Books: The Light That Failed

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'Dick, I never got you a beating on purpose in my life.'

'No, of course you never did. Good heavens! look at the sea.'

'Why, it's the same as ever!' said Maisie.

Torpenhow had gathered from Mr. Beeton that Dick, properly dressed
and shaved, had left the house at half-past eight in the morning with a
travelling-rug over his arm. The Nilghai rolled in at mid-day for chess
and polite conversation.

'It's worse than anything I imagined,' said Torpenhow.

'Oh, the everlasting Dick, I suppose! You fuss over him like a hen with
one chick. Let him run riot if he thinks it'll amuse him. You can whip a
young pup off feather, but you can't whip a young man.'

'It isn't a woman. It's one woman; and it's a girl.'

'Where's your proof?'

'He got up and went out at eight this morning,--got up in the middle of
the night, by Jove! a thing he never does except when he's on service.

Even then, remember, we had to kick him out of his blankets before the
fight began at El-Maghrib. It's disgusting.'

'It looks odd; but maybe he's decided to buy a horse at last. He might get
up for that, mightn't he?'

'Buy a blazing wheelbarrow! He'd have told us if there was a horse in
the wind. It's a girl.'

'Don't be certain. Perhaps it's only a married woman.'

'Dick has some sense of humour, if you haven't. Who gets up in the gray
dawn to call on another man's wife? It's a girl.'

'Let it be a girl, then. She may teach him that there's somebody else in
the world besides himself.'

'She'll spoil his hand. She'll waste his time, and she'll marry him, and
ruin his work for ever. He'll be a respectable married man before we can
stop him, and--he'll ever go on the long trail again.'

'All quite possible, but the earth won't spin the other way when that
happens. . . . No! ho! I'd give something to see Dick "go wooing with the
boys." Don't worry about it. These things be with Allah, and we can only
look on. Get the chessmen.'?

The red-haired girl was lying down in her own room, staring at the
ceiling. The footsteps of people on the pavement sounded, as they grew
indistinct in the distance, like a many-times-repeated kiss that was all one
long kiss. Her hands were by her side, and they opened and shut savagely
from time to time.

The charwoman in charge of the scrubbing of the studio knocked at her
door: 'Beg y' pardon, miss, but in cleanin' of a floor there's two, not to
say three, kind of soap, which is yaller, an' mottled, an' disinfectink.

Now, jist before I took my pail into the passage I though it would be
pre'aps jest as well if I was to come up 'ere an' ask you what sort of soap
you was wishful that I should use on them boards. The yaller soap,
miss----'

There was nothing in the speech to have caused the paroxysm of fury
that drove the red-haired girl into the middle of the room, almost
shouting--
'Do you suppose I care what you use? Any kind will do!--any kind!'

The woman fled, and the red-haired girl looked at her own reflection in
the glass for an instant and covered her face with her hands. It was as
though she had shouted some shameless secret aloud.

CHAPTER VII

Roses red and roses white
Plucked I for my love's delight.

She would none of all my posies,--
Bade me gather her blue roses.

Half the world I wandered through,
Seeking where such flowers grew;
Half the world unto my quest
Answered but with laugh and jest.

It may be beyond the grave
She shall find what she would have.

Mine was but an idle quest,--
Roses white and red are best! -- Blue Roses.?

THE SEA had not changed. Its waters were low on the mud-banks, and
the Marazion Bell-buoy clanked and swung in the tide-way. On the white
beach-sand dried stumps of sea-poppy shivered and chattered.

'I don't see the old breakwater,' said Maisie, under her breath.

'Let's be thankful that we have as much as we have. I don't believe
they've mounted a single new gun on the fort since we were here. Come
and look.'

They came to the glacis of Fort Keeling, and sat down in a nook sheltered
from the wind under the tarred throat of a forty-pounder cannon.

'Now, if Ammoma were only here!' said Maisie.

For a long time both were silent. Then Dick took Maisie's hand and
called her by her name.

She shook her head and looked out to sea.

'Maisie, darling, doesn't it make any difference?'

'No!' between clenched teeth. 'I'd--I'd tell you if it did; but it doesn't, Oh,
Dick, please be sensible.'

'Don't you think that it ever will?'

'No, I'm sure it won't.'

'Why?'

Maisie rested her chin on her hand, and, still regarding the sea, spoke
hurriedly--
'I know what you want perfectly well, but I can't give it to you, Dick. It
isn't my fault; indeed, it isn't. If I felt that I could care for any one----
But I don't feel that I care. I simply don't understand what the feeling
means.'

'Is that true, dear?'

'You've been very good to me, Dickie; and the only way I can pay you
back is by speaking the truth. I daren't tell a fib. I despise myself quit
enough as it is.'

'What in the world for?'

'Because--because I take everything that you give me and I give you
nothing in return. It's mean and selfish of me, and whenever I think of it
it worries me.'

'Understand once for all, then, that I can manage my own affairs, and if I
choose to do anything you aren't to blame. You haven't a single thing to
reproach yourself with, darling.'

'Yes, I have, and talking only makes it worse.'

'Then don't talk about it.'

'How can I help myself? If you find me alone for a minute you are always
talking about it; and when you aren't you look it. You don't know how I
despise myself sometimes.'

'Great goodness!' said Dick, nearly jumping to his feet. 'Speak the truth
now, Maisie, if you never speak it again! Do I--does this worrying bore
you?'

'No. It does not.'

'You'd tell me if it did?'

'I should let you know, I think.'

'Thank you. The other thing is fatal. But you must learn to forgive a man
when he's in love. He's always a nuisance. You must have known that?'

Maisie did not consider the last question worth answering, and Dick was
forced to repeat it.

'There were other men, of course. They always worried just when I was
in the middle of my work, and wanted me to listen to them.'

'Did you listen?'

'At first; and they couldn't understand why I didn't care. And they used
to praise my pictures; and I thought they meant it. I used to be proud of
the praise, and tell Kami, and--I shall never forget--once Kami laughed
at me.'

'You don't like being laughed at, Maisie, do you?'

'I hate it. I never laugh at other people unless--unless they do bad work.

Dick, tell me honestly what you think of my pictures generally,--of
everything of mine that you've seen.'

'"Honest, honest, and honest over!"' quoted Dick from a catchword of
long ago. 'Tell me what Kami always says.'

Maisie hesitated. 'He--he says that there is feeling in them.'

'How dare you tell me a fib like that? Remember, I was under Kami for
two years. I know exactly what he says.'

'It isn't a fib.'

'It's worse; it's a half-truth. Kami says, when he puts his head on one
side,--so,--"Il y a du sentiment, mais il n'y a pas de parti pris."' He rolled
the r threateningly, as Kami used to do.

'Yes, that is what he says; and I'm beginning to think that he is right.'

'Certainly he is.' Dick admitted that two people in the world could do and
say no wrong. Kami was the man.

'And now you say the same thing. It's so disheartening.'

'I'm sorry, but you asked me to speak the truth. Besides, I love you too
much to pretend about your work. It's strong, it's patient sometimes,--not
always,--and sometimes there's power in it, but there's no special reason
why it should be done at all. At least, that's how it strikes me.'

'There's no special reason why anything in the world should ever be
done. You know that as well as I do. I only want success.'

'You're going the wrong way to get it, then. Hasn't Kami ever told you
so?'

'Don't quote Kami to me. I want to know what you think. My work's bad,
to begin with.'

'I didn't say that, and I don't think it.'

'It's amateurish, then.'

'That it most certainly is not. You're a work-woman, darling, to your
boot-heels, and I respect you for that.'

'You don't laugh at me behind my back?'

'No, dear. You see, you are more to me than any one else. Put this cloak
thing round you, or you'll get chilled.'

Maisie wrapped herself in the soft marten skins, turning the gray
kangaroo fur to the outside.

'This is delicious,' she said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully along the fur.

'Well? Why am I wrong in trying to get a little success?'

'Just because you try. Don't you understand, darling? Good work has
nothing to do with--doesn't belong to--the person who does it. It's put into
him or her from outside.'

'But how does that affect----'

'Wait a minute. All we can do is to learn how to do our work, to be
masters of our materials instead of servants, and never to be afraid of
anything.'

'I understand that.'

'Everything else comes from outside ourselves. Very good. If we sit down
quietly to work out notions that are sent to us, we may or we may not do
something that isn't bad. A great deal depends on being master of the
bricks and mortar of the trade. But the instant we begin to think about
success and the effect of our work--to play with one eye on the
gallery--we lose power and touch and everything else. At least that's how
I have found it. Instead of being quiet and giving every power you possess
to your work, you're fretting over something which you can neither help
no hinder by a minute. See?'

'It's so easy for you to talk in that way. People like what you do. Don't
you ever think about the gallery?'

'Much too often; but I'm always punished for it by loss of power. It's as
simple as the Rule of Three. If we make light of our work by using it for
our own ends, our work will make light of us, and, as we're the weaker,
we shall suffer.'

'I don't treat my work lightly. You know that it's everything to me.'

'Of course; but, whether you realise it or not, you give two strokes for
yourself to one for your work. It isn't your fault, darling. I do exactly the
same thing, and know that I'm doing it. Most of the French schools, and
all the schools here, drive the students to work for their own credit, and
for the sake of their pride. I was told that all the world was interested in
my work, and everybody at Kami's talked turpentine, and I honestly
believed that the world needed elevating and influencing, and all manner
of impertinences, by my brushes. By Jove, I actually believed that! When
my little head was bursting with a notion that I couldn't handle because I
hadn't sufficient knowledge of my craft, I used to run about wondering at
my own magnificence and getting ready to astonish the world.'

'But surely one can do that sometimes?'

'Very seldom with malice aforethought, darling. And when it's done it's
such a tiny thing, and the world's so big, and all but a millionth part of it
doesn't care. Maisie, come with me and I'll show you something of the
size of the world. One can no more avoid working than eating,--that goes
on by itself,--but try to see what you are working for. I know such little
heavens that I could take you to,--islands tucked away under the Line.

You sight them after weeks of crashing through water as black as black
marble because it's so deep, and you sit in the fore-chains day after day
and see the sun rise almost afraid because the sea's so lonely.'

'Who is afraid?--you, or the sun?'

'The sun, of course. And there are noises under the sea, and sounds
overhead in a clear sky. Then you find your island alive with hot moist
orchids that make mouths at you and can do everything except talk.

There's a waterfall in it three hundred feet high, just like a sliver of
green jade laced with silver; and millions of wild bees live up in the
rocks; and you can hear the fat cocoanuts falling from the palms; and
you order an ivory-white servant to sling you a long yellow hammock
with tassels on it like ripe maize, and you put up your feet and hear the
bees hum and the water fall till you go to sleep.'

'Can one work there?'

'Certainly. One must do something always. You hang your canvas up in a
palm tree and let the parrots criticise. When the scuffle you heave a ripe
custard-apple at them, and it bursts in a lather of cream. There are
hundreds of places. Come and see them.'

'I don't quite like that place. It sounds lazy. Tell me another.'

'What do you think of a big, red, dead city built of red sandstone, with
raw green aloes growing between the stones, lying out neglected on
honey-coloured sands? There are forty dead kings there, Maisie, each in
a gorgeous tomb finer than all the others. You look at the palaces and
streets and shops and tanks, and think that men must live there, till you
find a wee gray squirrel rubbing its nose all alone in the market-place,
and a jewelled peacock struts out of a carved doorway and spreads its
tail against a marble screen as fine pierced as point-lace. Then a
monkey--a little black monkey--walks through the main square to get a
drink from a tank forty feet deep. He slides down the creepers to the
water's edge, and a friend holds him by the tail, in case he should fall in.'

'Is that all true?'

'I have been there and seen. Then evening comes, and the lights change
till it's just as though you stood in the heart of a king-opal. A little before
sundown, as punctually as clockwork, a big bristly wild boar, with all his
family following, trots through the city gate, churning the foam on his
tusks. You climb on the shoulder of a blind black stone god and watch
that pig choose himself a palace for the night and stump in wagging his
tail. Then the night-wind gets up, and the sands move, and you hear the
desert outside the city singing, "Now I lay me down to sleep," and
everything is dark till the moon rises. Maisie, darling, come with me and
see what the world is really like. It's very lovely, and it's very
horrible,--but I won't let you see anything horrid,--and it doesn't care
your life or mine for pictures or anything else except doing its own work
and making love. Come, and I'll show you how to brew sangaree, and
sling a hammock, and--oh, thousands of things, and you'll see for yourself
what colour means, and we'll find out together what love means, and
then, maybe, we shall be allowed to do some good work. Come away!'

'Why?' said Maisie.

'How can you do anything until you have seen everything, or as much as
you can? And besides, darling, I love you. Come along with me. You have
no business here; you don't belong to this place; you're half a
gipsy,--your face tells that; and I--even the smell of open water makes me
restless. Come across the sea and be happy!'

He had risen to his feet, and stood in the shadow of the gun, looking down
at the girl. The very short winter afternoon had worn away, and, before
they knew, the winter moon was walking the untroubled sea. Long ruled
lines of silver showed where a ripple of the rising tide was turning over
the mud-banks. The wind had dropped, and in the intense stillness they
could hear a donkey cropping the frosty grass many yards away. A faint
beating, like that of a muffled drum, came out of the moon-haze.

'What's that?' said Maisie, quickly. 'It sounds like a heart beating.

Where is it?'

Dick was so angry at this sudden wrench to his pleadings that he could
not trust himself to speak, and in this silence caught the sound. Maisie
from her seat under the gun watched him with a certain amount of fear.

She wished so much that he would be sensible and cease to worry her
with over-sea emotion that she both could and could not understand. She
was not prepared, however, for the change in his face as he listened.

'It's a steamer,' he said,--'a twin-screw steamer, by the beat. I can't make
her out, but she must be standing very close in-shore. Ah!' as the red of a
rocket streaked the haze, 'she's standing in to signal before she clears the
Channel.'

'Is it a wreck?' said Maisie, to whom these words were as Greek.

Dick's eyes were turned to the sea. 'Wreck! What nonsense! She's only
reporting herself. Red rocket forward--there's a green light aft now, and
two red rockets from the bridge.'

'What does that mean?'

'It's the signal of the Cross Keys Line running to Australia. I wonder
which steamer it is.' The note of his voice had changed; he seemed to be
talking to himself, and Maisie did not approve of it. The moonlight broke
the haze for a moment, touching the black sides of a long steamer
working down Channel. 'Four masts and three funnels--she's in deep
draught, too. That must be the Barralong, or the Bhutia. No, the Bhutia
has a clopper bow. It's the Barralong, to Australia. She'll lift the
Southern Cross in a week,--lucky old tub!--oh, lucky old tub!'

He stared intently, and moved up the slope of the fort to get a better
view, but the mist on the sea thickened again, and the beating of the
screws grew fainter. Maisie called to him a little angrily, and he
returned, still keeping his eyes to seaward. 'Have you ever seen the
Southern Cross blazing right over your head?' he asked. 'It's superb!'

'No,' she said shortly, 'and I don't want to. If you think it's so lovely, why
don't you go and see it yourself?'

She raised her face from the soft blackness of the marten skins about her
throat, and her eyes shone like diamonds. The moonlight on the gray
kangaroo fur turned it to frosted silver of the coldest.

'By Jove, Maisie, you look like a little heathen idol tucked up there.' The
eyes showed that they did not appreciate the compliment. 'I'm sorry,' he
continued. 'The Southern Cross isn't worth looking at unless someone
helps you to see. That steamer's out of hearing.'

'Dick,' she said quietly, 'suppose I were to come to you now,--be quiet a
minute,--just as I am, and caring for you just as much as I do.'

'Not as a brother, though You said you didn't--in the Park.'

'I never had a brother. Suppose I said, "Take me to those places, and in
time, perhaps, I might really care for you," what would you do?'

'Send you straight back to where you came from, in a cab. No, I
wouldn't; I'd let you walk. But you couldn't do it, dear. And I wouldn't
run the risk. You're worth waiting for till you can come without
reservation.'

'Do you honestly believe that?'

'I have a hazy sort of idea that I do. Has it never struck you in that
light?'

'Ye--es. I feel so wicked about it.'

'Wickeder than usual?'

'You don't know all I think. It's almost too awful to tell.'

'Never mind. You promised to tell me the truth--at least.'

'It's so ungrateful of me, but--but, though I know you care for me, and I
like to have you with me, I'd--I'd even sacrifice you, if that would bring
me what I want.'

'My poor little darling! I know that state of mind. It doesn't lead to good
work.'

'You aren't angry? Remember, I do despise myself.'

'I'm not exactly flattered,--I had guessed as much before,--but I'm not
angry. I'm sorry for you. Surely you ought to have left a littleness like
that behind you, years ago.'

'You've no right to patronise me! I only want what I have worked for so
long. It came to you without any trouble, and--and I don't think it's fair.'

'What can I do? I'd give ten years of my life to get you what you want.

But I can't help you; even I can't help.'

A murmur of dissent from Maisie. He went on--
'And I know by what you have just said that you're on the wrong road to
success. It isn't got at by sacrificing other people,--I've had that much
knocked into me; you must sacrifice yourself, and live under orders, and
never think for yourself, and never have real satisfaction in your work
except just at the beginning, when you're reaching out after a notion.'

'How can you believe all that?'

'There's no question of belief or disbelief. That's the law, and you take it
or refuse it as you please. I try to obey, but I can't, and then my work
turns bad on my hands. Under any circumstances, remember, four-fifths
of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble
for it's own sake.'

'Isn't it nice to get credit even for bad work?'

'It's much too nice. But---- May I tell you something? It isn't a pretty
tale, but you're so like a man that I forget when I'm talking to you.'

'Tell me.'

'Once when I was out in the Soudan I went over some ground that we
had been fighting on for three days. There were twelve hundred dead;
and we hadn't time to bury them.'

'How ghastly!'

'I had been at work on a big double-sheet sketch, and I was wondering
what people would think of it at home. The sight of that field taught me a
good deal. It looked just like a bed of horrible toadstools in all colours,
and--I'd never seen men in bulk go back to their beginnings before. So I
began to understand that men and women were only material to work
with, and that what they said or did was of no consequence. See? Strictly
speaking, you might just as well put your ear down to the palette to catch
what your colours are saying.'

'Dick, that's disgraceful!'

'Wait a minute. I said, strictly speaking. Unfortunately, everybody must
be either a man or a woman.'

'I'm glad you allow that much.'

'In your case I don't. You aren't a woman. But ordinary people, Maisie,
must behave and work as such. That's what makes me so savage.' He
hurled a pebble towards the sea as he spoke. 'I know that it is outside my
business to care what people say; I can see that it spoils my output if I
listen to 'em; and yet, confound it all,'--another pebble flew seaward,--'I
can't help purring when I'm rubbed the right way. Even when I can see
on a man's forehead that he is lying his way through a clump of pretty
speeches, those lies make me happy and play the mischief with my hand.'

'And when he doesn't say pretty things?'

'Then, belovedest,'--Dick grinned,--'I forget that I am the steward of
these gifts, and I want to make that man love and appreciate my work
with a thick stick. It's too humiliating altogether; but I suppose even if
one were an angel and painted humans altogether from outside, one
would lose in touch what one gained in grip.'

Maisie laughed at the idea of Dick as an angel.

'But you seem to think,' she said, 'that everything nice spoils your hand.'

'I don't think. It's the law,--just the same as it was at Mrs. Jennett's.

Everything that is nice does spoil your hand. I'm glad you see so clearly.'

'I don't like the view.'

'Nor I. But--have got orders: what can do? Are you strong enough to face
it alone?'

'I suppose I must.'

'Let me help, darling. We can hold each other very tight and try to walk
straight. We shall blunder horribly, but it will be better than stumbling
apart. Maisie, can't you see reason?'

'I don't think we should get on together. We should be two of a trade, so
we should never agree.'

'How I should like to meet the man who made that proverb! He lived in a
cave and ate raw bear, I fancy. I'd make him chew his own arrow-heads.

Well?'

'I should be only half married to you. I should worry and fuss about my
work, as I do now. Four days out of the seven I'm not fit to speak to.'

'You talk as if no one else in the world had ever used a brush. D'you
suppose that I don't know the feeling of worry and bother and
can't-get-at-ness? You're lucky if you only have it four days out of the
seven. What difference would that make?'

'A great deal--if you had it too.'

'Yes, but I could respect it. Another man might not. He might laugh at
you. But there's no use talking about it. If you can think in that way you
can't care for me--yet.'

The tide had nearly covered the mud-banks and twenty little ripples
broke on the beach before Maisie chose to speak.

'Dick,' she said slowly, 'I believe very much that you are better than I
am.'

'This doesn't seem to bear on the argument--but in what way?'

'I don't quite know, but in what you said about work and things; and
then you're so patient. Yes, you're better than I am.'

Dick considered rapidly the murkiness of an average man's life. There
was nothing in the review to fill him with a sense of virtue. He lifted the
hem of the cloak to his lips.

'Why,' said Maisie, making as though she had not noticed, 'can you see
things that I can't? I don't believe what you believe; but you're right, I
believe.'

'If I've seen anything, God knows I couldn't have seen it but for you, and
I know that I couldn't have said it except to you. You seemed to make
everything clear for a minute; but I don't practice what I preach. You
would help me. . . . There are only us two in the world for all purposes,
and--and you like to have me with you?'

'Of course I do. I wonder if you can realise how utterly lonely I am!'

'Darling, I think I can.'

'Two years ago, when I first took the little house, I used to walk up and
down the back-garden trying to cry. I never can cry. Can you?'

'It's some time since I tried. What was the trouble? Overwork?'

'I don't know; but I used to dream that I had broken down, and had no
money, and was starving in London. I thought about it all day, and it
frightened me--oh, how it frightened me!'

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