 I have a thousand men," said he, to wait upon my will, and towers nine upon the time, and three upon the till. And what care I for you men, said she, or towers from time to till? Sith, you must go with me," she said, to wait upon my will. Sir Hoggy and the Fairies. Next morning Torpenhau found Dick sunk at deepest repose of tobacco. Well, madman, how do you feel? I don't know. I'm trying to find out. You had much better do some work. Maybe. But I'm in no hurry. I've made a discovery, Torpenhau. There's too much ego in my cosmos. Not really. Is this revelation due to my lectures or the Neil-Guys? It came to me suddenly, all on my own account. Much too much ego, and now I'm going to work. He turned over a few half-finished sketches, drummed on a new canvas, cleaned three brushes, set Binky to bite the toes of the lay figure, rattled through his collection of arms and recruitment, and then went out abruptly, declaring that he had done enough for the day. This is positively indecent," said Torpenhau. In the first time that Dick has ever broken up a light morning, perhaps he has found out that he has a soul, or an artistic temperament, or something equally valuable. That comes of leaving him alone for a month. Perhaps he has been going out of evenings. I must look to this. He rang for the bald-headed old housekeeper whom nothing could astonish or annoy. Beaten! Did Mr. Hildard dine out at all while I was out of town? Never laid his dress-clothes out once, there all the time. Mostly dined in, but he brought some most remarkable young gentlemen up here after theaters once or twice. Remarkable fancy they was. Gentleman on the top floor does very much as you like, but it do sing to me, sir, dropping a walk-and-stick down five flights of stairs, and then going down for a rest to pick it up again at half-past two in the morning, singing, Bring back the whiskey, willy darling. Not once or twice, but scores at times isn't charity to the other tenants. What I say is, do as you would be done by, that's my motto. Of course, of course. I'm afraid the top floor isn't the quietest in the house. I make no complaint, sir. I have spoke to Mr. Hildard friendly, and he laughed, and did me a picture of the Mrs. that is as good as colored print. It hasn't the high shine of a photograph, but what I say is, never look a gift orse in the mouth. Mr. Hildard's dress-clothes haven't been on him for weeks. Then it's all right, said Torpenhow to himself. Orges are healthy, and Dick has a head of his own, but when it comes to women making eyes, I'm not certain. Binky, never you be a man, little dorglems. They're contrary brutes, and they do things without any reason. Dick had turned northward across the park, but he was walking in the spirit of the mudflats with Maisie. He laughed aloud as he remembered the day when he had decked a momma's horns with ham-frills, and Maisie, white with rage, had cuffed him. How long those four years seemed in review, and how closely Maisie was connected with every hour of them. Storm across the sea, and Maisie in grey dress on the beach, sweeping her drenched hair out of her eyes, and laughing at the homeward race of the fishing-smacks, hot sunshine on the mudflats, and Maisie sniffing scornfully with her chin in the air. Maisie flying before the wind that thresholds the foreshore and draws a sand-like small shot about her ears. Maisie very composed and independent, telling lies to Mrs. Jinnat while Dick supported her with coarser perjuries. Maisie picking her way delicately from stone to stone, a pistol in her hand and her teeth firm set, and Maisie in a grey dress sitting in the grass between the mouth of a cannon and a nodding yellow sea-poppy. The pictures passed before him one by one, and the last stayed the longest. Dick was perfectly happy with a quiet piece that was as new to his mind as it was foreign to his experiences. It never occurred to him that there might be other calls upon his time than loafing across the park in the forenoon. There's a good working-like now. He said watching his shadow placidly. Some poor devil ought to be grateful for this. There's Maisie. She was walking towards him from the marble arch, and he saw that no mannerism of her gait had been changed. It was good to find her still Maisie, and so to speak, his next-door neighbor. No greeting passed between them because there had been none in the old days. What are you doing out of your studio at this hour? Said Dick as one who's entitled to ask. Idling, just idling. I got angry with a chin and scraped it out. Then I left it in a little heap of paint-jibs and came away. I know what pallet-knifing means. What was the picky? A fancy head that wouldn't come right for a thing. I don't like working over scraped paint when I'm doing flesh. The grain comes up wooly as the paint dries. Not if you scrape it properly. Maisie waved her hand to illustrate her methods. There was a dab of paint on the white cuff, and Dick laughed. You're as untidy as ever. That comes well from you, look at your own cuff. By Jove, yes, it's worse than yours. I don't think we've much altered in anything. Let's see, though. He looked at Maisie critically. The pale blue haze of an autumn day craved between the tree-trunks of the park and made a background for the gray dress. The black velvet toque above the black hair and the resolute profile. No, there's nothing changed. How good it is! Do you remember when I fastened your hair into the snap of a handbag? Maisie nodded with a dwindle in her eye and turned her full face to Dick. Wait a minute, said he. That mouth is down at the corners a little. Who's been worrying you, Maisie? No one but myself. I never seemed to get on with my work, and yet I try hard enough, and Kami says, Continue, mademoiselle, continue toujours mes enfants. Kami is depressing. I beg your pardon. Yes, that's what he says. He told me last summer that I was doing better, and he'd let me exhibit this year. Not in this place, surely? Of course not. The salon. You fly high. I've been beating my wings long enough. Where do you exhibit, Dick? I don't exhibit. I sell. What is your line, then? Haven't you heard? Dick's eyes opened. Was this thing possible? We 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 around a print shop that Dick knew well. Some reproductions 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. Do you like it? Maisie looked at the wild, whirling rush of field battery going into action under fire. Two artillery men stood behind her in the crowd. They chocked the off-lead horse. Said one to the other. He's tore up all four, but they're making good time with the others. That lead driver drives better, nor you, Tom. See how Conan is nosing his horse? Number three will be off the limber next jolt, was the answer. No, we won't. See how his foot's braced against the iron? He'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 it last under her breath. Me, all me, said Dick placidly. Look at their faces. It hits them. 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 eye, eye, eyes, flashing through the records as telegraph poles fly past the traveler. Maisie listened and nodded her head. The histories of strife and probation did not move her a hair's breath. At the end of each canto, he would conclude. And that gave me some notion of handling color, 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 exultation 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. Though dealers laughed and fogs delayed work, and commie was unkind and even sarcastic, and girls in other studios were painfully polite. It had a few bright spots, and pictures accepted at provincial exhibitions, but it wound up with an 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, locked 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. Dick, I don't want you to go out of my life now that 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. 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. We don't, but you always understood me. There is so much in my work that you could help me in. You know things and the way of doing things, you must. I do. I fancy or else I don't know myself. Then you won't care to lose sight of me altogether, and you want me to help you in your work. Yes, but remember, Dick, nothing will ever come of it. That's why I feel so selfish. Can't things stay as they are? I do want your help. You shall have it. But let's consider. I must see your pics first and overhaul your sketches and find out about your tendencies. You should see what the papers say about my tendencies. Then I'll give you good advice and you shall paint according. Isn't that it, Maisie? Again, there was triumph in Dick's eye. It's too good of you, much too good, because you are consoling yourself with what will never happen. And I know that, and yet I want to keep you. Don't blame me later, please. I'm going into the matter with my eyes open. Moreover, the queen can do no wrong. It isn't your selfishness that impresses me. It's your audacity and proposing to make use of me. Poo! Your only dick and a print shop. Very good. That's all I am. But Maisie, you believe, don't you, that I love you? I don't want you to have any false notions about brothers and sisters. Maisie looked up for a moment and dropped her eyes. It's absurd, but I believe. I wish I could send you away before you get angry with me, but the girl that lives with me is red-haired and an impressionist and all our notions clash. So do ours, I think. Never mind. Three months from today we shall be laughing at this together. Maisie shook her head mournfully. I knew you wouldn't understand, and it will only hurt you more when you find out. Look at my face, Dick, and tell me what you see. They stood up and faced each other for a moment. The fog was gathering, and it stifled the roar of the traffic of London beyond the railings. Dick brought all his painfully acquired knowledge of faces to bear on the eyes, mouth, and chin underneath the black velvet toke. It's the same Maisie, and it's the same me. He said, We've both nice little wills of our own, and one or other of us has to be broken. Now about the future. I must come and see your picture some day. I suppose when the red-haired girl is on the premises. Sundays are my best times. You must come on Sundays. There are such heaps of things I want to talk about and ask your advice about. Now I must get back to work. Try to find out before next Sunday what I am. Said Dick. Don't take my word for anything I've told you. Goodbye, darling, and bless you. Maisie stole away like a little grey mouse. Dick watched her till she was out of sight, but he did not hear her say to herself very soberly. I'm a wretch, a horrid selfish wretch, but it's Dick, and Dick will understand. No one has yet explained what actually happens when an irresistible force meets the immovable post, though many have thought deeply, even as Dick thought. He tried to assure himself that Maisie would be led in a few weeks by his mere presence and discourse to a better way of thinking. Then he remembered much too distinctly her face and all that was written on it. If I know anything of heads, he said, there's everything in that face but love, and I shall have to put that in myself, and that chin and mouth won't be one for nothing. But she's right. She knows what she wants, and she's going to get it. What insolence, me, of all the people in the wide world to use me. But then she's Maisie. There's no getting over that fact, and it's good to see her again. This business must have been simmering in the back of my head for years. She'll use me as I use Benette, at Port Sade. She's quite right. It will hurt a little. I shall have to see her every Sunday, like a young man courting a housemaid. She's sure to come around, and yet that mouth isn't a yielding mouth. I shall be wanting to kiss her all the time, and I shall have to look at her pictures. I don't even know what sort of work she does yet. And I shall have to talk about art, woman's art, therefore particularly and perpetually, damn all varieties of art. It did me a good turn once, and now it's in my way. I'll go home and do some art. Halfway to the studio, Dick was smitten with a terrible thought. The figure of a solitary woman in the fog suggested it. She's all alone in London, with a red-haired impressionist girl who probably has the digestion of an ostrich. Most red-haired people have. Maisie's a byless little body. People eat like lone women. Meals at all hours, and teas with all meals. I remember how the students in Paris used to pig along. She may fall ill at any minute, and I shan't be able to help. Phew! This is ten times worse than owning a wife. Toppenhout entered the studio at dusk, and looked at Dick with eyes full of the austere love that springs up between men who have tugged at the same oar together, and are yoked by custom, and use, and the intimacies of toil. This is a good love, and, since it allows and even encourages strife, recrimination, and brutal sincerity, does not die but grows, and is proof against any absence and evil conduct. Dick was silent after he handed Torpenhout the filled pipe of counsel. He thought of Maisie and her possible needs. It was a new thing to think of anybody but Torpenhout who could think for himself. But at last was an outlet for that cash balance. He could adorn Maisie barbarically with jewelry, a thick gold necklace around her little neck, bracelets upon the rounded arms, and rings of price upon her hands, the cool, temperate, ringless hands that he had taken between his own. It was an absurd thought, for Maisie would not even allow him to put one ring on one finger, and she would laugh at golden trappings. He would be better to sit with her quietly in the desk, his arm around her neck, and her face on his shoulder, as befitted husband and wife. Torpenhout's boots creaked that night, and his strong voice jarred. Dick's brows contracted, and he murmured an evil word because he had taken all his success as a right and part payment for past discomfort, and now he was checked in his stride by a woman who admitted all the success and did not instantly care for him. I say, old man," said Torpenhout, who had made one or two vain attempts at conversation. I haven't put your back up by anything I've said lately, have I? You? No. How could you? Liver out of order? The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a liver. I'm only a bit worried about something in general. I suppose it's my soul. The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a soul. What business have you with luxuries of that kind? It came of itself. Who's the man that says that we're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding? He's right, whoever he is, except about the misunderstanding. I don't think we could misunderstand each other. If the blue smoke curled back from the ceiling in clouds, then Torpenhout insinuatingly— Dick, is it a woman? Be hanged if it's anything remotely resembling a woman. And if you begin to talk like that, I'll hire a brick-red studio with white paint trimmings and begonias and petunias and blue hungarias to play among three six-pinny pot-palms. And I'll mount all my picks in an aniline dye, plush plasters, and I'll invite every woman who monitors over what her guidebook tells her is art, and you shall receive them, Torpenhout, in a snuffed brown velvet coat with yellow trousers and an orange tie. You'll like that? Too thin, Dick, a better man than you once didied with cursing and swearing. You've overdone it just as he did. It's no business of mine, of course, but it's comforting to think that somewhere under the stars there's saving up for you a tremendous thrashing. Whether it'll come from heaven or earth, I don't know, but it's bound to come and break you up a little. You want hammering? Dick shivered. All right, said he. When this island is disintegrated, it will call for you. I shall come round the corner and help to disintegrate it some more. We're talking nonsense. Come along to a theater. End of section six. Section seven of The Light That Failed. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Ellie. The Light That Failed by Radhiyat Kipling. Chapter six, part one. And you may lead a thousand men who ever draw the rain. But here you lead the fairy queen to burst your heart in twain. He has slipped his boot from the stirrup bar, the bridle from his hand, and he is bound by hand and foot to the queen of Fairyland, Zahagi and the fairies. Some weeks later, on a very foggy Sunday, Dick was returning across the park to his studio. This, he said, is evidently the stretching the torment. It hurts more than I expected, but the queen can do no wrong, and she certainly has some notion of drawing. He had just finished a Sunday visit to Macy. There is under the green eyes of the red-haired impressionist girl, whom we learned to hate that side, and was tingling with the keen sense of shame. Sunday after Sunday, putting on his best clothes, he had walked over to the untidy house north of the park, first to see Macy's pictures and then to criticize in the twice upon them as he realized that there were productions on which advice would not be wasted. Sunday after Sunday and his love grew with each visit. He had been compelled to cram his heart back from between his lips, and it prompted him to kiss Macy several times and very much indeed. Sunday after Sunday, the head above the heart warned him that Macy was not yet attainable and that it would be better to talk as connectedly as possible upon the mysteries of the craft that was all in all to her. Therefore it was his fate to endure weekly torches in the studio built out over the clammy back garden of a frail stuffy little villa when nothing was ever in its right place and nobody ever called to endure to watch Macy moving to and fro with the tea cups. He abhorred tea, but since it gave him a little longer time in her presence, he drank it devoutly and directed a girl set in an untidy heap and eyed him without speaking. She was always watching him. Once and only once, when she had left the studio, Macy showed him an album that held a few poor cuttings on provincial papers. The briefest of hurried notes on some of her pictures sent out lying expeditions. Dick stooped and kissed the paint smudged some on the open page. Oh, my love, my love, he muttered. Do you value these things? Chuck them into the waste paper basket. Not, till I get some sick better, said Macy, shutting the book. Then Dick moved by no respect for his public and the very deep regard for the maiden did deliberately propose in order to secure more of these coveted cuttings that you should paint a picture which Macy should sign. That's childish, said Macy, and they didn't think it of you. It must be my work, mine, mine, mine. Go and design decorative medallions for rich brewers' houses. You are sorely good at that. Dick was sick and savage. Better things than medallions, Dick, was the answer in tones that recalled a grey eyed Adam's fearless speech to Mrs. Janet. Dick would have abashed himself utterly, but that other girl trailed in. Next Sunday, he laid at Macy's feet small gifts of pencils that could almost draw by themselves and colors in whose permanency believed, and he was ostentatiously attentive to the work in hand. It demanded, among other things, an exposition of the face that was in him. Torbenhoer's hair would have stood on end had he heard the fluency with which Dick preached his own gospel of art. A month before, Dick would have been equally astonished, but it was Macy's will and pleasure, and he dragged his works together to make plain to her comprehension all that had been hidden to himself of the vice and the force of work. There is not the least difficulty in doing a thing if you only know how to do it. The trouble is to explain your method. I could put this right if I had a brush in my hand, said Dick despairingly, over the modeling of a chin that Macy complained would not look flesh. It was the same chin that she had scraped out with the palette knife, but they find it almost impossible to teach you. There is a queer grin, that's touch, about your painting that they like, but I have a notion that you are weak in drawing. You foreshorten as though you never used a model, and you have caught Kami's pasty way of dealing with flesh and shadow, then again, though you don't know it yourself, you shirk hard work. Suppose you spend some of your time online alone. Lion doesn't allow of shirking. All stew and three square inches of flashy, tricky stuff in the corner of a pig sometimes carry a bad thing off, as I know. It's immoral, you lion work for a little while, and then I can tell you more about your powers, as old Kami used to say. Macy protested, she did not care for pure lion. I know, said Dick, you want to do your fancy head with a bunch of flowers at the base of the neck to hide the bad modeling. The red-haired girl laughed a little. Do you want to do landscapes with cattle knee-deep in grass to hide bad drawing? You want to do a great deal more than you can. You have a sense of color, but you want form. Color's a gift. Put it aside and think no more about it. But form can be turned into. Now all your fancy heads, and some of them are really very good, will keep you exactly where you are. With lion you must go forward or backward, and it will show up all your weaknesses. But other people began lazy. You mustn't mind what other people do. If their souls were your soul, it would be different. You stand and fall by your own work, remember, and it's waste of time to think of anyone else in this battle. Dick paused, and the longing that had been so resolutely put away came back into his eyes. He looked at Macy, and the look was as plainly as words. Was it not time to leave despair and wilderness of canvas and counsel and join hands with life and love? Macy ascended to the new program of schooling so adorably that Dick could hardly restrain himself from picking her up, then and there, and carrying her off to the nearest register's office. It was the implicit obedience of the spoken word and the blanket difference to the unspoken desire that baffled and buffeted his soul. He held authority in that house, authority limited indeed, to one half of one afternoon in seven, but very real while it lasted. Macy had learned to appeal to him on many subjects. From the proper packing of pictures, to the condition of a smoky chimney, the red-haired girl never consulted him about anything. On the other hand, she accepted his appearance as his out-protest and watched him always. He discovered that the meals of the establishment were irregular and fragmentary. They painted chiefly on tea, pickles, and biscuits as they had suspected from the beginning. The girls were supposed to market week and week about, but they lived with the help of a car woman as casually as young Ravens. Macy spent most of her income on models and the other girl rarred in apparatus as refined as her work was rough. Under his knowledge, the abort from the dogs, big one Macy at the end of same installation went the crippling of power to work, which was considerably worse than death. Macy took the warning and gave more thought to what she ate and drank. When his trouble returned upon him, as it generally did in the long winter toilets, the remembrance of that little act of domestic authority and his coercion was the hearse brush of the smoky drawing-room chimney stung thick like a whiplash. He conceived that this memory would be extreme of his sufferings. Till one Sunday, the red-haired girl announced that she would make a study of Dick's head and that he would be good enough to sit still and, quite as an afterthought, look at Macy. He said because he could not well refuse, for the space of half an hour reflected on all the people in the past whom he had laid upon for the purposes of his own craft. He remembered Beynett most distinctly, that Beynett had once been an artist and talked about degradation. It was the nearest monochrome roughing in of her head, but he presented the dumb waiting, the longing, and above all, a hopeless enslavement of the man in the spirit of bitter mockery. I'll bite, said Dick promptly, at your own price. My price is too high, but I dare say you'll be as grateful if. The wet sketch fluttered from the girl's hand and fell into the ashes of the studio stove. When she picked it up, it was hopelessly smudged. Oh, it's all spoiled, said Macy, and I never saw it. Was it like? Thank you, said Dick under his breast, the red-head girl, and he moved himself swiftly. How that man hates me, said the girl, and how he loves you, Macy. What nonsense! I know Dick's very fond of me, but he had his work to do and I have mine. Yes, he's fond of you, and I think he knows there's something in impressionist's mouth at all. Macy, can't you see? See, see what? Nothing, only. I know that if I could get any man to look at me as that man looks at you, I'd. I don't know what I'd do, but he hates me. Oh, how he hates me. She was not altogether correct. Dick's hatred was tempered with gratitude for a few moments, and then he forgot the girl entirely. Only the sense of shame remained, and he was nursing it across the park in the fog. There'll be an explosion one of these days, he said restfully, but it isn't Macy's fault. She's right, quite right, as far as she knows, and I can't blame her. This business has been going on for three months nearly. Three months, and it cost me 10 years knocking about to get at the notion. The merest raw notion of my work, that's true, but then I didn't have pins, drawing pins, and pallet knives stuck into me every Sunday. Oh, my little darling, if I ever break you, somebody will have a very bad time of it. No, she won't. I'd be as big a fool about her as I am now. I'll poison that red-head girl on my wedding day. She's unwholesome, and I'll pass on these present bad times to Torb. Torb Mahow had been moved to lecture Dick more than once lately on the sin of levity, and Dick had listened and replied not the word. In the weeks between his first Sundays of his discipline, he had flung himself savagely into his work. Resolved that Macy should at least know the full stretch of his powers. Then he had taught Macy that she must not pay the least attention to any work outside her own, and Macy had obeyed him all too well. She took his counsels, but was not interested in his pictures. Your thin smell of tobacco and blood, she said once, can't you do anything except soldiers? I could do a head of you that would startle you, so Dick. This was before the red-head girl had brought him under the guillotine. But he only said, I'm very sorry, and her Torb Mahow sold it even in his flesh for me against art. Later, insensibly, and to a large extent against his own will, he ceased to entrust himself in his own work. For Macy's sake, and to sooth the self-respect that it seemed to him he lost each Sunday, he would not conscientiously turn out bad stuff. But, since Macy did not care even for his best, it were better not to do anything at all safe wait and mark time between Sunday and Sunday. Torb Mahow was disgusted as the weeks went by faultlessly, and then attacked him one Sunday evening when Dick felt utterly exhausted after three hours biting self-restraint in Macy's presence. There was language in Torb Mahow's true-to-consult, the Neil Guy, who had come in to talk continental politics. Born idle is he, careless and touched in temper, said the Neil Guy. It isn't worse worrying over. Dick is probably playing the fool with the woman. Isn't that bad enough? No, she may throw him out of gear and knock his work to pieces for a while. She may even turn up here some day and make a scene on the staircase. One never knows. But until Dick speaks of his own accord, you'd better not touch him. He's no easy-tempered man to handle. No, I wish he were. He's such an aggressive, cocksure, you-bed-empt fellow. He'll get that knocked out of him in time. He must learn that he can't stomp up and down the world with a box of moist tubes and a slick brush. You're fond of him? I'd take any punishment that's in store for him if I could. But the worst of it is that no man can save his brother. No, and the worst of it is there's no discharge in this war. Dick must learn his lesson like the rest of us. Talking of war, there'll be trouble in the Balkans in the spring. The trouble is long-coming. I wonder if we could drag Dick out there when it comes off. Dick entered the room some afterwards and the question was put to him. Not good enough. He said shortly, I'm too comfortable where I am. Surely you aren't taking all the stuff in the papers seriously, said the kneel guy. Your walk will be ended in less than six months. The public will know your touch and go on to something new. And where will you be then? Here in England. When you might be doing decent work among us out there? Nonsense. I shall go. The canyon will be there. Top will be there. Casavetti will be there. And the whole lot of us will be there. And we shall have as much as ever we can do with unlimited fighting and the chance for you of seeing things that would make the reputation of these river ash-judges. Mm, is that Dick pulling at his pipe? You prefer to stay here and imagine that all the world is gaping at your pictures? Just think how full an average man's life is of his own pursuits and pleasures. And 20,000 of him find time to look up between mouthfuls and grunts something about something they aren't in the least interested in and that result is cold fame, reputation, and authority. According to the taste and fancy of the spell on my lord, I know that as well as you do, give me credit for a little gumption. Behang'd if I do. Behang'd then. You probably will be for a spy or excited Turks. I hope I am very dead wearing and the word she has gone out of me. Dick topped into a chair and was fast asleep in a minute. That's a bad sign, said the leel guy in an undertone. Top and how picked apart from the waistcoat where it was beginning to burn and put the pillow behind the head. We can't help, we can't help, he said. It's a good ugly sort of olcocorn hat and I'm in front of it. There's the scar on the vibe he got when he was cut over in the square. Shouldn't wonder if that has made him a trifle mad. I should, he's the most business-like madman. Then Dick began to snore furiously. Oh, here no affection can stand this sort of thing. Wake up, Dick, and go and sleep somewhere else if you intend to make a noise about it. When a cat has been out on the tiles all night, the leel guy in his beard, I noticed that she usually sleeps all day. This is natural history. End of section seven, recording by Ellie, September 2009. Section eight of The Light That Failed. This is a LibroVox recording. All LibroVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibroVox.org, recording by Ellie, The Light That Failed by Ratiath Kipling, chapter six, part two. Dick staggered away, grabbing his eyes and yawning. In the night watches, he was overtaken with an idea, so simple and so luminous, that he wondered he had never conceived it before. It was full of craft. He would seek Macy on a weekday, would suggest an excursion and would take her by train to find killing over the way ground that the two had trodden together 10 years ago. As a general rule, he explained to his chin-lettered reflection in the morning, it isn't safe to cross the old trail twice. Things remind one of things, and the cold wind gets up and you feel sad, but this is an exception to every rule that ever was. I'll go to Macy at once. Fortunately, the red-haired girl was out shopping when he arrived and Macy in a paint-splattered blouse was warring with her canvas. She was not pleased to see him. For weekday visits, there is a stretch of the bond, and it needed all his courage to explain his errand. I know you have been working too hard, he concluded, with an air of authority. If you do that, you'll break down. You had much better come. Thur, said Macy verily, she had been standing before her easel too long and was very tired. Anywhere you please, we'll take a train tomorrow and see where it stops. We'll have lunch somewhere and I'll bring you back in the evening. If there's a good working light tomorrow, I'll lose the day. Macy balanced the heavy-white chestnut pellet irresolutely. Dick bit back in O's that was hiring to his slips. He had not yet learned patience with the maiden to whom her work was all in all. You'll lose ever so many more, dear, if you use every hour of working light. Overwork's only murderous idleness. Don't be unreasonable. I'll call for you tomorrow after breakfast early. But surely you're going to ask. No, I'm not. I want you and nobody else. Besides, she hates me as much as I hate her. She won't care to come tomorrow then and pray that you get sunshine. Dick went away delighted and, by consequence, did not work whatever. He strangled a wild desire to order a special train but bought a great, great kangaroo cloak lined with glossy black martin and then retired into himself to consider things. I'm going out for the day tomorrow with Dick, said Macy, to the hired girl when the latter returned, tired, from marketing in the Etchway Road. He deserves it. I shall have the studio floor thoroughly scrapped while you were away. It's very dirty. Macy had enjoyed no sort of holiday for months and looked forward to a little excitement but not without misgivings. There is nobody nice, authentic. When he talks sensibly, she's sad. But I'm sure he'll be silly and worry me and I'm sure I can't tell him anything he'd like to hear. If only he'd be sensible. I should like him so much better. Dick's eyes were full of joy when he made his appearance next morning and so Macy, gray-eyed stud and black velvet-headed, standing in the hallway. Palaces of marble and no-sided imitation of grained wood were surely the fittest background for such a divinity. The red-haired girl threw her into the studio for a moment and kissed her hurriedly. Macy's eyebrows climbed to the top of her forehead. She was altogether unused to these demonstrations. Mind my head, she said hurrying away and ran down the steps to Dick waiting by the handsome. Are you quite warm enough? Are you sure you wouldn't like some more breakfast? Put the cloak over your knees. I'm quite comfy, thanks. Where are we going, Dick? Oh, do stop singing like that. People will think we are mad. Let them think. If the exertion doesn't kill them, they don't know who we are and I'm sure I don't care who they are. My face, Macy, you are looking lovely. Macy stared directly in front of her and did not reply. The wind of a keen clear winter morning had put color into her cheeks. Overhead the creamy yellow smoke clouds were singing away one by one against the pale blue sky and the improvident sparrows broke off from water-spout committees and cabra in cables to glamour of the coming of spring. It will be a lovely weather in the countryside, Dick. But where are we going? Wait and see. They stopped at Victoria and Dick saw tickets. For less than half the fraction of an instant, it occurred to Macy, comfortably settled by the waiting-home fire, that it was much more pleasant to send the man to the booking office than to elbow one's own way through the crowd. Dick put her into a pullman, solely on the count of the bombs there, and she regarded the extravagance with grave-scandalized eyes as the train moved out into the country. I wish I knew where we are going. She repeated for the 20 years' time. The name of a well-remembered station flash by towards the end of the run and Macy was delighted. Oh, Dick, you wellen. Well, I thought you might like to see the place again. You haven't been here since the old times, have you? No, I never cared to see Mrs. Janet again, and she was all that was ever there. Not quite. Look out the minute. There's the windmill above the potato fields. They haven't built well as they are yet. Do you remember when they shut you up in it? Yes, how she beat you for it. I never told it was you. She guessed and jammed the stick under the door and told you that I was burying a momma alive in the potatoes, and you believed me. You had a trusting nature in those days. They laughed and leaned to look out, identifying ancient landmarks with many reminiscences. Dick fixed his feather eye on the curve of Macy's cheek, wearing near his own, and watched the blood rise under the clear skin. He congratulated himself upon his cunning and looked that the evening would bring him a great reward. Then the train stopped. They went out to look at the old town with new eyes. First, but from a distance, they regarded the house of Mrs. Janet. Suppose she should come out now. What would you do, said Dick, with a mock terror? I should make a face. Show then, said Dick, dropping into the speech of childhood. Macy made that face in the direction of the mean little villa and the clout. This is disgraceful, said Macy, mimicking Mrs. Janet's tone. Macy, you run in advance and learn to collect gospel in the pistol for the next three Saturdays. After all I've taught you two, and three helps every Sunday at dinner, Dick's always leading you into mischief. If you aren't a gentleman, Dick, you might at least. The sentence ended abruptly, Macy remembered when it had last been used. Try to behave like one, said Dick promptly, quiet right. Now we'll get some lunch and go on to fight killing unless you try to drive there. We must walk out of respect of the place, how little changed it all is. They turned the direction of the sea through unaltered streets and the influence of old things lay upon them. Presently they passed a confectioner's shop, much considered in the days, and their joint pocket money amounted to a shilling a week. Dick, do you have any pennies? Said Macy, half to herself. Only three, and if you think you are going to have two of them to buy peppermint sweets, you are wrong. She says peppermints aren't ladylike. Again they laughed, and the color came into Macy's cheeks as the blood boiled so thick-hard. After a large lunch, they went down to the beach and to fight killing across the waist wind-bitten land that no builder had sought it versed his wile to defile. The winter breeze came in from the sea and sang about their ears. Macy, said Dick, her nose is getting a good perrush in blue at the tip. I'll raise you as far as you please, for as much as you please. She looked round cautiously and with a laugh set off, swiftly as the eyes were loud. There, she was out of breath. We used to run miles, she panted. It's absurd that we can't run now. Old age, dear, that it is to get fat and sleek in town. When I wish to pull your hair, you generally run for three miles, shrieking at the top of your voice. I ought to know, because to shrieks of yours, I meant to call up Mrs. Janet with a cane-end. 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. Torbmhau had gathered for Mr. Beaton the dick properly dressed and shaved and left the house at half past eight in the morning with a travelling rug over his arm. The nil guy, holding at midday for chess and polite conversation. It's worse than anything I imagined, said Torbmhau. Oh, the everlasting dick, I suppose. You fuss over him like a hen with one cheek. Let him run riot. If he thinks, it will amuse him. You can whip a young pup of 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 Choff, 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 Elma Crip. 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? By a blazing wheel-barrow. 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. They cast some sense of humor, 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 forever. He'll be a respectable married man before he can stop him, and he'll never go on a long trail again. Or quite possible, but the earth won't spin the other way, and that happens. No, ho, I'd give something to see dick. Go wooing the boys. Don't worry about it. These things can be with Ella, and we can only look on, get the chess man. The red-haired girl was lying down in her room, staring at the ceiling. The footsteps of people in the basement 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 seriously from time to time. The car woman in charge of the scrubbing of the studio knocked at her door, back her pardon miss, but in cleaning her floor there's two, not to say three, kind of soap, which is yellow and muddled and disinfecting. Now, just before I took my pale into the passage, I thought it would be perhaps best as well as if I just came up here and asked what sort of soap I was wishful that I should use on the boards. The yellow soap miss? There was nothing in the speech to have crossed the paroxysm of fury. They drove the red-haired girl into the middle of the room, almost shouting. Do you suppose care what you use? Any kind will do, any kind. The woman fled, and the red-haired girl looked at her 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. End of Section 8, recording by Ellie, September 2009. 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 mudbanks, and the mirazian belbuy clanked and swung in the tideway. 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 Glossy of Fort Keeling and sat down in a nook sheltered from the wind under the tarred throat of a forty-pounder cannon. Now if a MoMA were only here, said Maisie, for a long time both were silent, then Dick took Maisie's hand and called her by 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 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 anyone, 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 dare not tell a fib. I despise myself quite 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 quite 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 Cammie, and I shall never forget, once Cammie laughed at me. You don't like being laughed at, Maisie, do you? I hate it. I never laugh at other people 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 Cammie always says. Maisie hesitated. He says that there is feeling in them. How dare you tell me a fib like that? Remember, I was under Cammie for two years. I know exactly what he says. It isn't a fib. It's worse, it's a half-truth. Cammie says when he puts his head on one side, so, il y'a du sentiment, my il n'y a pas de partait prie. He rolled the R threateningly as Cammie 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. Cammie 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 Cammie ever told you so? Don't quote Cammie 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 anyone else. Put this cloak thing round you or you'll get chilled. Maisie wrapped herself in the soft martin skins, turning the great 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 may not do something that isn't bad. A great deal depends on being a 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've 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 nor 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 realize 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 Cammie's talked to 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 four chains day after day and see the sunrise almost afraid because the seas 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 300 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 coconuts falling from the palms and you order an ivory white servant to sling you along yellow hammock with tassels on it like ripe maize and you put up your feet and hear the bees hum in the waterfall 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 criticize. When the scuffle, you have 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-colored sands? There are 40 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 marketplace and a jeweled peacock struts out of a carved doorway and spreads its tail against a marble screen as fine pierced as point lays. Then a monkey, a little black monkey, walks through the main square to get a drink from a tank 40 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've 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 oboe, a little before sundown, as punctually as clockwork, a big bristly wild boar without his family following trots through the city gate, turning 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 bruise angry and sling a hammock and oh, thousands of things and you'll see for yourself what color 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 gypsy, 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 the sudden wrench to his pleadings that he could not trust himself to speak and in the 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 oversea 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 into 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. Rack, 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 draft, too. That must be the Barolong or the Butia. No, the Butia has a clapper bow. It's the Barolong 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 martin skins about her throat and her eyes shone like diamonds. The moonlight on the gray kangaroo fir 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 steamers 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? Yes, I feel so wicked about it. Wiccater 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 though I know you care for me and I like to have you with me, 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 have no right to patronize me. I only want what I have worked for so long. It came to you without any trouble and I don't think it's fair. What can I do? I'd give 10 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 God 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. It's up 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 a trouble for its 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 Sudan, I went over some ground that we had been fighting on for three days. There were 1200 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 colors 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 colors 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 him and yet confound it all, another pebble flew seaward. I can't help purring when I am 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 Grind, 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. Jenet'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 arrowheads. Well, I should only be half married to you. I should worry and fuss about my work as I do now. Four days out of seven, I'm not fit to speak to. You talk as if no one else in the world had ever used a brush. Do you suppose that I don't know the feeling of worry and bother and can't get atness? 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 don't care for me yet. The tide had nearly covered the mud banks and 20 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 too in the world for all purposes, and do you like to have me with you? Of course I do. I wonder if you can realize 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 over work? 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. I know that fear. It's the most terrible of all. It wakes me up in the night sometimes. You oughtn't to know anything about it. How do you know? Never mind, is your 300 a year safe? It's in consoles. Very well, if anyone comes to you and recommends a better investment, even if I should come to you, don't you listen. Never shift the money for a minute and never lend a penny of it even to the red haired girl. Don't scold me so. I'm not likely to be foolish. The earth is full of men who'd sell their souls for 300 a year and women come and talk and borrow a five pound note here and a 10 pound note there. And a woman has no conscience in a money debt. Stick to your money, Maisie, for there's nothing more ghastly in the world than poverty in London. It scared me. By Jove it put the fear into me and one oughtn't to be afraid of anything. End of section nine. Section 10 of The Light That Failed. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Light That Failed by Rudyard Kipling, chapter seven, part two. To each man is appointed his particular dread. The terror that, if he does not fight against it, must cow him even to the loss of his manhood. Dick's experience of the sordid misery of want had entered into the deeps of him. And lest he might find virtue too easy, that memory stood behind him, tempting to shame, when dealers came to buy his wares. As the Nilkai quaked against his will at the still green water of a lake or a mill dam, as Torpenhau flinched before any white arm that could cut or stab and loathed himself for flinching, Dick feared the poverty he had once tasted half in jest. His burden was heavier than the burdens of his companions. Maisie watched the face working in the moonlight. You have plenty of pennies now, she said soothingly. I shall never have enough, he began with vicious emphasis. Then laughing, I shall always be Thruppen's short in my accounts. Why Thruppen's? I carried a man's bag once from Liverpool Street Station to Blackfriars Bridge. It was a six-penny job. You needn't laugh, indeed it was. And I wanted the money desperately. He only gave me Thruppen's. And he hadn't even the decency to pay in silver. Whatever money I make, I shall never get that old Thruppen's out of the world. This was not language befitting the man who had preached of the sanctity of work. It jarred on Maisie, who preferred her payment in applause, which, since all men desire it, must be of the right. She hunted for her little purse and gravely took out a three-penny bit. There it is, she said. I'll pay you, Dickie. And don't worry any more. It isn't worthwhile. Are you paid? I am, said the very human apostle of Faircraft, taking the coin. I'm paid a thousand times, and will close that account. It shall live on my watch chain, and you're an angel, Maisie. I'm very cramped, and I'm feeling a little cold. Good gracious! The cloak is all white, and so is your mustache. I never knew it was so chilly. A light frost lay white on the shoulder of Dick's Ulster. He, too, had forgotten the state of the weather. They laughed together, and with that laugh ended all serious discourse. They ran inland across the waist to warm themselves, then turned to look at the glory of the full tide under the moonlight and the intense black shadows of the firs' bushes. It was an additional joy to Dick that Maisie could see color even as he saw it, could see the blue and the white of the mist, the violet that is in gray palings, and all things else as they are, not of one hue but a thousand. And the moonlight came into Maisie's soul so that she, usually reserved, chattered of herself and of the things she took interest in, of cammy, wisest of teachers, and of the girls in the studio, of the Poles who will kill themselves with overwork if they are not checked, of the French who will talk at great length of much more than they will ever accomplish, of the slovenly English who toil hopelessly and cannot understand that inclination does not imply power, of the Americans whose rasping voices in the hush of a hot afternoon strain tense-drawn nerves to breaking point and whose suppers lead to indigestion, of tempestuous Russians neither to hold nor to bind who tell girls' ghost stories till the girls shriek, of stolid Germans who come to learn one thing and, having mastered that much, stolidly go away and copy pictures forever more. Dick listened and raptured because it was Maisie who spoke. He knew the old life. It hasn't changed much, he said. Do they still steal colors at lunchtime? Not steal, attract is the word. Of course they do. I'm good, I only attract ultramarine, but there are students who'd attract flake white. I've done it myself. You can't help it when the pallets are hung up. Every color is common property once it runs down, even though you do start it with a drop of oil. It teaches people not to waste their tubes. I should like to attract some of your colors, Dick. Perhaps I might catch your success with them. I mustn't say a bad word, but I should like to. What in the world, which you've just missed a lovely chance of seeing, does success or want of success or a three-storied success matter compared with, no, I won't open that question again. It's time to go back to town. I'm sorry, Dick, but you're much more interested in that than you are in me. I don't know, I don't think I am. What will you give me if I tell you a sure shortcut to everything you want, the trouble and the fuss and the tangle and all the rest? Will you promise to obey me? Of course. In the first place, you must never forget a meal because you happen to be at work. You forgot your lunch twice last week, said Dick at a venture, for he knew with whom he was dealing. No, no, only once, really. That's bad enough. And you mustn't take a cup of tea and a biscuit in place of a regular dinner because dinner happens to be a trouble. You're making fun of me. I never was more earnest in my life. Oh, my love, my love, hasn't it dawned on you yet what you are to me? Here's the whole earth in a conspiracy to give you a chill or run over you or drench you to the skin or cheat you out of your money or let you die of overwork and underfeeding and I haven't the mere right to look after you. Why, I don't even know if you have sense enough to put on warm things when the weather's cold. Dick, you're the most awful boy to talk to, really. How do you suppose I managed when you were away? I wasn't here and I didn't know, but now I'm back, I'd give everything I have for the right of telling you to come in out of the rain. Your success too? This time it cost Dick a severe struggle to refrain from bad words. As Mrs. Janet used to say, you're a trial, Maisie. You've been cooped up in the schools too long and you think everyone is looking at you. There aren't 1,200 people in the world who understand pictures. The others pretend and don't care. Remember, I've seen 1,200 men dead in toadstool beds. It's only the voice of the tiniest little fraction of people that makes success. The real world doesn't care a tinkers, doesn't care a bit. For you or I know, every man in the world may be arguing with a Maisie of his own. Poor Maisie. Poor Dick, I think. Do you believe while he's fighting for what's dearer than his life, he wants to look at a picture? And even if he did and if all the world did and 1,000 million people rose up and shouted hymns to my honor and glory, would that make up to me for the knowledge that you were out shopping in the Edgeware Road on a rainy day without an umbrella? Now we'll go to the station. But you said on the beach, persisted Maisie with a certain fear. Dick groaned aloud. Yes, I know what I said. My work is everything I have or am or hope to be to me. And I believe I've learned the law that governs it. But I've some lingering sense of fun left, though you've nearly knocked it out of me. I can just see that it isn't everything to all the world. Do what I say and not what I do. Maisie was careful not to reopen debatable matters and they returned to London joyously. The terminus stopped Dick in the midst of an eloquent harangue on the beauties of exercise. He would buy Maisie a horse. Such a horse has never yet bowed head to bit, would stable it with a companion some 20 miles from London. And Maisie, solely for her health's sake, should ride with him twice or thrice a week. That's absurd, said she. It wouldn't be proper. Now, who in all London tonight would have sufficient interest or audacity to call us two to account for anything we chose to do? Maisie looked at the lamps, the fog, and the hideous turmoil. Dick was right, but horse flesh did not make for art as she understood it. You're very nice sometimes, but you're very foolish more times. I'm not going to let you give me horses or take you out of your way tonight. I'll go home by myself. Only I want you to promise me something. You won't think any more about that extra thruppance, will you? Remember, you've been paid and I won't allow you to be spiteful and do bad work for a little thing like that. You can be so big that you mustn't be tiny. This was turning the tables with a vengeance. There remained only to put Maisie into her handsome. Goodbye, she said simply. You'll come on Sunday. It has been a beautiful day, Dick. Why can't it be like this always? Because love's like line work. You must go forward or backward. You can't stand still. By the way, go on with your line work. Good night and for my sake, take care of yourself. He turned to walk home meditating. The day had brought him nothing that he hoped for, but surely this was worth many days. It had brought him nearer to Maisie. The end was only a question of time now and the prize well worth the waiting. By instinct, once more, he turned to the river. And she understood it once, he said, looking at the water. She found out my pet be setting sin on the spot and paid it off. My God, how she understood. And she said I was better than she was, better than she was. He laughed at the absurdity of the notion. I wonder if girls guess at one half a man's life. They can't or they wouldn't marry us. He took her gift out of his pocket and considered it in the light of a miracle and a pledge of the comprehension that one day would lead to perfect happiness. Meantime, Maisie was alone in London with none to save her from danger and the packed wilderness was very full of danger. Dick made his prayer to fate disjointedly after the manner of the heathen as he threw the piece of silver into the river. If any evil were to befall, let him bear the burden and let Maisie go unscathed since the three-penny piece was dearest to him of all his possessions. It was a small coin in itself but Maisie had given it and the Thames held it and surely the fates would be bribed for this once. The drowning of the coin seemed to cut him free from thought of Maisie for the moment. He took himself off the bridge and went whistling to his chambers with a strong yearning for some mantak and tobacco after his first experience of an entire day spent in the society of a woman. There was a stronger desire at his heart when there rose before him an unsolicited vision of the barrel-long dipping deep and sailing free for the southern cross. End of section 10. Section 11 of The Light That Failed. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Zarnaz, The Light That Failed by Rudyard Kipling, Chapter 8, Part 1. And these two, as I have told you, were the friends of Hayawatha, Shibiabos, the musician and the very strong man Wasind. Torpanha was paging the last sheets of some manuscript while the Neil guy who had come for shells and remained to talk tactics was reading through the first part, commenting scornfully the while. It's picturesque enough and it's sketchy, said he. But as serious consideration of affairs in Eastern Europe, it's not worth much. It's off my hands at any rate. 37, 38, 39, slips altogether, aren't there? There should make between 11 and 12 pages of valuable misinformation. Hayaw, Torpanha shuffled the writing together and hummed. Young lambs to sell, young lambs to sell, if I'd as much money as I could tell, I never would cry, young lambs to sell. Dick entered self-conscious and a little defiant, but in the best of tempers with all the world. Back at last, said Torpanha. More or less, what have you been doing? Work, Dickie, you behave as though the Bank of England were behind you. Here's Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday gone and you haven't done a line. It's scandalous. The notions come and go, my children. They come and go like our Basie. He answered, filling his pipe. Moreover, he stooped to thrust a spill into the crate. Apollo doesn't always stretch his, oh, confound your clumsy jests, Neil Guy. This is not the place to preach the theory of direct inspiration, said the Neil Guy, returning to Torpanha's large and workman-like billows to their nail on the wall. We believe in Cobbler's wax, la, where you sit down. If you weren't so big and fat, said Dick, looking round for a weapon. I'd no sky-larking in my rooms. You two smashed half my furniture last time you threw the cushions about. You might have the decency to say, how do you do to Binky? Look at him. Binky had jumped down from the sofa and was falling round Dick's knee and is scratching at his boots. Dear man, said Dick, snatching him up and kissing him on the black patch above his right eye. Didoms was Binks. Did that ugly Neil Guy turn you off the sofa? Bite him, Mr. Binky. He pitched him on the Neil Guy's stomach as the big man lay at ease and Binky pretended to destroy the Neil Guy inch by inch till the sofa cushion extinguished him and panting. He stuck out his tongue at the company. The Binky boy went for a walk this morning before you were up, Torp. I saw him making love to the butcher at the corner when the shutters were being taken down, just as if he hadn't enough to eat in his own dropper house. Said Dick, Binks, is that a true bill? Said Torp in house severely. The little dog retreated under the sofa cushion and showed by the fat white back of him that he really had no further interest in the discussion. Strikes me that another disreputable dog went for a walk too. Said the Neil Guy, what made you get up so early? Torp said you might be buying a horse. He knows it would need three of us for a serious business like that. No, I fell lonesome and unhappy, so I went out to look at the sea and watched the pretty ships go by. Where did it go? Somewhere on the channel, broccoli or snagly or some watering place was its name, I've forgotten. But it was only two hours run from London and the ships went by. Did you see anything you knew? Only the barrel long towards Australia and an Odessa grain board loaded down by the head. It was a thick day, but the sea smelled good. Wherefore put on one's best trousers to see the barrel long? Said Torp in house pointing. Because I have nothing except these things and my paintings, dubs. Besides, I wanted to do honour to the sea. Did she make you feel restless? Asked the Neil Guy keenly. Crazy, don't speak of it, I'm sorry I went. Torp and how in the Neil Guy exchanged a look as Dick stooping besieged himself among the former's boots and trees. These will do, he said at last. I can't say I think much of your taste in slippers, but the fit's the thing. He slipped his feet into a pair of sock-like, semberskin foot coverings, found a long chair and laid length. They are my own pet bear, Torp in house said. I was just going to put them on myself. All your reprehensible selfishness. Just because you see me happy for a minute, you want to worry me and stir me up. Find another bear. Good for you that Dick can't wear your clothes, Torp. You two live communistically, said the Neil Guy. Dick never has anything that I can wear. He's only useful to sponge upon. Confound you, have you been rummaging around my clothes again then? Said Dick. I put a sober in in the Tobacco jar yesterday. How do you expect a man to keep his accounts properly if you? Here the Neil Guy began to laugh and Torp in how he joined him. He just sobered in yesterday. You are no sort of financier. You lend me a fiver about a month back. Do you remember? Torp in house said. Yes, of course, said Dick. Do you remember that I paid it to you 10 days later and you put it at the bottom of the Tobacco? By job, did I? I thought it was in one of my color boxes. You thought about a week ago I went in your studio to get some Bessie and found it. What did you do with it? I took the Neil Guy to a theater and fed him. You couldn't feed the Neil Guy under twice the money. Not though you gave him army beef. Well, I suppose I should have found it out sooner or later. What is there to laugh at? You are a most amazing cuckoo in many directions, said the Neil Guy, still chuckling over the thought of the dinner. Never mind, we had both been working very hard and it was your unarmed increment we spent and as you're only a loafer it didn't matter. That's pleasant. From the man who is bursting with my meat too, I'll get the dinner back one of these days. Suppose you go to a theater now. Put your boots on and dress and wash. The Neil Guy spoke very lazily. I withdraw the motion. Suppose just for a change as a startling variety, you know, we that is to say we get our charcoal in our canvas and go on with our work. Torpenhauer spoke pointedly, but it only wriggled his toes inside the soft leather macaens. With a one-ideart clucker, that is, if I had any unfinished figures on hand, I haven't any model. If I had my model, I haven't any spray and I never leave charcoal unfixed overnight and if I had my spray in 20 photographs of background, I couldn't do anything tonight. I don't feel that way. Binky Dog, he's a lazy hog, isn't he? Said the Neil Guy. Very good. I will do some work. Said Dick, rising swiftly. I'll fetch the Nanga Punga book and we'll add another picture to the Neil Guy saga. Aren't you worrying him a little too much? Said the Neil Guy when Dick had left the room. Perhaps, but I know what he can turn out if he likes. It makes me savage to hear him praised for past work when I know what he ought to do. You and I are arranged for by Kismet and our powers, most the pity. I have dreamed of a good deal. So have I, but we know our limitations now. I am dashed if I know what Dick's may be when he gives himself to his work. That's what makes me so keen about him. And when all's said and done, you will be put aside quite rightly for a female girl. I wonder, where do you think he has been today? To the sea. Didn't you see the look in his eyes when he talked about her? He's as restless as a swallow in autumn. Yes, but did he go alone? I don't know. And I don't care, but he has the beginnings of the go fever upon him. He wants to up his stakes and move out. There's no mistaking the signs. Whatever he may have said before, he has the call upon him now. It might be salvation, Torpenhouse said. Perhaps, if you care to take the responsibility of being a saviour, Dick returned with the big clasp sketchbook that the Neil guy knew well and did not love too much. In it, Dick had drawn all manner of moving incidents experienced by himself or related to him by the others of all the four corners of the earth. But the wider range of the Neil guy's body and life attracted him most. When Shrut failed, he fell back on fiction of the wildest and represented incidents in the Neil guy's career that were unseemly. His marriages with many African princesses, his shameless betrayal for Arab wives of an army corpse to Mehdi, his tattoo man by skilled operators in Burma, his interview and his fears with the yellow heads man in the bloodstained execution ground of Canton. And finally, the passings of his spirit into the bodies of whales, elephants and tokens. Torpenhouse from time to time had added rhyme descriptions and the whole was a curious piece of art because Dick decided having regard to the name of the book which being interpreted means naked, that it would be wrong to draw the Neil guy with any clothes on under any circumstances. Consequently, the last sketch representing that much enduring man calling on the war office to press his claims to the Egyptian medal was hardly delicate. He settled himself comfortably on Torpenhouse table and turned over the pages. What a fortune you would have been to play, Neil guy. He said, that's a succulent pinkness about some of these sketches that's more than lifelike. The Neil guy surrounded while bathing by the matey. That was found around fact, eh? It was very nearly my last bath, you irrelevant dober. Has Binky come into the saga yet? No, the Binky boy hasn't done anything except eat and kill cats. Let's see. Here you are as a stained glass saint in a church, dused decorative lines about your anatomy. You ought to be grateful for being handed down to posterity in this way. Fifty years hence you'll exist in rare and curious festivals at ten guineas each. What shall I try this time? The domestic life of the Neil guy? Hasn't got any. The undomestic life of the Neil guy then? Of course. Mass meeting of his wives in Trafalgar Square. That's it. They came from the ends of the earth to attend Neil guy's wedding to an English bride. This shall be an epic. It's a sweet material to work with. It's a scandalous waste of time. Said the Torpenhau. Don't worry, it keeps one's hand in, especially when you begin without the pencil. He said to work rapidly. That's Nelson's column. Presently, the Neil guy will appear shinning up it. Give him some clothes this time. Certainly, a veil and an orange wreath because he's been married. Yeah, that's clever enough. Said Torpenhau over his shoulder as Dick brought out of the paper with three twirls of the brush, a very fat back and laboring shoulder pressed against stone. Just imagine, Dick continued, if we could publish a few of these dear little things every time the Neil guy subsidizes a man who can write to give the public an honest opinion of my pictures. Well, you'll admit I always tell you and I have done anything of that kind. I know I can't hammer you as you out to be hammered, so I give the job to another. Young MacLagan, for instance, no whoa, one half minute, old man, stuck your hand out against the dark of the wallpaper. You only burble and call me names that left shoulders out of drawing. I must literally throw a veil over that. Where's my pen knife? Well, what about MacLagan? I only gave him his writing orders to lambast you on general principles for not producing work that will last. Whereupon, that young fool, Dick threw back his head and shut one eye as he shifted the page under his hand. Being left alone with an ink pot and what he conceived for his own notions went and split them both over me in the papers, you might have engaged a grown man for the business Neil guy. How do you think the bridal veil looks now, Torp? How the dews do three dabs and two scratches make the stuff stand away from the body as it does. Said Torp and how, to whom Dick's methods were always new. It just depends on where you put him. If MacLagan had known that much about his business, he might have done better. Why don't you put the damned dabs into something that will stay them? Incensored the Neil guy who had really taken considerable trouble in hiring for Dick'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 processional wise. You seem to have married extensively and I must rough him in with the pencil. Meads, Parthians, Edomites, now, setting aside the weakness and the wickedness and the fat-headedness of the 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 here best work? Said Torpenhau. Anything you've sold? Said the Neil guy. Oh no, it isn't here and it isn't sold. Better than that, it can't be sold and I don't think anyone knows where it is. I'm sure I don't. And yet more and more wives on the north side of the square observed the virtuous horror of the lines. You may as well explain, said the Torpenhau and they clifted 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 Neil guy. 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 passenger ship turned into a cargo boat and owned by a second hand Italian firm. She was a crazy basket. We were cut down to 15 ton of a 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 a spreading. Were you a steward or a stoker in those days? I was flush for the time being, so I was a passenger or else I should have been a steward I think. Said Dick with perfect gravity returning to the procession of angry wise. I was the only other passenger from Lima and the ship was half empty and full of rats and cockroaches and scorpions. But what this has to do with the picture? Wait a minute. She had been in the China passenger trade and her lower decks had monks for 2,000 pig tails. Those were all taken down and she was empty up to her nose and the lights came through the portholes. Most annoying lights to work in till you got used to them. I hadn't anything to do for weeks. The ship's carts were in pieces and our skipper didn'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 passengers 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 Torpenhau. She was a sort of Negroi Jewish 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 passage 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 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 color. What was the notion? Two lines in poem. Neither the angels in heaven above nor the demons down under the sea can ever dis-ever my soul from the soul to the beautiful Annabelle Lee. It came out of the sea all by itself. I drew that fight, fought out in green water over the naked, choking soul and the woman served as the model for the devils and the angels both. Sea devils and sea angels and the soul have drowned between them. It doesn't sound much but when there was a good light on the lower deck it looked very fine and creepy. It was seven by 14 feet all done in shifting light for shifting light. Did the woman inspire you much? Said Torben Howe. She and the sea between them immensely. There was a heap of bad drawing in that picture. I remember I went out of my way to foreshorten for sheer delight of doing it and I foreshortened damnably. But for all that it's the best thing I've ever done and now I suppose the ships broken up or gone down. Phew, what a time that was. What happened after all? It all ended. They were loading her with wool when I left the sheep but even the Steve doors kept the picture clear to the last. The eyes of the demons scared them I honestly believe and the woman? She was scared too when it was finished. She used to cross herself before she went down to look at it. Just three colors and no chance of getting anymore and the sea outside an unlimited love making inside and the fear of death atop of everything else. Oh Lord. He had ceased to look at the sketch but was staring straight in front of him across the room. Why don't you try something of the same kind now? Said the Neil guy. Because those things come not by fasting and prayer. When I had a cargo board and a Jewish Cuban and another notion and the same old life, I may. You won't find them here, said the Neil guy. No I shall not. Dictate the sketchbook with a bang. This room's as hot as an oven. Open the window someone. End of section 11.