‘Oh, it’s all spoiled!’ said Maisie. ‘And I never saw it. Was it like?’
‘Thank you,’ said Dick under his breath to the red-haired girl, and he removed himself swiftly.
‘How that man hates me!’ said the girl. ‘And how he loves you, Maisie!’
‘What nonsense? I knew Dick’s very fond of me, but he had his work to do, and I have mine.’
‘Yes, he is fond of you, and I think he knows there is something in impressionism, after all. Maisie, can’t you see?’
‘See? See what?’
‘Nothing; only, I know that if I could get any man to look at me as that man looks at you, I’d—I don’t know what I’d do. But he hates me. Oh, how he hates me!’
She was not altogether correct. Dick’s hatred was tempered with gratitude for a few moments, and then he forgot the girl entirely. Only the sense of shame remained, and he was nursing it across the Park in the fog. ‘There’ll be an explosion one of these days,’ he said wrathfully. ‘But it isn’t Maisie’s fault; she’s right, quite right, as far as she knows, and I can’t blame her. This business has been going on for three months nearly. Three months!—and it cost me ten years’ knocking about to get at the notion, the merest raw notion, of my work. That’s true; but then I didn’t have pins, drawing-pins, and palette-knives, stuck into me every Sunday. Oh, my little darling, if ever I break you, somebody will have a very bad time of it. No, she won’t. I’d be as big a fool about her as I am now. I’ll poison that red-haired girl on my wedding-day,—she’s unwholesome,—and now I’ll pass on these present bad times to Torp.’
Torpenhow had been moved to lecture Dick more than once lately on the sin of levity, and Dick and listened and replied not a word. In the weeks between the first few Sundays of his discipline he had flung himself savagely into his work, resolved that Maisie should at least know the full stretch of his powers. Then he had taught Maisie that she must not pay the least attention to any work outside her own, and Maisie had obeyed him all too well. She took his counsels, but was not interested in his pictures.
‘Your things smell of tobacco and blood,’ she said once. ‘Can’t you do anything except soldiers?’
‘I could do a head of you that would startle you,’ thought Dick,—this was before the red-haired girl had brought him under the guillotine,—but he only said, ‘I am very sorry,’ and harrowed Torpenhow’s soul that evening with blasphemies against Art. Later, insensibly and to a large extent against his own will, he ceased to interest himself in his own work. For Maisie’s sake, and to soothe the self-respect that it seemed to him he lost each Sunday, he would not consciously turn out bad stuff, but, since Maisie did not care even for his best, it were better not to do anything at all save wait and mark time between Sunday and Sunday. Torpenhow was disgusted as the weeks went by fruitless, and then attacked him one Sunday evening when Dick felt utterly exhausted after three hours’ biting self-restraint in Maisie’s presence. There was Language, and Torpenhow withdrew to consult the Nilghai, who had come it to talk continental politics.
‘Bone-idle, is he? Careless, and touched in the temper?’ said the Nilghai. ‘It isn’t worth worrying over. Dick is probably playing the fool with a woman.’
‘Isn’t that bad enough?’
‘No. She may throw him out of gear and knock his work to pieces for a while. She may even turn up here some day and make a scene on the staircase: one never knows. But until Dick speaks of his own accord you had better not touch him. He is no easy-tempered man to handle.’
‘No; I wish he were. He is such an aggressive, cocksure, you-be-damned fellow.’
‘He’ll get that knocked out of him in time. He must learn that he can’t storm up and down the world with a box of moist tubes and a slick brush. You’re fond of him?’
‘I’d take any punishment that’s in store for him if I could; but the worst of it is, no man can save his brother.’
‘No, and the worser of it is, there is no discharge in this war. Dick must learn his lesson like the rest of us. Talking of war, there’ll be trouble in the Balkans in the spring.’
‘That trouble is long coming. I wonder if we could drag Dick out there when it comes off?’
Dick entered the room soon afterwards, and the question was put to him. ‘Not good enough,’ he said shortly. ‘I’m too comf’y where I am.’
‘Surely you aren’t taking all the stuff in the papers seriously?’ said the Nilghai. ‘Your vogue will be ended in less than six months,—the public will know your touch and go on to something new,—and where will you be then?’
‘Here, in England.’
‘When you might be doing decent work among us out there? Nonsense! I shall go, the Keneu will be there, Torp will be there, Cassavetti will be there, and the whole lot of us will be there, and we shall have as much as ever we can do, with unlimited fighting and the chance for you of seeing things that would make the reputation of three Verestchagins.’
‘Um!’ said Dick, pulling at his pipe.
‘You prefer to stay here and imagine that all the world is gaping at your pictures? Just think how full an average man’s life is of his own pursuits and pleasures. When twenty thousand of him find time to look up between mouthfuls and grunt something about something they aren’t the least interested in, the net result is called fame, reputation, or notoriety, according to the taste and fancy of the speller my lord.’
‘I know that as well as you do. Give me credit for a little gumption.’
‘Be hanged if I do!’
‘Be hanged, then; you probably will be,—for a spy, by excited Turks. Heigh-ho! I’m weary, dead weary, and virtue has gone out of me.’ Dick dropped into a chair, and was fast asleep in a minute.
‘That’s a bad sign,’ said the Nilghai, in an undertone.
Torpenhow picked the pipe from the waistcoat where it was beginning to burn, and put a pillow behind the head. ‘We can’t help; we can’t help,’ he said. ‘It’s a good ugly sort of old cocoanut, and I’m fond of it. There’s the scar of the wipe he got when he was cut over in the square.’
‘Shouldn’t wonder if that has made him a trifle mad.’
‘I should. He’s a most businesslike madman.’
Then Dick began to snore furiously.
‘Oh, here, no affection can stand this sort of thing. Wake up, Dick, and go and sleep somewhere else, if you intend to make a noise about it.’
‘When a cat has been out on the tiles all night,’ said the Nilghai, in his beard, ‘I notice that she usually sleeps all day. This is natural history.’
Dick staggered away rubbing his eyes and yawning. In the night-watches he was overtaken with an idea, so simple and so luminous that he wondered he had never conceived it before. It was full of craft. He would seek Maisie on a week-day,—would suggest an excursion, and would take her by train to Fort Keeling, over the very ground that they two had trodden together ten years ago.
‘As a general rule,’ he explained to his chin-lathered reflection in the morning, ‘it isn’t safe to cross an old trail twice. Things remind one of things, and a cold wind gets up, and you feel said; but this is an exception to every rule that ever was. I’ll go to Maisie at once.’
Fortunately, the red-haired girl was out shopping when he arrived, and Maisie in a paint-spattered blouse was warring with her canvas. She was not pleased to see him; for week-day visits were a stretch of the bond; and it needed all his courage to explain his errand.
‘I know you’ve been working too hard,’ he concluded, with an air of authority. ‘If