A Comedy of Masks | Page 2

the many charming effects--for the most part coldly sad and white--which the river offered, towards evening, from the window of his friend's dining-room.
After his first visit, he availed himself eagerly of Rainham's invitation to make his property the point of view from which he could most conveniently transfer to canvas his impressions; and he worked hard for months, with an industry that came upon his friend as a surprise, at the uneven outlines of the Thames warehouses, and the sharp-pointed masts that rose so trenchantly above them. He had generated an habit of coming and going, as he pleased, without consideration of his host's absences; and latterly, in the early spring--whose caprices in England Rainham was never in a hurry to encounter--the easel and painting tools of the assiduous artist had become an almost constant feature of the landscape.
Now, towards the close of an exceptionally brilliant day in the finish of May, he was putting the last touches to a picture which had occupied him for some months, and which he hoped to have completed for Rainham's return. As he stood on the wharf, which ran down to the river-side, leaning back against a crane of ancient pattern, and viewing his easel from a few yards' distance critically, he could not contemplate the result without a certain complacency.
"It's deuced good, after all," he said to himself, with his head poised a little on one side. "Yes, old Rainham will like this. And, by Jove! what matters a good deal more, the hangers will like it, and if it's sold--and, confound it! it must be sold--it will be a case of three figures."
He had one hand in his pocket, and instinctively--it may have been the result of his meditation--he fell to jingling some coins in it. They were not very many, but just then, though he was a young gentleman keenly alive to the advantages of a full purse, their paucity hardly troubled him. He felt, for the nonce, assured of his facility, and doubtless had a vista of unlimited commissions and the world at his feet, for he drew himself up to his full height of six feet and looked out beyond the easel with a smile that had no longer its origin in the fruition of the artist. Indeed, as he stood there, in his light, lax dress and the fulness of his youth, he had (his art apart) excuse for self-complacency. He was very pleasant to look upon, with an air of having always been popular with his fellows, and the favourite of women; this, too, was borne out by his history. Not a beautiful man, by any means, but the best type of English comeliness: ruddy-coloured, straight, and healthy; muscular, but without a suggestion of brutality. His yellow moustache, a shade lighter than his hair--which, although he wore it cropped, showed a tendency to be curling--concealed a mouth that was his only questionable feature. It was not the sensitive mouth of the through and through artist, and the lines of it were vacillating. The lips, had they not been hidden, would have surprised by their fulness, contradicting, in some part, the curious coldness of his light blue eyes. All said, however, he remained a singularly handsome fellow; and the slight consciousness which he occasionally betrayed, that his personality was pleasing, hardly detracted from it; it was, after all, a harmless vanity that his friends could afford to overlook. Just then his thoughts, which had wandered many leagues from the warehouses of Blackpool, were brought up sharply by the noise of an approaching footstep. He started slightly, but a moment later greeted the new-comer with a pleasant smile of recognition. It was Rainham's foreman and general manager, with whom the artist, as with most persons with whom he was often in contact, was on excellent, and even familiar, terms.
"Look here, Bullen," he said, twisting the easel round a little, "the picture is practically finished. A few more strokes--I shall do them at home--and it is ready for the Academy. How do you like it?"
Mr. Bullen bent down his burly form and honoured the little canvas with a respectful scrutiny.
"That is Trinidad Wharf, sir, I suppose?" he suggested, pointing with a huge forefinger at the background a little uncertainly.
"That is Trinidad Wharf, Bullen, certainly! And those masts are from the ships in the Commercial Docks. But the river, the atmosphere--that's the point--how do they strike you?"
"Well, it's beautiful, sir," remarked Bullen cordially; "painted like the life, you may say. But isn't it just a little smudgy, sir?"
"That's the beauty of it, Bullen. It's impressionism, you Philistine!--a sort of modified impressionism, you know, to suit the hangers. 'Gad, Bullen, you ought to be a hanger yourself! Bullen, my dear man, if it wasn't that you do know how to paint