A Comedy of Masks Part 34

"Perhaps I had better not let him come up," she said; "it is late already, and you will be wanting to dress."

Lightmark had just alighted from the carriage when his wife joined him in the street. He held the door for her silently, and stopped for a moment to give the direction, "Home," to the coachman before he took the place at her side.

She turned to him after a while inquiringly, finding something of unwonted gravity in his manner.

"Did you get the box?" she asked.

"The box?" he repeated blankly. Then, pulling himself up, "No," he said quickly, "I forgot all about it. The fact is, I heard something this afternoon which put it out of my head. I am afraid," he went on, with a growing hesitation, "you will be rather shocked."

"Ah," she cried quickly, catching at her breath, "something has happened. Tell me. Don't preface it; I can bear anything if you will only tell me straight out."

"It's Rainham," he murmured. "He died last night at Blackpool. I heard it from McAllister, at the club."

He looked away from her vaguely out of his window at the pale streets, where a few lamps were beginning to appear, waiting in a fever of apprehension, which he vainly sought to justify, for some word or comment on the part of his wife.

As none came, and the silence grew intolerable, he ventured at last to glance furtively across at her. Her face seemed to him a shade paler than before, but that might be exaggerated by the relief of her rich and sombre furs. Her eyes were quite expressionless and blank, although she had the air of being immensely thoughtful; her mouth was inscrutable and unmoved. And he experienced a sudden pang of horror at the antic.i.p.ation of a dinner alone with her, with the ghostly presence of this news dividing them, before he reminded himself that Colonel Lightmark was to be of the party.

For, perhaps, the first time in his life the prospect of his uncle's company afforded him a sensation of relief.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

When Oswyn emerged from the narrow doorway of the gallery in Bond Street, which on the morrow was to be filled with the heterogeneous presence of those who, for different reasons, are honoured with cards of invitation to private views, it was still daylight, although the lamps had been lighted; and the east wind, which during the earlier hours of the day had made the young summer seem such a mockery of flowery illusions, had taken a more genial air from the south into alliance; and there was something at once caressing and exhilarating in their united touch as they wandered in gentle eddies up the crooked thoroughfare.

Oswyn paused upon the pavement, outside the showroom which Mosenthal called a gallery, gazing up the road towards Oxford Street, with a momentary appreciation of the subtile early evening charm, which lent so real a beauty even to a vista of commonplace shop-fronts and chimney-pots, straightening his bent figure, and wondering whither to betake himself.

He had not allowed his friend's death to be an excuse for abandoning the projected exhibition; indeed, when this event occurred, he was already too far compromised; and he even found the labour involved in the preparations for the new departure a very welcome distraction--the one thing which made it possible for the desolate man to stay on in London, which, he a.s.sured himself dogmatically, was the only place on earth where he could face life with an indifference which was at least a tolerable imitation of equanimity.

To get together the materials for even a modest exhibition of the kind which he contemplated, it became necessary for him to ransack old portfolios, and to borrow from dealers, and from his few discriminating private patrons, works which had but recently left his studio and could still be traced; to utilize all the hours of daylight accorded to him by a grudging season for finis.h.i.+ng, mounting, and retouching.

The man who made frames for Oswyn knew him of old as an exacting customer and hard to please, who insisted on a rigid adherence to his own designs, and was quick to detect inferior workmans.h.i.+p or material; but during the last few days he had been driven almost to rebellion by the painter's exigencies; never had such calls been made upon him for flawless gla.s.s, and delicately varied shades of gold and silver; never had artist's eye been so ruthless in the condemnation of imperfect mitres and superfluous plaster.

But now the work of preparation was at an end: the catalogues had been printed, and his _impresario_ had judiciously circulated invitations to press and public: the work was done, and the workman felt only weary and indifferent. If the public howled, what did it matter? Their hostility would be for him a corroboration, for his Jew an invaluable advertis.e.m.e.nt. If they fawned, so much the better: it would not hurt him, and Mosenthal would still have his advertis.e.m.e.nt. If they were indifferent, well, so was he.

The question of pecuniary profit troubled him not at all (though here his Jew joined issue): what in the world could he do with money, now? He could paint a picture in a month which would keep him for six, and the dealer who bought it probably for a year.

Margot was already provided for, even handsomely: in that respect, at least, her first adopted father had left no void for his successor to fill.

So again he shrugged his shoulders. And upon that evening, for the first time since Rainham's death, he dined, more solitary and more silent than ever, at his familiar table at Brodonowski's. He found that, after all, his nervous antic.i.p.ation of inconvenient protestations of sympathy was not fulfilled; there were not many men who knew him more than by sight at Brodonowski's, and the few of his old a.s.sociates who were there had the good sense to exhibit nothing extraordinary in their demeanour towards him. Only they were a little less wildly humorous than of old, and more forbearing in their sallies; the conversation died out for an instant as he made his way quickly, with the faintest sign of recognition, through their midst--and that was all.

Rainham's death had affected some of them for a few days perhaps, but it had not the shock of the unexpected; they chiefly wondered that he had dragged his life through so cruel a winter. And his close alliance with Oswyn had, as a natural consequence, debarred him from a real intimacy with any of the other men, who, for the most part younger, cultivated different friends.h.i.+ps and different pursuits.

They had missed Oswyn during his seclusion of the last few weeks; he was so essentially the presiding, silent genius of the place--a man to be pointed out to new-comers, half ironically, as the greatest, most deeply injured, of them all; the possessor of a talent unapproached and unappreciated. They felt that his presence lent a distinction to the dingy resort which it otherwise frequently lacked: and he had come to be so far regarded as a permanent inst.i.tution, of an almost official nature, that even on the coldest nights his chair by the fireside had remained untenanted.

When the next morning came, Oswyn felt desperately inclined to break the promise which Mosenthal had, with some difficulty, exacted from him, and to keep far from Bond Street and the crowd who even then were a.s.sembling to cast their careless glances and light words at the work of his life; it was only the fear of the taint of cowardice, and a certain perversity, which induced him eventually to present himself within the gallery rather late in the afternoon.

As he entered the room, looking about him with a kind of challenge, many eyes were turned upon him (for people go to private views not to see pictures--that is generally impossible--but to see and be seen of men), but few had any suspicion that this strange man, with the shabby, old-fas.h.i.+oned apparel, and expression half nervous, half defiant, was the painter whose pictures they were pretending to criticise.

Very few of those present--hardly half a dozen perhaps--knew him even by sight; and while his evident disregard for social convention marked him, for the discerning observer, as a person of probably artistic distinction, the general conjecture set him down, not as a painter--he did not seem to be of that type--but as a man of letters--probably a maker of obscure verse.

When he had mastered the first wild impulse which prompted him to tear his pictures down, to turn their faces to the wall--anything to hide them from this smiling, languid, well-dressed crowd--and resigned himself to observation, he saw that Mosenthal was beaming at him complacently, through the ma.s.sive gold spectacles which adorned and modified the bridge of his compromising nose, from his seat behind the table, where information as to the prices of the exhibits could be obtained.

There were exactly forty drawings and paintings to be seen upon the spa.r.s.ely-covered walls, which had been draped for the occasion with coa.r.s.ely-woven linen of a dull olive-green, and about half of these were drawings and studies, small in point of size, executed in chalk and pastels.

The greater part of these represented ordinary scenes of London outdoor life--a deserted corner of Kensington Gardens, with tall soot-blackened trees lifting their stately tracery of dark branches into the sky; a reach of the wide, muddy river, with a gaunt bridge looming through the fog; a gin-palace at night time, with garish lamps s.h.i.+ning out upon the wet streets and crouching beggars.

Of the remainder, which included a few portraits and some imaginative subjects, the greater number were painted in oils, and the largest canvas would not have seemed out of place on the walls of an ordinary room.

Oswyn smiled grimly as he noticed that the portrait of Margot, which he had begun for Rainham and finished for himself, was a considerable centre of attraction; there was quite a dense crowd in the vicinity of this canvas (it is true, it was near the tea-table), and it included two bishops, a duke, and an actress, of whom the last-named was certainly more stared at than the picture.

It irritated him, in spite of his contempt for the throng, to see people standing, chatting, with their backs turned towards his creations; and when Mosenthal informed him in a triumphant stage-whisper, leaning across the table littered with catalogues, that nine of the pictures had already found purchasers, he was almost inclined to rebel, to refuse to ratify the sales.

The only friendly face which he encountered during the afternoon was that of McAllister, who presently brought his congratulations and conspicuous presence to the corner to which Oswyn had betaken himself; and for a time he found himself listening, while the Scotchman enlightened him, somewhat against his will, as to the names and celebrity of the distinguished visitors whom he was supposed to be receiving.

He was a.s.sured that the press notices could not fail to be favourable (he mentally promised himself that nothing should induce him to read a newspaper for at least a fortnight), and the flattering comments of Mr. This and Lady That were half-apologetically retailed for his presumed delectation.

As his eyes wandered, with his attention, furtively round the room, they presently encountered, in their pa.s.sage from group to group, a face which seemed vaguely familiar--the face of a woman, whom he certainly had never known, but whose beauty, he thought, was not appealing to his admiration for the first time.

She was standing with her profile turned towards him, gazing gravely at his study of a pale figure, with beautiful eyes and an armful of wonderfully coloured poppies, which he called "Thanatos, the Peace-bearer."

When she moved, presently, her gaze rested on him for a moment, with the faintest note of inquiry interrupting the smile with which she was listening to the sallies of her escort for the time being; the smile and glance revealed her more perfectly to Oswyn, and he was prepared to hear McAllister greet her as Mrs. Lightmark when, a few minutes later, she pa.s.sed them on her way round the room.

Eve had spent the week which followed the afternoon upon which her husband had stunned her with the news of Philip Rainham's death almost in solitude.

Lightmark had been obliged to pay a hasty visit to Berlin, on business connected with an International Art Congress, and his wife at the last moment decided, somewhat to his relief, that she would not accompany him. A man of naturally quick perception, and with a certain vein of nervous alertness underlying his outer clothing of careless candour, he could not help feeling that when he was alone with his wife he was being watched, that traps were set for him--in short, that he was suspected. And not only when they were alone had he cause for alarm: in crowded rooms, at mammoth dinner-parties, and colossal a.s.semblies he frequently became aware, by a sense even quicker than vision, that his wife's eyes were directed upon him from the farther side of the room, the opposite end of the dinner-table, with that wistful, childish expression in their depths, which, growing sterner and more critical of late, had ended by boring him.

Before Rainham's death, Eve, in her private discussions of the situation, had generally concluded by dismissing the subject petulantly, with a summing-up only partially convincing, that everything would come right in the end; that in time that miserable scene would be forgotten or explained away; and that the old intimacy, of which it was at once so bitter and so pleasant to dream, would be restored.

Her training--of which her mother was justly proud--had endowed her with a respect for social convention too great to allow her to think of rebelling against the existing order of things. She consoled herself by the reflection that at least she had committed no fault, and that no active discipline of penitence could justly be expected of her.

Concerning the truth of Rainham's story she could not fail to harbour doubts; that her husband was concealing something was daily more plainly revealed to her.

It was hard that she should suffer, but what could she do? At the bottom of her heart, in spite of the feeling of resentment which a.s.sailed her when--as it often did--the idea occurred to her that he had not exhibited towards her the perfect frankness which their old friends.h.i.+p demanded, she pitied Rainham. There were even times--such was her state of doubt--when she pitied her husband, and blamed herself for suspecting him of--she hardly owned what.

But, most of all, she pitied herself. She felt that in any case she had been wronged, whether Philip's ill-told tale was true or false.

But her pride enabled her to keep her doubts locked within her own heart, to present a smiling, if occasionally pale, face to the world, in whose doings she took so large a part, and even to deceive Mrs. Sylvester.

And now Philip was dead! The severance, which she had persuaded herself was only temporary, was on a sudden rendered inexorably complete and eternal.

The blow was a cruel one, and for a time it seemed to be succeeded by a kind of rebellious insensibility. Eve felt demoralized, and careless of the future; her frame of mind was precisely that of the man who is making his first hasty steps along the headlong road which is popularly spoken of as leading to the devil.

Later she began to reproach herself. She reflected, with a kind of scornful wonder at her weakness, that she had allowed all chance of explanation to escape; the one man whom she could trust, who would surely give her a straightforward answer if she appealed to him by the memory of the old days, was beyond the reach of her questions, silent to eternity. Her former sorrow seemed trivial by comparison with this.

On his return, Lightmark found his wife looking so pale and tired that he broke off in the middle of the story of his flattering reception at the German Court to express a suggestion for her benefit, that she had better go to Brighton or somewhere to recruit.

She would never get through the season at this rate. Yes, she must certainly take a holiday, directly after the Academy Private View.