‘“Oh, our fathers in the churchyard,
She is older than ye,
And our graves will be the greener,”
Said The Men of the Sea.’
‘What is there to hinder?’ said Torpenhow, in the long hush that followed the song.
‘You said a little time since that you wouldn’t come for a walk round the world, Torp.’
‘That was months ago, and I only objected to your making money for travelling expenses. You’ve shot your bolt here and it has gone home. Go away and do some work, and see some things.’
‘Get some of the fat off you; you’re disgracefully out of condition,’ said the Nilghai, making a plunge from the chair and grasping a handful of Dick generally over the right ribs. ‘Soft as putty — pure tallow born of over-feeding. Train it off, Dickie.’
‘We’re all equally gross, Nilghai. Next time you have to take the field you’ll sit down, wink your eyes, gasp, and die in a fit.’
‘Never mind. You go away on a ship. Go to Lima again, or to Brazil.
There’s always trouble in South America.’
‘Do you suppose I want to be told where to go? Great Heavens, the only difficulty is to know where I’m to stop. But I shall stay here, as I told you before.’
‘Then you’ll be buried in Kensal Green and turn into adipocere with the others,’ said Torpenhow. ‘Are you thinking of commissions in hand? Pay forfeit and go. You’ve money enough to travel as a king if you please.’
‘You’ve the grisliest notions of amusement, Torp. I think I see myself shipping first class on a six-thousand-ton hotel, and asking the third engineer what makes the engines go round, and whether it isn’t very warm in the stokehold. Ho! ho! I should ship as a loafer if ever I shipped at all, which I’m not going to do. I shall compromise, and go for a small trip to begin with.’
‘That’s something at any rate. Where will you go?’ said Torpenhow. ‘It would do you all the good in the world, old man.’
The Nilghai saw the twinkle in Dick’s eye, and refrained from speech.
‘I shall go in the first place to Rathray’s stable, where I shall hire one horse, and take him very carefully as far as Richmond Hill. Then I shall walk him back again, in case he should accidentally burst into a lather and make Rathray angry. I shall do that to-morrow, for the sake of air and exercise.’
‘Bah!’ Dick had barely time to throw up his arm and ward off the cushion that the disgusted Torpenhow heaved at his head.
‘Air and exercise indeed,’ said the Nilghai, sitting down heavily on Dick.
‘Let’s give him a little of both. Get the bellows, Torp.’
At this point the conference broke up in disorder, because Dick would not open his mouth till the Nilghai held his nose fast, and there was some trouble in forcing the nozzle of the bellows between his teeth; and even when it was there he weakly tried to puff against the force of the blast, and his cheeks blew up with a great explosion; and the enemy becoming helpless with laughter he so beat them over the head with a soft sofa cushion that that became unsewn and distributed its feathers, and Binkie, interfering in Torpenhow’s interests, was bundled into the half-empty bag and advised to scratch his way out, which he did after a while, travelling rapidly up and down the floor in the shape of an agitated green haggis, and when he came out looking for satisfaction, the three pillars of his world were picking feathers out of their hair.
‘A prophet has no honour in his own country,’ said Dick, ruefully, dusting his knees. ‘This filthy fluff will never brush off my legs.’
‘It was all for your own good,’ said the Nilghai. ‘Nothing like air and exercise.’
‘All for your good,’ said Torpenhow, not in the least with reference to past clowning. ‘It would let you focus things at their proper worth and prevent your becoming slack in this hothouse of a town. Indeed it would, old man. I shouldn’t have spoken if I hadn’t thought so. Only, you make a joke of everything.’
‘Before God I do no such thing,’ said Dick, quickly and earnestly. ‘You don’t know me if you think that.’
I don’t think it,’ said the Nilghai.
‘How can fellows like ourselves, who know what life and death really mean, dare to make a joke of anything? I know we pretend it, to save ourselves from breaking down or going to the other extreme. Can’t I see, old man, how you’re always anxious about me, and try to advise me to make my work better? Do you suppose I don’t think about that myself? But you can’t help me — you can’t help me — not even you. I must play my own hand alone in my own way.’
‘Hear, hear,’ from the Nilghai.
‘What’s the one thing in the Nilghai Saga that I’ve never drawn in the Nungapunga Book?’ Dick continued to Torpenhow, who was a little astonished at the outburst.
Now there was one blank page in the book given over to the sketch that Dick had not drawn of the crowning exploit in the Nilghai’s life; when that man, being young and forgetting that his body and bones belonged to the paper that employed him, had ridden over sunburned slippery grass in the rear of Bredow’s brigade on the day that the troopers flung themselves at Caurobert’s artillery, and for aught they knew twenty battalions in front, to save the battered 24th German Infantry, to give time to decide the fate of Vionville, and to learn ere their remnant came back to Flavigay that cavalry can attack and crumple and break unshaken infantry. Whenever he was inclined to think over a life that might have been better, an income that might have been larger, and a soul that might have been considerably cleaner, the Nilghai would comfort himself with the thought, ‘I rode with Bredow’s brigade at Vionville,’ and take heart for any lesser battle the next day might bring.
‘I know,’ he said very gravely. ‘I was always glad that you left it out.’
‘I left it out because Nilghai taught me what the Germany army learned then, and what Schmidt taught their cavalry. I don’t know German.
What is it? “Take care of the time and the dressing will take care of itself.” I must ride my own line to my own beat, old man.’
‘Tempe ist richtung. You’ve learned your lesson well,’ said the Nilghai.
‘He must go alone. He speaks truth, Torp.’
‘Maybe I’m as wrong as I can be — hideously wrong. I must find that out for myself, as I have to think things out for myself, but I daren’t turn my head to dress by the next man. It hurts me a great deal more than you know not to be able to go, but I cannot, that’s all. I must do my own work and live my own life in my own way, because I’m responsible for both.
Only don’t think I frivol about it, Torp. I have my own matches and sulphur, and I’ll make my own hell, thanks.’
There was an uncomfortable pause. Then Torpenhow said blandly, ‘What did the Governor of North Carolina say to the Governor of South Carolina?’
‘Excellent notion. It is a long time between drinks. There are the makings of a very fine prig in you, Dick,’ said the Nilghai.
‘I’ve liberated my mind, estimable Binkie, with the feathers in his mouth.’ Dick picked up the still indignant one and shook him tenderly.
‘You’re tied up in a sack and made to run about blind, Binkie-wee, without any reason, and it has hurt your little feelings. Never mind. Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas, and don’t sneeze in my eye because I talk Latin. Good-night.’
He went out of the room.
‘That’s distinctly one for you,’ said the Nilghai. ‘I told you it was hopeless to meddle with him. He’s not pleased.’
‘He’d swear at me if he weren’t. I can’t make it out. He has the go-fever upon him and he won’t go. I only hope that he mayn’t have to go some day when he doesn’t want to,’ said Torpenhow.
* * *
In his own room Dick was settling a question with himself — and the question was whether all the world, and all that was therein, and a burning desire to exploit both, was worth one threepenny piece thrown into the Thames.
‘It came of seeing the sea, and I’
m a cur to think about it,’ he decided.
‘After all, the honeymoon will be that tour — with reservations; only... only I didn’t realise that the sea was so strong. I didn’t feel it so much when I was with Maisie. These damnable songs did it. He’s beginning again.’
But it was only Herrick’s Nightpiece to Julia that the Nilghai sang, and before it was ended Dick reappeared on the threshold, not altogether clothed indeed, but in his right mind, thirsty and at peace.
The mood had come and gone with the rising and the falling of the tide by Fort Keeling.
CHAPTER IX
‘If I have taken the common clay
And wrought it cunningly
In the shape of a god that was digged a clod,
The greater honour to me.’
‘If thou hast taken the common clay,
And thy hands be not free
From the taint of the soil, thou hast made thy spoil
The greater shame to thee.’ — The Two Potters.
HE DID no work of any kind for the rest of the week. Then came another Sunday. He dreaded and longed for the day always, but since the red-haired girl had sketched him there was rather more dread than desire in his mind.
He found that Maisie had entirely neglected his suggestions about line-work. She had gone off at score filed with some absurd notion for a ‘fancy head.’ It cost Dick something to command his temper.
‘What’s the good of suggesting anything?’ he said pointedly.
‘Ah, but this will be a picture, — a real picture; and I know that Kami will let me send it to the Salon. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘I suppose not. But you won’t have time for the Salon.’
Maisie hesitated a little. She even felt uncomfortable.
‘We’re going over to France a month sooner because of it. I shall get the idea sketched out here and work it up at Kami’s.
Dick’s heart stood still, and he came very near to being disgusted with his queen who could do no wrong. ‘Just when I thought I had made some headway, she goes off chasing butterflies. It’s too maddening!’
There was no possibility of arguing, for the red-haired girl was in the studio. Dick could only look unutterable reproach.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘and I think you make a mistake. But what’s the idea of your new picture?’
‘I took it from a book.’
‘That’s bad, to begin with. Books aren’t the places for pictures. And — — ’
‘It’s this,’ said the red-haired girl behind him. ‘I was reading it to Maisie the other day from The City of Dreadful Night. D’you know the book?’
‘A little. I am sorry I spoke. There are pictures in it. What has taken her fancy?’
‘The description of the Melancolia —
‘Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle,
But all too impotent to lift the regal
Robustness of her earth-born strength and pride.
And here again. (Maisie, get the tea, dear.)
‘The forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams,
The household bunch of keys, the housewife’s gown,
Voluminous indented, and yet rigid
As though a shell of burnished metal frigid,
Her feet thick-shod to tread all weakness down.’
There was no attempt to conceal the scorn of the lazy voice. Dick winced.
‘But that has been done already by an obscure artist by the name of Durer,’ said he. ‘How does the poem run? —
‘Three centuries and threescore years ago, With phantasies of his peculiar thought.
You might as well try to rewrite Hamlet. It will be a waste of time.
‘No, it won’t,’ said Maisie, putting down the teacups with a clatter to reassure herself. ‘And I mean to do it. Can’t you see what a beautiful thing it would make?’
‘How in perdition can one do work when one hasn’t had the proper training? Any fool can get a notion. It needs training to drive the thing through, — training and conviction; not rushing after the first fancy.’ Dick spoke between his teeth.
‘You don’t understand,’ said Maisie. ‘I think I can do it.’
Again the voice of the girl behind him —
‘Baffled and beaten back, she works on still; Weary and sick of soul, she works the more.
Sustained by her indomitable will,
The hands shall fashion, and the brain shall pore,
And all her sorrow shall be turned to labour — —
I fancy Maisie means to embody herself in the picture.’
‘Sitting on a throne of rejected pictures? No, I shan’t, dear. The notion in itself has fascinated me. — Of course you don’t care for fancy heads, Dick.
I don’t think you could do them. You like blood and bones.’
‘That’s a direct challenge. If you can do a Melancolia that isn’t merely a sorrowful female head, I can do a better one; and I will, too. What d’you know about Melacolias?’ Dick firmly believed that he was even then tasting three-quarters of all the sorrow in the world.
‘She was a woman,’ said Maisie, ‘and she suffered a great deal, — till she could suffer no more. Then she began to laugh at it all, and then I painted her and sent her to the Salon.’
The red-haired girl rose up and left the room, laughing.
Dick looked at Maisie humbly and hopelessly.
‘Never mind about the picture,’ he said. ‘Are you really going back to Kami’s for a month before your time?’
‘I must, if I want to get the picture done.’
‘And that’s all you want?’
‘Of course. Don’t be stupid, Dick.’
‘You haven’t the power. You have only the ideas — the ideas and the little cheap impulses. How you could have kept at your work for ten years steadily is a mystery to me. So you are really going, — a month before you need?’
‘I must do my work.’
‘Your work — bah!... No, I didn’t mean that. It’s all right, dear. Of course you must do your work, and — I think I’ll say good-bye for this week.’
‘Won’t you even stay for tea? ‘No, thank you. Have I your leave to go, dear? There’s nothing more you particularly want me to do, and the line-work doesn’t matter.’
‘I wish you could stay, and then we could talk over my picture. If only one single picture’s a success, it draws attention to all the others. I know some of my work is good, if only people could see. And you needn’t have been so rude about it.’
‘I’m sorry. We’ll talk the Melancolia over some one of the other Sundays.
There are four more — yes, one, two, three, four — before you go. Good-bye, Maisie.’
Maisie stood by the studio window, thinking, till the red-haired girl returned, a little white at the corners of her lips.
‘Dick’s gone off,’ said Maisie. ‘Just when I wanted to talk about the picture. Isn’t it selfish of him?’
Her companion opened her lips as if to speak, shut them again, and went on reading The City of Dreadful Night.
Dick was in the Park, walking round and round a tree that he had chosen as his confidante for many Sundays past. He was swearing audibly, and when he found that the infirmities of the English tongue hemmed in his rage, he sought consolation in Arabic, which is expressly designed for the use of the afflicted. He was not pleased with the reward of his patient service; nor was he pleased with himself; and it was long before he arrived at the proposition that the queen could do no wrong.
‘It’s a losing game,’ he said. ‘I’m worth nothing when a whim of hers is in question. But in a losing game at Port Said we used to double the stakes and go on. She do a Melancolia! She hasn’t the power, or the insight, or the training. Only the desire. She’s cursed with the curse of Reuben. She won’t do line-work, because it means real work; and yet she’s stronger than I am. I’ll make her understand that I can beat her on her own Melancolia. Even then she wouldn’t care. She says I can only do blood and bones. I
don’t believe she has blood in her veins. All the same I lover her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her inordinate vanity I will. I’ll do a Melancolia that shall be something like a Melancolia — ”the Melancolia that transcends all wit.” I’ll do it at once, con — bless her.’
He discovered that the notion would not come to order, and that he could not free his mind for an hour from the thought of Maisie’s departure. He took very small interest in her rough studies for the Melancolia when she showed them next week. The Sundays were racing past, and the time was at hand when all the church bells in London could not ring Maisie back to him. Once or twice he said something to Binkie about ‘hermaphroditic futilities,’ but the little dog received so many confidences both from Torpenhow and Dick that he did not trouble his tulip-ears to listen.
Dick was permitted to see the girls off. They were going by the Dover night-boat; and they hoped to return in August. It was then February, and Dick felt that he was being hardly used. Maisie was so busy stripping the small house across the Park, and packing her canvases, that she had not time for thought. Dick went down to Dover and wasted a day there fretting over a wonderful possibility. Would Maisie at the very last allow him one small kiss? He reflected that he might capture her by the strong arm, as he had seem women captured in the Southern Soudan, and lead her away; but Maisie would never be led. She would turn her gray eyes upon him and say, ‘Dick, how selfish you are!’ Then his courage would fail him. It would be better, after all, to beg for that kiss.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 12