'She's all alone in London, with a red-haired impressionist girl, who probably has the digestion of an ostrich. Most red-haired people have.
Maisie's a bilious little body. They'll eat like lone women,--meals at all hours, and tea with all meals. I remember how the students in Paris used to pig along. She may fall ill at any minute, and I shan't be able to help.
Whew! this is ten times worse than owning a wife.'
Torpenhow entered the studio at dusk, and looked at Dick with eyes full of the austere love that springs up between men who have tugged at the same oar together and are yoked by custom and use and the intimacies of toil. This is a good love, and, since it allows, and even encourages, strife, recrimination, and brutal sincerity, does not die, but grows, and is proof against any absence and evil conduct.
Dick was silent after he handed Torpenhow the filled pipe of council. He thought of Maisie and her possible needs. It was a new thing to think of anybody but Torpenhow, who could think for himself. Here at last was an outlet for that cash balance. He could adorn Maisie barbarically with jewelry,--a thick gold necklace round that little neck, bracelets upon the rounded arms, and rings of price upon her hands,--thie cool, temperate, ringless hands that he had taken between his own. It was an absurd thought, for Maisie would not even allow him to put one ring on one finger, and she would laugh at golden trappings. It would be better to sit with her quietly in the dusk, his arm around her neck and her face on his shoulder, as befitted husband and wife. Torpenhow's boots creaked that night, and his strong voice jarred. Dick's brows contracted and he murmured an evil word because he had taken all his success as a right and part payment for past discomfort, and now he was checked in his stride by a woman who admitted all the success and did not instantly care for him.
'I say, old man,' said Torpenhow, who had made one or two vain attempts at conversation, 'I haven't put your back up by anything I've said lately, have I?'
'You! No. How could you?'
'Liver out of order?'
'The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a liver. I'm only a bit worried about things in general. I suppose it's my soul.'
'The truly healthy man doesn't know he has a soul. What business have you with luxuries of that kind?'
'It came of itself. Who's the man that says that we're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding?'
'He's right, whoever he is,--except about the misunderstanding. I don't think we could misunderstand each other.'
The blue smoke curled back from the ceiling in clouds. Then Torpenhow, insinuatingly--'Dick, is it a woman?'
'Be hanged if it's anything remotely resembling a woman; and if you begin to talk like that, I'll hire a red-brick studio with white paint trimmings, and begonias and petunias and blue Hungarias to play among three-and-sixpenny pot-palms, and I'll mount all my pics in aniline-dye plush plasters, and I'll invite every woman who maunders over what her guide-books tell her is Art, and you shall receive 'em, Torp,--in a snuff-brown velvet coat with yellow trousers and an orange tie. You'll like that?'
'Too thin, Dick. A better man than you once denied with cursing and swearing. You've overdone it, just as he did. It's no business of mine, of course, but it's comforting to think that somewhere under the stars there's saving up for you a tremendous thrashing. Whether it'll come from heaven or earth, I don't know, but it's bound to come and break you up a little. You want hammering.'
Dick shivered. 'All right,' said he. 'When this island is disintegrated, it will call for you.'
'I shall come round the corner and help to disintegrate it some more.
We're talking nonsense. Come along to a theatre.'?
