A Comedy of Masks Part 31

"Ah, they don't understand," cried the other quickly, acridly. "They don't understand."

He had drawn his chair beside Rainham, and sat with his large, uncouth head propped on one hand, and the latter could perceive that his mouth was twisted with vague irony and some subtile emotion which eluded him.

"You are the great paradox!" he sighed at last. "For Heaven's sake, be reasonable! It is a chance, whoever makes it, and you mustn't miss it, for the sake of a few--the just, the pure, the discreet, who do know good work--as well as for your own. After all, we are not all gross, and fatuous, and vulgar; there are some of us who know, who care, who make fine distinctions. Consider us!"

"Consider you?" cried the other quickly. "Ah, _mon gros_, don't I--more than anything?"

Then he continued in a lighter key:

"However, I don't refuse; you take me too literally. It was the last bitter cry of my spleen. I have put myself in Mosenthal's hands; I've sold him two pictures."

"In that case, then, why am I not to be glad?"

"Oh, it's success!" said Oswyn. He glanced contemptuously at his frayed s.h.i.+rt-cuff, with the broad stains of paint upon it. "Be glad, if you like; I am glad in a way. G.o.d knows, I have arrears to make up with the flesh-pots of Egypt. And I have paid my price for it.

Oh, I have d.a.m.nably paid my price!"

Rainham shrugged his shoulders absently.

"Yes, one pays," he agreed--"one pays, some time or other, to the last penny."

His friend rose, pushed his chair back impatiently: he had the air of suppressing some fierce emotion, of anxiously seeking self-control. At last he moved over to the black square of window, and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at nothing, at the frosty fantasies which had collected on the gla.s.s.

"If it had come ten years ago," he said in a low, constrained voice, "ten years ago, in Paris.... Oh, man, man!" he went on bitterly, "if you could know, if you could dimly imagine the horrors, the mad, furious horrors, the things I have seen and suffered, since then."

He pulled himself up sharply, and concluded with a little mirthless laugh, as though he were ashamed of his outburst.

"You would consume a great deal of raw spirit, to take the taste out of your mouth. And my 'Medusa' is to hang for the future in Mr.

Mosenthal's dining-room! Will he understand her, do you think?"

Rainham was silent, wondering at his friend's departure from his wonted reticence, which, however, scarcely surprised him. He had never sought to penetrate the dark background, against which the painter's solitary figure stood. He was content to accept him as he was, asking no questions, and hardly forming, even in his own mind, conjectures as to what his previous history and relations might have been. He was not ignorant, indeed, that he was a man who had been in dark places; it had always seemed possible to account for him on the theory that he lived on the memory of an inextinguishable sorrow.

And now this possibility had received corroboration from his own words, shedding a new light, in which both his character and his genius became more intelligible. He had only stood out of the shadows which obscured him for one instant; but that instant had been enough.

And Rainham did not find the occasion less valuable, nor the impression which he had received less pitiful, because he believed it to be ultimate and unique; his friend would make no vain, elaborate confidences; he would simply step back into his old obscurity, leaving Rainham with the memory of that instructive cry which had been wrung from him by the irony of tardy recognition, when he had seen him luridly standing over the wreck of his honour and of his life. And with his pity there came to him a fresh sense of the greatness of the painter's work. His genius, so full of suffering, and of the sense of an almost fiendish cruelty in things, was, simply, his life, his experience, his remorse.

With the hand of a master, with the finest technique, which made his work admirable even to persons who misinterpreted or were revolted by its conception, he rendered the things he had known, so that his art was nothing so much as an expression of his personal pain in life.

In the light of this vision into the bottom of Oswyn's soul, Rainham's own pain seemed suddenly shallow and remote; he had gazed for a moment upon a blacker desolation than any which he could know.

He felt a new, a tolerant sympathy towards his friend, and it struck him, not for the first time, but with an increased force, as he reminded himself how his days were bounded, that they had many things which they had still to say, things which must certainly be said.

CHAPTER XXIX

In the same room one afternoon a fortnight later, Oswyn sat, absently correcting the draft catalogue of his exhibition, when he received an intimation, which for some days he had expected--his friend felt strong enough to see him. He put down his pen, glancing up inquiringly at the bearer of this message, a young woman in the neat, depressing garb of a professional nurse; but for answer she slightly shook her head with the disinterested complacency of the woman used to sickness, who would encourage no false notions.

"It is only temporary," she said with deliberation. "I fear there has been no real improvement; the patient is steadily losing strength. Only he insists on seeing you; and when they are like that, one must give them what they want. I must beg you to excite him as little as possible."

Oswyn bowed a dreary a.s.sent, and followed her up the obscure staircase, which creaked sullenly beneath his tread. And he stood for a few moments in silence, until his eyes were accustomed to the darkened room, when the nurse had gently closed the door behind him, leaving him alone with his friend.

He almost believed, at first, that Rainham must be sleeping, he lay back with such extreme quietness in the large old-fas.h.i.+oned bed. And seeing him there in that new helplessness, he realized, almost for the first time, how little there was to say or to hope.

He had never, indeed, been ignorant that his friend's hold on life was precarious; some such scene as this had often been in his mind before; only, insensibly, Rainham's own jesting att.i.tude towards his disabilities had half imposed on him, and made that possibility appear intangible and remote. But now, in view of the change which the last fortnight had wrought in him, he could cherish no illusions; the worst that was possible was all now that one could expect. He was a charming, generous, clever fellow, and he was dying; that was a thing one could not get over.

He moved across to the bedside, and Rainham's eyes suddenly opened.

They were immensely large, strangely brilliant; his face had fallen in, was so white and long and lean, that these tremendous eyes seemed almost all of the man that was still to be accounted.

Oswyn derived the impression from them that, while his friend's body had been failing, his mind had never been more vigorous; that, during these long nights and days, when he had lain so motionless, in so continued a silence, it had only been because he was thinking with redoubled intensity.

Presently, as Rainham's lips moved slightly, he drew nearer, and bent his head over him.

"Don't talk," he said nervously, as Rainham appeared to struggle with the difficulty of utterance; "don't tire yourself. I've only come to look at you. Wait until you are a little stronger."

Rainham raised his hand impatiently.

"It won't tire me, and tired or not there are things I must speak of. Is she in the room--the nurse?"

He spoke slowly, and with a visible effort; but his voice, although it scarcely rose above a whisper, and seemed shadowy and far away, was deliberate and distinct. Oswyn shook his head.

"She has given me half an hour; you must not abuse it. I have promised to keep you quiet. I really believe you are a little better."

"I am well enough for what I want--to talk to you. After that, I will be as quiet as you like, for as long as you like. Only I have been keeping myself for this all these last few days that I have lain here like a log, listening to the ticking of that merciless clock. They thought I was sleeping, unconscious, very likely. I have been collecting myself, thinking immensely, waiting for this."

"I have always been here," said the other simply, "in case you should send for me. I have been painting Margot. She is a dear little soul; she misses you sadly."

"It is of her partly that I must speak. I have left all I can to her. If you will sometimes give her a thought; she is absolutely without belongings. I don't wish to make it a charge on you, a burden, only sometimes it has struck me lately that you were interested in the child, that you liked her, and I have taken the liberty of making you a sort of guardian. She could live with the Bullens----"

"Oh, I like her--I like her!" cried Oswyn, with a short laugh. Then he went on more seriously, half-apologetically, as though the other might have found his mirth ill-timed: "My dear friend, it is a great honour, a great pleasure, you give me. I, too, have no belongings, no interests; this might be a great one. I never thought of it before, I must admit; but I will adopt her. She shall live with me, if it's necessary. Only, ah! let us hope still that this may not be necessary, that it is premature."

The other held up a thin hand deprecatingly.

"Ah, don't let us fence with the truth. I have always seen it coming, and why should I lie about it, now that it is come? When one is as tired as I am, there is only one other thing which happens--one dies. You don't suppose I should have sent for you like this if it hadn't been so?"

He lay very still for a moment or two with his eyes closed, as if the effort which speech cost him was considerable. At last he said abruptly:

"There are things you should know; she is Lightmark's child."

Oswyn had seated himself on a low chair by the bed; he kept his head averted, as does a priest who hears confessions; and he gazed with absent eyes at the fire which burned sulkily, at the row of medicine-bottles on the mantelpiece, at all the dreary paraphernalia of a sick-room.

"Yes, she is Lightmark's child," continued Rainham; "and the mother was that girl whom we found two years ago--do you remember?--the night of your first visit here outside the gates. She called herself Mrs. Crichton. It's a miserable story; I only discovered it quite recently."

Oswyn drew in a deep breath, which sounded like a sigh in the strangely still room.

It did not so much suggest surprise as the indefinable relief which a man feels when accident permits him to express cognizance of some fact of which he has long been inwardly a.s.sured.

"I knew that long ago," he said at last. "I suspected it when I first saw the girl; but I said nothing to you at the time; perhaps I was wrong. Afterwards, when we knew each other better, there seemed no occasion; I had almost forgotten the episode."

"Yes," went on the other faintly; "we have all made mistakes--I more than most folk, perhaps."