No More Learning

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.

'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 good 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 and think about what we've done. I'll give you three
months' pay when the picture's finished, and next time I have any more
work in hand--but that doesn't matter. Won't three months' pay make you
hate me less? "

"No, it won't! I hate you, and I'll go on hating you. Mr. Torpenhow
won't speak to me any more. He's always looking at maps. "

Bessie did not say that she had again laid siege to Torpenhow, or that
at the end of our passionate pleading he had picked her up, given her a
kiss, and put her outside the door with the recommendation not to be a
little fool. He spent most of his time in the company of the Nilghai,
and their talk was of war in the near future, the hiring of transports,
and secret preparations among the dockyards. He did not wish to see Dick
till the picture was finished.

"He's doing first-class work," he said to the Nilghai, "and it's quite
out of his regular line. But, for the matter of that, so's his infernal
soaking. "

"Never mind. Leave him alone. When he has come to his senses again we'll
carry him off from this place and let him breathe clean air. Poor Dick!
I don't envy you, Torp, when his eyes fail. "

"Yes, it will be a case of 'God help the man who's chained to our
Davie. ' The worst is that we don't know when it will happen, and I
believe the uncertainty and the waiting have sent Dick to the whiskey
more than anything else. "

"How the Arab who cut his head open would grin if he knew! "

"He's at perfect liberty to grin if he can. He's dead. That's poor
consolation now. "

In the afternoon of the third day Torpenhow heard Dick calling for him.

"All finished! " he shouted. "I've done it! Come in! Isn't she a beauty?
Isn't she a darling? I've been down to hell to get her; but isn't she
worth it? "

Torpenhow looked at the head of a woman who laughed,--a full-lipped,
hollow-eyed woman who laughed from out of the canvas as Dick had
intended she would.

"Who taught you how to do it? " said Torpenhow. "The touch and notion
have nothing to do with your regular work. What a face it is! What eyes,
and what insolence! " Unconsciously he threw back his head and laughed
with her. "She's seen the game played out,--I don't think she had a good
time of it,--and now she doesn't care. Isn't that the idea? "

"Exactly. "

"Where did you get the mouth and chin from? They don't belong to Bess. "

"They're--some one else's. But isn't it good? Isn't it thundering good?
Wasn't it worth the whiskey? I did it. Alone I did it, and it's the best
I can do. " He drew his breath sharply, and whispered, "Just God! what
could I not do ten years hence, if I can do this now! --By the way, what
do you think of it, Bess? "

The girl was biting her lips. She loathed Torpenhow because he had taken
no notice of her.

"I think it's just the horridest, beastliest thing I ever saw," she
answered, and turned away.

"More than you will be of that way of thinking, young woman. --Dick,
there's a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the
head that I don't understand," said Torpenhow.

"That's trick-work," said Dick, chuckling with delight at being
completely understood. "I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer
swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got
at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening
of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the
left ear. That, and deepening the shadow under the lobe of the ear. It
was flagrant trick-work; but, having the notion fixed, I felt entitled
to play with it,--Oh, you beauty! "

"Amen! She is a beauty. I can feel it. "

"So will every man who has any sorrow of his own," said Dick, slapping
his thigh. "He shall see his trouble there, and, by the Lord Harry, just
when he's feeling properly sorry for himself he shall throw back his
head and laugh,--as she is laughing. I've put the life of my heart and
the light of my eyes into her, and I don't care what comes. . . . I'm
tired,--awfully tired. I think I'll get to sleep. Take away the whiskey,
it has served its turn, and give Bessie thirty-six quid, and three over
for luck. Cover the picture. "

He dropped asleep in the long chair, hid face white and haggard, almost
before he had finished the sentence. Bessie tried to take Torpenhow's
hand. "Aren't you never going to speak to me any more? " she said; but
Torpenhow was looking at Dick.

"What a stock of vanity the man has! I'll take him in hand tomorrow and
make much of him. He deserves it. --Eh! what was that, Bess? "

"Nothing. I'll put things tidy here a little, and then I'll go. You
couldn't give Me that three months' pay now, could you? He said you
were to. "

Torpenhow gave her a check and went to his own rooms.
Bessie faithfully
tidied up the studio, set the door ajar for flight, emptied half a
bottle of turpentine on a duster, and began to scrub the face of the
Melancolia viciously. The paint did not smudge quickly enough. She took
a palette-knife and scraped, following each stroke with the wet duster.
In five minutes the picture was a formless, scarred muddle of colours.
She threw the paint-stained duster into the studio stove, stuck out her
tongue at the sleeper, and whispered, "Bilked! " as she turned to run
down the staircase. She would never see Torpenhow any more, but she had
at least done harm to the man who had come between her and her desire
and who used to make fun of her. Cashing the check was the very cream of
the jest to Bessie. Then the little privateer sailed across the Thames,
to be swallowed up in the gray wilderness of South-the-Water.

Dick slept till late in the evening, when Torpenhow dragged him off
to bed. His eyes were as bright as his voice was hoarse. "Let's have
another look at the picture," he said, insistently as a child.

"You--go--to--bed," said Torpenhow. "You aren't at all well, though you
mayn't know it. You're as jumpy as a cat. "

"I reform tomorrow. Good night. "

As he repassed through the studio, Torpenhow lifted the cloth above the
picture, and almost betrayed himself by outcries: "Wiped out! --scraped
out and turped out! He's on the verge of jumps as it is. That's
Bess,--the little fiend! Only a woman could have done that! --with the
ink not dry on the check, too! Dick will be raving mad tomorrow. It was
all my fault for trying to help gutter-devils. Oh, my poor Dick, the
Lord is hitting you very hard! "

Dick could not sleep that night, partly for pure joy, and partly because
the well-known Catherine-wheels inside his eyes had given place to
crackling volcanoes of many-coloured fire. "Spout away," he said aloud.

"I've done my work, and now you can do what you please. " He lay still,
staring at the ceiling, the long-pent-up delirium of drink in his
veins, his brain on fire with racing thoughts that would not stay to be
considered, and his hands crisped and dry. He had just discovered that
he was painting the face of the Melancolia on a revolving dome ribbed
with millions of lights, and that all his wondrous thoughts stood
embodied hundreds of feet below his tiny swinging plank, shouting
together in his honour, when something cracked inside his temples like
an overstrained bowstring, the glittering dome broke inward, and he was
alone in the thick night.

"I'll go to sleep. The room's very dark. Let's light a lamp and see how
the Melancolia looks. There ought to have been a moon. "

It was then that Torpenhow heard his name called by a voice that he did
not know,--in the rattling accents of deadly fear.

"He's looked at the picture," was his first thought, as he hurried
into the bedroom and found Dick sitting up and beating the air with his
hands.

"Torp! Torp! where are you? For pity's sake, come to me! "

"What's the matter? "

Dick clutched at his shoulder. "Matter! I've been lying here for hours
in the dark, and you never heard me. Torp, old man, don't go away. I'm
all in the dark. In the dark, I tell you! "

Torpenhow held the candle within a foot of Dick's eyes, but there was no
light in those eyes. He lit the gas, and Dick heard the flame catch. The
grip of his fingers on Torpenhow's shoulder made Torpenhow wince.

"Don't leave me. You wouldn't leave me alone now, would you? I can't
see. D'you understand? It's black,--quite black,--and I feel as if I was
falling through it all. "

"Steady does it. " Torpenhow put his arm round Dick and began to rock him
gently to and fro.

"That's good. Now don't talk. If I keep very quiet for a while, this
darkness will lift. It seems just on the point of breaking. H'sh! " Dick
knit his brows and stared desperately in front of him. The night air was
chilling Torpenhow's toes.

"Can you stay like that a minute? " he said. "I'll get my dressing-gown
and some slippers. "

Dick clutched the bed-head with both hands and waited for the darkness
to clear away. "What a time you've been! " he cried, when Torpenhow
returned. "It's as black as ever. What are you banging about in the
door-way? "

"Long chair,--horse-blanket,--pillow. Going to sleep by you. Lie down
now; you'll be better in the morning. "

"I shan't! " The voice rose to a wail. "My God! I'm blind! I'm blind, and
the darkness will never go away. " He made as if to leap from the bed,
but Torpenhow's arms were round him, and Torpenhow's chin was on his
shoulder, and his breath was squeezed out of him. He could only gasp,
"Blind! " and wriggle feebly.

"Steady, Dickie, steady! " said the deep voice in his ear, and the grip
tightened. "Bite on the bullet, old man, and don't let them think you're
afraid. " The grip could draw no closer. Both men were breathing heavily.

Dick threw his head from side to side and groaned.

"Let me go," he panted. "You're cracking my ribs. We--we mustn't let
them think we're afraid, must we,--all the powers of darkness and that
lot? "

"Lie down. It's all over now. "

"Yes," said Dick, obediently. "But would you mind letting me hold your
hand? I feel as if I wanted something to hold on to. One drops through
the dark so. "

Torpenhow thrust out a large and hairy paw from the long chair. Dick
clutched it tightly, and in half an hour had fallen asleep. Torpenhow
withdrew his hand, and, stooping over Dick, kissed him lightly on the
forehead, as men do sometimes kiss a wounded comrade in the hour of
death, to ease his departure.

In the gray dawn Torpenhow heard Dick talking to himself. He was adrift
on the shoreless tides of delirium, speaking very quickly--"It's a
pity,--a great pity; but it's helped, and it must be eaten, Master
George. Sufficient unto the day is the blindness thereof, and, further,
putting aside all Melancolias and false humours, it is of obvious
notoriety--such as mine was--that the queen can do no wrong. Torp
doesn't know that. I'll tell him when we're a little farther into the
desert.

"What a bungle those boatmen are making of the steamer-ropes! They'll
have that four-inch hawser chafed through in a minute. I told you
so--there she goes! White foam on green water, and the steamer slewing
round. How good that looks! I'll sketch it. No, I can't. I'm afflicted
with ophthalmia. That was one of the ten plagues of Egypt, and it
extends up the Nile in the shape of cataract. Ha! that's a joke, Torp.
Laugh, you graven image, and stand clear of the hawser. . . . It'll
knock you into the water and make your dress all dirty, Maisie dear. "

"Oh! " said Torpenhow. "This happened before. That night on the river. "

"She'll be sure to say it's my fault if you get muddy, and you're quite
near enough to the breakwater. Maisie, that's not fair. Ah! I knew you'd
miss. Low and to the left, dear. But you've no conviction. Don't be angry,
darling. I'd cut my hand off if it would give you anything more than
obstinacy. My right hand, if it would serve. "

"Now we mustn't listen. Here's an island shouting across seas of
misunderstanding with a vengeance. But it's shouting truth, I fancy,"
said Torpenhow.

The babble continued. It all bore upon Maisie. Sometimes Dick lectured
at length on his craft, then he cursed himself for his folly in being
enslaved. He pleaded to Maisie for a kiss--only one kiss--before she
went away, and called to her to come back from Vitry-sur-Marne, if she
would; but through all his ravings he bade heaven and earth witness that
the queen could do no wrong.

Torpenhow listened attentively, and learned every detail of Dick's life
that had been hidden from him. For three days Dick raved through the
past, and then a natural sleep. "What a strain he has been running
under, poor chap! " said Torpenhow. "Dick, of all men, handing himself
over like a dog! And I was lecturing him on arrogance! I ought to have
known that it was no use to judge a man. But I did it. What a demon that
girl must be! Dick's given her his life,--confound him! --and she's given
him one kiss apparently. "

"Torp," said Dick, from the bed, "go out for a walk. You've been here
too long. I'll get up. Hi! This is annoying. I can't dress myself. Oh,
it's too absurd! "

Torpenhow helped him into his clothes and led him to the big chair
in the studio. He sat quietly waiting under strained nerves for
the darkness to lift. It did not lift that day, nor the next. Dick
adventured on a voyage round the walls. He hit his shins against the
stove, and this suggested to him that it would be better to crawl on all
fours, one hand in front of him. Torpenhow found him on the floor.

"I'm trying to get the geography of my new possessions," said he. "D'you
remember that nigger you gouged in the square? Pity you didn't keep the
odd eye. It would have been useful. Any letters for me? Give me all the
ones in fat gray envelopes with a sort of crown thing outside. They're
of no importance. "

Torpenhow gave him a letter with a black M. on the envelope flap. Dick
put it into his pocket. There was nothing in it that Torpenhow might
not have read, but it belonged to himself and to Maisie, who would never
belong to him.

"When she finds that I don't write, she'll stop writing. It's better
so. I couldn't be any use to her now," Dick argued, and the tempter
suggested that he should make known his condition. Every nerve in him
revolted. "I have fallen low enough already. I'm not going to beg for
pity. Besides, it would be cruel to her. " He strove to put Maisie out of
his thoughts; but the blind have many opportunities for thinking, and as
the tides of his strength came back to him in the long employless days
of dead darkness, Dick's soul was troubled to the core. Another letter,
and another, came from Maisie. Then there was silence, and Dick sat by
the window, the pulse of summer in the air, and pictured her being won
by another man, stronger than himself. His imagination, the keener for
the dark background it worked against, spared him no single detail that
might send him raging up and down the studio, to stumble over the stove
that seemed to be in four places at once. Worst of all, tobacco would
not taste in the darkness. The arrogance of the man had disappeared, and
in its place were settled despair that Torpenhow knew, and blind passion
that Dick confided to his pillow at night. The intervals between
the paroxysms were filled with intolerable waiting and the weight of
intolerable darkness.

"Come out into the Park," said Torpenhow. "You haven't stirred out since
the beginning of things. "

"What's the use? There's no movement in the dark; and, besides,"--he
paused irresolutely at the head of the stairs,--"something will run over
me. "

"Not if I'm with you. Proceed gingerly. "

The roar of the streets filled Dick with nervous terror, and he clung to
Torpenhow's arm. "Fancy having to feel for a gutter with your foot! " he
said petulantly, as he turned into the Park.