第70章

Crossing the Green Park on his way home, was he more, or less, restless? Difficult to say.A little flattered, certainly, a little warmed; yet irritated, as always when he came into contact with people to whom the world of Art was such an amusing unreality.

The notion of trying to show that child how to draw--that feather-pate, with her riding and her kitten; and her 'Perdita' eyes!

Quaint, how she had at once made friends with him! He was a little different, perhaps, from what she was accustomed to.And how daintily she spoke! A strange, attractive, almost lovely child!

Certainly not more than seventeen--and--Johnny Dromore's daughter!

The wind was bitter, the lamps bright among the naked trees.

Beautiful always--London at night, even in January, even in an east wind, with a beauty he never tired of.Its great, dark, chiselled shapes, its gleaming lights, like droves of flying stars come to earth; and all warmed by the beat and stir of innumerable lives--those lives that he ached so to know and to be part of.

He told Sylvia of his encounter.Dromore! The name struck her.

She had an old Irish song, 'The Castle of Dromore,' with a queer, haunting refrain.

It froze hard all the week, and he began a life-size group of their two sheep-dogs.Then a thaw set in with that first south-west wind, which brings each February a feeling of Spring such as is never again recaptured, and men's senses, like sleepy bees in the sun, go roving.It awakened in him more violently than ever the thirst to be living, knowing, loving--the craving for something new.Not this, of course, took him back to Dromore's rooms; oh, no! just friendliness, since he had not even told his old room-mate where he lived, or said that his wife would be glad to make his acquaintance, if he cared to come round.For Johnny Dromore had assuredly not seemed too happy, under all his hard-bitten air.

Yes! it was but friendly to go again.

Dromore was seated in his long arm-chair, a cigar between his lips, a pencil in his hand, a Ruff's Guide on his knee; beside him was a large green book.There was a festive air about him, very different from his spasmodic gloom of the other day; and he murmured without rising:

"Halo, old man!--glad to see you.Take a pew.Look here!

Agapemone--which d'you think I ought to put her to--San Diavolo or Ponte Canet?--not more than four crosses of St.Paul.Goin' to get a real good one from her this time!"He, who had never heard these sainted names, answered:

"Oh! Ponte Canet, without doubt.But if you're working I'll come in another time.""Lord! no! Have a smoke.I'll just finish lookin' out their blood--and take a pull."And so Lennan sat down to watch those researches, wreathed in cigar smoke and punctuated by muttered expletives.They were as sacred and absorbing, no doubt, as his own efforts to create in clay; for before Dromore's inner vision was the perfect racehorse--he, too, was creating.Here was no mere dodge for making money, but a process hallowed by the peculiar sensation felt when one rubbed the palms of the hands together, the sensation that accompanied all creative achievement.Once only Dromore paused to turn his head and say:

"Bally hard, gettin' a taproot right!"