‘You’re pleased to-day,’ said Bessie.
Dick waved his mahl-stick in mystic circles and went to the sideboard for a drink. In the evening, when the exaltation of the day had died down, he went to the sideboard again, and after some visits became convinced that the eye-doctor was a liar, since he could still see everything very clearly. He was of opinion that he would even make a home for Maisie, and that whether she liked it or not she should be his wife. The mood passed next morning, but the sideboard and all upon it remained for his comfort. Again he set to work, and his eyes troubled him with spots and dashes and blurs till he had taken counsel with the sideboard, and the Melancolia both on the canvas and in his own mind appeared lovelier than ever. There was a delightful sense of irresponsibility upon him, such as they feel who walking among their fellow-men know that the death-sentence of disease is upon them, and, seeing that fear is but waste of the little time left, are riotously happy. The days passed without event. Bessie arrived punctually always, and, though her voice seemed to Dick to come from a distance, her face was always very near. The Melancolia began to flame on the canvas, in the likeness of a woman who had known all the sorrow in the world and was laughing at it. It was true that the corners of the studio draped themselves in gray film and retired into the darkness, that the spots in his eyes and the pains across his head were very troublesome, and that Maisie’s letters were hard to read and harder still to answer. He could not tell her of his trouble, and he could not laugh at her accounts of her own Melancolia which was always going to be finished. But the furious days of toil and the nights of wild dreams made amends for all, and the sideboard was his best friend on earth. Bessie was singularly dull. She used to shriek with rage when Dick stared at her between half-closed eyes. Now she sulked, or watched him with disgust, saying very little.
Torpenhow had been absent for six weeks. An incoherent note heralded his return. ‘News! great news!’ he wrote. ‘The Nilghai knows, and so does the Keneu. We’re all back on Thursday. Get lunch and clean your accoutrements.’
Dick showed Bessie the letter, and she abused him for that he had ever sent Torpenhow away and ruined her life.
‘Well,’ said Dick, brutally, ‘you’re better as you are, instead of making love to some drunken beast in the street.’ He felt that he had rescued Torpenhow from great temptation.
‘I don’t know if that’s any worse than sitting to a drunken beast in a studio. You haven’t been sober for three weeks. You’ve been soaking the whole time; and yet you pretend you’re better than me!’
‘What d’you mean?’ said Dick.
‘Mean! You’ll see when Mr. Torpenhow comes back.’
It was not long to wait. Torpenhow met Bessie on the staircase without a sign of feeling. He had news that was more to him than many Bessies, and the Keneu and the Nilghai were trampling behind him, calling for Dick.
‘Drinking like a fish,’ Bessie whispered. ‘He’s been at it for nearly a month.’ She followed the men stealthily to hear judgment done.
They came into the studio, rejoicing, to be welcomed over effusively by a drawn, lined, shrunken, haggard wreck,—unshaven, blue-white about the nostrils, stooping in the shoulders, and peering under his eyebrows nervously. The drink had been at work as steadily as Dick.
‘Is this you?’ said Torpenhow.
‘All that’s left of me. Sit down. Binkie’s quite well, and I’ve been doing some good work.’ He reeled where he stood.
‘You’ve done some of the worst work you’ve ever done in your life. Man alive, you’re——’
Torpenhow turned to his companions appealingly, and they left the room to find lunch elsewhere. Then he spoke; but, since the reproof of a friend is much too sacred and intimate a thing to be printed, and since Torpenhow used figures and metaphors which were unseemly, and contempt untranslatable, it will never be known what was actually said to Dick, who blinked and winked and picked at his hands. After a time the culprit began to feel the need of a little self-respect. He was quite sure that he had not in any way departed from virtue, and there were reasons, too, of which Torpenhow knew nothing. He would explain.
He rose, tried to straighten his shoulders, and spoke to the face he could hardly see.
‘You are right,’ he said. ‘But I am right, too. After you went away I had some trouble with my eyes. So I went to an oculist, and he turned a gasogene—I mean a gas-engine—into my eye. That was very long ago. He said, “Scar on the head,—sword-cut and optic nerve.” Make a note of that. So I am going blind. I have some work to do before I go blind, and I suppose that I must do it. I cannot see much now, but I can see best when I am drunk. I did not know I was drunk till I was told, but I must go on with my work. If you want to see it, there it is.’ He pointed to the all but finished Melancolia and looked for applause.
Torpenhow said nothing, and Dick began to whimper feebly, for joy at seeing Torpenhow again, for grief at misdeeds—if indeed they were misdeeds—that made Torpenhow remote and unsympathetic, and for childish vanity hurt, since Torpenhow had not given a word of praise to his wonderful picture.
Bessie looked through the keyhole after a long pause, and saw the two walking up and down as usual, Torpenhow’s hand on Dick’s shoulder. Hereat she said something so improper that it shocked even Binkie, who was dribbling patiently on the landing with the hope of seeing his master again.
▲▲▲
Chapter XI
The lark will make her hymn to God,
The partridge call her brood,
While I forget the heath I trod,
The fields wherein I stood.
’Tis dule to know not night from morn,
But deeper dule to know
I can but hear the hunter’s horn
That once I used to blow.
—The Only Son.
It was the third day after Torpenhow’s return, and his heart was heavy.
‘Do you mean to tell me that you can’t see to work without whiskey? It’s generally the other way about.’
‘Can a drunkard swear on his honour?’ said Dick.
‘Yes, if he has been as god a man as you.’
‘Then I give you my word of honour,’ said Dick, speaking hurriedly through parched lips. ‘Old man, I can hardly see your face now. You’ve kept me sober for two days,—if I ever was drunk,—and I’ve done no work. Don’t keep me back any more. I don’t know when my eyes may give out. The spots and dots and the pains and things are crowding worse than ever. I swear I can see all right when I’m—when I’m moderately screwed, as you say. Give me three more sittings from Bessie and all—the stuff I want, and the picture will be done. I can’t kill myself in three days. It only means a touch of D. T. at the worst.’
‘If I give you three days more will you promise me to stop work and—the other thing, whether the picture’s finished or not?’
‘I can’t. You don’t know what that picture means to me. But surely you could get the Nilghai to help you, and knock me down and tie me up. I shouldn’t fight for the whiskey, but I should for the work.’
‘Go on, then. I give you three days; but you’re nearly breaking my heart.’
Dick returned to his work, toiling as one possessed; and the yellow devil of whiskey stood by him and chased away the spots in his eyes. The Melancolia was nearly finished, and was all or nearly all that he had hoped she would be. Dick jested with Bessie, who reminded him that he was ‘a drunken beast’; but the reproof did not move him.
‘You can’t understand, Bess. We are in sight of land now, and soon we shall lie back