It was one of the series of summer evenings on which, according to the cards which had been so widely circulated, Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark were "at home" to their friends and to their friends' friends; and Rainham, who was a late arrival at the elaborate house in Grove Road, was able after a time to recognise many familiar faces, some of them almost forgotten, among those who had elected to be present. The rooms, in spite of the outlet afforded by the garden, were all surprisingly full; and after a hurried exchange of greetings, which Eve's duties as hostess had compelled her to curtail, he had passed through a jungle of brilliant toilettes and unfamiliar figures into the newly-built, bright studio, where he had been told that he would find his friend. He had abundant leisure to corroborate the first impression of a splendour for which he was hardly prepared, which had seized him when he entered the hall and surrendered his coat to a courteous servant in livery, before Lightmark, radiant and flushed with success, singled him out in the corner to which he had retreated in loneliness.
"So glad to see you, old man! we were hoping you would turn up. Better late than never. Isn't it a crush? I assure you our evenings are becoming quite an institution. You will find scores of people you know here. Excuse my leaving you. Not much like the old studio days, eh? Afternoon tea with Copal's cups and saucers, and Mrs. Thingumy's tea-cakes. Your friend Lady Garnett is here somewhere—I'll be shot if I know where. Try the garden; you can get out this way. See you again later."
"All right, Dick," he answered with equanimity, smiling with a little inward amusement; "you look after your people. I will find my way about."
As he made his way discreetly among the little groups of people who strolled processionally along the gravel walks and beneath the trees, or disposed themselves in basket chairs upon the lawn, feeling himself vaguely exhilarated by the not too abstruse music of the posturing fiddlers, his eyes caressed by the soft glow of the Japanese lanterns, strung like antique jewelled necklets against the almost tangible blackness of the night, he found himself listening with an half-malicious amusement to the commonplace of the conversational formulæ affected by the young world of society, the well-worn, patched-up questions, the anticipated answers. It was very little changed since the time when he had not yet emancipated himself from the dreary bondage of such functions. It was croquet then, lawn-tennis now; for the rest only the names were different. Presently he encountered McAllister, a solitary wanderer like himself, and they found themselves seats before long in the darkest corner of the garden, where a few chairs had been placed, outside the radius of the lanterns, underneath a weeping willow.
"And they say painting doesn't pay," said the Scotchman, extending his long hands comprehensively, with a quiet chuckle. "And I'm not saying that it does, mind you, when a man has notions like that queer, cantankerous devil Oswyn. He wouldn't make anything pay in this world. But if a man's clever and canny, and has the sense to see on which side his bread's buttered … why, it's just easier than nothing. And to think that the laddie isn't even an Associate."
"Yes. I suppose he's getting on pretty well," suggested Rainham, with a lazy enjoyment of this frank worldliness.
"Getting on! Doesn't it look like it? Isn't he entertaining his friends like—like a Rothschild? You know, of course, that he has sold his Academy picture, and next year's as well—and four figures for each of them?"
"Yes; and he's commissioned to paint a life-size portrait of the Hereditary Grand-Duchess of Oberschnitzelsteinwurst—an undertaking, by the way, for which I don't envy him. Oh, Dick's all right! What have you got in the Academy this year, by the way? I'm ashamed to say I haven't been there yet."
"You haven't! But you have seen Lightmark's picture? No? Well, it's a fine thing, and just as clever as—— But, mind you, I'm not prepared to say that Oswyn wouldn't have made something better out of it."
"Yes," said Rainham slowly, with the chill of the old misgiving about his heart, as he remembered the stormy encounter at the dock, with the haunting shadow of doubt in his mind, laboriously dismissed as an offence against his loyalty. "It seems to me that Oswyn has more real genius in his little finger than Dick has in his whole body; I am sure of it. It was a pity that they should both have chosen the same subject, especially as their ideas, as to colour and treatment and so on, are so much the same. But, of course, Dick had a perfect right to finish and exhibit his picture, even if he knew that Oswyn was thinking of the same thing."