might have been rather--rather a fifth wheel?"

suggested Rainham feebly, entirely ignoring Mrs. Sylvester's remark, to which, indeed, he attached no special meaning.

"Spare our blushes, old man," expostulated d.i.c.k. "It would have been awfully jolly. You would have been such a companion for Charles, you know," he added, with a malicious glance over his shoulder. "Oh dear! fog again. I think I must release you now, Eve. Tell me what you think of the portrait, now that I've worked in the background, Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, now don't you think I was right about the flowers?"

There was, in fact, a charming, almost virginal delicacy and freshness of air and tone about the picture. The girl's simple, white dress, with only--the painter had so far prevailed over the milliner,--only a suggestion of bright ribands at throat and waist; the quaint chippendale chair, the sombre Spanish leather screen, which formed the background, and the pot of copper-coloured chrysanthemums, counterparts of the little cl.u.s.ter which Eve wore in the bosom of her gown, on a many-cornered Turkish table at the side: it had all the gay realism of modern Paris without losing the poetry of the old school, or attaining the hardness of the new.

Rainham looked at it attentively, closely, for a long time. Then he said simply:

"It's the best thing you have done, d.i.c.k. It will be one of the best portraits in the Academy, and you ought to get a good place on the line."

"I'm so glad!" cried Eve rapturously, clasping her hands. "On the line! But," and her voice fell, "it isn't to go to the Academy.

Mamma has promised Sir--d.i.c.k is going to send it to the Grosvenor.

But it's pretty much the same, isn't it? Oh, now show Philip the sketch you have made for your Academy picture," she added, pointing to a board which stood on another easel, with a protecting veil over the paper which was stretched upon it. "You know _he_ can tell us if it's like the real thing."

"If it's the Riviera, or--or dry docks," added Rainham modestly.

But Lightmark stepped forward hastily, after a moment's hesitation, and put his hand on the drawing just as Eve was preparing with due ceremony to unveil it.

"Excuse me, I don't want to show it to Rainham yet. I--I want to astonish him, you know."

He laughed rather uneasily, and Eve gave way, with some surprise in her eyes, and a puzzled cloud on her pretty brow, and went and seated herself on the settee at her mother's side.

"He's afraid of my critical eye, Mrs. Sylvester," said Rainham gravely. "That's what it is. Well, if you don't show it me now, you won't have another opportunity yet awhile."

"That's it, Eve," exclaimed Lightmark hastily. "I'm afraid of his critical what's-his-name. You know he can be awfully severe sometimes, the old beggar, and I don't want him to curl me up and annihilate me while you're here."

"I don't believe he would, if it were _ever_ so bad," said Eve, only half satisfied. "And it isn't; it's awfully good. But it's too dark to see anything now."

"By Jove, so it is! Mrs. Sylvester, I'm awfully sorry; I always like the twilight myself. Rainham, would you mind ringing the bell.

Thanks. Oh, don't apologize; the handle always comes off. I never use it myself, except when I have visitors. I go and shout in the pa.s.sage; but Mrs. Grumbit objects to being shouted for when there are visitors on the premises. Great hand at etiquette, Mrs. Grumbit is."

The lady in question arrived at this juncture, fortified by a new and imposing cap, and laden with candles and a tea-tray, which she deposited, with much clatter of teaspoons, on a table by Mrs.

Sylvester's side.

"Thank you, Mrs. Grumbit. And now will you come to a poor bachelor's a.s.sistance, and pour out tea, Mrs. Sylvester? And I'm very sorry, but I haven't got any sugar-tongs. I generally borrow Copal's, but the beggar's gone out and locked his door. You ladies will have to imagine you're at Oxford."

Mrs. Sylvester looked bewildered, and paused with one hand on the Satsuma teapot.

"Don't you know, mamma, it isn't--form, don't you say? to have sugar-tongs at Oxford? It was one of the things Charles always objected to. I believe he tried to introduce them, but people always threw them out of the window. _I_ think they're an absurd invention."

Rainham, as he watched her slender fingers with their dimpled knuckles, daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the cracked blue-and-white china teacup which did service for a sugar-basin, unhesitatingly agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester seemed to think her argument that sugar-tongs could be so pretty--"Queen Anne, you know"--entirely unanswerable.

It was not until Mrs. Grumbit broke in upon the cosy little party to announce that the ladies' carriage was at the door that Rainham remembered the real object of his expedition.

Then, when Eve, warmly wrapped in her furs, and with the glow of the firelight still in her face, held out a small gloved hand with a smiling "Au revoir, Philip," he shook his head rather sadly.

"I'm afraid it must be good-bye--for some time, at least. I came to tell you that I am on the wing again. Doctor's orders, you know. I shall be in Bordighera on Friday, I expect."

"And to-day's Tuesday," complained Eve.

"And I was just going to ask you to dine with us, one day soon,"

expostulated her mother.

"You must come over at Christmas, old man," said d.i.c.k cheerfully.

"For the wedding, you know. You've got to give me away, and be bridesmaid, and all that sort of thing."

Rainham shook his head again.

"I'm afraid not. You don't know my doctor. He wouldn't hear of it.

No, you won't see me in town again before May, unless there's a radical reform in the climate."

"Couldn't--couldn't we put it off till May?" suggested Eve navely.

But the suggestion was not received with anything approaching enthusiasm.