‘It hasn’t changed much,’ he said. ‘Do they still steal colours at lunch-time?’
‘Not steal. Attract is the word. Of course they do. I’m good — I only attract ultramarine; but there are students who’d attract flake-white.’
‘I’ve done it myself. You can’t help it when the palettes are hung up.
Every colour is common property once it runs down, — even though you do start it with a drop of oil. It teaches people not to waste their tubes.’
‘I should like to attract some of your colours, Dick. Perhaps I might catch your success with them.’
‘I mustn’t say a bad word, but I should like to. What in the world, which you’ve just missed a lovely chance of seeing, does success or want of success, or a three-storied success, matter compared with — — No, I won’t open that question again. It’s time to go back to town.’
‘I’m sorry, Dick, but — — ’
‘You’re much more interested in that than you are in me.’
‘I don’t know, I don’t think I am.’
‘What will you give me if I tell you a sure short-cut to everything you want, — the trouble and the fuss and the tangle and all the rest? Will you promise to obey me?’
‘Of course.’
‘In the first place, you must never forget a meal because you happen to be at work. You forgot your lunch twice last week,’ said Dick, at a venture, for he knew with whom he was dealing.’
‘No, no, — only once, really.’
‘That’s bad enough. And you mustn’t take a cup of tea and a biscuit in place of a regular dinner, because dinner happens to be a trouble.’
‘You’re making fun of me!’
‘I never was more in earnest in my life. Oh, my love, my love, hasn’t it dawned on you yet what you are to me? Here’s the whole earth in a conspiracy to give you a chill, or run over you, or drench you to the skin, or cheat you out of your money, or let you die of overwork and underfeeding, and I haven’t the mere right to look after you. Why, I don’t even know if you have sense enough to put on warm things when the weather’s cold.’
‘Dick, you’re the most awful boy to talk to — really! How do you suppose I managed when you were away?’
‘I wasn’t here, and I didn’t know. But now I’m back I’d give everything I have for the right of telling you to come in out of the rain.’
‘Your success too?’
This time it cost Dick a severe struggle to refrain from bad words.
‘As Mrs. Jennett used to say, you’re a trial, Maisie! You’ve been cooped up in the schools too long, and you think every one is looking at you.
There aren’t twelve hundred people in the world who understand pictures. The others pretend and don’t care. Remember, I’ve seen twelve hundred men dead in toadstool-beds. It’s only the voice of the tiniest little fraction of people that makes success. The real world doesn’t care a tinker’s — doesn’t care a bit. For aught you or I know, every man in the world may be arguing with a Maisie of his own.’
‘Poor Maisie!’
‘Poor Dick, I think. Do you believe while he’s fighting for what’s dearer than his life he wants to look at a picture? And even if he did, and if all the world did, and a thousand million people rose up and shouted hymns to my honour and glory, would that make up to me for the knowledge that you were out shopping in the Edgware Road on a rainy day without an umbrella? Now we’ll go to the station.’
‘But you said on the beach — — ’ persisted Maisie, with a certain fear.
Dick groaned aloud: ‘Yes, I know what I said. My work is everything I have, or am, or hope to be, to me, and I believe I’ve learnt the law that governs it; but I’ve some lingering sense of fun left, — though you’ve nearly knocked it out of me. I can just see that it isn’t everything to all the world. Do what I say, and not what I do.’
Maisie was careful not to reopen debatable matters, and they returned to London joyously. The terminus stopped Dick in the midst of an eloquent harangue on the beauties of exercise. He would buy Maisie a horse, — such a horse as never yet bowed head to bit, — would stable it, with a companion, some twenty miles from London, and Maisie, solely for her health’s sake should ride with him twice or thrice a week.
‘That’s absurd,’ said she. ‘It wouldn’t be proper.’
‘Now, who in all London to-night would have sufficient interest or audacity to call us two to account for anything we chose to do?’
Maisie looked at the lamps, the fog, and the hideous turmoil. Dick was right; but horseflesh did not make for Art as she understood it.
‘You’re very nice sometimes, but you’re very foolish more times. I’m not going to let you give me horses, or take you out of your way to-night. I’ll go home by myself. Only I want you to promise me something. You won’t think any more about that extra threepence, will you? Remember, you’ve been paid; and I won’t allow you to be spiteful and do bad work for a little thing like that. You can be so big that you mustn’t be tiny.’
This was turning the tables with a vengeance. There remained only to put Maisie into her hansom.
‘Good-bye,’ she said simply. ‘You’ll come on Sunday. It has been a beautiful day, Dick. Why can’t it be like this always?’
‘Because love’s like line-work: you must go forward or backward; you can’t stand still. By the way, go on with your line-work. Good-night, and, for my — for my sake, take care of yourself.’
He turned to walk home, meditating. The day had brought him nothing that he hoped for, but — surely this was worth many days — it had brought him nearer to Maisie. The end was only a question of time now, and the prize well worth the waiting. By instinct, once more, he turned to the river.
‘And she understood at once,’ he said, looking at the water. ‘She found out my pet besetting sin on the spot, and paid it off. My God, how she understood! And she said I was better than she was! Better than she was!’ He laughed at the absurdity of the notion. ‘I wonder if girls guess at one-half a man’s life. They can’t, or — they wouldn’t marry us.’ He took her gift out of his pocket, and considered it in the light of a miracle and a pledge of the comprehension that, one day, would lead to perfect happiness. Meantime, Maisie was alone in London, with none to save her from danger. And the packed wilderness was very full of danger.
Dick made his prayer to Fate disjointedly after the manner of the heathen as he threw the piece of silver into the river. If any evil were to befall, let him bear the burden and let Maisie go unscathed, since the threepenny piece was dearest to him of all his possessions. It was a small coin in itself, but Maisie had given it, and the Thames held it, and surely the Fates would be bribed for this once.
The drowning of the coin seemed to cut him free from thought of Maisie for the moment. He took himself off the bridge and went whistling to his chambers with a strong yearning for some man-talk and tobacco after his first experience of an entire day spent in the society of a woman. There was a stronger desire at his heart when there rose before him an unsolicited vision of the Barralong dipping deep and sailing free for the Southern Cross.
CHAPTER VIII
And these two, as I have told you,
Were the friends of Hiawatha,
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
— Hiawatha.
TORPENHOW was paging the last sheets of some manuscript, while the Nilghai, who had come for chess and remained to talk tactics, was reading through the first part, commenting scornfully the while.
‘It’s picturesque enough and it’s sketchy,’ said he; ‘but as a serious consideration of affairs in Eastern Europe, it’s not worth much.’
‘It’s off my hands at any rate.... Thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
thirty-nine slips altogether, aren’t there? That should make between
eleven and twelve pages of valuable misinformation. Heigho!’ Torpenhow
shuffled the writing together and hummed —
If I’d as much money as I could tell,
I never would cry, Young lambs to sell!
Dick entered, self-conscious and a little defiant, but in the best of tempers with all the world.
‘Back at last?’ said Torpenhow.
‘More or less. What have you been doing?’
‘Work. Dickie, you behave as though the Bank of England were behind you. Here’s Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday gone and you haven’t done a line. It’s scandalous.’
‘The notions come and go, my children — they come and go like our ‘baccy,’ he answered, filling his pipe. ‘Moreover,’ he stooped to thrust a spill into the grate, ‘Apollo does not always stretch his — — Oh, confound your clumsy jests, Nilghai!’
‘This is not the place to preach the theory of direct inspiration,’ said the Nilghai, returning Torpenhow’s large and workmanlike bellows to their nail on the wall. ‘We believe in cobblers’ wax. La! — where you sit down.’
‘If you weren’t so big and fat,’ said Dick, looking round for a weapon, ‘I’d — — ’
‘No skylarking in my rooms. You two smashed half my furniture last time you threw the cushions about. You might have the decency to say How d’you do? to Binkie. Look at him.’
Binkie had jumped down from the sofa and was fawning round Dick’s knee, and scratching at his boots.
‘Dear man!’ said Dick, snatching him up, and kissing him on the black patch above his right eye. ‘Did ums was, Binks? Did that ugly Nilghai turn you off the sofa? Bite him, Mr. Binkie.’ He pitched him on the Nilghai’s stomach, as the big man lay at ease, and Binkie pretended to destroy the Nilghai inch by inch, till a sofa cushion extinguished him, and panting he stuck out his tongue at the company.
‘The Binkie-boy went for a walk this morning before you were up, Torp.
I saw him making love to the butcher at the corner when the shutters were being taken down — just as if he hadn’t enough to eat in his own proper house,’ said Dick.
‘Binks, is that a true bill?’ said Torpenhow, severely. The little dog retreated under the sofa cushion, and showed by the fat white back of him that he really had no further interest in the discussion.
‘Strikes me that another disreputable dog went for a walk, too,’ said the Nilghai. ‘What made you get up so early? Torp said you might be buying a horse.’
‘He knows it would need three of us for a serious business like that. No, I felt lonesome and unhappy, so I went out to look at the sea, and watch the pretty ships go by.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Somewhere on the Channel. Progly or Snigly, or some watering-place was its name; I’ve forgotten; but it was only two hours’ run from London and the ships went by.’
‘Did you see anything you knew?’
‘Only the Barralong outwards to Australia, and an Odessa grain-boat loaded down by the head. It was a thick day, but the sea smelt good.’
‘Wherefore put on one’s best trousers to see the Barralong?’ said Torpenhow, pointing.
‘Because I’ve nothing except these things and my painting duds. Besides, I wanted to do honour to the sea.’
‘Did She make you feel restless?’ asked the Nilghai, keenly.
‘Crazy. Don’t speak of it. I’m sorry I went.’
Torpenhow and the Nilghai exchanged a look as Dick, stooping, busied himself among the former’s boots and trees.
‘These will do,’ he said at last; ‘I can’t say I think much of your taste in slippers, but the fit’s the thing.’ He slipped his feet into a pair of sock-like sambhur-skin foot coverings, found a long chair, and lay at length.
‘They’re my own pet pair,’ Torpenhow said. ‘I was just going to put them on myself.’
‘All your reprehensible selfishness. Just because you see me happy for a minute, you want to worry me and stir me up. Find another pair.’
‘Good for you that Dick can’t wear your clothes, Torp. You two live communistically,’ said the Nilghai.
‘Dick never has anything that I can wear. He’s only useful to sponge upon.’
‘Confound you, have you been rummaging round among my clothes, then?’ said Dick. ‘I put a sovereign in the tobacco-jar yesterday. How do you expect a man to keep his accounts properly if you — — ’
Here the Nilghai began to laugh, and Torpenhow joined him.
‘Hid a sovereign yesterday! You’re no sort of financier. You lent me a fiver about a month back. Do you remember?’ Torpenhow said.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Do you remember that I paid it you ten days later, and you put it at the bottom of the tobacco?’
‘By Jove, did I? I thought it was in one of my colour-boxes.’
‘You thought! About a week ago I went into your studio to get some ‘baccy and found it.’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘Took the Nilghai to a theatre and fed him.’
‘You couldn’t feed the Nilghai under twice the money — not though you gave him Army beef. Well, I suppose I should have found it out sooner or later. What is there to laugh at?’
‘You’re a most amazing cuckoo in many directions,’ said the Nilghai, still chuckling over the thought of the dinner. ‘Never mind. We had both been working very hard, and it was your unearned increment we spent, and as you’re only a loafer it didn’t matter.’
‘That’s pleasant — from the man who is bursting with my meat, too. I’ll get that dinner back one of these days. Suppose we go to a theatre now.’
‘Put our boots on, — and dress, — and wash?’ The Nilghai spoke very lazily.
‘I withdraw the motion.’
‘Suppose, just for a change — as a startling variety, you know — we, that is to say we, get our charcoal and our canvas and go on with our work.’
Torpenhow spoke pointedly, but Dick only wriggled his toes inside the soft leather moccasins.
‘What a one-ideaed clucker that is! If I had any unfinished figures on hand, I haven’t any model; if I had my model, I haven’t any spray, and I never leave charcoal unfixed overnight; and if I had my spray and twenty photographs of backgrounds, I couldn’t do anything to-night. I don’t feel that way.’
‘Binkie-dog, he’s a lazy hog, isn’t he?’ said the Nilghai.
‘Very good, I will do some work,’ said Dick, rising swiftly. ‘I’ll fetch the Nungapunga Book, and we’ll add another picture to the Nilghai Saga.’
‘Aren’t you worrying him a little too much?’ asked the Nilghai, when Dick had left the room.
‘Perhaps, but I know what he can turn out if he likes. It makes me savage to hear him praised for past work when I know what he ought to do. You and I are arranged for — — ’
‘By Kismet and our own powers, more’s the pity. I have dreamed of a good deal.’
‘So have I, but we know our limitations now. I’m dashed if I know what Dick’s may be when he gives himself to his work. That’s what makes me so keen about him.’
‘And when all’s said and done, you will be put aside — quite rightly — for a female girl.’
‘I wonder... Where do you think he has been to-day?’
‘To the sea. Didn’t you see the look in his eyes when he talked about her? He’s as restless as a swallow in autumn.’
‘Yes; but did he go alone?’
‘I don’t know, and I don’t care, but he has the beginnings of the go-fever upon him. He wants to up-stakes and move out. There’s no mistaking the signs. Whatever he may have said before, he has the call upon him now.’
‘It might be his salvation,’ Torpenhow said.
‘Perhaps — if you care to take the responsibility of being a saviour.’
Dick returned with the big clasped sketch-book that the Nilghai knew well and did not love too much. In it Dick had drawn all manner of moving incidents, experienced by himself or related to him by the others, of all the four corners of the earth. But the wider range of the Ni
lghai’s body and life attracted him most. When truth failed he fell back on fiction of the wildest, and represented incidents in the Nilghai’s career that were unseemly, — his marriages with many African princesses, his shameless betrayal, for Arab wives, of an army corps to the Mahdi, his tattooment by skilled operators in Burmah, his interview (and his fears) with the yellow headsman in the blood-stained execution-ground of Canton, and finally, the passings of his spirit into the bodies of whales, elephants, and toucans. Torpenhow from time to time had added rhymed descriptions, and the whole was a curious piece of art, because Dick decided, having regard to the name of the book which being interpreted means ‘naked,’ that it would be wrong to draw the Nilghai with any clothes on, under any circumstances. Consequently the last sketch, representing that much-enduring man calling on the War Office to press his claims to the Egyptian medal, was hardly delicate. He settled himself comfortably on Torpenhow’s table and turned over the pages.
‘What a fortune you would have been to Blake, Nilghai!’ he said. ‘There’s a succulent pinkness about some of these sketches that’s more than life-like. “The Nilghai surrounded while bathing by the Mahdieh” — that was founded on fact, eh?’
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 10