A Comedy of Masks | Page 4

quaint pattern on the forefinger--deprecatingly.
"My dear fellow, I know exactly what you are going to say. Don't be
conventional--don't say it. I have a fraudulent countenance if I do look

well; and I don't, and I am not. I am as bad as I ever was."
"Well, come now, Rainham, at any rate you are no worse."
"Oh, I am no worse!" admitted the dry dock proprietor. "But, then, I
could not afford to be much worse. However, my health is a subject
which palls on me after a time. Tell me about yourself."
He looked up with a smile, in which an onlooker might have detected a
spark of malice, as though Rainham were aware that his suggested
topic was not without attraction to his friend. He was a slight man of
middle height, and of no apparent distinction, and his face with all its
petulant lines of lassitude and ill-health--the wear and tear of forty
years having done with him the work of fifty--struck one who saw
Philip Rainham for the first time by nothing so much as by his ugliness.
And yet few persons who knew him would have hesitated to allow to
his nervous, suffering visage a certain indefinable charm. The large
head set on a figure markedly ungraceful, on which the clothes seldom
fitted, was shapely and refined, although the features were indefensible,
even grotesque. And his mouth, with its constrained thin lips and the
acrid lines about it, was unmistakably a strong one. His deep-set eyes,
moreover, of a dark gray colour, gleamed from under his thick
eyebrows with a pleasant directness; while his smile, which some
people called cynical, as his habit of speech most certainly was, was
found by others extraordinarily sympathetic.
"Yes, tell me about yourself, Dick," he said again.
"I have done a picture, if that is what you mean, besides some portraits;
I have worked down here like a galley slave for the last three months."
"And is the queer little estaminet in Soho still in evidence? Do the men
of to-morrow still meet there nightly and weigh the claims of the men
of to-day?"
Lightmark smiled a trifle absently; his eyes had wandered off to his
picture in the corner.

"Oh, I believe so!" he said at last; "I dine there occasionally when I
have time. But I have been going out a good deal lately, and I hardly
ever do have time.... May I smoke, by the way?"
Rainham nodded gently, and the artist pulled out his case and started a
fragrant cigarette.
"You see, Rainham," he continued, sending a blue ring sailing across
the room, "I am not so young as I was last year, and I have seen a good
deal more of the world."
"I see, Dick," said Rainham. "Well, go on!"
"I mean," he explained, "that those men who meet at Brodonowski's are
very good fellows, and deuced clever, and all that; but I doubt if they
are the sort of men it is well to get too much mixed up with. They are
rather _outré_, you know; though, of course, they are awfully good
fellows in their way."
"Precisely!" said Rainham, "you are becoming a very Solomon, Dick!"
He sat playing idly with the ring on his forefinger, watching the artist's
smoke with the same curiously obscure smile. It had the effect on
Lightmark now, as Rainham's smile did on many people, however
innocent it might be of satiric intention, of infusing his next remarks
with the accent of apology.
"You see, Rainham, one has to think of what will help one on, as well
as what one likes. There is a man I have come to know lately--a very
good man too, a barrister--who is always dinning that into me. He has
introduced me to some very useful people, and is always urging me not
to commit myself. And Brodonowski's is rather committal, you know.
However, we must dine there together again one day, soon, and then
you will understand it."
"Oh, I understand it, Dick!" said Rainham. "But let me see the picture
while the light lasts."

"Oh, yes!" cried Lightmark eagerly. "We must not forget the picture."
He hoisted it up to a suitable light, and Rainham stood by the
bow-window, from which one almost obtained the point of view which
the artist had chosen, regarding it in a critical silence.
"What do you call it?" he asked at last.
"'The Gray River,'" said Lightmark; then a little impatiently: "But how
do you find it? Are you waiting for a tripod?"
"I don't think I shall tell you. By falling into personal criticism, unless
one is either dishonest or trivial, one runs the risk of losing a friend."
"Oh, nonsense, man! It's not such a daub as that. I will risk