The Light That Failed
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The month dragged through at last, and, nearly prancing with impatience, he went to draw his money. Then he hastened to Torpenhow’s address and smelt the smell of cooking meats all along the corridors of the chambers. Torpenhow was on the top floor, and Dick burst into his room, to be received with a hug which nearly cracked his ribs, as Torpenhow dragged him to the light and spoke of twenty different things in the same breath.
‘But you’re looking tucked up,’ he concluded.
‘Got anything to eat?’ said Dick, his eye roaming round the room.
‘I shall be having breakfast in a minute. What do you say to sausages?’
‘No, anything but sausages! Torp, I’ve been starving on that accursed horse-flesh for thirty days and thirty nights.’
‘Now, what lunacy has been your latest?’
Dick spoke of the last few weeks with unbridled speech. Then he opened his coat; there was no waistcoat below. ‘I ran it fine, awfully fine, but I’ve just scraped through.’
‘You haven’t much sense, but you’ve got a backbone, anyhow. Eat, and talk afterwards.’ Dick fell upon eggs and bacon and gorged till he could gorge no more. Torpenhow handed him a filled pipe, and he smoked as men smoke who for three weeks have been deprived of good tobacco.
‘Ouf!’ said he. ‘That’s heavenly! Well?’
‘Why in the world didn’t you come to me?’
‘Couldn’t; I owe you too much already, old man. Besides I had a sort of superstition that this temporary starvation – that’s what it was, and it hurt – would bring me luck later. It’s over and done with now, and none of the syndicate know how hard up I was. Fire away. What’s the exact state of affairs as regards myself?’
‘You had my wire? You’ve caught on here. People like your work immensely. I don’t know why, but they do. They say you have a fresh touch and a new way of drawing things. And, because they’re chiefly home-bred English, they say you have insight. You’re wanted by half a dozen papers; you’re wanted to illustrate books.’
Dick grunted scornfully.
‘You’re wanted to work up your smaller sketches and sell them to the dealers. They seem to think the money sunk in you is a good investment.
Good Lord! who can account for the fathomless folly of the public?’
‘They’re a remarkably sensible people.’
‘They are subject to fits, if that’s what you mean; and you happen to be the object of the latest fit among those who are interested in what they call Art. Just now you’re a fashion, a phenomenon, or whatever you please. I appeared to be the only person who knew anything about you here, and I have been showing the most useful men a few of the sketches you gave me from time to time. Those coming after your work on the Central Southern Syndicate appear to have done your business. You’re in luck.’
‘Huh! call it luck! Do call it luck, when a man has been kicking about the world like a dog, waiting for it to come! I’ll luck ‘em later on. I want a place to work first.’
‘Come here,’ said Torpenhow, crossing the landing. ‘This place is a big box room really, but it will do for you. There’s your skylight, or your north light, or whatever window you call it, and plenty of room to thrash about in, and a bedroom beyond. What more do you need?’
‘Good enough,’ said Dick, looking round the large room that took up a third of a top story in the rickety chambers overlooking the Thames. A pale yellow sun shone through the skylight and showed the much dirt of the place. Three steps led from the door to the landing, and three more to Torpenhow’s room. The well of the staircase disappeared into darkness, pricked by tiny gas-jets, and there were sounds of men talking and doors slamming seven flights below, in the warm gloom.
‘Do they give you a free hand here?’ said Dick, cautiously. He was Ishmael enough to know the value of liberty.
‘Anything you like; latch-keys and license unlimited. We are permanent tenants for the most part here. ‘Tisn’t a place I would recommend for a Young Men’s Christian Association, but it will serve. I took these rooms for you when I wired.’
‘You’re a great deal too kind, old man.’
‘You didn’t suppose you were going away from me, did you?’ Torpenhow put his hand on Dick’s shoulder, and the two walked up and down the room, henceforward to be called the studio, in sweet and silent communion. They heard rapping at Torpenhow’s door. ‘That’s some ruffian come up for a drink,’ said Torpenhow; and he raised his voice cheerily. There entered no one more ruffianly than a portly middle-aged gentleman in a satin-faced frockcoat. His lips were parted and pale, and there were deep pouches under the eyes.
‘Weak heart,’ said Dick to himself, and, as he shook hands, ‘very weak heart. His pulse is shaking his fingers.’
The man introduced himself as the head of the Central Southern Syndicate and ‘one of the most ardent admirers of your work, Mr. Heldar. I assure you, in the name of the syndicate, that we are immensely indebted to you; and I trust, Mr. Heldar, you won’t forget that we were largely instrumental in bringing you before the public.’ He panted because of the seven flights of stairs.
Dick glanced at Torpenhow, whose left eyelid lay for a moment dead on his cheek.
‘I shan’t forget,’ said Dick, every instinct of defence roused in him.
‘You’ve paid me so well that I couldn’t, you know. By the way, when I am settled in this place I should like to send and get my sketches. There must be nearly a hundred and fifty of them with you.’
‘That is er – is what I came to speak about. I fear we can’t allow it exactly, Mr. Heldar. In the absence of any specified agreement, the sketches are our property, of course.’
‘Do you mean to say that you are going to keep them?’
‘Yes; and we hope to have your help, on your own terms, Mr. Heldar, to assist us in arranging a little exhibition, which, backed by our name and the influence we naturally command among the press, should be of material service to you. Sketches such as yours – ’
‘Belong to me. You engaged me by wire, you paid me the lowest rates you dared. You can’t mean to keep them! Good God alive, man, they’re all I’ve got in the world!’
Torpenhow watched Dick’s face and whistled.
Dick walked up and down, thinking. He saw the whole of his little stock in trade, the first weapon of his equipment, annexed at the outset of his campaign by an elderly gentleman whose name Dick had not caught aright, who said that he represented a syndicate, which was a thing for which Dick had not the least reverence. The injustice of the proceedings did not much move him; he had seen the strong hand prevail too often in other places to be squeamish over the moral aspects of right and wrong.
But he ardently desired the blood of the gentleman in the frockcoat, and when he spoke again, and when he spoke again it was with a strained sweetness that Torpenhow knew well for the beginning of strife.
‘Forgive me, sir, but you have no – no younger man who can arrange this business with me?’
‘I speak for the syndicate. I see no reason for a third party to – ’
‘You will in a minute. Be good enough to give back my sketches.’
The man stared blankly at Dick, and then at Torpenhow, who was leaning against the wall. He was not used to ex-employees who ordered him to be good enough to do things.
‘Yes, it is rather a cold-blooded steal,’ said Torpenhow, critically; ‘but I’m afraid, I am very much afraid, you’ve struck the wrong man. Be careful, Dick; remember, this isn’t the Soudan.’
‘Considering what services the syndicate have done you in putting your name before the world – ’
This was not a fortunate remark; it reminded Dick of certain vagrant years lived out in loneliness and strife and unsatisfied desires. The memory did not contrast well with the prosperous gentleman who proposed to enjoy the fruit of those years.
‘I don’t know quite what to do with you,’ began Dick, meditatively. ‘Of course you’re a thief, and you ought to be half killed, but in your case you’d probably die. I don’t want you dead on this floor, and, besides, it’s unlucky just as one’s moving in. Don’t hit, sir; you’ll only excite yourself.’
He put one hand on the man’s forearm and ran the other down the plump body beneath the coat. ‘My goodness!’ said he to Torpenhow, ‘and this gray oaf dares to be a thief! I have seen an Esneh camel-driver have the black hide taken off his body in strips for stealing half a pound of wet dates, and he was as tough as whipcord. This things’ soft all over – like a woman.’
There are few things more poignantly humiliating than being handled by a man who does not intend to strike. The head of the syndicate began to breathe heavily. Dick walked round him, pawing him, as a cat paws a soft hearth-rug. Then he traced with his forefinger the leaden pouches underneath the eyes, and shook his head. ‘You were going to steal my things, – mine, mine, mine! – you, who don’t know when you may die.
Write a note to your office, – you say you’re the head of it, – and order them to give Torpenhow my sketches, – every one of them. Wait a minute: your hand’s shaking. Now!’ He thrust a pocket-book before him. The note was written. Torpenhow took it and departed without a word, while Dick walked round and round the spellbound captive, giving him such advice as he conceived best for the welfare of his soul. When Torpenhow returned with a gigantic portfolio, he heard Dick say, almost soothingly, ‘Now, I hope this will be a lesson to you; and if you worry me when I have settled down to work with any nonsense about actions for assault, believe me, I’ll catch you and manhandle you, and you’ll die. You haven’t very long to live, anyhow. Go! Imshi, Vootsak, – get out!’ The man departed, staggering and dazed. Dick drew a long breath: ‘Phew! what a lawless lot these people are! The first thing a poor orphan meets is gang robbery, organised burglary! Think of the hideous blackness of that man’s mind! Are my sketches all right, Torp?’
‘Yes; one hundred and forty-seven of them. Well, I must say, Dick, you’ve begun well.’
‘He was interfering with me. It only meant a few pounds to him, but it was everything to me. I don’t think he’ll bring an action. I gave him some medical advice gratis about the state of his body. It was cheap at the little flurry it cost him. Now, let’s look at my things.’
Two minutes later Dick had thrown himself down on the floor and was deep in the portfolio, chuckling lovingly as he turned the drawings over and thought of the price at which they had been bought.
The afternoon was well advanced when Torpenhow came to the door and saw Dick dancing a wild saraband under the skylight.
‘I builded better than I knew, Torp,’ he said, without stopping the dance.
‘They’re good! They’re damned good! They’ll go like flame! I shall have an exhibition of them on my own brazen hook. And that man would have cheated me out of it! Do you know that I’m sorry now that I didn’t actually hit him?’
‘Go out,’ said Torpenhow, – ‘go out and pray to be delivered from the sin of arrogance, which you never will be. Bring your things up from whatever place you’re staying in, and we’ll try to make this barn a little more shipshape.’
‘And then – oh, then,’ said Dick, still capering, ‘we will spoil the Egyptians!’
CHAPTER IV
The wolf-cub at even lay hid in the corn, When the smoke of the cooking hung gray: He knew where the doe made a couch for her fawn, And he looked to his strength for his prey. But the moon swept the smoke-wreaths away. And he turned from his meal in the villager’s close, And he bayed to the moon as she rose.– In Seonee.‘WELL, and how does success taste?’ said Torpenhow, some three months later. He had just returned to chambers after a holiday in the country.
‘Good,’ said Dick, as he sat licking his lips before the easel in the studio.
‘I want more, – heaps more. The lean years have passed, and I approve of these fat ones.’
‘Be careful, old man. That way lies bad work.’
Torpenhow was sprawling in a long chair with a small fox-terrier asleep on his chest, while Dick was preparing a canvas. A dais, a background, and a lay-figure were the only fixed objects in the place. They rose from a wreck of oddments that began with felt-covered water-bottles, belts, and regimental badges, and ended with a small bale of second-hand uniforms and a stand of mixed arms. The mark of muddy feet on the dais showed that a military model had just gone away. The watery autumn sunlight was falling, and shadows sat in the corners of the studio.
‘Yes,’ said Dick, deliberately, ‘I like the power; I like the fun; I like the fuss; and above all I like the money. I almost like the people who make the fuss and pay the money. Almost. But they’re a queer gang, – an amazingly queer gang!’
‘They have been good enough to you, at any rate, than tin-pot exhibition of your sketches must have paid. Did you see that the papers called it the “Wild Work Show”?’
‘Never mind. I sold every shred of canvas I wanted to; and, on my word, I believe it was because they believed I was a self-taught flagstone artist.
I should have got better prices if I worked my things on wool or scratched them on camel-bone instead of using mere black and white and colour. Verily, they are a queer gang, these people. Limited isn’t the word to describe ‘em. I met a fellow the other day who told me that it was impossible that shadows on white sand should be blue, – ultramarine, – as they are. I found out, later, that the man had been as far as Brighton beach; but he knew all about Art, confound him. He gave me a lecture on it, and recommended me to go to school to learn technique. I wonder what old Kami would have said to that.’
‘When were you under Kami, man of extraordinary beginnings?’
‘I studied with him for two years in Paris. He taught by personal magnetism. All he ever said was, “Continuez, mes enfants,” and you had to make the best you could of that. He had a divine touch, and he knew something about colour. Kami used to dream colour; I swear he could never have seen the genuine article; but he evolved it; and it was good.’
‘Recollect some of those views in the Soudan?’ said Torpenhow, with a provoking drawl.
Dick squirmed in his place. ‘Don’t! It makes me want to get out there again. What colour that was! Opal and umber and amber and claret and brick-red and sulphur – cockatoo-crest – sulphur – against brown, with a nigger-black rock sticking up in the middle of it all, and a decorative frieze of camels festooning in front of a pure pale turquoise sky.’ He began to walk up and down. ‘And yet, you know, if you try to give these people the thing as God gave it, keyed down to their comprehension and according to the powers He has given you – ’
‘Modest man! Go on.’
‘Half a dozen epicene young pagans who haven’t even been to Algiers will tell you, first, that your notion is borrowed, and, secondly, that it isn’t Art.
‘’This comes of my leaving town for a month. Dickie, you’ve been promenading among the toy-shops and hearing people talk.’
‘I couldn’t help it,’ said Dick, penitently. ‘You weren’t here, and it was lonely these long evenings. A man can’t work for ever.’
‘A man might have gone to a pub, and got decently drunk.’
‘I wish I had; but I forgathered with some men of sorts. They said they were artists, and I knew some of them could draw, – but they wouldn’t draw. They gave me tea, – tea at five in the afternoon! – and talked about Art and the state of their souls. As if their souls mattered. I’ve heard more about Art and seen less of her in the last six months than in the whole of my life. Do you remember Cassavetti, who worked for some continental syndicate, out with the desert column? He was a regular Christmas-tree of contraptions when he took the field in full fig, with his water-bottle, lanyard, revolver, writing-case, housewife, gig-lamps, and the Lord knows what all. He used to fiddle about with ‘em and show us how they worked; but he never seemed to do much except fudge his reports from the Nilghai. See?’
‘Dear old Nilghai! He’s in town, fatter than ever. He ought to be up here this evening. I see the comparison perfectly. You should have kept clear of all that man-millinery. Serves you right; and I hope it will unsettle your mind.’
‘It won’t. It has taught me what Art – holy sacred Art – means.’
‘You’ve learnt something while I’ve been away. What is Art?’
‘Give ‘em what they know, and when you’ve done it once do it again.’
Dick dragged forward a canvas laid face to the wall. ‘Here’s a sample of real Art. It’s going to be a facsimile reproduction for a weekly. I called it “His Last Shot.” It’s worked up from the little water-colour I made outside El Maghrib. Well, I lured my model, a beautiful rifleman, up here with drink; I drored him, and I redrored him, and I redrored him, and I made him a flushed, dishevelled, bedevilled scallawag, with his helmet at the back of his head, and the living fear of death in his eye, and the blood oozing out of a cut over his ankle-bone. He wasn’t pretty, but he was all soldier and very much man.’
‘Once more, modest child!’
Dick laughed. ‘Well, it’s only to you I’m talking. I did him just as well as I knew how, making allowance for the slickness of oils. Then the art-manager of that abandoned paper said that his subscribers wouldn’t like it. It was brutal and coarse and violent, – man being naturally gentle when he’s fighting for his life. They wanted something more restful, with a little more colour. I could have said a good deal, but you might as well talk to a sheep as an art-manager. I took my “Last Shot” back. Behold the result! I put him into a lovely red coat without a speck on it. That is Art. I polished his boots, – observe the high light on the toe. That is Art. I cleaned his rifle, – rifles are always clean on service, – because that is Art.
I pipeclayed his helmet, – pipeclay is always used on active service, and is indispensable to Art. I shaved his chin, I washed his hands, and gave him an air of fatted peace. Result, military tailor’s pattern-plate. Price, thank Heaven, twice as much as for the first sketch, which was moderately decent.’
‘And do you suppose you’re going to give that thing out as your work?’
‘Why not? I did it. Alone I did it, in the interests of sacred, home-bred Art and Dickenson’s Weekly.’
Torpenhow smoked in silence for a while. Then came the verdict, delivered from rolling clouds: ‘If you were only a mass of blathering vanity, Dick, I wouldn’t mind, – I’d let you go to the deuce on your own mahl-stick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I find that to vanity you add the twopenny-halfpenny pique of a twelve-year-old girl, then I bestir myself in your behalf. Thus!’
The canvas ripped as Torpenhow’s booted foot shot through it, and the terrier jumped down, thinking rats were about.
‘If you have any bad language to use, use it. You have not. I continue.
You are an idiot, because no man born of woman is strong enough to take liberties with his public, even though they be – which they ain’t – all you say they are.’
‘But they don’t know any better. What can you expect from creatures born and bred in this light?’ Dick pointed to the yellow fog. ‘If they want furniture-polish, let them have furniture-polish, so long as they pay for it.
They are only men and women. You talk as if they were gods.’
‘That sounds very fine, but it has nothing to do with the case. They are the people you have to do work for, whether you like it or not. They are your masters. Don’t be deceived, Dickie, you aren’t strong enough to trifle with them, – or with yourself, which is more important.
Moreover, – Come back, Binkie: that red daub isn’t going anywhere, – unless you take precious good care, you will fall under the damnation of the check-book, and that’s worse than death. You will get drunk – you’re half drunk already – on easily acquired money. For that money and your own infernal vanity you are willing to deliberately turn out bad work. You’ll do quite enough bad work without knowing it. And, Dickie, as I love you and as I know you love me, I am not going to let you cut off your nose to spite your face for all the gold in England. That’s settled. Now swear.’
‘Don’t know, said Dick. ‘I’ve been trying to make myself angry, but I can’t, you’re so abominably reasonable. There will be a row on Dickenson’s Weekly, I fancy.’
‘Why the Dickenson do you want to work on a weekly paper? It’s slow bleeding of power.’
‘It brings in the very desirable dollars,’ said Dick, his hands in his pockets.
Torpenhow watched him with large contempt. ‘Why, I thought it was a man!’ said he. ‘It’s a child.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Dick, wheeling quickly. ‘You’ve no notion what the certainty of cash means to a man who has always wanted it badly.
Nothing will pay me for some of my life’s joys; on that Chinese pig-boat, for instance, when we ate bread and jam for every meal, because Ho-Wang wouldn’t allow us anything better, and it all tasted of pig, – Chinese pig. I’ve worked for this, I’ve sweated and I’ve starved for this, line on line and month after month. And now I’ve got it I am going to make the most of it while it lasts. Let them pay – they’ve no knowledge.’
‘What does Your Majesty please to want? You can’t smoke more than you do; you won’t drink; you’re a gross feeder; and you dress in the dark, by the look of you. You wouldn’t keep a horse the other day when I suggested, because, you said, it might fall lame, and whenever you cross the street you take a hansom. Even you are not foolish enough to suppose that theatres and all the live things you can buy thereabouts mean Life.
What earthly need have you for money?’
‘It’s there, bless its golden heart,’ said Dick. ‘It’s there all the time.
Providence has sent me nuts while I have teeth to crack ‘em with. I haven’t yet found the nut I wish to crack, but I’m keeping my teeth filed.
Perhaps some day you and I will go for a walk round the wide earth.’
‘With no work to do, nobody to worry us, and nobody to compete with? You would be unfit to speak to in a week. Besides, I shouldn’t go. I don’t care to profit by the price of a man’s soul, – for that’s what it would mean.
Dick, it’s no use arguing. You’re a fool.’
‘Don’t see it. When I was on that Chinese pig-boat, our captain got credit for saving about twenty-five thousand very seasick little pigs, when our old tramp of a steamer fell foul of a timber-junk. Now, taking those pigs as a parallel – ’
‘Oh, confound your parallels! Whenever I try to improve your soul, you always drag in some anecdote from your very shady past. Pigs aren’t the British public; and self-respect is self-respect the world over. Go out for a walk and try to catch some self-respect. And, I say, if the Nilghai comes up this evening can I show him your diggings?’
‘Surely. You’ll be asking whether you must knock at my door, next.’ And Dick departed, to take counsel with himself in the rapidly gathering London fog.
Half an hour after he had left, the Nilghai laboured up the staircase. He was the chiefest, as he was the youngest, of the war correspondents, and his experiences dated from the birth of the needle-gun. Saving only his ally, Keneu the Great War Eagle, there was no man higher in the craft than he, and he always opened his conversation with the news that there would be trouble in the Balkans in the spring. Torpenhow laughed as he entered.
‘Never mind the trouble in the Balkans. Those little states are always screeching. You’ve heard about Dick’s luck?’
‘Yes; he has been called up to notoriety, hasn’t he? I hope you keep him properly humble. He wants suppressing from time to time.’
‘He does. He’s beginning to take liberties with what he thinks is his reputation.’
‘Already! By Jove, he has cheek! I don’t know about his reputation, but he’ll come a cropper if he tries that sort of thing.’
‘So I told him. I don’t think he believes it.’
‘They never do when they first start off. What’s that wreck on the ground there?’
‘Specimen of his latest impertinence.’ Torpenhow thrust the torn edges of the canvas together and showed the well-groomed picture to the Nilghai, who looked at it for a moment and whistled.
‘It’s a chromo,’ said he, – ‘a chromo-litholeomargarine fake! What possessed him to do it? And yet how thoroughly he has caught the note that catches a public who think with their boots and read with their elbows! The cold-blooded insolence of the work almost saves it; but he mustn’t go on with this. Hasn’t he been praised and cockered up too much? You know these people here have no sense of proportion. They’ll call him a second Detaille and a third-hand Meissonier while his fashion lasts. It’s windy diet for a colt.’