Out & Proud: Gay Classics Collection. Radclyffe Hall
Читать онлайн книгу.
you see, sir,” said Locksley, “I’m in considerable of a scare about that young painter up-stairs.”
He pointed to the centre-piece of the arabesqued ceiling. I looked up, almost expecting to see a pair of legs dangling through, according to my fancy of the afternoon.
“What?” said I, my interest wide awake. “The one overhead?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Cecil Dreeme? I saw the name on a card above.”
“Mr. Cecil Dreeme, and I’m afraid something’s come to him.”
“Is he missing?”
“No; he’s there. But I haven’t seen him these two days. Dora went up with his breakfast this morning, and with his dinner. No one answered when she knocked. I’ve just been up, and hammered a dozen thumps on his door. I couldn’t raise a sound inside.”
Locksley’s voice sank to an anxious whisper as he spoke.
“What do you fear?” said I.
“Sickness or starvation, — one of them I’m afraid has come to him. Or perhaps he’s punying away for want of open air and sunshine, and some friend to say ‘Hurrah boys!’ to him.”
“You have a pass-key, of course; why didn’t you push in?”
“I would have shoved straight through, and seen what was the matter, if Mr. Dreeme had been like other young fellows. But he isn’t. He might be there dying alone, and I shouldn’t like to interfere on my own hook, against his particular orders not to be disturbed. What do you say, Mr. Byng? Suppose it’s a case of life and death, — shall I break in?”
“It is a delicate matter to advise upon. A gentleman’s house is his castle. I must have my facts before I become accomplice to a burglary. What do you know of Mr. Dreeme’s health or habits to make you anxious?”
“Not over much. But more than any one else.”
“He is reserved then?” My curiosity about the name was increasing, as the slight mystery seemed to thicken.
“Reserved, sir! I don’t believe a soul in the city knows a word of him, except us Locksleys. He’s one of the owl kind.”
“A friendless stranger,” said I, recalling my fancies of the afternoon, by his door. “A man with the shyness and jealousy of an artist awaiting recognition. He does not wish to be known at all until he is known to fame.”
“That sounds like it, partly,” Locksley returned. “But there must be other reasons for his keeping so uncommon dark.”
“What! Poverty? Creditors? Crime?”
“Crime and Mr. Dreeme! You’d drop that notion, if you saw him. Not that! No; nor poverty exactly. He can pay his omnibus yet, and needn’t go on the steps, and risk a ‘Cut behind.’”
“What then?” I asked, unwilling to pry disloyally, and yet eager to hear more.
“I suspicion that something’s hit him where he lives, and he’s lying by till the wound heals. I know how a man feels when the world’s mean to him. He wants to get out of sight, and hide in a den like old Chrysalis. That was the way with me when I failed, and Mr. Densdeth put up my creditors not to let me take the Stillwell. I was mighty near hiding in Hellgate.”
“How did he happen to shelter in Chrysalis?” I asked.
“I shall have to tell you all the little I know. I’ve halted because we Locksleys promised Mr. Dreeme not to be public about him. We’ve kept it close. But you’re one of the kind, Mr. Byng, that a man naturally wants to open his self to.”
“I’m not leaky; depend upon that!”
“Well,” said Locksley, fairly uncorked at last, and overrunning with his story; “Mr. Dreeme came in, after ten, one night about three months ago, and says he, ‘I’ve just got to town by the late train. The last time I was down, I saw the card out, “Studios to Let.” Will you show me what there is?’ ‘Well’, says I. ‘It’s pretty well along in the night to be hiring a studio!’ ‘Yes,’ says he, mild as you please, but knowing his own mind; ‘but I’ve got to have one. I’m not hard to satisfy, and if I could move in right off, I should save the money they’d take from me at the Chuzzlewit, or some other costly hotel.’ ‘You’re not so flush as you’d like to be, perhaps,’ says I. ‘No,’ says he, ‘if flush means rich, I’m not.’”
“So you got him as a tenant,” said I, trying to hurry the narrator.
“Yes; he was such a pleasant-spoken young man that I took to him. Besides, not being flush made him one of my family, — and a big family it is!”
“We must not forget, Locksley, that while we discuss, he may be suffering.”
“That’s true. I must talk short, and talking short isn’t natural to my trade. Filing iron trains a man to be slow, just as hammering iron practises him to bounce his words like a sledge on an anvil. Well; I took Mr. Dreeme up-stairs, and showed him the studio overhead. It has closets and bath, like this room. He said that would do him. He paid me a quarter in advance, and camped right in, with a small bundle he had.”
“Gritty fellow!”
“Grit as the Quincy quarry! or he’d never have stuck there alone for three months, painting like time, and never stirring out till night.”
“That is enough to kill the man! Never till night! Not to meals, or to buy materials? Not to meet a friend, to see the world?”
“The world and people are what he wants to dodge. I buy him all his materials. He took the last tenant’s furniture just as it stood, — and it’s only about Sing-Sing allowance. He don’t seem to need all sorts of old rubbish to put ideas into him, as the other painters do. I fitted him out, according to list, with sheets and towels, and clothes too. He said he couldn’t knock off work for no such nonsense as clothes. He must paint, or he shouldn’t have money for clothes or victuals.”
“A resolute recluse, concentred upon his art,” said I. “And about his meals?”
“Mother Locksley cooks ’em, and Dora takes ’em up when I’m off. But he don’t eat enough to keep a single-action cockroach on his rounds.”
“Poor fellow! I don’t wonder he has but a hermit’s appetite.” I am ashamed to say that interest in this determined withdrawal from the world made me forget for a moment that the exile might be in urgent need of relief.
“Mrs. Locksley,” continued the janitor, “has never seen him. He has had the children up, and drawn their likenesses, like as they can be. But women he don’t seem to want to have anything to do with.”
“Ah!” cried I. “Here we have a clew! Some woman has wronged him; so he is going through a despair. That is an old story. He edits it with unusual vigor.”
“That’s what my wife and I think,” says Locksley. “He loved some girl, she went crooked, and so things look black to him.”
“What!” thought I. “Is he passing through Churm’s ‘dark waters’? Strange if I should encounter at once another illustration of that sorrow!”
After my dramatic fashion of identifying myself with others, I put myself in Mr. Dreeme’s place, and shrank from so miserable a solution of his exile.
“Perhaps,” I propounded, “some flirt has victimized the poor fellow, and he does not yet realize that we all must take our Bachelor of Arts at a flirt’s school, to become Master of the Arts to know and win a true woman.”
Locksley smiled, then shook his head, and his worried look returned.
“No,” said he; “that kind of a girl makes a man want to be among folks and forget her. Mr. Dreeme has had a worse hurt than that. But whatever wounded him, for the last two weeks he’s been growing paler