第71章

Real Art! How well an artist knew that desperate search after the point of balance, the central rivet that must be found before a form would come to life....And he noted that to-day there was no kitten, no flowers, no sense at all of an extraneous presence--even the picture was curtained.Had the girl been just a dream--a fancy conjured up by his craving after youth?

Then he saw that Dromore had dropped the large green book, and was standing before the fire.

"Nell took to you the other day.But you always were a lady's man.

Remember the girl at Coaster's?"

Coaster's tea-shop, where he would go every afternoon that he had money, just for the pleasure of looking shyly at a face.Something beautiful to look at--nothing more! Johnny Dromore would no better understand that now than when they were at 'Bambury's.' Not the smallest good even trying to explain! He looked up at the goggling eyes; he heard the bantering voice:

"I say--you ARE goin' grey.We're bally old, Lenny! A fellow gets old when he marries."And he answered:

"By the way, I never knew that YOU had been."From Dromore's face the chaffing look went, like a candle-flame blown out; and a coppery flush spread over it.For some seconds he did not speak, then, jerking his head towards the picture, he muttered gruffly:

"Never had the chance of marrying, there; Nell's 'outside.'"A sort of anger leaped in Lennan; why should Dromore speak that word as if he were ashamed of his own daughter? Just like his sort--none so hidebound as men-about-town! Flotsam on the tide of other men's opinions; poor devils adrift, without the one true anchorage of their own real feelings! And doubtful whether Dromore would be pleased, or think him gushing, or even distrustful of his morality, he said:

"As for that, it would only make any decent man or woman nicer to her.When is she going to let me teach her drawing?"Dromore crossed the room, drew back the curtain of the picture, and in a muffled voice, said:

"My God, Lenny! Life's unfair.Nell's coming killed her mother.

I'd rather it had been me--bar chaff! Women have no luck."Lennan got up from his comfortable chair.For, startled out of the past, the memory of that summer night, when yet another woman had no luck, was flooding his heart with its black, inextinguishable grief.He said quietly:

"The past IS past, old man."

Dromore drew the curtain again across the picture, and came back to the fire.And for a full minute he stared into it.

"What am I to do with Nell? She's growing up.""What have you done with her so far?"

"She's been at school.In the summer she goes to Ireland--I've got a bit of an old place there.She'll be eighteen in July.I shall have to introduce her to women, and all that.It's the devil!

How? Who?"

Lennan could only murmur: "My wife, for one."He took his leave soon after.Johnny Dromore! Bizarre guardian for that child! Queer life she must have of it, in that bachelor's den, surrounded by Ruff's Guides! What would become of her?

Caught up by some young spark about town; married to him, no doubt--her father would see to the thoroughness of that, his standard of respectability was evidently high! And after--go the way, maybe, of her mother--that poor thing in the picture with the alluring, desperate face.Well! It was no business of his!