The Light That Failed

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.’

‘I don’t think it affects Dick much. You might as well call a young wolf a lion and expect him to take the compliment in exchange for a shin-bone.

Dick’s soul is in the bank. He’s working for cash.’

‘Now he has thrown up war work, I suppose he doesn’t see that the obligations of the service are just the same, only the proprietors are changed.’

‘How should he know? He thinks he is his own master.’

‘Does he? I could undeceive him for his good, if there’s any virtue in print. He wants the whiplash.’

‘Lay it on with science, then. I’d flay him myself, but I like him too much.’

‘I’ve no scruples. He had the audacity to try to cut me out with a woman at Cairo once. I forgot that, but I remember now.’

‘Did he cut you out?’

‘You’ll see when I have dealt with him. But, after all, what’s the good? Leave him alone and he’ll come home, if he has any stuff in him, dragging or wagging his tail behind him. There’s more in a week of life than in a lively weekly. None the less I’ll slate him. I’ll slate him ponderously in the Cataclysm.’

‘Good luck to you; but I fancy nothing short of a crowbar would make Dick wince. His soul seems to have been fired before we came across him.

He’s intensely suspicious and utterly lawless.’

‘Matter of temper,’ said the Nilghai. ‘It’s the same with horses. Some you wallop and they work, some you wallop and they jib, and some you wallop and they go out for a walk with their hands in their pockets.’

‘That’s exactly what Dick has done,’ said Torpenhow. ‘Wait till he comes back. In the meantime, you can begin your slating here. I’ll show you some of his last and worst work in his studio.’

Dick had instinctively sought running water for a comfort to his mood of mind. He was leaning over the Embankment wall, watching the rush of the Thames through the arches of Westminster Bridge. He began by thinking of Torpenhow’s advice, but, as of custom, lost himself in the study of the faces flocking past. Some had death written on their features, and Dick marvelled that they could laugh. Others, clumsy and coarse-built for the most part, were alight with love; others were merely drawn and lined with work; but there was something, Dick knew, to be made out of them all. The poor at least should suffer that he might learn, and the rich should pay for the output of his learning. Thus his credit in the world and his cash balance at the bank would be increased. So much the better for him. He had suffered. Now he would take toll of the ills of others.

The fog was driven apart for a moment, and the sun shone, a blood-red wafer, on the water. Dick watched the spot till he heard the voice of the tide between the piers die down like the wash of the sea at low tide. A girl hard pressed by her lover shouted shamelessly, ‘Ah, get away, you beast!’ and a shift of the same wind that had opened the fog drove across Dick’s face the black smoke of a river-steamer at her berth below the wall. He was blinded for the moment, then spun round and found himself face to face with – Maisie.

There was no mistaking. The years had turned the child to a woman, but they had not altered the dark-gray eyes, the thin scarlet lips, or the firmly modelled mouth and chin; and, that all should be as it was of old, she wore a closely fitting gray dress.

Since the human soul is finite and not in the least under its own command, Dick, advancing, said ‘Halloo!’ after the manner of schoolboys, and Maisie answered, ‘Oh, Dick, is that you?’ Then, against his will, and before the brain newly released from considerations of the cash balance had time to dictate to the nerves, every pulse of Dick’s body throbbed furiously and his palate dried in his mouth. The fog shut down again, and Maisie’s face was pearl-white through it. No word was spoken, but Dick fell into step at her side, and the two paced the Embankment together, keeping the step as perfectly as in their afternoon excursions to the mud-flats. Then Dick, a little hoarsely – ‘What has happened to Amomma?’

‘He died, Dick. Not cartridges; over-eating. He was always greedy. Isn’t it funny?’

‘Yes. No. Do you mean Amomma?’

‘Ye – es. No. This. Where have you come from?’

‘Over there,’ He pointed eastward through the fog. ‘And you?’

‘Oh, I’m in the north, – the black north, across all the Park. I am very busy.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I paint a great deal. That’s all I have to do.’

‘Why, what’s happened? You had three hundred a year.’

‘I have that still. I am painting; that’s all.’

‘Are you alone, then?’

‘There’s a girl living with me. Don’t walk so fast, Dick; you’re out of step.’

‘Then you noticed it too?’

‘Of course I did. You’re always out of step.’

‘So I am. I’m sorry. You went on with the painting?’

‘Of course. I said I should. I was at the Slade, then at Merton’s inSt. John’s Wood, the big studio, then I pepper-potted, – I mean I went to the National, – and now I’m working under Kami.’

‘But Kami is in Paris surely?’

‘No; he has his teaching studio in Vitry-sur-Marne. I work with him in the summer, and I live in London in the winter. I’m a householder.’

‘Do you sell much?’

‘Now and again, but not often. There is my ‘bus. I must take it or lose half an hour. Good-bye, Dick.’

‘Good-bye, Maisie. Won’t you tell me where you live? I must see you again; and perhaps I could help you. I – I paint a little myself.’