A Comedy of Masks | Page 6

of hotels and voluble tradespeople,
generally followed by a severance of hastily-cemented friendships, and
a departure of apparently unpremeditated abruptness.
When his mother died, he was sent to a fairly good school in England,
where his father occasionally visited him, and where he had been
terribly bullied at first, and had afterwards learned to bully in turn. He
spent his holidays in London, at the house of his grandmother--an
excellent old lady, who petted and scolded him almost simultaneously,
who talked mysteriously about his "poor dear father," and took care
that he went to church regularly, and had dancing-lessons three times a
week.
His father's death, which occurred at Monaco somewhat unexpectedly,
and on the subject of which his grandmother maintained a certain
reserve, affected the boy but little; in fact, the first real grief which he
could remember to have experienced was when the old lady herself
died--he was then nineteen years old--leaving him her blessing and a
sum of Consols sufficient to produce an income of about £250 a year.
The boy's inclinations leaned in the direction of Oxford, and in this he
was supported by his only-surviving relative, his uncle, Colonel
Lightmark, a loud-voiced cavalry officer, who had been the terror of
Richard's juvenile existence, and who, as executor of the old lady's will,
was fully aware of the position in which her death had left him, and her
desire that he should go into the Church.
At one of the less fashionable colleges, which he selected because he
was enamoured of its picturesque inner quadrangle, and of the quaint
Dutch glass in the chapel windows, Lightmark was popular with his
peers, and, for his first term, in tolerably good odour with the dons,
who decided, on his coming up to matriculate, that he ought to read for
honours. And he did read for honours, after a fashion, for nearly a
scholastic year, after which an unfortunate excursion to Abingdon, and
a boisterous re-entry into the University precincts, at the latter part of
which the junior proctor and his satellites were painfully conspicuous,
ended in his being "sent down" for a term. Whereupon he decided to
travel, a decision prompted as much by a not unnatural desire to avoid

avuncular criticism as by a constitutional yearning for the sunny South.
Besides, one could live for next to nothing abroad.
During the next few years his proceedings were wrapped in a veil of
mystery which he never entirely threw aside. Rainham, it is true, saw
him occasionally at this time, for, indeed, it was soon after his first
arrival in Paris that Lightmark made his friend's acquaintance, sealed
by their subsequent journey together to Rome. But Rainham was
discreet. Lightmark before long informed his uncle, with whom he at
first communicated through the post on the subject of dividends, that he
was studying Art, to which his uncle had replied:
"Don't be a d----d fool. Come back and take your degree."
This letter Dick had light-heartedly ignored, and he received his next
cheque from his uncle's solicitors, together with a polite request that he
would keep them informed as to his wanderings, and an intimation that
his uncle found it more convenient to make them the channel of
correspondence for the future.
At Paris it was generally conceded that, for an Englishman, the delicacy
of Lightmark's touch, and the daring of his conception and execution,
were really marvellous; and if only he could draw! But he was too
impatient for the end to spend the necessary time in perfecting the
means.
At Rome he tried his hand at sculpture, and made a few sketches which
his attractive personality rather than their intrinsic merit enabled him to
sell. The camaraderie of the Café Grecco welcomed him with open
arms; and he was to be encountered, in the season, at the most
fashionable studio tea-parties and diplomatic dances. Before long his
talent in the direction of seizing likenesses secured him a well-paid post
as caricaturist-in-chief on the staff of a Republican journal of more wit
than discretion; and it was in this capacity that he gained his literary
experience. On the eve of the suppression of this enterprising organ the
Minister of Police thought it a favourable opportunity to express to
Lightmark privately his opinion that he was not likely to find the
atmosphere of Rome particularly salubrious during the next few

months. Whereupon our friend had shrugged his shoulders, and after
ironically thanking the official for his disinterested advice, he had
given a farewell banquet of great splendour at the Grecco, packed up
palettes and paint-boxes, and started for London, where his friends
persuaded him that his talent would be recognised. And at London he
had arrived, travelling by ruinously easy stages, and breaking the
journey at Florence, where he sketched