A Comedy of Masks Part 3

"d.i.c.k, my boy," said the colonel, when they were safely in the street, "you must come and dine with me. Not tonight; I am going to take Lady Dulminster to the French play. Let me have your address, or come and look me up at the club. I'm dev'lish glad you're getting on so well, my boy, though you were a fool not to stay up at Oxford and take your degree. After all, though, perhaps you aren't quite the cut for the Church or a fellows.h.i.+p, and--and the Sylvesters are dev'lish good people to know, d.i.c.k. Ta, ta! Don't forget to come and see me."

So saying, d.i.c.k's versatile uncle waved his cheroot by way of adieu, and clambered laboriously into a hansom.

"By Jove!" said the younger man blankly, "what a ridiculous old humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with his confounded cavalry bl.u.s.ter! I rather think I _will_ look him up: and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile, it's time for me to go and meet old Rainham, and take him round to Brodonowski's. What a ripping sunset!"

And he strolled light-heartedly through Grosvenor Square, the smoke of his cigarette fading away behind him.

CHAPTER IV

When Rainham pushed back the door of the dim little restaurant in Turk Street, Soho, he stood a moment, blinking his eyes a little in the sudden change from the bright summer suns.h.i.+ne, before he a.s.sured himself that his friend had not yet arrived. Half a dozen men were sitting about smoking or discussing various drinks. The faces of several were familiar to him, but there were none of them whom he knew; so he took his seat at a table near the door and ordered a vermouth to occupy him until Lightmark, whose unpunctuality was notorious, should put in an appearance. In the interim his eyes strayed round the establishment, taking stock of the walls with their rough decorations, and the _clientele_, and noting, not without a certain pleasure, that during the six months in which he had been absent neither had suffered much alteration.

Indeed, to Philip Rainham, who had doubtless in his blood the taint of Bohemia, Brodonowski's and the enthusiasm of its guests had a very definite charm. They were almost all of them artists; they were all of them young and ardent; and they had a habit of propounding their views, which were always of the most advanced nature, with a vehemence which to Rainham represented all the disinterestedness of youth. Very often they were exceedingly well worth knowing, though in the majority of cases the world had not found it out. He knew very few of them personally; he had been taken there first by Lightmark, when the latter was fresh from Paris, and had been himself more in touch with them. But he had often sat smoking silently a little outside the main group, listening, with a deferential air that sat upon his age somewhat oddly, to their audacious propaganda.

In his mind he would sometimes contrast the coterie with certain artistic houses, more socially important, which he had from time to time frequented: where earnest-eyed women in graceful garments--which certainly afforded a rest to the eye--dispensed tea from a _samovar_, and discoursed discreetly of the current Academy and the most recent symptomatic novel.

The delight of a visible, orderly culture permeating their manners and their conversation was a real one, and yet, Rainham reflected, it left one at the last a trifle weary, a little cold. It seemed to him that this restaurant, with its perennial smell of garlic, its discoloured knife-handles, its frequentation of picturesque poverty, possessed actually an horizon that was somewhat less limited.

Indeed, the dingy room, its a.s.semblage apart, had many traces of an artistic patronage. The rough walls were adorned, in imitation of the familiar Roman haunt, of which this was, so to speak, a colony, with a host of fantastic sketches: rapid silhouettes in charcoal, drawn for ill.u.s.tration or refutation in the heat of some strenuous argument; caricatures in the same medium, some of them trenchantly like, of the customers as well as of certain artistic celebrities, whose laurels Brodonowski's had not approved, varied here and there by an epigram or a doggerel couplet, d.a.m.ning the Philistine.

Rainham smiled as he recognised occasionally the grotesque travesty of a familiar face. Presently his eyes were arrested by a drawing which was new to him, a face of striking ugliness, offering advantages to the caricaturist of which, doubtless, he had not omitted to avail himself. It imposed itself on Rainham, for the savage strength which it displayed, and for an element in its hideousness which suggested beauty. He was still absorbed in the study of this face when Lightmark entered and took his place opposite him with a brief apology for his tardiness. He was dressed well, with a white orchid in his b.u.t.ton-hole, and looked prosperous and rosy. Some light badinage on this score from his various acquaintances in the restaurant he parried with a good-humoured nonchalance; then he betook himself to consideration of the _menu_.

"I have been calling on your friends, the Sylvesters," he explained after a while, "and I could not get away before. My uncle was there, by the way. You have heard me speak of him?"

"Your uncle, who holds such a lax view of the avuncular offices?"

Lightmark smiled a little self-congratulatory smile.

"Ah, that's changed. The old boy was deuced friendly--gave me his whole hand instead of two fingers, and asked me to dine with him. I think," he went on after a moment, "the Sylvesters have been putting in a good word for me. Or perhaps it was Mrs. Sylvester's portrait which did the job."

"Ah," said Rainham, "you have painted her, have you?"

Their fish occupied them in silence. Lightmark, a trifle flushed from his rapid walk, smiled from time to time absently, as though his thoughts were pleasant ones. The older man thought he had seldom seen him looking more boyishly handsome. Presently his eyes again caught the head which had so struck his fancy.

"Is that yours, d.i.c.k?" he asked.

Lightmark followed the direction of his eyes to the opposite wall.

"I believe it is," he remarked, with a shade of deprecation in his manner. "It is Oswyn. Don't you know him?"

"I don't know him," said the other, sipping his thin Medoc. "But I think I should like to. What is he?"

"He will be here soon, no doubt, and then you will see for yourself.

He is Oswyn! I knew him in Paris better than I do now. He was in B----'s studio; and B---- swore that he had a magnificent genius. He painted a monstrous picture which the Salon wouldn't hang; but B---- bought it, and hung it in his studio, where it frightened his models into fits. Last year he came to London, where he makes enough, when he is sober, by painting pot-boilers for the dealers, to keep him in absinthe and tobacco, which are apparently his sole sustenance. In the meanwhile he is painting a masterpiece; at least, so he will tell you. He is a virulent fanatic, whose art is the most monstrous thing imaginable. He is--but talk of the devil----"

He broke off and nodded to a little, lean man of ambiguous age, in a strained coat, who entered at this moment with a rapid lurching gait. He sat down immediately opposite them, under Lightmark's presentment, with which Rainham curiously compared him. And it struck him that there was something in that oddly repulsive figure which Lightmark's superficial crayon had missed. The long, haggard face was there, with its ill-kempt hair and beard; and the lips, which, when they parted in a smile that was too full of irony, revealed the man's uneven, discoloured teeth. Rainham lost sight of his uncouthness in a sense of his extreme power. His eyes, which were restless and extraordinarily brilliant, met Rainham's presently; and the latter was conscious of a certain fascination in their sustained gaze. In spite of the air of savagery which pervaded the man, it was a movement of sympathy which, on the whole, he experienced towards him. And it seemed as if this sentiment were reciprocal, for when the German youth, who was the cupbearer of the establishment, had taken Oswyn's order, and had brought him absinthe in a long gla.s.s, he motioned it abruptly to the opposite table. Then he crossed over and accosted Lightmark, whom he had not hitherto appeared to recognise, with a word of greeting. Lightmark murmured his name and Rainham's, and the strange, little man nodded to him not unamiably.

"I must smoke, if you don't mind," he said, after a moment.

They nodded a.s.sent, and he produced tobacco in a screw of newspaper from the pocket of his coat, and began rapidly to make cigarettes.

Rainham watched the dexterous movements of his long nervous hands--the colour of old ivory--and found them noticeable.

"You are not an artist, I think," he suggested after a moment, fixing his curiously intent eyes on Rainham.

"No," admitted the other, smiling, "I am afraid I am not. I am only here on sufferance. I am a mender of s.h.i.+ps."

"He is a connoisseur," put in Lightmark gaily. "It's an accident that he happens to be connected with s.h.i.+pping--a fortunate one, though, for he owns a most picturesque old shanty in the far East.

But actually he does not know a rudder post from a jib-boom."

"I suppose you have been painting it?" said Oswyn shortly.

Lightmark nodded.

"I have been painting the river from his wharf. The picture is just finished, and on the whole I am pleased with it. You should come in and give it a look, Oswyn, some time. You haven't seen my new studio."

"I never go west of Regent Street," said Oswyn brusquely.

Lightmark laughed a little nervously.

"Oswyn doesn't believe in me, you know, Philip," he explained lightly. "It is a humiliating thing to have to say, but I may as well say it, to save him the trouble. He is so infernally frank about it, you know. He thinks that I am a humbug, that I don't take my art seriously, and because, when I have painted my picture, I begin to think about the pieces of silver, he is not quite sure that I may not be a descendant of Judas. And then, worst of all, I have committed the unpardonable sin: I have been hung at Burlington House. Isn't that about it, Oswyn?"

The elder man laughed his low, mirthless laugh.

"We understand each other, d.i.c.k; but you don't quite do yourself justice--or me. I have an immense respect for your talent. I feel sure you will achieve greatness--in Burlington House."

"Well, it's a respectable inst.i.tution," said the young man soberly.

Oswyn finished his drink at a long, thirsty gulp, watching the young man askance with his impressive eyes. Rainham noticed for the first time that he had a curious trick of smiling with his lips only--or was it of sneering?--while the upper part of his face and his heavy brows frowned.

"By the way, Lightmark," he observed presently, "I have to congratulate you on your renown. There is quite a long panegyric on your picture in the _Outcry_ this week. Do you know who wrote it?"

"d.a.m.n it, man!" broke out Lightmark, with a vehemence which, to Rainham, seemed uncalled for, "how should I know? I haven't seen the rag for an age."

There was an angry light in his eyes, but it faded immediately.

Oswyn continued apologetically:

"I beg your pardon. It must be very annoying to you to be puffed indiscreetly. But I fancied, you know----"

Lightmark, flus.h.i.+ng a little, interrupted him, laying his hand with a quick gesture, that might have contained an appeal in it, on the painter's frayed coat-sleeve.

"Your gla.s.s is empty, and we are about ready for our coffee. What will you take?"

Oswyn repeated his order, smiling still a little remotely, as he let the water trickle down from a scientific height to his gla.s.s, whipping the crystal green of its contents into a nebulous yellow.

Rainham, who had listened to the little pa.s.sage of arms in silence, felt troubled, uneasy. The air seemed thunderous, and was heavy with unspoken words. There appeared to be an under-current of understanding between the two painters which was the reverse of sympathetic, and made conversation difficult and volcanic. It caused him to remind himself, a trifle sadly, how little, after all, one knew of even one's nearest friend--and Lightmark, perhaps, occupied to him that relation--how much of the country of his mind remains perpetually undiscovered; and it made him wonder, as he had sometimes wondered before, whether the very open and sunny nature of the young painter, which was so large a part of his charm, had not its concealed shadows--how far, briefly, Lightmark's very frankness might not be a refinement of secretiveness?