No More Learning

I never seem to get on with my work, and yet I try
hard enough, and Kami says----"

"'Continuez, mesdemoiselles. Continuez toujours, mes enfants. ' Kami is
depressing. I beg your pardon. "

"Yes, that's what he says. He told me last summer that I was doing
better and he'd let me exhibit this year. "

"Not in this place, surely? "

"Of course not. The Salon. "

"You fly high. "

"I've been beating my wings long enough. Where do you exhibit, Dick? "

"I don't exhibit. I sell. "

"What is your line, then? "

"Haven't you heard? " Dick's eyes opened. Was this thing possible? He
cast about for some means of conviction. They were not far from the
Marble Arch. "Come up Oxford Street a little and I'll show you. "

A small knot of people stood round a print-shop that Dick knew well.

"Some reproduction of my work inside," he said, with suppressed triumph.
Never before had success tasted so sweet upon the tongue. "You see the
sort of things I paint. D'you like it? "

Maisie looked at the wild whirling rush of a field-battery going into
action under fire. Two artillery-men stood behind her in the crowd.

"They've chucked the off lead-'orse" said one to the other. "'E's tore
up awful, but they're makin' good time with the others. That lead-driver
drives better nor you, Tom. See 'ow cunnin' 'e's nursin' 'is 'orse. "

"Number Three'll be off the limber, next jolt," was the answer.

"No, 'e won't. See 'ow 'is foot's braced against the iron? 'E's all
right. "

Dick watched Maisie's face and swelled with joy--fine, rank, vulgar
triumph. She was more interested in the little crowd than in the
picture.

That was something that she could understand.

"And I wanted it so! Oh, I did want it so! " she said at last, under her
breath.

"Me,--all me! " said Dick, placidly. "Look at their faces. It hits 'em.
They don't know what makes their eyes and mouths open; but I know. And I
know my work's right. "

"Yes. I see. Oh, what a thing to have come to one! "

"Come to one, indeed! I had to go out and look for it. What do you
think? "

"I call it success. Tell me how you got it. "

They returned to the Park, and Dick delivered himself of the saga of his
own doings, with all the arrogance of a young man speaking to a woman.

From the beginning he told the tale, the I--I--I's flashing through the
records as telegraph-poles fly past the traveller. Maisie listened and
nodded her head. The histories of strife and privation did not move her
a hair's-breadth. At the end of each canto he would conclude, "And that
gave me some notion of handling colour," or light, or whatever it might
be that he had set out to pursue and understand. He led her breathless
across half the world, speaking as he had never spoken in his life
before.

And in the flood-tide of his exaltation there came upon him a great
desire to pick up this maiden who nodded her head and said, "I
understand. Go on,"--to pick her up and carry her away with him, because
she was Maisie, and because she understood, and because she was his
right, and a woman to be desired above all women.

Then he checked himself abruptly. "And so I took all I wanted," he said,
"and I had to fight for it. Now you tell. "

Maisie's tale was almost as gray as her dress. It covered years of
patient toil backed by savage pride that would not be broken though
dealers laughed, and fogs delayed work, and Kami was unkind and even
sarcastic, and girls in other studios were painfully polite. It had a
few bright spots, in pictures accepted at provincial exhibitions, but
it wound up with the oft repeated wail, "And so you see, Dick, I had no
success, though I worked so hard. "

Then pity filled Dick. Even thus had Maisie spoken when she could not
hit the breakwater, half an hour before she had kissed him. And that had
happened yesterday.

"Never mind," he said. "I'll tell you something, if you'll believe it. "
The words were shaping themselves of their own accord. "The whole thing,
lock, stock, and barrel, isn't worth one big yellow sea-poppy below Fort
Keeling. "

Maisie flushed a little. "It's all very well for you to talk, but you've
had the success and I haven't. "

"Let me talk, then. I know you'll understand. Maisie, dear, it sounds a
bit absurd, but those ten years never existed, and I've come back again.
It really is just the same. Can't you see? You're alone now and I'm
alone. What's the use of worrying? Come to me instead, darling. "

Maisie poked the gravel with her parasol. They were sitting on a bench.

"I understand," she said slowly. "But I've got my work to do, and I must
do it. "

"Do it with me, then, dear. I won't interrupt. "

"No, I couldn't. It's my work,--mine,--mine,--mine! I've been alone all
my life in myself, and I'm not going to belong to anybody except myself.
I remember things as well as you do, but that doesn't count. We were
babies then, and we didn't know what was before us. Dick, don't be
selfish. I think I see my way to a little success next year. Don't take
it away from me. "

"I beg your pardon, darling. It's my fault for speaking stupidly. I
can't expect you to throw up all your life just because I'm back. I'll
go to my own place and wait a little. "

"But, Dick, I don't want you to--go--out of--my life, now you've just
come back. "

"I'm at your orders; forgive me. " Dick devoured the troubled little face
with his eyes. There was triumph in them, because he could not conceive
that Maisie should refuse sooner or later to love him, since he loved
her.

"It's wrong of me," said Maisie, more slowly than before; "it's wrong
and selfish; but, oh, I've been so lonely! No, you misunderstand. Now
I've seen you again,--it's absurd, but I want to keep you in my life. "

"Naturally. We belong. "

"We don't; but you always understood me, and there is so much in my work
that you could help me in. You know things and the ways of doing things.
You must. "

"I do, I fancy, or else I don't know myself. Then you won't care to lose
sight of me altogether, and--you want me to help you in your work? "

"Yes; but remember, Dick, nothing will ever come of it. That's why I
feel so selfish. Can't things stay as they are? I do want your help. "

"You shall have it. But let's consider. I must see your pics first, and
overhaul your sketches, and find out about your tendencies. You should
see what the papers say about my tendencies! Then I'll give you good
advice, and you shall paint according. Isn't that it, Maisie? "

Again there was triumph in Dick's eye.

"It's too good of you,--much too good. Because you are consoling
yourself with what will never happen, and I know that, and yet I want to
keep you. Don't blame me later, please. "

"I'm going into the matter with my eyes open. Moreover the Queen can
do no wrong. It isn't your selfishness that impresses me. It's your
audacity in proposing to make use of me. "

"Pooh! You're only Dick,--and a print-shop. "

"Very good: that's all I am. But, Maisie, you believe, don't you, that I
love you? I don't want you to have any false notions about brothers and
sisters. "

Maisie looked up for a moment and dropped her eyes.

"It's absurd, but--I believe. I wish I could send you away before you
get angry with me. But--but the girl that lives with me is red-haired,
and an impressionist, and all our notions clash. "

"So do ours, I think. Never mind. Three months from today we shall be
laughing at this together. "

Maisie shook her head mournfully. "I knew you wouldn't understand, and
it will only hurt you more when you find out. Look at my face, Dick, and
tell me what you see. "

They stood up and faced each other for a moment. The fog was gathering,
and it stifled the roar of the traffic of London beyond the railings.
Dick brought all his painfully acquired knowledge of faces to bear on
the eyes, mouth, and chin underneath the black velvet toque.

"It's the same Maisie, and it's the same me," he said. "We've both nice
little wills of our own, and one or other of us has to be broken. Now
about the future. I must come and see your pictures some day,--I suppose
when the red-haired girl is on the premises. "

"Sundays are my best times. You must come on Sundays. There are such
heaps of things I want to talk about and ask your advice about. Now I
must get back to work. "

"Try to find out before next Sunday what I am," said Dick. "Don't take
my word for anything I've told you. Good-bye, darling, and bless you. "

Maisie stole away like a little gray mouse. Dick watched her till she
was out of sight, but he did not hear her say to herself, very soberly,
"I'm a wretch,--a horrid, selfish wretch. But it's Dick, and Dick will
understand. "

No one has yet explained what actually happens when an irresistible
force meets the immovable post, though many have thought deeply, even as
Dick thought. He tried to assure himself that Maisie would be led in
a few weeks by his mere presence and discourse to a better way of
thinking. Then he remembered much too distinctly her face and all that
was written on it.

"If I know anything of heads," he said, "there's everything in that face
but love. I shall have to put that in myself; and that chin and mouth
won't be won for nothing. But she's right. She knows what she wants, and
she's going to get it. What insolence! Me! Of all the people in the wide
world, to use me! But then she's Maisie. There's no getting over that
fact; and it's good to see her again. This business must have been
simmering at the back of my head for years. . . . She'll use me as I
used Binat at Port Said. She's quite right. It will hurt a little.
I shall have to see her every Sunday,--like a young man courting a
housemaid. She's sure to come around; and yet--that mouth isn't a
yielding mouth. I shall be wanting to kiss her all the time, and I shall
have to look at her pictures,--I don't even know what sort of work she
does yet,--and I shall have to talk about Art,--Woman's Art! Therefore,
particularly and perpetually, damn all varieties of Art. It did me a
good turn once, and now it's in my way. I'll go home and do some Art. "

Half-way to the studio, Dick was smitten with a terrible thought. The
figure of a solitary woman in the fog suggested it.

"She's all alone in London, with a red-haired impressionist girl, who
probably has the digestion of an ostrich. Most red-haired people have.
Maisie's a bilious little body. They'll eat like lone women,--meals at
all hours, and tea with all meals.
I remember how the students in Paris
used to pig along. She may fall ill at any minute, and I shan't be able
to help. Whew! this is ten times worse than owning a wife. "

Torpenhow entered the studio at dusk, and looked at Dick with eyes full
of the austere love that springs up between men who have tugged at the
same oar together and are yoked by custom and use and the intimacies of
toil. This is a good love, and, since it allows, and even encourages,
strife, recrimination, and brutal sincerity, does not die, but grows,
and is proof against any absence and evil conduct.

Dick was silent after he handed Torpenhow the filled pipe of council. He
thought of Maisie and her possible needs. It was a new thing to think of
anybody but Torpenhow, who could think for himself. Here at last was an
outlet for that cash balance. He could adorn Maisie barbarically with
jewelry,--a thick gold necklace round that little neck, bracelets
upon the rounded arms, and rings of price upon her hands,--the cool,
temperate, ringless hands that he had taken between his own. It was an
absurd thought, for Maisie would not even allow him to put one ring on
one finger, and she would laugh at golden trappings. It would be better
to sit with her quietly in the dusk, his arm around her neck and her
face on his shoulder, as befitted husband and wife. Torpenhow's boots
creaked that night, and his strong voice jarred. Dick's brows contracted
and he murmured an evil word because he had taken all his success as a
right and part payment for past discomfort, and now he was checked in
his stride by a woman who admitted all the success and did not instantly
care for him.

"I say, old man," said Torpenhow, who had made one or two vain attempts
at conversation, "I haven't put your back up by anything I've said
lately, have I? "

"You! No. How could you? "

"Liver out of order? "

"The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a liver. I'm only a bit
worried about things in general. I suppose it's my soul. "

"The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a soul. What business have
you with luxuries of that kind? "

"It came of itself. Who's the man that says that we're all islands
shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding? "

"He's right, whoever he is,--except about the misunderstanding. I don't
think we could misunderstand each other. "

The blue smoke curled back from the ceiling in clouds. Then Torpenhow,
insinuatingly--"Dick, is it a woman? "

"Be hanged if it's anything remotely resembling a woman; and if you
begin to talk like that, I'll hire a red-brick studio with white paint
trimmings, and begonias and petunias and blue Hungarias to play among
three-and-sixpenny pot-palms, and I'll mount all my pics in aniline-dye
plush plasters, and I'll invite every woman who maunders over what her
guide-books tell her is Art, and you shall receive 'em, Torp,--in a
snuff-brown velvet coat with yellow trousers and an orange tie. You'll
like that? "

"Too thin, Dick. A better man than you once denied with cursing and
swearing. You've overdone it, just as he did. It's no business of mine,
of course, but it's comforting to think that somewhere under the stars
there's saving up for you a tremendous thrashing. Whether it'll come
from heaven or earth, I don't know, but it's bound to come and break you
up a little. You want hammering. "

Dick shivered. "All right," said he. "When this island is disintegrated,
it will call for you. "

"I shall come round the corner and help to disintegrate it some more.
We're talking nonsense. Come along to a theatre. "



CHAPTER VI

"And you may lead a thousand men,
Nor ever draw the rein,
But ere ye lead the Faery Queen
'Twill burst your heart in twain. "

He has slipped his foot from the stirrup-bar,
The bridle from his hand,
And he is bound by hand and foot
To the Queen 'o Faery-land.
----Sir Hoggie and the Fairies.

Some weeks later, on a very foggy Sunday, Dick was returning across the
Park to his studio. "This," he said, "is evidently the thrashing that
Torp meant. It hurts more than I expected; but the Queen can do no
wrong; and she certainly has some notion of drawing. "

He had just finished a Sunday visit to Maisie,--always under the green
eyes of the red-haired impressionist girl, whom he learned to hate
at sight,--and was tingling with a keen sense of shame. Sunday after
Sunday, putting on his best clothes, he had walked over to the untidy
house north of the Park, first to see Maisie's pictures, and then to
criticise and advise upon them as he realised that they were productions
on which advice would not be wasted. Sunday after Sunday, and his love
grew with each visit, he had been compelled to cram his heart back from
between his lips when it prompted him to kiss Maisie several times and
very much indeed. Sunday after Sunday, the head above the heart had
warned him that Maisie was not yet attainable, and that it would be
better to talk as connectedly as possible upon the mysteries of the
craft that was all in all to her. Therefore it was his fate to endure
weekly torture in the studio built out over the clammy back garden of a
frail stuffy little villa where nothing was ever in its right place and
nobody every called,--to endure and to watch Maisie moving to and fro
with the teacups. He abhorred tea, but, since it gave him a little
longer time in her presence, he drank it devoutly, and the red-haired
girl sat in an untidy heap and eyed him without speaking. She was always
watching him.

Once, and only once, when she had left the studio, Maisie showed him
an album that held a few poor cuttings from provincial papers,--the
briefest of hurried notes on some of her pictures sent to outlying
exhibitions. Dick stooped and kissed the paint-smudged thumb on the open
page. "Oh, my love, my love," he muttered, "do you value these things?
Chuck 'em into the waste-paper basket! "

"Not till I get something better," said Maisie, shutting the book.

Then Dick, moved by no respect for his public and a very deep regard for
the maiden, did deliberately propose, in order to secure more of these
coveted cuttings, that he should paint a picture which Maisie should
sign.

"That's childish," said Maisie, "and I didn't think it of you. It must
be my work. Mine,--mine,--mine! "

"Go and design decorative medallions for rich brewers' houses. You are
thoroughly good at that. " Dick was sick and savage.

"Better things than medallions, Dick," was the answer, in tones that
recalled a gray-eyed atom's fearless speech to Mrs. Jennett. Dick would
have abased himself utterly, but that other girl trailed in.

Next Sunday he laid at Maisie's feet small gifts of pencils that could
almost draw of themselves and colours in whose permanence he believed,
and he was ostentatiously attentive to the work in hand. It demanded,
among other things, an exposition of the faith that was in him.

Torpenhow's hair would have stood on end had he heard the fluency with
which Dick preached his own gospel of Art.

A month before, Dick would have been equally astonished; but it was
Maisie's will and pleasure, and he dragged his words together to make
plain to her comprehension all that had been hidden to himself of the
whys and wherefores of work. There is not the least difficulty in doing
a thing if you only know how to do it; the trouble is to explain your
method.

"I could put this right if I had a brush in my hand," said Dick,
despairingly, over the modelling of a chin that Maisie complained would
not "look flesh,"--it was the same chin that she had scraped out with
the palette knife,--"but I find it almost impossible to teach you.
There's a queer grim Dutch touch about your painting that I like; but
I've a notion that you're weak in drawing. You foreshorten as though you
never used the model, and you've caught Kami's pasty way of dealing with
flesh in shadow. Then, again, though you don't know it yourself, you
shirk hard work. Suppose you spend some of your time on line lone. Line
doesn't allow of shirking. Oils do, and three square inches of flashy,
tricky stuff in the corner of a pic sometimes carry a bad thing off,--as
I know. That's immoral. Do line-work for a little while, and then I can
tell more about your powers, as old Kami used to say. "

Maisie protested; she did not care for the pure line.

"I know," said Dick. "You want to do your fancy heads with a bunch of
flowers at the base of the neck to hide bad modelling. " The red-haired
girl laughed a little. "You want to do landscapes with cattle knee-deep
in grass to hide bad drawing. You want to do a great deal more than
you can do. You have sense of colour, but you want form. Colour's a
gift,--put it aside and think no more about it,--but form you can be
drilled into. Now, all your fancy heads--and some of them are very
good--will keep you exactly where you are. With line you must go forward
or backward, and it will show up all your weaknesses. "

"But other people----" began Maisie.

"You mustn't mind what other people do. If their souls were your soul,
it would be different. You stand and fall by your own work, remember,
and it's waste of time to think of any one else in this battle. "

Dick paused, and the longing that had been so resolutely put away came
back into his eyes. He looked at Maisie, and the look asked as plainly
as words, Was it not time to leave all this barren wilderness of canvas
and counsel and join hands with Life and Love? Maisie assented to the
new programme of schooling so adorably that Dick could hardly restrain
himself from picking her up then and there and carrying her off to the
nearest registrar's office. It was the implicit obedience to the spoken
word and the blank indifference to the unspoken desire that baffled and
buffeted his soul. He held authority in that house,--authority limited,
indeed, to one-half of one afternoon in seven, but very real while it
lasted. Maisie had learned to appeal to him on many subjects, from the
proper packing of pictures to the condition of a smoky chimney. The
red-haired girl never consulted him about anything.

On the other hand, she accepted his appearances without protest, and
watched him always. He discovered that the meals of the establishment
were irregular and fragmentary. They depended chiefly on tea, pickles,
and biscuit, as he had suspected from the beginning. The girls were
supposed to market week and week about, but they lived, with the help of
a charwoman, as casually as the young ravens. Maisie spent most of her
income on models, and the other girl revelled in apparatus as refined
as her work was rough. Armed with knowledge, dear-bought from the Docks,
Dick warned Maisie that the end of semi-starvation meant the crippling
of power to work, which was considerably worse than death.

Maisie took the warning, and gave more thought to what she ate and
drank. When his trouble returned upon him, as it generally did in the
long winter twilights, the remembrance of that little act of domestic
authority and his coercion with a hearth-brush of the smoky drawing-room
chimney stung Dick like a whip-lash.

He conceived that this memory would be the extreme of his sufferings,
till one Sunday, the red-haired girl announced that she would make a
study of Dick's head, and that he would be good enough to sit still,
and--quite as an afterthought--look at Maisie. He sat, because he could
not well refuse, and for the space of half an hour he reflected on all
the people in the past whom he had laid open for the purposes of his
own craft. He remembered Binat most distinctly,--that Binat who had once
been an artist and talked about degradation.

It was the merest monochrome roughing in of a head, but it presented the
dumb waiting, the longing, and, above all, the hopeless enslavement of
the man, in a spirit of bitter mockery.

"I'll buy it," said Dick, promptly, "at your own price. "

"My price is too high, but I dare say you'll be as grateful if----" The
wet sketch, fluttered from the girl's hand and fell into the ashes of
the studio stove. When she picked it up it was hopelessly smudged.

"Oh, it's all spoiled! " said Maisie. "And I never saw it. Was it like? "

"Thank you," said Dick under his breath to the red-haired girl, and he
removed himself swiftly.

"How that man hates me! " said the girl. "And how he loves you, Maisie! "

"What nonsense? I knew Dick's very fond of me, but he had his work to
do, and I have mine. "

"Yes, he is fond of you, and I think he knows there is something in
impressionism, after all. Maisie, can't you see? "

"See? See what? "

"Nothing; only, I know that if I could get any man to look at me as that
man looks at you, I'd--I don't know what I'd do. But he hates me. Oh,
how he hates me! "

She was not altogether correct. Dick's hatred was tempered with
gratitude for a few moments, and then he forgot the girl entirely. Only
the sense of shame remained, and he was nursing it across the Park
in the fog. "There'll be an explosion one of these days," he said
wrathfully. "But it isn't Maisie's fault; she's right, quite right, as
far as she knows, and I can't blame her. This business has been going
on for three months nearly. Three months! --and it cost me ten years"
knocking about to get at the notion, the merest raw notion, of my
work. That's true; but then I didn't have pins, drawing-pins, and
palette-knives, stuck into me every Sunday.

"Oh, my little darling, if ever I break you, somebody will have a very
bad time of it. No, she won't. I'd be as big a fool about her as I
am now. I'll poison that red-haired girl on my wedding-day,--she's
unwholesome,--and now I'll pass on these present bad times to Torp. "

Torpenhow had been moved to lecture Dick more than once lately on the
sin of levity, and Dick and listened and replied not a word. In the
weeks between the first few Sundays of his discipline he had flung
himself savagely into his work, resolved that Maisie should at least
know the full stretch of his powers. Then he had taught Maisie that she
must not pay the least attention to any work outside her own, and
Maisie had obeyed him all too well. She took his counsels, but was not
interested in his pictures.

"Your things smell of tobacco and blood," she said once. "Can't you do
anything except soldiers? "

"I could do a head of you that would startle you," thought
Dick,--this was before the red-haired girl had brought him under
the guillotine,--but he only said, "I am very sorry," and harrowed
Torpenhow's soul that evening with blasphemies against Art. Later,
insensibly and to a large extent against his own will, he ceased to
interest himself in his own work.

For Maisie's sake, and to soothe the self-respect that it seemed to him
he lost each Sunday, he would not consciously turn out bad stuff, but,
since Maisie did not care even for his best, it were better not to
do anything at all save wait and mark time between Sunday and Sunday.
Torpenhow was disgusted as the weeks went by fruitless, and then
attacked him one Sunday evening when Dick felt utterly exhausted after
three hours' biting self-restraint in Maisie's presence. There was
Language, and Torpenhow withdrew to consult the Nilghai, who had come it
to talk continental politics.

"Bone-idle, is he? Careless, and touched in the temper? " said the
Nilghai. "It isn't worth worrying over. Dick is probably playing the
fool with a woman. "

"Isn't that bad enough? "

"No. She may throw him out of gear and knock his work to pieces for
a while. She may even turn up here some day and make a scene on the
staircase: one never knows. But until Dick speaks of his own accord you
had better not touch him. He is no easy-tempered man to handle. "

"No; I wish he were. He is such an aggressive, cocksure, you-be-damned
fellow. "

"He'll get that knocked out of him in time. He must learn that he can't
storm up and down the world with a box of moist tubes and a slick brush.
You're fond of him? "

"I'd take any punishment that's in store for him if I could; but the
worst of it is, no man can save his brother. "

"No, and the worser of it is, there is no discharge in this war. Dick
must learn his lesson like the rest of us. Talking of war, there'll be
trouble in the Balkans in the spring. "

"That trouble is long coming. I wonder if we could drag Dick out there
when it comes off? "

Dick entered the room soon afterwards, and the question was put to him.

"Not good enough," he said shortly. "I'm too comf'y where I am. "

"Surely you aren't taking all the stuff in the papers seriously? " said
the Nilghai. "Your vogue will be ended in less than six months,--the
public will know your touch and go on to something new,--and where will
you be then? "

"Here, in England. "

"When you might be doing decent work among us out there? Nonsense! I
shall go, the Keneu will be there, Torp will be there, Cassavetti will
be there, and the whole lot of us will be there, and we shall have as
much as ever we can do, with unlimited fighting and the chance for you
of seeing things that would make the reputation of three Verestchagins. "

"Um! " said Dick, pulling at his pipe.

"You prefer to stay here and imagine that all the world is gaping at
your pictures? Just think how full an average man's life is of his own
pursuits and pleasures. When twenty thousand of him find time to look
up between mouthfuls and grunt something about something they aren't
the least interested in, the net result is called fame, reputation, or
notoriety, according to the taste and fancy of the speller my lord.