CHAPTER XIV
Which has to do with the Fascination of Naughtiness
Doome’s studio became the talk of the town.
Who, that is Who, has not sat therein?
It came to be a part of the great Social Function to have the entrance to this handsome room.
The rich tapestries that hung the walls, the glowing colour and the beauty of the furnishments were held in restraint by the chastening, somewhat religious, atmosphere that made the whisper of wickedness add such a mysterious charm to his habitation as it did to the attraction of the dark-souled mysterious Doome himself. No one knew a single vice against the slender handsome youth of the pale classic features and the black hair and immaculate dress; but it was said that things were said. And he was too charmingly delightful—and just a little alarming. Thus gossip wagged an artful tongue.
Dingy-looking weak-eyed journalists of the inferior press sneered in unsigned paragraphs of rancid English at his effeminacy, hinting at unmentionable sins—who, had he struck them, would have thought a horse had kicked them—he, whose only agony was that they should belittle him with their praise. Rude sporting men, that passed their virile lives gazing at horses galloping, said he wanted kicking. None kicked him.
Perhaps the great church candlesticks that rose in massive wrought brass from the dark stained floor at the ends and by the sides of the large room, holding aloft enormous candles half way to the high ceiling, struck the religious note. Or it may have been the exquisitely rich image of the Mary which stood on the mantel amongst the glowing splendid nudes. But the yawning accents of the most garrulous society babbler sank to a whisper on entrance. Nay, the most brilliant rakes had been known to lower their strutting voices on coming into this room. The faculty of reverence lies dormant in the cynic as in the fool.
Nobody had been known to see Doome at work. It was said that some beautiful women could have said things, and they would. But they would not. Yet his exquisite craftsmanship, the wondrous musical rhythm of his line and the quaint and rather morbid fancy of the subjects that came from his pen, together with a certain uncanniness of imagination, continued to pour forth masterpieces in black and white, startling the world of art and delighting the lovers of his genius.
It was significantly whispered that he never worked except at dead of night, with the great candles lit, and all the old-world glass lustres that hung from the ceiling aglow with a hundred lights; it was then, said the traffickers in scandal, he came out to the practice of his art in a silken dressing-gown—the most beautiful woman of London sitting to him to snatch a little of immortality.