A Comedy of Masks | Page 7

and smoked pipes innumerable
on the Lung Arno; at Venice, where he affected cigarettes, and
indulged in a desperate flirtation with a pretty black-eyed marchesa; at
Monaco, where he gambled; and at Paris, where he spent his winnings,
and foregathered with his friends of the Quartier Latin.
His empty pockets suggested the immediate necessity for work in a
manner more emphatic than agreeable. His uncle, upon whom he called
at his club, invited him to dinner, lectured him with considerable
eloquence, and practically declined to have any more to do with the
young reprobate, which shook Lightmark's faith in the teaching of
parables.
However, he set to work in the two little rooms beneath the tiles which
he rented in Bloomsbury, and which served him as bedroom and studio;
and for a few weeks he finished sketches by day, and wrote sonnets for
magazines, and frivolous articles for dailies, by night. And, strange to
say, though there were times when success seemed very hard to grasp,
and when he was obliged to forestall quarter-day, and even to borrow
money from Rainham--when that bird of passage was within reach--he
sold sketches from time to time; he obtained commissions for portraits;
and the editors occasionally read and retained his contributions.
In course of time he moved further west, to the then unfashionable
neighbourhood of Holland Park, and devoted his energies to the
production of a work which should make an impression at the
Academy. It was his first large picture in oils, an anonymous portrait,
treated with all the audacity and chic of the modern French school, of a
fair-haired girl in a quaint fancy dress, standing under the soft light of
Japanese lanterns, in a conservatory, with a background of masses of
flowers.

And when it was finished, Rainham and the small coterie of artists who
were intimate with Lightmark were generously enthusiastic in their
expressions of approval.
"But I don't know about the Academy, old man," said one of these
critics dubiously, after the first spontaneous outburst of discussion. "Of
course it's good enough, but it's not exactly their style, you know. The
old duffers on the Hanging Committee wouldn't understand it----"
And though Lightmark maintained his intention in the face of this
criticism, the picture was never submitted to the hangers. Rainham
brought a wealthy American ship-owner to see it, and when the
committee sat in judgment, the work was already on the high seas on its
way to New York.
After all, Lightmark owed his nascent reputation to work of a less
important nature--a few landscapes which appeared on the walls of
Bond Street galleries, and were transferred in course of time to
fashionable drawing-rooms; a few portraits, which the uninitiated
thought admirable because they were so "like." Moreover, he could
flatter discreetly, and he took care not to bore his sitter; two admirable
qualities in a portrait-painter who desires to succeed.
CHAPTER III
It was to one of his sitters that Lightmark owed his introduction to the
Sylvesters. Charles Sylvester had been told that Lightmark was a man
who would certainly achieve greatness, and he felt that here was an
opportunity to add all hitherto missing leaf to his laurels, by
constituting himself a patron of art, a position not often attained by
young barristers even when, as in Sylvester's case, they have already
designs upon a snug constituency.
Sylvester began by giving his _protégé_ a commission to paint his
mother's portrait, and before this work was finished a very appreciable
degree of intimacy had sprung up between the Sylvester family and the
young painter, who found no difficulty in gratifying a
woman-of-the-world's passion for small-talk and fashionable

intelligence--judiciously culled from the columns of the daily
newspapers with the art of a practised wielder of the scissors and
paste-brush.
With Miss Sylvester he had a less easy task. She was a girl who had
from a very early age been accustomed to have her impressions
moulded by her self-assertive elder brother; and he, at any rate at first,
had been careful to show that he regarded Lightmark as an object of his
patronage rather than as a friend who could meet him on his own
exalted level. He had been known, in his earlier years, to speak
somewhat contemptuously of "artists"; and, indeed, his want of
sympathy with Bohemians in general had given Eve occasion for much
wondering mental comment, when her brother first spoke of
introducing the portrait-painter to the family circle.
However, brotherly rule over a girl's opinions is apt to be disestablished
when she draws near the autumn of her teens; and after her
emancipation from the schoolroom and short frocks, Miss Eve began to
think it was time that she should be allowed to entertain and express
views of her own. And after her first