The Light That Failed. Rudyard Kipling
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anything to eat?’ said Dick, his eye roaming round the room.
‘I shall be having breakfast in a minute. What do you say to sausages?’
‘No, anything but sausages! Torp, I’ve been starving on that accursed horse-flesh for thirty days and thirty nights.’
‘Now, what lunacy has been your latest?’
Dick spoke of the last few weeks with unbridled speech. Then he opened his coat; there was no waistcoat below. ‘I ran it fine, awfully fine, but I’ve just scraped through.’
‘You haven’t much sense, but you’ve got a backbone, anyhow. Eat, and talk afterwards.’ Dick fell upon eggs and bacon and gorged till he could gorge no more. Torpenhow handed him a filled pipe, and he smoked as men smoke who for three weeks have been deprived of good tobacco.
‘Ouf!’ said he. ‘That’s heavenly! Well?’
‘Why in the world didn’t you come to me?’
‘Couldn’t; I owe you too much already, old man. Besides I had a sort of superstition that this temporary starvation – that’s what it was, and it hurt – would bring me luck later. It’s over and done with now, and none of the syndicate know how hard up I was. Fire away. What’s the exact state of affairs as regards myself?’
‘You had my wire? You’ve caught on here. People like your work immensely. I don’t know why, but they do. They say you have a fresh touch and a new way of drawing things. And, because they’re chiefly home-bred English, they say you have insight. You’re wanted by half a dozen papers; you’re wanted to illustrate books.’
Dick grunted scornfully.
‘You’re wanted to work up your smaller sketches and sell them to the dealers. They seem to think the money sunk in you is a good investment.
Good Lord! who can account for the fathomless folly of the public?’
‘They’re a remarkably sensible people.’
‘They are subject to fits, if that’s what you mean; and you happen to be the object of the latest fit among those who are interested in what they call Art. Just now you’re a fashion, a phenomenon, or whatever you please. I appeared to be the only person who knew anything about you here, and I have been showing the most useful men a few of the sketches you gave me from time to time. Those coming after your work on the Central Southern Syndicate appear to have done your business. You’re in luck.’
‘Huh! call it luck! Do call it luck, when a man has been kicking about the world like a dog, waiting for it to come! I’ll luck ‘em later on. I want a place to work first.’
‘Come here,’ said Torpenhow, crossing the landing. ‘This place is a big box room really, but it will do for you. There’s your skylight, or your north light, or whatever window you call it, and plenty of room to thrash about in, and a bedroom beyond. What more do you need?’
‘Good enough,’ said Dick, looking round the large room that took up a third of a top story in the rickety chambers overlooking the Thames. A pale yellow sun shone through the skylight and showed the much dirt of the place. Three steps led from the door to the landing, and three more to Torpenhow’s room. The well of the staircase disappeared into darkness, pricked by tiny gas-jets, and there were sounds of men talking and doors slamming seven flights below, in the warm gloom.
‘Do they give you a free hand here?’ said Dick, cautiously. He was Ishmael enough to know the value of liberty.
‘Anything you like; latch-keys and license unlimited. We are permanent tenants for the most part here. ‘Tisn’t a place I would recommend for a Young Men’s Christian Association, but it will serve. I took these rooms for you when I wired.’
‘You’re a great deal too kind, old man.’
‘You didn’t suppose you were going away from me, did you?’ Torpenhow put his hand on Dick’s shoulder, and the two walked up and down the room, henceforward to be called the studio, in sweet and silent communion. They heard rapping at Torpenhow’s door. ‘That’s some ruffian come up for a drink,’ said Torpenhow; and he raised his voice cheerily. There entered no one more ruffianly than a portly middle-aged gentleman in a satin-faced frockcoat. His lips were parted and pale, and there were deep pouches under the eyes.
‘Weak heart,’ said Dick to himself, and, as he shook hands, ‘very weak heart. His pulse is shaking his fingers.’
The man introduced himself as the head of the Central Southern Syndicate and ‘one of the most ardent admirers of your work, Mr. Heldar. I assure you, in the name of the syndicate, that we are immensely indebted to you; and I trust, Mr. Heldar, you won’t forget that we were largely instrumental in bringing you before the public.’ He panted because of the seven flights of stairs.
Dick glanced at Torpenhow, whose left eyelid lay for a moment dead on his cheek.
‘I shan’t forget,’ said Dick, every instinct of defence roused in him.
‘You’ve paid me so well that I couldn’t, you know. By the way, when I am settled in this place I should like to send and get my sketches. There must be nearly a hundred and fifty of them with you.’
‘That is er – is what I came to speak about. I fear we can’t allow it exactly, Mr. Heldar. In the absence of any specified agreement, the sketches are our property, of course.’
‘Do you mean to say that you are going to keep them?’
‘Yes; and we hope to have your help, on your own terms, Mr. Heldar, to assist us in arranging a little exhibition, which, backed by our name and the influence we naturally command among the press, should be of material service to you. Sketches such as yours – ’
‘Belong to me. You engaged me by wire, you paid me the lowest rates you dared. You can’t mean to keep them! Good God alive, man, they’re all I’ve got in the world!’
Torpenhow watched Dick’s face and whistled.
Dick walked up and down, thinking. He saw the whole of his little stock in trade, the first weapon of his equipment, annexed at the outset of his campaign by an elderly gentleman whose name Dick had not caught aright, who said that he represented a syndicate, which was a thing for which Dick had not the least reverence. The injustice of the proceedings did not much move him; he had seen the strong hand prevail too often in other places to be squeamish over the moral aspects of right and wrong.
But he ardently desired the blood of the gentleman in the frockcoat, and when he spoke again, and when he spoke again it was with a strained sweetness that Torpenhow knew well for the beginning of strife.
‘Forgive me, sir, but you have no – no younger man who can arrange this business with me?’
‘I speak for the syndicate. I see no reason for a third party to – ’
‘You will in a minute. Be good enough to give back my sketches.’
The man stared blankly at Dick, and then at Torpenhow, who was leaning against the wall. He was not used to ex-employees who ordered him to be good enough to do things.
‘Yes, it is rather a cold-blooded steal,’ said Torpenhow, critically; ‘but I’m afraid, I am very much afraid, you’ve struck the wrong man. Be careful, Dick; remember, this isn’t the Soudan.’
‘Considering what services the syndicate have done you in putting your name before the world – ’
This was not a fortunate remark; it reminded Dick of certain vagrant years lived out in loneliness and strife and unsatisfied desires. The memory did not contrast well with the prosperous gentleman who proposed to enjoy the fruit of those years.
‘I don’t know quite what to do with you,’ began Dick, meditatively. ‘Of course you’re a thief, and you ought to be half killed, but in your case you’d probably die. I don’t want you dead on this floor, and, besides, it’s unlucky just as one’s moving in. Don’t hit, sir; you’ll only excite yourself.’
He put one hand on the man’s forearm and ran the other down the