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 thought 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.’
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