No More Learning

"

"So you think. Wait till she has been fed a little and freed from fear.
That fair type recovers itself very quickly. You won't know her in a
week or two, when that abject fear has died out of her eyes. She'll be
too happy and smiling for my purposes. "

"But surely you're not taking her out of charity? --to please me? "

"I am not in the habit of playing with hot coals to please anybody. She
has been sent from heaven, as I may have remarked before, to help me
with my Melancolia. "

"Never heard a word about the lady before. "

"What's the use of having a friend, if you must sling your notions at
him in words? You ought to know what I'm thinking about. You've heard me
grunt lately? "

"Even so; but grunts mean anything in your language, from bad 'baccy to
wicked dealers. And I don't think I've been much in your confidence for
some time. "

"It was a high and soulful grunt. You ought to have understood that
it meant the Melancolia. " Dick walked Torpenhow up and down the room,
keeping silence. Then he smote him in the ribs, "Now don't you see it?
Bessie's abject futility, and the terror in her eyes, welded on to one
or two details in the way of sorrow that have come under my experience
lately. Likewise some orange and black,--two keys of each. But I can't
explain on an empty stomach. "

"It sounds mad enough. You'd better stick to your soldiers, Dick,
instead of maundering about heads and eyes and experiences. "

"Think so? " Dick began to dance on his heels, singing--

"They're as proud as a turkey when they hold the ready cash, You ought
to 'ear the way they laugh an' joke; They are tricky an' they're funny
when they've got the ready money,--Ow! but see 'em when they're all
stone-broke. "

Then he sat down to pour out his heart to Maisie in a four-sheet letter
of counsel and encouragement, and registered an oath that he would get
to work with an undivided heart as soon as Bessie should reappear.

The girl kept her appointment unpainted and unadorned, afraid and
overbold by turns. When she found that she was merely expected to sit
still, she grew calmer, and criticised the appointments of the studio
with freedom and some point. She liked the warmth and the comfort and
the release from fear of physical pain. Dick made two or three studies
of her head in monochrome, but the actual notion of the Melancolia would
not arrive.

"What a mess you keep your things in! " said Bessie, some days later,
when she felt herself thoroughly at home. "I s'pose your clothes are
just as bad. Gentlemen never think what buttons and tape are made for. "

"I buy things to wear, and wear 'em till they go to pieces. I don't know
what Torpenhow does. "

Bessie made diligent inquiry in the latter's room, and unearthed a bale
of disreputable socks. "Some of these I'll mend now," she said, "and
some I'll take home. D'you know, I sit all day long at home doing
nothing, just like a lady, and no more noticing them other girls in
the house than if they was so many flies. I don't have any unnecessary
words, but I put 'em down quick, I can tell you, when they talk to me.
No; it's quite nice these days. I lock my door, and they can only
call me names through the keyhole, and I sit inside, just like a lady,
mending socks. Mr. Torpenhow wears his socks out both ends at once. "

"Three quid a week from me, and the delights of my society. No socks
mended. Nothing from Torp except a nod on the landing now and again, and
all his socks mended. Bessie is very much a woman," thought Dick; and he
looked at her between half-shut eyes. Food and rest had transformed the
girl, as Dick knew they would.

"What are you looking at me like that for? " she said quickly. "Don't.
You look reg'lar bad when you look that way. You don't think much o' me,
do you? "

"That depends on how you behave. "

Bessie behaved beautifully. Only it was difficult at the end of a
sitting to bid her go out into the gray streets. She very much preferred
the studio and a big chair by the stove, with some socks in her lap as
an excuse for delay. Then Torpenhow would come in, and Bessie would
be moved to tell strange and wonderful stories of her past, and still
stranger ones of her present improved circumstances. She would make them
tea as though she had a right to make it; and once or twice on these
occasions Dick caught Torpenhow's eyes fixed on the trim little figure,
and because Bessie's flittings about the room made Dick ardently long
for Maisie, he realised whither Torpenhow's thoughts were tending. And
Bessie was exceedingly careful of the condition of Torpenhow's linen.
She spoke very little to him, but sometimes they talked together on the
landing.

"I was a great fool," Dick said to himself. "I know what red firelight
looks like when a man's tramping through a strange town; and ours is a
lonely, selfish sort of life at the best. I wonder Maisie doesn't feel
that sometimes. But I can't order Bessie away. That's the worst of
beginning things. One never knows where they stop. "

One evening, after a sitting prolonged to the last limit of the light,
Dick was roused from a nap by a broken voice in Torpenhow's room. He
jumped to his feet. "Now what ought I to do? It looks foolish to go
in. --Oh, bless you, Binkie! " The little terrier thrust Torpenhow's door
open with his nose and came out to take possession of Dick's chair. The
door swung wide unheeded, and Dick across the landing could see Bessie
in the half-light making her little supplication to Torpenhow. She was
kneeling by his side, and her hands were clasped across his knee.

"I know,--I know," she said thickly. "'Tisn't right 'o me to do this,
but I can't help it; and you were so kind,--so kind; and you never took
any notice 'o me. And I've mended all your things so carefully,--I did.
Oh, please, 'tisn't as if I was asking you to marry me. I wouldn't think
of it. But you--couldn't you take and live with me till Miss Right comes
along? I'm only Miss Wrong, I know, but I'd work my hands to the bare
bone for you. And I'm not ugly to look at. Say you will! "

Dick hardly recognised Torpenhow's voice in reply--"But look here. It's
no use. I'm liable to be ordered off anywhere at a minute's notice if a
war breaks out. At a minute's notice--dear. "

"What does that matter? Until you go, then. Until you go. 'Tisn't much
I'm asking, and--you don't know how good I can cook. " She had put an arm
round his neck and was drawing his head down.

"Until--I--go, then. "

"Torp," said Dick, across the landing. He could hardly steady his voice.

"Come here a minute, old man. I'm in trouble"--

"Heaven send he'll listen to me! " There was something very like an oath
from Bessie's lips. She was afraid of Dick, and disappeared down the
staircase in panic, but it seemed an age before Torpenhow entered the
studio. He went to the mantelpiece, buried his head on his arms, and
groaned like a wounded bull.

"What the devil right have you to interfere? " he said, at last.

"Who's interfering with which? Your own sense told you long ago you
couldn't be such a fool. It was a tough rack, St. Anthony, but you're
all right now. "

"I oughtn't to have seen her moving about these rooms as if they
belonged to her. That's what upset me. It gives a lonely man a sort of
hankering, doesn't it? " said Torpenhow, piteously.

"Now you talk sense. It does. But, since you aren't in a condition
to discuss the disadvantages of double housekeeping, do you know what
you're going to do? "

"I don't. I wish I did. "

"You're going away for a season on a brilliant tour to regain tone.
You're going to Brighton, or Scarborough, or Prawle Point, to see the
ships go by. And you're going at once. Isn't it odd? I'll take care of
Binkie, but out you go immediately. Never resist the devil. He holds the
bank. Fly from him. Pack your things and go. "

"I believe you're right. Where shall I go? "

"And you call yourself a special correspondent! Pack first and inquire
afterwards. "

An hour later Torpenhow was despatched into the night for a hansom.

"You'll probably think of some place to go to while you're moving," said
Dick. "On to Euston, to begin with, and--oh yes--get drunk tonight. "

He returned to the studio, and lighted more candles, for he found the
room very dark.

"Oh, you Jezebel! you futile little Jezebel! Won't you hate me
tomorrow! --Binkie, come here. "

Binkie turned over on his back on the hearth-rug, and Dick stirred him
with a meditative foot.

"I said she was not immoral. I was wrong. She said she could cook. That
showed premeditated sin. Oh, Binkie, if you are a man you will go to
perdition; but if you are a woman, and say that you can cook, you will
go to a much worse place. "



CHAPTER X

What's you that follows at my side? --
The foe that ye must fight, my lord. --
That hirples swift as I can ride? --
The shadow of the night, my lord. --
Then wheel my horse against the foe! --
He's down and overpast, my lord.

Ye war against the sunset glow;
The darkness gathers fast, my lord.
----The Fight of Heriot's Ford

"This is a cheerful life," said Dick, some days later. "Torp's away;
Bessie hates me; I can't get at the notion of the Melancolia; Maisie's
letters are scrappy; and I believe I have indigestion. What give a man
pains across the head and spots before his eyes, Binkie? Shall us take
some liver pills? "

Dick had just gone through a lively scene with Bessie. She had for the
fiftieth time reproached him for sending Torpenhow away. She explained
her enduring hatred for Dick, and made it clear to him that she only sat
for the sake of his money. "And Mr. Torpenhow's ten times a better man
than you," she concluded.

"He is. That's why he went away. I should have stayed and made love to
you. "

The girl sat with her chin on her hand, scowling. "To me! I'd like to
catch you! If I wasn't afraid 'o being hung I'd kill you. That's what
I'd do. D'you believe me? "

Dick smiled wearily. It is not pleasant to live in the company of a
notion that will not work out, a fox-terrier that cannot talk, and a
woman who talks too much. He would have answered, but at that moment
there unrolled itself from one corner of the studio a veil, as it were,
of the flimsiest gauze. He rubbed his eyes, but the gray haze would not
go.

"This is disgraceful indigestion. Binkie, we will go to a medicine-man.
We can't have our eyes interfered with, for by these we get our bread;
also mutton-chop bones for little dogs. "

The doctor was an affable local practitioner with white hair, and he
said nothing till Dick began to describe the gray film in the studio.

"We all want a little patching and repairing from time to time," he
chirped. "Like a ship, my dear sir,--exactly like a ship. Sometimes the
hull is out of order, and we consult the surgeon; sometimes the
rigging, and then I advise; sometimes the engines, and we go to the
brain-specialist; sometimes the look-out on the bridge is tired, and
then we see an oculist. I should recommend you to see an oculist. A
little patching and repairing from time to time is all we want. An
oculist, by all means. "

Dick sought an oculist,--the best in London. He was certain that the
local practitioner did not know anything about his trade, and more
certain that Maisie would laugh at him if he were forced to wear
spectacles.

"I've neglected the warnings of my lord the stomach too long. Hence
these spots before the eyes, Binkie. I can see as well as I ever could. "

As he entered the dark hall that led to the consulting-room a man
cannoned against him. Dick saw the face as it hurried out into the
street.

"That's the writer-type. He has the same modelling of the forehead as
Torp. He looks very sick. Probably heard something he didn't like. "

Even as he thought, a great fear came upon Dick, a fear that made him
hold his breath as he walked into the oculist's waiting room, with the
heavy carved furniture, the dark-green paper, and the sober-hued prints
on the wall. He recognised a reproduction of one of his own sketches.

Many people were waiting their turn before him. His eye was caught by a
flaming red-and-gold Christmas-carol book.
Little children came to that
eye-doctor, and they needed large-type amusement.

"That's idolatrous bad Art," he said, drawing the book towards himself.

"From the anatomy of the angels, it has been made in Germany. " He opened
in mechanically, and there leaped to his eyes a verse printed in red
ink--

The next good joy that Mary had,
It was the joy of three,
To see her good Son Jesus Christ
Making the blind to see;
Making the blind to see, good Lord,
And happy we may be.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
To all eternity!

Dick read and re-read the verse till his turn came, and the doctor
was bending above him seated in an arm-chair. The blaze of the
gas-microscope in his eyes made him wince. The doctor's hand touched the
scar of the sword-cut on Dick's head, and Dick explained briefly how he
had come by it. When the flame was removed, Dick saw the doctor's face,
and the fear came upon him again. The doctor wrapped himself in a
mist of words. Dick caught allusions to "scar," "frontal bone," "optic
nerve," "extreme caution," and the "avoidance of mental anxiety. "

"Verdict? " he said faintly. "My business is painting, and I daren't
waste time. What do you make of it? "

Again the whirl of words, but this time they conveyed a meaning.

"Can you give me anything to drink? "

Many sentences were pronounced in that darkened room, and the prisoners
often needed cheering. Dick found a glass of liqueur brandy in his hand.

"As far as I can gather," he said, coughing above the spirit, "you call
it decay of the optic nerve, or something, and therefore hopeless. What
is my time-limit, avoiding all strain and worry? "

"Perhaps one year. "

"My God! And if I don't take care of myself? "

"I really could not say. One cannot ascertain the exact amount of injury
inflicted by the sword-cut. The scar is an old one, and--exposure to the
strong light of the desert, did you say? --with excessive application to
fine work? I really could not say? "

"I beg your pardon, but it has come without any warning. If you will
let me, I'll sit here for a minute, and then I'll go. You have been very
good in telling me the truth. Without any warning; without any warning.
Thanks. "

Dick went into the street, and was rapturously received by Binkie.

"We've got it very badly, little dog! Just as badly as we can get it.
We'll go to the Park to think it out. "

They headed for a certain tree that Dick knew well, and they sat down to
think, because his legs were trembling under him and there was cold fear
at the pit of his stomach.

"How could it have come without any warning? It's as sudden as being
shot. It's the living death, Binkie. We're to be shut up in the dark in
one year if we're careful, and we shan't see anybody, and we shall
never have anything we want, not though we live to be a hundred! " Binkie
wagged his tail joyously. "Binkie, we must think. Let's see how it
feels to be blind. " Dick shut his eyes, and flaming commas and
Catherine-wheels floated inside the lids. Yet when he looked across the
Park the scope of his vision was not contracted. He could see perfectly,
until a procession of slow-wheeling fireworks defiled across his
eyeballs.

"Little dorglums, we aren't at all well. Let's go home. If only Torp
were back, now! "

But Torpenhow was in the south of England, inspecting dockyards in the
company of the Nilghai. His letters were brief and full of mystery.

Dick had never asked anybody to help him in his joys or his sorrows. He
argued, in the loneliness of his studio, henceforward to be decorated
with a film of gray gauze in one corner, that, if his fate were
blindness, all the Torpenhows in the world could not save him. "I can't
call him off his trip to sit down and sympathise with me. I must pull
through this business alone," he said. He was lying on the sofa, eating
his moustache and wondering what the darkness of the night would be
like. Then came to his mind the memory of a quaint scene in the Soudan.
A soldier had been nearly hacked in two by a broad-bladed Arab spear.
For one instant the man felt no pain. Looking down, he saw that his
life-blood was going from him. The stupid bewilderment on his face
was so intensely comic that both Dick and Torpenhow, still panting and
unstrung from a fight for life, had roared with laughter, in which the
man seemed as if he would join, but, as his lips parted in a sheepish
grin, the agony of death came upon him, and he pitched grunting at their
feet. Dick laughed again, remembering the horror. It seemed so exactly
like his own case.

"But I have a little more time allowed me," he said. He paced up and
down the room, quietly at first, but afterwards with the hurried feet of
fear. It was as though a black shadow stood at his elbow and urged him
to go forward; and there were only weaving circles and floating pin-dots
before his eyes.

"We need to be calm, Binkie; we must be calm. " He talked aloud for the
sake of distraction. "This isn't nice at all. What shall we do? We must
do something. Our time is short. I shouldn't have believed that this
morning; but now things are different. Binkie, where was Moses when the
light went out? "

Binkie smiled from ear to ear, as a well-bred terrier should, but made
no suggestion.

"'Were there but world enough and time, This coyness, Binkie, were not
crime. . . . But at my back I always hear----'" He wiped his forehead,
which was unpleasantly damp. "What can I do? What can I do? I haven't
any notions left, and I can't think connectedly, but I must do
something, or I shall go off my head. "

The hurried walk recommenced, Dick stopping every now and again to drag
forth long-neglected canvases and old note-books; for he turned to his
work by instinct, as a thing that could not fail. "You won't do, and you
won't do," he said, at each inspection. "No more soldiers. I couldn't
paint 'em. Sudden death comes home too nearly, and this is battle and
murder for me. "

The day was failing, and Dick thought for a moment that the twilight
of the blind had come upon him unaware. "Allah Almighty! " he cried
despairingly, "help me through the time of waiting, and I won't whine
when my punishment comes. What can I do now, before the light goes? "

There was no answer. Dick waited till he could regain some sort of
control over himself. His hands were shaking, and he prided himself on
their steadiness; he could feel that his lips were quivering, and the
sweat was running down his face. He was lashed by fear, driven forward
by the desire to get to work at once and accomplish something, and
maddened by the refusal of his brain to do more than repeat the news
that he was about to go blind. "It's a humiliating exhibition," he
thought, "and I'm glad Torp isn't here to see. The doctor said I was to
avoid mental worry. Come here and let me pet you, Binkie. "

The little dog yelped because Dick nearly squeezed the bark out of him.

Then he heard the man speaking in the twilight, and, doglike, understood
that his trouble stood off from him--"Allah is good, Binkie. Not quite
so gentle as we could wish, but we'll discuss that later. I think I see
my way to it now. All those studies of Bessie's head were nonsense, and
they nearly brought your master into a scrape. I hold the notion now as
clear as crystal, 'the Melancolia that transcends all wit. ' There shall
be Maisie in that head, because I shall never get Maisie; and Bess, of
course, because she knows all about Melancolia, though she doesn't know
she knows; and there shall be some drawing in it, and it shall all end
up with a laugh. That's for myself. Shall she giggle or grin? No, she
shall laugh right out of the canvas, and every man and woman that ever
had a sorrow of their own shall--what is it the poem says? -- 'Understand
the speech and feel a stir Of fellowship in all disastrous fight. '

"'In all disastrous fight'? That's better than painting the thing merely
to pique Maisie. I can do it now because I have it inside me. Binkie,
I'm going to hold you up by your tail. You're an omen. Come here. "

Binkie swung head downward for a moment without speaking.

"Rather like holding a guinea-pig; but you're a brave little dog, and
you don't yelp when you're hung up. It is an omen. "

Binkie went to his own chair, and as often as he looked saw Dick walking
up and down, rubbing his hands and chuckling. That night Dick wrote a
letter to Maisie full of the tenderest regard for her health, but saying
very little about his own, and dreamed of the Melancolia to be born. Not
till morning did he remember that something might happen to him in the
future.

He fell to work, whistling softly, and was swallowed up in the clean,
clear joy of creation, which does not come to man too often, lest he
should consider himself the equal of his God, and so refuse to die at
the appointed time. He forgot Maisie, Torpenhow, and Binkie at his feet,
but remembered to stir Bessie, who needed very little stirring, into a
tremendous rage, that he might watch the smouldering lights in her eyes.

He threw himself without reservation into his work, and did not think of
the doom that was to overtake him, for he was possessed with his notion,
and the things of this world had no power upon him.

"You're pleased today," 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.