Part 116 (2/2)

”Whereupon that young fool,”--d.i.c.k threw back his head and shut one eye as he s.h.i.+fted 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 d.i.c.k'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 d.a.m.ned dabs into something that will stay, then?”

insisted the Nilghai, who had really taken considerable trouble in hiring for d.i.c.k'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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.senger-s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.senger, or else I should have been a steward, I think,” said d.i.c.k, with perfect gravity, returning to the procession of angry wives. ”I was the only other pa.s.senger from Lima, and the s.h.i.+p was half empty, and full of rats and c.o.c.kroaches and scorpions.”

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

”Wait a minute. She had been in the China pa.s.senger 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 s.h.i.+p'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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sage 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?”

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