No More Learning

"She found
out my pet besetting sin on the spot, and paid it off. My God, how she
understood! And she said I was better than she was! Better than she
was! " He laughed at the absurdity of the notion. "I wonder if girls
guess at one-half a man's life. They can't, or--they wouldn't marry us. "
He took her gift out of his pocket, and considered it in the light of a
miracle and a pledge of the comprehension that, one day, would lead to
perfect happiness. Meantime, Maisie was alone in London, with none to
save her from danger. And the packed wilderness was very full of danger.

Dick made his prayer to Fate disjointedly after the manner of the
heathen as he threw the piece of silver into the river. If any evil were
to befal, let him bear the burden and let Maisie go unscathed, since
the threepenny piece was dearest to him of all his possessions. It was
a small coin in itself, but Maisie had given it, and the Thames held it,
and surely the Fates would be bribed for this once.

The drowning of the coin seemed to cut him free from thought of Maisie
for the moment. He took himself off the bridge and went whistling to his
chambers with a strong yearning for some man-talk and tobacco after his
first experience of an entire day spent in the society of a woman.
There was a stronger desire at his heart when there rose before him an
unsolicited vision of the Barralong dipping deep and sailing free for
the Southern Cross.



CHAPTER VIII

And these two, as I have told you,
Were the friends of Hiawatha,
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
--Hiawatha

Torpenhow was paging the last sheets of some manuscript, while the
Nilghai, who had come for chess and remained to talk tactics, was
reading through the first part, commenting scornfully the while.

"It's picturesque enough and it's sketchy," said he; "but as a serious
consideration of affairs in Eastern Europe, it's not worth much. "

"It's off my hands at any rate. . . . Thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
thirty-nine slips altogether, aren't there? That should make between
eleven and twelve pages of valuable misinformation. Heigh-ho! " Torpenhow
shuffled the writing together and hummed--

'Young lambs to sell, young lambs to sell,
If I'd as much money as I could tell,
I never would cry, Young lambs to sell! '"

Dick entered, self-conscious and a little defiant, but in the best of
tempers with all the world.

"Back at last? " said Torpenhow.

"More or less. What have you been doing? "

"Work. Dickie, you behave as though the Bank of England were behind you.
Here's Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday gone and you haven't done a line.
It's scandalous. "

"The notions come and go, my children--they come and go like our
'baccy," he answered, filling his pipe. "Moreover," he stooped to thrust
a spill into the grate, "Apollo does not always stretch his----Oh,
confound your clumsy jests, Nilghai! "

"This is not the place to preach the theory of direct inspiration,"
said the Nilghai, returning Torpenhow's large and workmanlike bellows to
their nail on the wall. "We believe in cobblers' wax. La! --where you sit
down. "

"If you weren't so big and fat," said Dick, looking round for a weapon,
"I'd----"

"No skylarking in my rooms. You two smashed half my furniture last time
you threw the cushions about. You might have the decency to say How
d'you do? to Binkie. Look at him. "

Binkie had jumped down from the sofa and was fawning round Dick's knee,
and scratching at his boots.

"Dear man! " said Dick, snatching him up, and kissing him on the black
patch above his right eye. "Did ums was, Binks? Did that ugly Nilghai
turn you off the sofa? Bite him, Mr. Binkie. " He pitched him on the
Nilghai's stomach, as the big man lay at ease, and Binkie pretended to
destroy the Nilghai inch by inch, till a sofa cushion extinguished him,
and panting he stuck out his tongue at the company.

"The Binkie-boy went for a walk this morning before you were up, Torp. I
saw him making love to the butcher at the corner when the shutters were
being taken down--just as if he hadn't enough to eat in his own proper
house," said Dick.

"Binks, is that a true bill? " said Torpenhow, severely. The little dog
retreated under the sofa cushion, and showed by the fat white back of
him that he really had no further interest in the discussion.

"Strikes me that another disreputable dog went for a walk, too," said
the Nilghai. "What made you get up so early? Torp said you might be
buying a horse. "

"He knows it would need three of us for a serious business like that.
No, I felt lonesome and unhappy, so I went out to look at the sea, and
watch the pretty ships go by. "

"Where did you go? "

"Somewhere on the Channel. Progly or Snigly, or some watering-place was
its name; I've forgotten; but it was only two hours' run from London and
the ships went by. "

"Did you see anything you knew? "

"Only the Barralong outwards to Australia, and an Odessa grain-boat
loaded down by the head. It was a thick day, but the sea smelt good. "

"Wherefore put on one's best trousers to see the Barralong? " said
Torpenhow, pointing.

"Because I've nothing except these things and my painting duds. Besides,
I wanted to do honour to the sea. "

"Did She make you feel restless? " asked the Nilghai, keenly.

"Crazy. Don't speak of it. I'm sorry I went. "

Torpenhow and the Nilghai exchanged a look as Dick, stooping, busied
himself among the former's boots and trees.

"These will do," he said at last; "I can't say I think much of your
taste in slippers, but the fit's the thing. " He slipped his feet into a
pair of sock-like sambhur-skin foot coverings, found a long chair, and
lay at length.

"They're my own pet pair," Torpenhow said. "I was just going to put them
on myself. "

"All your reprehensible selfishness. Just because you see me happy for a
minute, you want to worry me and stir me up. Find another pair. "

"Good for you that Dick can't wear your clothes, Torp. You two live
communistically," said the Nilghai.

"Dick never has anything that I can wear. He's only useful to sponge
upon. "

"Confound you, have you been rummaging round among my clothes, then? "
said Dick. "I put a sovereign in the tobacco-jar yesterday. How do you
expect a man to keep his accounts properly if you----"

Here the Nilghai began to laugh, and Torpenhow joined him.

"Hid a sovereign yesterday! You're no sort of financier. You lent me a
fiver about a month back. Do you remember? " Torpenhow said.

"Yes, of course. "

"Do you remember that I paid it you ten days later, and you put it at
the bottom of the tobacco? "

"By Jove, did I? I thought it was in one of my colour-boxes. "

"You thought! About a week ago I went into your studio to get some
'baccy and found it. "

"What did you do with it? "

"Took the Nilghai to a theatre and fed him. "

"You couldn't feed the Nilghai under twice the money--not though you
gave him Army beef. Well, I suppose I should have found it out sooner or
later. What is there to laugh at? "

"You're a most amazing cuckoo in many directions," said the Nilghai,
still chuckling over the thought of the dinner. "Never mind. We had both
been working very hard, and it was your unearned increment we spent, and
as you're only a loafer it didn't matter. "

"That's pleasant--from the man who is bursting with my meat, too. I'll
get that dinner back one of these days. Suppose we go to a theatre now. "

"Put our boots on,--and dress,--and wash? " The Nilghai spoke very
lazily.

"I withdraw the motion. "

"Suppose, just for a change--as a startling variety, you know--we, that
is to say we, get our charcoal and our canvas and go on with our work. "

Torpenhow spoke pointedly, but Dick only wriggled his toes inside the
soft leather moccasins.

"What a one-ideaed clucker that is! If I had any unfinished figures on
hand, I haven't any model; if I had my model, I haven't any spray, and I
never leave charcoal unfixed overnight; and if I had my spray and twenty
photographs of backgrounds, I couldn't do anything tonight. I don't feel
that way. "

"Binkie-dog, he's a lazy hog, isn't he? " said the Nilghai.

"Very good, I will do some work," said Dick, rising swiftly. "I'll fetch
the Nungapunga Book, and we'll add another picture to the Nilghai Saga. "

"Aren't you worrying him a little too much? " asked the Nilghai, when
Dick had left the room.

"Perhaps, but I know what he can turn out if he likes. It makes me
savage to hear him praised for past work when I know what he ought to
do. You and I are arranged for----"

"By Kismet and our own powers, more's the pity. I have dreamed of a good
deal. "

"So have I, but we know our limitations now. I'm dashed if I know what
Dick's may be when he gives himself to his work. That's what makes me so
keen about him. "

"And when all's said and done, you will be put aside--quite rightly--for
a female girl. "

"I wonder. . . Where do you think he has been today? "

"To the sea. Didn't you see the look in his eyes when he talked about
her? He's as restless as a swallow in autumn. "

"Yes; but did he go alone? "

"I don't know, and I don't care, but he has the beginnings of the
go-fever upon him. He wants to up-stakes and move out. There's no
mistaking the signs. Whatever he may have said before, he has the call
upon him now. "

"It might be his salvation," Torpenhow said.

"Perhaps--if you care to take the responsibility of being a saviour. "

Dick returned with the big clasped sketch-book that the Nilghai knew
well and did not love too much. In it Dick had drawn all manner of
moving incidents, experienced by himself or related to him by the
others, of all the four corners of the earth. But the wider range of the
Nilghai's body and life attracted him most. When truth failed he
fell back on fiction of the wildest, and represented incidents in the
Nilghai's career that were unseemly,--his marriages with many African
princesses, his shameless betrayal, for Arab wives, of an army corps to
the Mahdi, his tattooment by skilled operators in Burmah, his
interview (and his fears) with the yellow headsman in the blood-stained
execution-ground of Canton, and finally, the passings of his spirit into
the bodies of whales, elephants, and toucans. Torpenhow from time to
time had added rhymed descriptions, and the whole was a curious piece of
art, because Dick decided, having regard to the name of the book which
being interpreted means "naked," that it would be wrong to draw the
Nilghai with any clothes on, under any circumstances. Consequently the
last sketch, representing that much-enduring man calling on the War
Office to press his claims to the Egyptian medal, was hardly delicate.
He settled himself comfortably on Torpenhow's table and turned over the
pages.

"What a fortune you would have been to Blake, Nilghai! " he said.
"There's a succulent pinkness about some of these sketches that's
more than life-like. 'The Nilghai surrounded while bathing by the
Mahdieh'--that was founded on fact, eh? "

"It was very nearly my last bath, you irreverent dauber. Has Binkie come
into the Saga yet? "

"No; the Binkie-boy hasn't done anything except eat and kill cats.
Let's see. Here you are as a stained-glass saint in a church. Deuced
decorative lines about your anatomy; you ought to be grateful for being
handed down to posterity in this way. Fifty years hence you'll exist in
rare and curious facsimiles at ten guineas each. What shall I try this
time? The domestic life of the Nilghai? "

"Hasn't got any. "

"The undomestic life of the Nilghai, then. Of course. Mass-meeting of
his wives in Trafalgar Square. That's it. They came from the ends of the
earth to attend Nilghai's wedding to an English bride. This shall be an
epic. It's a sweet material to work with. "

"It's a scandalous waste of time," said Torpenhow.

"Don't worry; it keeps one's hand in--specially when you begin without
the pencil. " He set to work rapidly. "That's Nelson's Column. Presently
the Nilghai will appear shinning up it. "

"Give him some clothes this time. "

"Certainly--a veil and an orange-wreath, because he's been married. "

"Gad, that's clever enough! " said Torpenhow over his shoulder, as Dick
brought out of the paper with three twirls of the brush a very fat back
and labouring shoulder pressed against stone.

"Just imagine," Dick continued, "if we could publish a few of these dear
little things every time the Nilghai subsidises a man who can write, to
give the public an honest opinion of my pictures. "

"Well, you'll admit I always tell you when I have done anything of that
kind. I know I can't hammer you as you ought to be hammered, so I give
the job to another. Young Maclagan, for instance----"

"No-o--one half-minute, old man; stick your hand out against the dark of
the wall-paper--you only burble and call me names. That left shoulder's
out of drawing. I must literally throw a veil over that. Where's my
pen-knife? Well, what about Maclagan? "

"I only gave him his riding-orders to--to lambast you on general
principles for not producing work that will last.
"

"Whereupon that young fool,"--Dick threw back his head and shut one
eye as he shifted the page under his hand,--"being left alone with an
ink-pot and what he conceived were his own notions, went and spilt them
both over me in the papers. You might have engaged a grown man for the
business, Nilghai. How do you think the bridal veil looks now, Torp? "

"How the deuce do three dabs and two scratches make the stuff stand away
from the body as it does? " said Torpenhow, to whom Dick's methods were
always new.

"It just depends on where you put 'em. If Maclagan had know that much
about his business he might have done better. "

"Why don't you put the damned dabs into something that will stay, then? "
insisted the Nilghai, who had really taken considerable trouble in
hiring for Dick's benefit the pen of a young gentleman who devoted most
of his waking hours to an anxious consideration of the aims and ends of
Art, which, he wrote, was one and indivisible.

"Wait a minute till I see how I am going to manage my procession of
wives. You seem to have married extensively, and I must rough 'em in
with the pencil--Medes, Parthians, Edomites. . . . Now, setting
aside the weakness and the wickedness and--and the fat-headedness of
deliberately trying to do work that will live, as they call it, I'm
content with the knowledge that I've done my best up to date, and I
shan't do anything like it again for some hours at least--probably
years. Most probably never. "

"What! any stuff you have in stock your best work? " said Torpenhow.

"Anything you've sold? " said the Nilghai.

"Oh no. It isn't here and it isn't sold. Better than that, it can't be
sold, and I don't think any one knows where it is. I'm sure I don't. . . .
And yet more and more wives, on the north side of the square. Observe
the virtuous horror of the lions! "

"You may as well explain," said Torpenhow, and Dick lifted his head from
the paper.

"The sea reminded me of it," he said slowly. "I wish it hadn't. It
weighs some few thousand tons--unless you cut it out with a cold
chisel. "

"Don't be an idiot. You can't pose with us here," said the Nilghai.

"There's no pose in the matter at all. It's a fact. I was loafing from
Lima to Auckland in a big, old, condemned passenger-ship turned into
a cargo-boat and owned by a second-hand Italian firm. She was a crazy
basket. We were cut down to fifteen ton of coal a day, and we thought
ourselves lucky when we kicked seven knots an hour out of her. Then
we used to stop and let the bearings cool down, and wonder whether the
crack in the shaft was spreading. "

"Were you a steward or a stoker in those days? "

"I was flush for the time being, so I was a passenger, or else I
should have been a steward, I think," said Dick, with perfect gravity,
returning to the procession of angry wives. "I was the only other
passenger from Lima, and the ship was half empty, and full of rats and
cockroaches and scorpions. "

"But what has this to do with the picture? "

"Wait a minute. She had been in the China passenger trade and her lower
decks had bunks for two thousand pigtails. Those were all taken down,
and she was empty up to her nose, and the lights came through the port
holes--most annoying lights to work in till you got used to them. I
hadn't anything to do for weeks. The ship's charts were in pieces and
our skipper daren't run south for fear of catching a storm. So he did
his best to knock all the Society Islands out of the water one by one,
and I went into the lower deck, and did my picture on the port side as
far forward in her as I could go. There was some brown paint and some
green paint that they used for the boats, and some black paint for
ironwork, and that was all I had. "

"The passengers must have thought you mad. "

"There was only one, and it was a woman; but it gave me the notion of my
picture. "

"What was she like? " said Torpenhow.

"She was a sort of Negroid-Jewess-Cuban; with morals to match. She
couldn't read or write, and she didn't want to, but she used to come
down and watch me paint, and the skipper didn't like it, because he was
paying her passage and had to be on the bridge occasionally. "

"I see. That must have been cheerful. "

"It was the best time I ever had. To begin with, we didn't know whether
we should go up or go down any minute when there was a sea on; and when
it was calm it was paradise; and the woman used to mix the paints
and talk broken English, and the skipper used to steal down every few
minutes to the lower deck, because he said he was afraid of fire.
So, you see, we could never tell when we might be caught, and I had a
splendid notion to work out in only three keys of colour. "

"What was the notion? "

"Two lines in Poe--

'Neither the angels in Heaven above nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee. '

It came out of the sea--all by itself. I drew that fight, fought out in
green water over the naked, choking soul, and the woman served as the
model for the devils and the angels both--sea-devils and sea-angels,
and the soul half drowned between them. It doesn't sound much, but when
there was a good light on the lower deck it looked very fine and creepy.
It was seven by fourteen feet, all done in shifting light for shifting
light. "

"Did the woman inspire you much? " said Torpenhow.

"She and the sea between them--immensely. There was a heap of bad
drawing in that picture. I remember I went out of my way to foreshorten
for sheer delight of doing it, and I foreshortened damnably, but for all
that it's the best thing I've ever done; and now I suppose the ship's
broken up or gone down. Whew! What a time that was! "

"What happened after all? "

"It all ended. They were loading her with wool when I left the ship, but
even the stevedores kept the picture clear to the last. The eyes of the
demons scared them, I honestly believe. "

"And the woman? "

"She was scared too when it was finished. She used to cross herself
before she went down to look at it. Just three colours and no chance of
getting any more, and the sea outside and unlimited love-making inside,
and the fear of death atop of everything else, O Lord! " He had ceased to
look at the sketch, but was staring straight in front of him across the
room.

"Why don't you try something of the same kind now? " said the Nilghai.

"Because those things come not by fasting and prayer. When I find a
cargo-boat and a Jewess-Cuban and another notion and the same old life,
I may. "

"You won't find them here," said the Nilghai.

"No, I shall not. " Dick shut the sketch-book with a bang. "This room's
as hot as an oven. Open the window, some one. "

He leaned into the darkness, watching the greater darkness of London
below him. The chambers stood much higher than the other houses,
commanding a hundred chimneys--crooked cowls that looked like sitting
cats as they swung round, and other uncouth brick and zinc mysteries
supported by iron stanchions and clamped by 8-pieces. Northward the
lights of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square threw a copper-coloured
glare above the black roofs, and southward by all the orderly lights of
the Thames. A train rolled out across one of the railway bridges, and
its thunder drowned for a minute the dull roar of the streets. The
Nilghai looked at his watch and said shortly, "That's the Paris
night-mail. You can book from here to St. Petersburg if you choose. "

Dick crammed head and shoulders out of the window and looked across the
river. Torpenhow came to his side, while the Nilghai passed over quietly
to the piano and opened it. Binkie, making himself as large as possible,
spread out upon the sofa with the air of one who is not to be lightly
disturbed.

"Well," said the Nilghai to the two pairs of shoulders, "have you never
seen this place before? "

A steam-tug on the river hooted as she towed her barges to wharf. Then
the boom of the traffic came into the room. Torpenhow nudged Dick.

"Good place to bank in--bad place to bunk in, Dickie, isn't it? "

Dick's chin was in his hand as he answered, in the words of a general
not without fame, still looking out on the darkness--"'My God, what a
city to loot! '"

Binkie found the night air tickling his whiskers and sneezed
plaintively.

"We shall give the Binkie-dog a cold," said Torpenhow. "Come in," and
they withdrew their heads. "You'll be buried in Kensal Green, Dick,
one of these days, if it isn't closed by the time you want to go
there--buried within two feet of some one else, his wife and his
family. "

"Allah forbid! I shall get away before that time comes. Give a man room
to stretch his legs, Mr. Binkie. " Dick flung himself down on the sofa
and tweaked Binkie's velvet ears, yawning heavily the while.

"You'll find that wardrobe-case very much out of tune," Torpenhow said
to the Nilghai. "It's never touched except by you. "

"A piece of gross extravagance," Dick grunted. "The Nilghai only comes
when I'm out. "

"That's because you're always out. Howl, Nilghai, and let him hear. "

"The life of the Nilghai is fraud and slaughter, His writings are
watered Dickens and water; But the voice of the Nilghai raised on high
Makes even the Mahdieh glad to die! "

Dick quoted from Torpenhow's letterpress in the Nungapunga Book.

"How do they call moose in Canada, Nilghai? "

The man laughed. Singing was his one polite accomplishment, as many
Press-tents in far-off lands had known.

"What shall I sing? " said he, turning in the chair.

"'Moll Roe in the Morning,'" said Torpenhow, at a venture.

"No," said Dick, sharply, and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old
chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not
a pretty one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing.
Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together
and troubles the hearts of the gipsies of the sea--

"Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies, Farewell and adieu to you,
ladies of Spain. "

Dick turned uneasily on the sofa, for he could hear the bows of the
Barralong crashing into the green seas on her way to the Southern Cross.

Then came the chorus--

"We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors, We'll rant and
we'll roar across the salt seas, Until we take soundings in the Channel
of Old England From Ushant to Scilly 'tis forty-five leagues. "

"Thirty-five-thirty-five," said Dick, petulantly. "Don't tamper with
Holy Writ. Go on, Nilghai. "

"The first land we made it was called the Deadman," and they sang to the
end very vigourously.

"That would be a better song if her head were turned the other way--to
the Ushant light, for instance," said the Nilghai.

"Flinging his arms about like a mad windmill," said Torpenhow. "Give us
something else, Nilghai. You're in fine fog-horn form tonight. "

"Give us the 'Ganges Pilot'; you sang that in the square the night
before El-Maghrib. By the way, I wonder how many of the chorus are alive
tonight," said Dick.

Torpenhow considered for a minute. "By Jove! I believe only you and I.
Raynor, Vicery, and Deenes--all dead; Vincent caught smallpox in Cairo,
carried it here and died of it. Yes, only you and I and the Nilghai. "

"Umph! And yet the men here who've done their work in a well-warmed
studio all their lives, with a policeman at each corner, say that I
charge too much for my pictures. "

"They are buying your work, not your insurance policies, dear child,"
said the Nilghai.

"I gambled with one to get at the other. Don't preach. Go on with the
'Pilot. ' Where in the world did you get that song? "

"On a tombstone," said the Nilghai. "On a tombstone in a distant land. I
made it an accompaniment with heaps of base chords. "

"Oh, Vanity! Begin. " And the Nilghai began--

"I have slipped my cable, messmates, I'm drifting down with the tide, I
have my sailing orders, while yet at anchor ride. And never on fair June
morning have I put out to sea With clearer conscience or better hope, or
a heart more light and free.

"Shoulder to shoulder, Joe, my boy, into the crowd like a wedge. Strike
with the hangers, messmates, but do not cut with the edge. " Cries
Charnock, "Scatter the faggots, double that Brahmin in two, The tall
pale widow for me, Joe, the little brown girl for you! "

"Young Joe (you're nearing sixty), why is your hide so dark? Katie has
soft fair blue eyes, who blackened yours? --Why, hark! "

They were all singing now, Dick with the roar of the wind of the open
sea about his ears as the deep bass voice let itself go.

"The morning gun--Ho, steady! the arquebuses to me! I ha' sounded the
Dutch High Admiral's heart as my lead doth sound the sea.

"Sounding, sounding the Ganges, floating down with the tide, Moore me
close to Charnock, next to my nut-brown bride. My blessing to Kate
at Fairlight--Holwell, my thanks to you; Steady! We steer for heaven,
through sand-drifts cold and blue. "

"Now what is there in that nonsense to make a man restless? " said Dick,
hauling Binkie from his feet to his chest.

"It depends on the man," said Torpenhow.

"The man who has been down to look at the sea," said the Nilghai.

"I didn't know she was going to upset me in this fashion. "

"That's what men say when they go to say good-bye to a woman. It's more
easy though to get rid of three women than a piece of one's life and
surroundings. "

"But a woman can be----" began Dick, unguardedly.

"A piece of one's life," continued Torpenhow. "No, she can't. " His face
darkened for a moment. "She says she wants to sympathise with you and
help you in your work, and everything else that clearly a man must
do for himself. Then she sends round five notes a day to ask why the
dickens you haven't been wasting your time with her. "

"Don't generalise," said the Nilghai. "By the time you arrive at
five notes a day you must have gone through a good deal and behaved
accordingly. Shouldn't begin these things, my son. "

"I shouldn't have gone down to the sea," said Dick, just a little
anxious to change the conversation. "And you shouldn't have sung. "

"The sea isn't sending you five notes a day," said the Nilghai.

"No, but I'm fatally compromised.