A Comedy of Masks: A Novel

by Ernest Christopher Dowson; Arthur Moore

Margot was already provided for, even handsomely: in that respect, at least, her first adopted father had left no void for his successor to fill.

So again he shrugged his shoulders. And upon that evening, for the first time since Rainham's death, he dined, more solitary and more silent than ever, at his familiar table at Brodonowski's. He found that, after all, his nervous anticipation of inconvenient protestations of sympathy was not fulfilled; there were not many men who knew him more than by sight at Brodonowski's, and the few of his old associates who were there had the good sense to exhibit nothing extraordinary in their demeanour towards him. Only they were a little less wildly humorous than of old, and more forbearing in their sallies; the conversation died out for an instant as he made his way quickly, with the faintest sign of recognition, through their midst—and that was all.

Rainham's death had affected some of them for a few days perhaps, but it had not the shock of the unexpected; they chiefly wondered that he had dragged his life through so cruel a winter. And his close alliance with Oswyn had, as a natural consequence, debarred him from a real intimacy with any of the other men, who, for the most part younger, cultivated different friendships and different pursuits.

They had missed Oswyn during his seclusion of the last few weeks; he was so essentially the presiding, silent genius of the place—a man to be pointed out to new-comers, half ironically, as the greatest, most deeply injured, of them all; the possessor of a talent unapproached and unappreciated. They felt that his presence lent a distinction to the dingy resort which it otherwise frequently lacked: and he had come to be so far regarded as a permanent institution, of an almost official nature, that even on the coldest nights his chair by the fireside had remained untenanted.

When the next morning came, Oswyn felt desperately inclined to break the promise which Mosenthal had, with some difficulty, exacted from him, and to keep far from Bond Street and the crowd who even then were assembling to cast their careless glances and light words at the work of his life; it was only the fear of the taint of cowardice, and a certain perversity, which induced him eventually to present himself within the gallery rather late in the afternoon.

As he entered the room, looking about him with a kind of challenge, many eyes were turned upon him (for people go to private views not to see pictures—that is generally impossible—but to see and be seen of men), but few had any suspicion that this strange man, with the shabby, old-fashioned apparel, and expression half nervous, half defiant, was the painter whose pictures they were pretending to criticise.

Very few of those present—hardly half a dozen perhaps—knew him even by sight; and while his evident disregard for social convention marked him, for the discerning observer, as a person of probably artistic distinction, the general conjecture set him down, not as a painter—he did not seem to be of that type—but as a man of letters—probably a maker of obscure verse.

When he had mastered the first wild impulse which prompted him to tear his pictures down, to turn their faces to the wall—anything to hide them from this smiling, languid, well-dressed crowd—and resigned himself to observation, he saw that Mosenthal was beaming at him complacently, through the massive gold spectacles which adorned and modified the bridge of his compromising nose, from his seat behind the table, where information as to the prices of the exhibits could be obtained.

There were exactly forty drawings and paintings to be seen upon the sparsely-covered walls, which had been draped for the occasion with coarsely-woven linen of a dull olive-green, and about half of these were drawings and studies, small in point of size, executed in chalk and pastels.

The greater part of these represented ordinary scenes of London outdoor life—a deserted corner of Kensington Gardens, with tall soot-blackened trees lifting their stately tracery of dark branches into the sky; a reach of the wide, muddy river, with a gaunt bridge looming through the fog; a gin-palace at night time, with garish lamps shining out upon the wet streets and crouching beggars.