I
I knew the reason of Maschka's visit the moment she was announced. Even in the stressful moments of the funeral she had found time to whisper to me that she hoped to call upon me at an early date. I dismissed the amanuensis to whom I was dictating the last story of the fourth series of Martin Renard, gave a few hasty instructions to my secretary, and told the servant to show Miss Andriaovsky into the drawing-room, to ask her to be so good as to excuse me for five minutes, to order tea at once, and then to bring my visitor up to the library.
A few minutes later she was shown into the room.
She was dressed in the same plainly cut costume of dead black she had worn at the funeral, and had pushed up her heavy veil over the close-fitting cap of black fur that accentuated her Sclavonic appearance. I noticed again with distress the pallor of her face and the bistred rings that weeks of nursing had put under her dark eyes. I noticed also her resemblance, in feature and stature, to her brother. I placed a chair for her; the tea-tray followed her in; and without more than a murmured greeting she peeled off her gloves and prepared to preside at the tray.
She had filled the cups, and I had handed her toast, before she spoke.
Then:
"I suppose you know what I've come about," she said.
I nodded.
"Long, long ago you promised it. Nobody else can do it. The only question is 'when.'"
"That's the only question," I agreed.
"We, naturally," she continued, after a glance in which her eyes mutely thanked me for my implied promise, "are anxious that it should be as soon as possible; but, of course—I shall quite understand—"
She gave a momentary glance round my library. I helped her out.
"You mean that I'm a very important person nowadays, and that you're afraid to trespass on my time. Never mind that. I shall find time for this. But tell me before we go any further exactly how you stand and precisely what it is you expect."
Briefly she did so. It did not in the least surprise me to learn that her brother had died penniless.
"And if you hadn't undertaken the 'Life,'" she said, "he might just as well not have worked in poverty all these years. You can, at least, see to his fame."
I nodded again gravely, and ruminated for a moment. Then I spoke.
"I can write it, fully and in detail, up to five years ago," I said. "You know what happened then. I tried my best to help him, but he never would let me. Tell me, Maschka, why he wouldn't sell me that portrait."
I knew instantly, from her quick confusion, that her brother had spoken to her about the portrait he had refused to sell me, and had probably told her the reason for his refusal. I watched her as she evaded the question as well as she could.
"You know how—queer—he was about who he sold his things to. And as for those five years in which you saw less of him, Schofield will tell you all you want to know."
I relinquished the point. "Who's Schofield?" I asked instead.
"He was a very good friend of Michael's—of both of us. You can talk quite freely to him. I want to say at the beginning that I should like him to be associated with you in this."
I don't know how I divined on the spot her relation to Schofield, whoever he was. She told me that he too was a painter.
"Michael thought very highly of his things," she said.
"I don't know them," I replied.
"You probably wouldn't," she returned….
But I caught the quick drop of her eyes from their brief excursion round my library, and I felt something within me stiffen a little. It did not need Maschka Andriaovsky to remind me that I had not attained my position without—let us say—splitting certain differences; the looseness of the expression can be corrected hereafter. Life consists very largely of compromises. You doubtless know my name, whichever country or hemisphere you happen to live in, as that of the creator of Martin Renard, the famous and popular detective; and I was not at that moment disposed to apologise, either to Maschka or Schofield or anybody else, for having written the stories at the bidding of a gaping public. The moment the public showed that it wanted something better I was prepared to give it. In the meantime, I sat in my very comfortable library, securely shielded from distress by my balance at my banker's.
"Well," I said after a moment, "let's see how we stand. And first as to what you're likely to get out of this. It goes without saying, of course, that by writing the 'Life' I can get you any amount of 'fame'—advertisement, newspaper talk, and all the things that, it struck me, Michael always treated with especial scorn. My name alone, I say, will do that. But for anything else I'm by no means so sure. You see," I explained, "it doesn't follow that because I can sell hundreds of thousands of… you know what… that I can sell anything I've a mind to sign." I said it, confident that she had not lived all those years with her brother without having learned the axiomatic nature of it. To my discomfiture, she began to talk like a callow student.
"I should have thought that it followed that if you could sell something—" she hesitated only for a moment, then courageously gave the other stuff its proper adjective, "—something rotten, you could have sold something good when you had the chance."
"Then if you thought that you were wrong," I replied briefly and concisely.
"Michael couldn't, of course," she said, putting Michael out of the question with a little wave of her hand, "because Michael was—I mean, Michael wasn't a business man. You are."
"I'm speaking as one," I replied. "I don't waste time in giving people what they don't want. That is business. I don't undertake your brother's 'Life' as a matter of business, but as an inestimable privilege. I repeat, it doesn't follow that the public will buy it."
"But—but—" she stammered, "the public will buy a Pill if they see your name on the testimonial!"
"A Pill—yes," I said sadly…. Genius and a Pill were, alas, different things. "But," I added more cheerfully, "you can never tell what the public will do. They might buy it—there's no telling except by trying—"
"Well, Schofield thinks they will," she informed me with decision.
"I dare say he does, if he's an artist. They mostly do," I replied.
"He doesn't think Michael will ever be popular," she emphasised the adjective slightly, "but he does think he has a considerable following if they could only be discovered."
I sighed. All artists think that. They will accept any compromise except the one that is offered to them…. I tried to explain to Maschka that in this world we have to stand to the chances of all or nothing.
"You've got to be one thing or the other—I don't know that it matters very much which," I said. "There's Michael's way, and there's… mine. That's all. However, we'll try it. All you can say to me, and more, I'll say to a publisher for you. But he'll probably wink at me."
For a moment she was silent. Then she said: "Schofield rather fancies one publisher."
"Oh? Who's he?" I asked.
She mentioned a name. If I knew anything at all of business she might as well have offered The Life of Michael Andriaovsky to The Religious Tract Society at once….
"Hm!… And has Mr. Schofield any other suggestions?" I inquired.
He had. Several. I saw that Schofield's position would have to be defined before we went any further.
"Hm!" I said again. "Well, I shall have to rely on Schofield for those five years in which I saw little of Michael; but unless Schofield knows more of publishing than I do, and can enforce a better contract and a larger sum on account than I can, I really think, Maschka, that you'll do better to leave things to me. For one thing, it's only fair to me. My name hasn't much of an artistic value nowadays, but it has a very considerable commercial one, and my worth to publishers isn't as a writer of the Lives of Geniuses."
I could see she didn't like it; but that couldn't be helped. It had to be so. Then, as we sat for a time in silence over the fire, I noticed again how like her brother she was. She was not, it was true, much like him as he had been on that last visit of mine to him … and I sighed as I remembered that visit. The dreadful scene had come back to me….
On account, I suppose, of the divergence of our paths, I had not even heard of his illness until almost the finish. Immediately I had hastened to the Hampstead "Home," only to find him already in the agony. He had not been too far gone to recognise me, however, for he had muttered something brokenly about "knowing better," that a spasm had interrupted. Besides myself, only Maschka had been there; and I had been thankful for the summons that had called her for a moment out of the room. I had still retained his already cold hand; his brow had worked with that dreadful struggle; and his eyes had been closed.
But suddenly he had opened them, and the next moment had sat up on his pillow. He had striven to draw his hand from mine.
"Who are you?" he had suddenly demanded, not knowing me.
I had come close to him. "You know me, Andriaovsky—Harrison?" I had asked sorrowfully.
I had been on the point of repeating my name but suddenly, after holding my eyes for a moment with a look the profundity and familiarity of which I cannot express, he had broken into the most ghastly haunting laugh I have ever heard.
"Harrison?" the words had broken throatily from him…. "Oh yes; I know you!… You shall very soon know that I know you if… if…"
The cough and rattle had come as Maschka had rushed into the room. In ten seconds Andriaovsky had fallen back, dead.