The Mis-rule of Three
CHAPTER I.
THEY DISCUSS THE GIRL
The Diggings were in a street somewhere off Tottenham Court Road, in a tall, old-fashioned, roomy house which had seen its best days, but which still made a valiant attempt to hold its own in the respectable class in a neighbourhood where respectability is not exactly rampant.
For dingy foreigners of the undesirable class abound exceedingly in those parts, and undesirables of home growth are not unknown there. Indeed, individuals of both these types did get in, now and then, within the hospitable shelter of No. 46 itself, in spite of the anxiety of Mrs Inkersole, the landlady, to preserve the high tone of the house.
But whoever might occupy the ground floor and the first floor of No. 46, whoever might enjoy the solid mahogany and second-hand chenille curtains of the former, or bask in the luxury of alleged Sheraton upholstered in vivid plush and brocade in the latter, the historical Diggings on the second floor remained for month after month in the possession of the famous Three, who were known among the landlady’s family and servants as “The gentlemen.”
Not only did “the gentlemen” occupy the two rooms which constituted the second floor, but they overflowed upwards into two of the small apartments of the rabbit warren which is always to be found on the upper floors of the typical London lodging-house. One of these small upper rooms belonged to Bartlett Bayre, a tall, thin, dark-skinned, black-haired young man, who was a clerk at Somerset House in the first place, and a struggling writer of loftiest ambition but as yet very indifferent success in the second. His room was remarkable for great outward neatness, though the internal condition of the wardrobe and chest of drawers left much to be desired in the way of order.
The little room next to Bayre’s was occupied by Ted Southerley, a big, broad, stolid, red-faced Northerner, who was “on” two or three papers of no world-wide circulation and with no very certain prospects, and on one which actually paid its way and afforded a modest pittance to its most energetic if, perhaps, slightly commonplace contributor.
The third member of the confraternity was a painter, to whom neither the Academy nor the New Gallery had as yet opened its doors. As the happy possessor of a small allowance from home, which enabled him to enjoy the luxury of being idle and the further luxury of pretending to be very busy at the same time, Jan Repton occupied the place of honour among the three friends: that is to say, he had the back room on the second floor all to himself as combined studio and bedroom. This apartment, therefore, offered a picturesque combination; an easel being placed near the window for the benefit of the north light, while a small bedstead stood in one corner, and a platform for a model occupied the place of honour in the middle of the room. The bedstead was used by day for books, newspapers and parcels of various kinds. The dressing-table made a convenient hat and coat stand; while the washstand was rendered picturesque with a display of palettes, canvases, paint-brushes, and all the paraphernalia of the artist’s profession.
On occasions of state, when friends or cousins from the country were to be entertained, such choice bits of this outfit as seemed adapted to the purposes of the picturesque were transferred to the sitting-room in the front, together with the easel containing the picture upon which Repton was engaged, the model platform and a few bits of cheap brocade, remnants bought at drapers’ sales, to be thrown at random across the well-worn and springless sofa and over the backs of the lodging-house chairs. Also, on these occasions, the solid square table, which would then have been particularly useful, was thrust into the bedroom at the back, so that the visitors might have their tea uncomfortably in corners, on their own laps, in what was felt to be the orthodox studio fashion.
Bayre grumbled on these occasions, objecting to this “faking up” of an unreal atmosphere of artistic luxury to which they were unaccustomed. Ted Southerley growled more openly at the unnecessary discomfort the plan entailed. But Jan Repton was inexorable. Art was superior to all things else: and the artistic atmosphere, according to him, “gave a tone,” which he was not going to sacrifice for any utilitarian whims of “you two fellows.”