The Light That Failed

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.