He had choice of all the races of the East and West for studies, and the advantage of seeing his subjects under the influence of strong excitement, at the gaming-tables, saloons, dancing-hells, and elsewhere. For recreation there was the straight vista of the Canal, the blazing sands, the procession of shipping, and the white hospitals where the English soldiers lay. He strove to set down in black and white and colour all that Providence sent him, and when that supply was ended sought about for fresh material. It was a fascinating employment, but it ran away with his money, and he had drawn in advance the hundred and twenty pounds to which he was entitled yearly. “Now I shall have to work and starve!” thought he, and was addressing himself to this new fate when a mysterious telegram arrived from Torpenhow in England, which said, “Come back, quick; you have caught on. Come.”
A large smile overspread his face. “So soon! that's a good hearing,” said he to himself. “There will be an orgy tonight. I'll stand or fall by my luck. Faith, it's time it came!” He deposited half of his funds in the hands of his well-known friends Monsieur and Madame Binat, and ordered himself a Zanzibar dance of the finest. Monsieur Binat was shaking with drink, but Madame smiles sympathetically—“Monsieur needs a chair, of course, and of course Monsieur will sketch; Monsieur amuses himself strangely.”
Binat raised a blue-white face from a cot in the inner room. “I understand,” he quavered. “We all know Monsieur. Monsieur is an artist, as I have been.” Dick nodded. “In the end,” said Binat, with gravity, “Monsieur will descend alive into hell, as I have descended.” And he laughed.
“You must come to the dance, too,” said Dick; “I shall want you.”
“For my face? I knew it would be so. For my face? My God! and for my degradation so tremendous! I will not. Take him away. He is a devil. Or at least do thou, Celeste, demand of him more.” The excellent Binat began to kick and scream.
“All things are for sale in Port Said,” said Madame. “If my husband comes it will be so much more. Eh, how you call 'alf a sovereign.”
The money was paid, and the mad dance was held at night in a walled courtyard at the back of Madame Binat's house. The lady herself, in faded mauve silk always about to slide from her yellow shoulders, played the piano, and to the tin-pot music of a Western waltz the naked Zanzibari girls danced furiously by the light of kerosene lamps. Binat sat upon a chair and stared with eyes that saw nothing, till the whirl of the dance and the clang of the rattling piano stole into the drink that took the place of blood in his veins, and his face glistened. Dick took him by the chin brutally and turned that face to the light. Madame Binat looked over her shoulder and smiled with many teeth. Dick leaned against the wall and sketched for an hour, till the kerosene lamps began to smell, and the girls threw themselves panting on the hard-beaten ground. Then he shut his book with a snap and moved away, Binat plucking feebly at his elbow. “Show me,” he whimpered. “I too was once an artist, even I!” Dick showed him the rough sketch. “Am I that?” he screamed. “Will you take that away with you and show all the world that it is I,—Binat?” He moaned and wept.
“Monsieur has paid for all,” said Madame. “To the pleasure of seeing Monsieur again.”
The courtyard gate shut, and Dick hurried up the sandy street to the nearest gambling-hell, where he was well known. “If the luck holds, it's an omen; if I lose, I must stay here.” He placed his money picturesquely about the board, hardly daring to look at what he did. The luck held.
Three turns of the wheel left him richer by twenty pounds, and he went down to the shipping to make friends with the captain of a decayed cargo-steamer, who landed him in London with fewer pounds in his pocket than he cared to think about.