The Sport of Fate

Front matter

THE SPORT OF FATE THE SPORT OF FATE BV EICHAED DOWLING, AUTHOB OF "THE MYSTERY OF KILLABn," "THE WEIBD 8ISTEBS," ETC. In (&hxn liUttirus. VOL. I. LONDON : TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 1880. CHABLES DICKENS AND EVANS, OBYBTAL PALACE PRESS. TO MISS FILDES, IN TOKEN OP SINCERE FRIENDSHIP. CONTENTS. EED HANDS. CHAFTBB PAGE I. — THE TWELFTH OF JUNE .... 3 II. — CHARLES MALLARD'S LAST DRAUGHT . 14 III. — THE PICTURE 27 IV. "MISS WRAYWOOD, MR. MALLARD1' . 42 V. IN THE RAPIDS ..... 58 VI. "MORNING" 71 VII. RUNNING SMOOTH 84 VIII. FAREWELL 93 IX. NIGHT CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE X. — "gone OUT OF town!" . . ■ 116 XI. A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE . . .128 XII. — OSMOND BROCK'S DAUGHTER . .. . 138 XIII. IN THE FADING LIGHT .... 148 XIV. — THE WRITING ON THE WALL . i . 157 XV. — AUNT AND NEPHEW . . . .168 XVI.

CHRISTMAS EVE ON THE LAME . .178 XVII. FROM MAN TO FELLOW . . . .186 XVIII. CHRISTMAS ON THE THAMES . . .196 XIX. A LITTLE SUPPER AT BLITFY'S . . 209 xx. — "to the river I" .... 226 XXI. — "red stains on my HANDS." . . 238 xxii. — through the fog .... VOL. I, B CHAPTEE I. THE TWELFTH OF JUNE. " That Barlopp can paint flesh. I'd give my left hand to be able to paint flesh like that." He looked at his left hand, upon the thumb of which a dirty palette hung. Then he looked at the large photograph on the easel beside him, and sighed. "After all," he went on in a low voice, "the left hand has its uses, and if I can't paint flesh I can do backgrounds and drapery." There was a sneer at himself under his last words. After a long pause he rose, threw b down his palette, let his brushes fall on a stained rug lying beside him, and cried softly, in a tone of triumph : " And I can do what no other man in Craymore can — draw."

He raised himself up to his full height for a moment. A vague light came into his eyes. Soon he relapsed, sighed again, and took up his palette and brushes, and with a weary look, went on working at the background of the photograph. It was a large room, with very little furni ture in it. A few pieces of drapery hung from pegs ; there were three chairs, one small table, two easels, and an escritoire. Nothing cheerful appeared in the room. It had the necessary northern light, and con sequently looked dull and cold. The only window was at a good distance from the ground and rather small. The floor was not very care fully clean, and a dull sickly smell of bygone varnish, vapid turpentine and stale tobacco lingered disagreeably in the air. Nothing handsome was visible but the artist — Charles Mallard by name.

Chapter II. Charles Mallard's Last Draught

The city of Craymore is upwards of a hundred miles from London. It is old without being venerable or even dull. Fifty to sixty thousand people live within its municipal boundaries. It is clean and well-to-do, and unambitious. It is the centre of a fruitful country and the seat of a thriving manufacture. Many leagues of low hills and warm pasture lie between it and the sea. Beside it flows an idle little river, the Lame, in which lazy men fish and active women wash clothes. Two miles from Craymore, on a slope of gentle hills, stands the small town of West oake. It is no more than a suburb of Craymore, and many of the traders and manufacturers, whose places of business are in the city, live in substantial houses and pleasant villas built in and near the town. Charles Mallard was born at Craymore.

When a child he had shown a great taste for art. His father and mother at first did all they could to divert his mind from what they believed to be an idle and unprofitable pursuit. But the boy would not be denied, and in the end, after much pleading and protesting and threatening, his parents allowed him to become a student at the local school of design. In his sixteenth year, before he had been twelve months at school, his father died. A small annuity remained to the widow, and upon this she and the son depended solely, until the latter was twenty, when he accepted Mr. Poynts' offer of two pounds a-week, lately increased to three. Young Mallard had not spent all the four years at the school of art. He gave it up at the end of two. During those two years he gained some reputation as a draughtsman and an utter scorner of the South Kensington system.

"It is the ruin of art," he would say. " In five years it would kill the originality of an elephant." It is likely he did not mean to imply that the elephant is particularly in ventive, but that being tenacious of life, all his qualities are enduring. The years between his leaving school and going to Mr. Poynts' he spent in wandering among the sunny hills, or in the shady glens, or through the fruitful plains. He usually carried a sketch-book. Frequently he made studies of rocks, or peasants, or moss clad trees. Often he lay on his back for hours in some meadow of succulent grass, watchino the changes of light in the sky, from the pale gray of open day to the shrouded silver twi light of the summer night. When reproached for idleness, he smiled and made no answer, but to himself he said : " I can learn more in such an idle day than in a year of blinding drudgery at friezes from the Parthenon."

Through these years his inner life was a series of acute contrasts. At one time, carried away on the wTings of imagination, he found himself a painter of great pictures and the owner of an illustrious name ; at another time, plunged in the gloomiest depression over the narrowness of his present ways and the apparent impossibility of enlarging his resources. The fact that he was dependent upon his mother, and that he absorbed more than half her annuity, hung like a leaden chain upon his spirits. Not that his mother had ever hinted at what he considered his humiliating position. She had, on the contrary, always said that they had enough for both. When he spoke to her of the future he had in mind she looked sad. He was her only child, her only comfort, the one pleasant object on the slope of her declining life, and she had told him over and over again that she would rather he consented to remain as he was than leave her to follow ambition or fortune, however splendid.

Towards her he was always gentle and affectionate, and she declared to others that vol. i. c from the time she had been left with only him in the world, he never caused her one hour's serious uneasiness, except when he hinted at leaving her. His few companions said he possessed large capacity, a good heart, a keen sense of honour and manliness, and (or rather, but) an over scrupulous anxiety to keep within the strictest lines of right. An oppressively persistent habit of self justification clung to him. He was fond of digging up the deepest stratum of motive under every act of his own. Months after an occurrence in which he had taken part, and which had passed from the memory of others concerned in it, he would come back upon it, and explain something which had exercised a modifying influence on his position, and which had at the moment been overlooked.

If he believed himself to have been in the wrono-, he would apologise with disproportionate ardour. Upon one occasion, when a com panion had laughed at him for what he called his " circumstantial morality," he said : "My nature is such that I cannot afford to feel myself in the wrong. I have little religious instinct. I am a Pagan governing myself by a Christian code. I am utterly incapable of taking into account what others may think of me. But if I lose caste with myself I am lost." Although Craymore was a prosperous old city, largely given to manufacture, it had its quiet little love stories, its sedate little romances, its lively little scandals, just as if it was a brand-new city, with a new high pressure set of passions for its people, and the vigour of an initial swing in the whirl of its events.

It had its flirtations and its marriag;es, its jiltings and its divorces, its dark sad histories of irreparable wrong. It had careful eyes to spy out flaws, and sedulous tongues to ruin names. But with all its watchfulness — and it regarded very closely its handsome young men — it had seen little and could say little or nothingto the disadvantage of Charles Mallard. c He had never been in love. He had never even said gentle things to any girl. He had shunned the society of women. When his friends rallied him upon his indifference, he said : "I have kept indifferent because I stayed away. By nature I am dangerously inflam mable ; but by circumstances I cannot afford to catch fire now, and I intend not to catch fire until I can afford to burn." When he found himself once more alone on that twelfth of June he sat down and resumed his work.

He had lost nearly half an hour. It was necessary to make the most of his time. At a little before six he went downstairs. He found the porter putting up the shutters, and said to Mr. Poynts : "There are two hours of good daylight yet. I shall stay till eight in order to get on with that portrait." " Oh, thank you, Mr. Mallard. But, really, is there any necessity for your losing this beautiful evening ? " the old man asked, with beaming graciousness. "It isn't exactly necessary, but I want to get the thing out of hand. You know there are two others." He had a habit of frowning when he thought. His brows were knitted now. When he frowned his face became hard and utterly impassible. " So there are," exclaimed the proprietor cordially. " So there are, and I have to thank you for there being two.

Only for you there would have been but one." " Can I see the entry of those ? " he asked, still keeping his brows knit. " Certainly. If you go into the office the book-keeper will show it to you." "Thank you." In a few minutes he was once more back in his studio. Then the frown disappeared, and a dull subdued expression came into his eyes. He locked the door and lit a pipe. For a little while he stood at the table scribbling idly on a sheet of paper. As he did so he muttered : "'Mrs. Wraywood, Westoake,' and 'Miss Wraywood.' They must be Wraywood's wife and sister. He lives at Westoake, I believe. Lucky I know Wraywood." He fell into a reverie. Meanwhile the pencil moved over the paper without his being conscious of it. Presently he threw down the pencil with an exasperated gesture. " Lucky I know Wraywood !

" he cried scornfully. "Lucky for what or for whom? Charles Mallard, artist, with one hundred and fifty pounds a-year, the only luck that can befall you is that you take some good lively disease, and pitch up your life and your ambition and your everlasting yearnings all at once, and try your chance as a ghost, for you haven't any as a man." His frame shook and his face darkened. He grew calmer. He walked up and down smoking. He stood before the easel on which the photograph rested. " Look here," he said, addressing himself in a grave voice, " don't be a fool. Get on with your work. You often thought of such things before, and it did you only harm. You can never afford to fall in love, for you can never afford to marry. Get on with your work and go home to your mother — she'll be waiting tea."

A spasm passed through him. " Yes, my mother. But the other love — the wild love." He raised his eyes to the high window and then turned them with cruel deliberateness round the room until they finally rested on the portrait. With a hoarse sob he tossed his arms into the air, as though he were defending himself against a flight of deadly thoughts. In a moment the look of repression came back upon his face. He folded his arms tightly across his chest and pressed them close. The tumult gradually subsided and he cried : " Cured ! " His face became calm and a pitying smile stole into it. He shook his head at himself: "Mallard," he half laughed, "if that kind of fight could have killed you, you would have been a dead man long ago. Now should this Hebe of the northern vales steal in upon you, and sit down there, you would be just as much at your ease as if she were a lay figure or a model."

He refilled his pipe, sat at his ease, and hummed a tune, as he put in the vase and violet curtain at the back of the alderman whose photograph he was colouring. It was long after eight o'clock when he laid aside his palette and brushes. He went to the table to get his tobacco-pouch, and saw the piece of paper on which he had been scribbling. Taking it up he looked at it. In the centre was the figure of a tall girl, and underneath were written the words " Miss Wraywood." He started and examined the paper more closely. " I must have done this folly while I was romancing a while ago," he whispered softly. He drew the sketch nearer his eyes. One of the hands of the figure hung down by the side. The whole thing was a mere outline, with a few indications of where folds should be in the drapery.

The face had been merely blocked in. Insensibly his fingers caught up a pencil and he made a few rapid touches. The face and head grew into a likeness. He let the pencil fall and sighed sadly. Raising his tobacco-pouch, he shook him self. Then he muttered, as though to persuade himself that the occurrence was not unusual : " I've been at my old game, I see — making a design for a picture I shall never paint. The only surprising thing about this design is that there happened to be a clean sheet of paper knocking about for it." As a matter of habit he held the drawing with its face to the light to see if the figure was in plumb. With a cry he sprang back. Two figures appeared on the paper. One on the front, one on the back. The second was that of a man. He had drawn it a day or two before, and turned the paper with the pencilled side down.

This sketch was a ghastly jest. Beneath it appeared the words, " Charles Mallard's Last Draught." It represented him holding in his hand a cup with the word " Lethe " on it, while at his feet lay a broken bottle, one of the fragments of which was labelled with a death's head and cross-bones. The figure held the cup out at some distance from the mouth, as if in the act of making an elaborate sweep to the mouth. So far the coincidence was singular and startling. But what had made Charles Mallard cry out was that the figure of the girl stood close beside the man's. Her neck lay within the loop of his arm and the rim of the cup touched her lips ! He recovered almost instantly, laughed a forced laugh, as if he were trying to persuade a third person into the belief that he had not been affected by the sight.

Then he tore the paper half-way through ; stopped ; reflected a little while ; laughed, more naturally this time ; folded up the drawing carefully, and having put it in his pocket walked quickly home.

Chapter III. The

picture. Three days later Charles Mallard stood in his studio holding two large photographs in his hands. One was that of a low-sized woman ; the other that of a tall girl. The heads and hands of both were painted. The remainder of the surface was in the warm purple brown of photography. An expression of contempt occupied Mallard's face as he looked from one to the other. " That Barlopp can paint flesh," he said slowly, " but he can't paint spirit." Mallard let the two photographs fall on the table. He went on, " His eyes must be made of crockery ware and his nerves of leather. Is this all he can see in her ? Well, the establishment must be looked to. This would ruin our name, and in the end Poynts would be bankrupt, and I should be out of situation." As he drew to the end of these words his contempt for Barlopp faded, and in its place came scorn for his own position.

There was a knock at the door. " Come in." The porter entered. " A gentleman below wants to see you, sir." " Which did he ask for, John— Mr. Mallard or Mr. Poynts' drapery man ? " " For Mr. Mallard, sir." "Very good. Ask him to come up, if he's sober ; if he's drunk, help him up, John." " Yes, sir," said John gravely, and left the room. The artist sighed, placed the photograph of the girl on the easel, squeezed out some flake white on his dirty palette, took up his brushes, sighed again a little wearily, and sat down. Another knock. " Come in." A low-sized, stout, prosperous-looking man of about eight-and-thirty entered. His hair and beard and moustaches were light brown and rather thin. He had red-brown merry eyes and a dark dull complexion. It would be hard to find a pleasanter face. It was honest, cordial, sympathetic.

It seemed to announce the man's desire to live righteously and please himself and all those around him, and keep up his boyhood until ninety at least. "Mr. Mallard," he said, holding the door handle. His voice was deep. His tone and manner implied : " If you don't want me, I'm off ; but if you will let me, I'd like to stay and have a few words with you." The artist rose, turned towards the door, and exclaimed with a start : " Mr. Wraywood ! " " The same," said the visitor, with a good humoured apologetic sweep of his hat across his knees as he went over to the table. "My young people," he added, "have been here getting their photographs taken, and I thought I'd just step in and see how you are, and ask about the things. I hope you are well." " Very well, thank you," he answered with a little restraint.

"These are the photographs. Only the head and hands are painted as yet." "So I see. Very good, indeed ; very beautiful. A trifle better than nature, but, ha, ha, ha ! you artists are always flatterers." His laugh was that of a man of the world who rather admired little wickednesses. " I did not paint what you see. I do only the geranium-pots and bed-curtains. I think, however, I shall make a slight alteration in one of those heads." He took up the photo graph and looked long at it. What an artist gathers from one of these long looks is as surprising to the unskilled, as what a reader gathers from a page is to the unlettered. " I can see where the likeness is lost here, and I think I can put it right." " Ah !" sighed Mr. Wraywood, in confession of ignorance. " I don't know anything about art.

Of course I know a good likeness from a bad one. By the way, Mr. Mallard, you could confer a favour on me, if you would be good enough." " I should be very glad. What is it ? " "The other day my young people went to an auction and bought a heap of lumber. There's either a piece of oilcloth or a picture in the lot. I can't say which it is, as I know nothing about such matters. It's so black I can't see the subject. I think it's oilcloth. My wife says it/s a painting of a burning city, and a friend tells me it's a painting of carrots on a silver tray. Would you mind coming over and telling us what it really is, and what to do with it ? We don't like washing it." " Could you not manage to send it here ? " asked the artist, with' a start and a flush which he concealed by turning towards the easel.

" I am very seldom in Westoake. I am glued to this place until late every day." " Oh, come across to tea some evening. You can come and go in the 'bus ; there will be no one but Mrs. Wraywood, who will be very glad to see you." After a good deal of refusing on the one side and pressing on the other, Charles Mallard at length agreed to go over to Westoake and see the picture and drink Mrs. Wraywood's tea on that day week, and after a little more talk Mr. Wraywood left. Here was something for Mallard to think of. In the first place, of course, the picture, if a picture at all, was a daub. He settled this easy enough. But he was going to spend an evening in Wraywood's house. He would be introduced to Mrs. Wraywood, a most charming woman apparently. No doubt they were a worthy couple, and lived happily together.

No one was to be there but Mr. and Mrs. Wraywood. So far all was right. Yes, so far all was right. It would be the height of imprudence for him to go staring and gaping at a handsome girl — no, not hand some — that is, she was handsome to a great extent, and sweet beyond any extent he had ever seen before. Of course he would be exposing himself to a great danger by meeting such a girl in a pleasant room with gaslight and hangings, against which the great purity of her com plexion wTould seem like the petals of a white rose on a purple pansy, or a . By Jove ! he was becoming poetic ! One art is plenty to starve an average man ; two would starve a tortoise ! Evidently it was most likely there would be three only at Wraywood's that night week. So give over bothering about the matter. He took a penknife out of his pocket, whistled softly to himself, and proceeded to scrape off the head Barlopp had painted on Miss Wraywood's photograph.

He allowed the hands to remain, for he thought : " Although I have seen a picture by Titian, with great soul in one of the hands, I am not going to set myself up as a rival of Titian's in hands, only in faces, and Barlopp flesh is good enough for hands and the faces of aldermen." He sat down and began to paint the photograph. At the beginning he held a vol. I. D small photograph between his thumb and the palette. The smaller was a reduction of the larger, and the object was to furnish a black and white key to the ground covered with colour. As he warmed to his work, he threw the smaller photograph down, and painted " out of his head." Gradually he became excited. He saw a vision, and was in the first throes of the struggle to give it form. He bent low. He drew all his body together. Now his brush went swiftly and surely, as though an invisible and infallible spirit guided his hand.

Now his touches were feeble and uncertain, as though the light was bad, he could not see, and was guessing. His eyes seemed not to be concerned with the material surface before him, but fixed on an image that stood in a dim uncertain light far beyond. Pose, folds, colour, all were changed. An eye unaccustomed to the early stages of a picture would have seen only chaos in his work. Through that chaos Charles Mallard saw a glorious vision, and he was striving with all the skill of his body and all the passion of his soul to fix the subject of that vision on the surface before him. A good while before the daylight had gone he threw down his brushes muttering : " I can do no more to-day — but to-morrow ! " and having locked his studio and placed the key in his pocket, he stole home without saying a word to anyone and went early to bed.

Next morning he said : " Mother, I shall not be back to dinner nor to-night. I have work to do which will keep me away for a few days. I'll be home as soon as I can." He kissed her and went away. When he got to his painting-room he rang the bell. John the porter came. " John, I am going to do something which will not allow of my seeing anyone for a few days. I shall want you to bring me food every day. I will sleep here. Give this note to Mr. Poynts." When the man had gone he set to work d again. This day he paced the room and painted less continuously. He made a bed on the floor with drapery, and often lay down on this with his eyes shut, smoking. His excitement grew as the day wore on. John brought him dinner, but he never touched it. Now and then he rose up and tossed his arms over his head in grief or doubt or hope of ultimate triumph.

When the daylight began to wane he climbed to the high window and watched the changing of the northern sky until it was dark and the stars came out. Then he descended, ate something, and lay down. He could not sleep. In the silence and the gloom the picture he saw stood out in a blaze of light. Twice he got up, and having lighted a candle, looked long and eagerly at the work on the easel. The second time he clasped his hands above his head and moaned : " It will never come right ! It will never come right ! I can't believe it will. The colour is too poor and thin, and the figure too fleshy." Then his doubts passed, and folding his arms on his chest to control himself, he muttered in a hoarse voice : " But it may ! It may come right. You can never tell till nearly all is done. If it does come right it will be a picture.

A picture ! A picture ! I shall have painted one picture ! " In a while he thought "There is nothing wrong in this. I am not in love. In love at first sight. Bah ! No, she is only a girl wTho has inspired me with a beautiful thought. That is all. If I realise the thought, there is nothing further. If I fail, there is nothing further. A passage in a book might have started me on this picture." His mind ran on again : " How poor the girl seems beside my vision. She is a vapid abstraction ; it is a pregnant reality. Nature may make the form ; art creates the spirit. Nature gives the flowers ; art makes them feel and breathe. Nature fills the cups of the flowers with dew ; art turns them into tears. Nature makes women; art goddesses. Nature furnishes the hill and the pine and the lake ; art makes the hill and the pine and the lake worship their Creator."

At dawn he went to the window again, and watched the changing light. When it was full day he descended and painted for a while. Then he ate a little and rested and slept. Before the people were stirring, he un locked the door and descended. A shower bath stood halfway down. He braced himself with the cold water. At ten o'clock John brought him food. That day passed like the former one, only he was calmer. He had learned to master his enthusiasm, and instead of allowing; it to escape in violent gesture and rhapsody, he was turning it upon his work. Four other mornings passed, and he had not finished. Towards six o'clock on the evening of the sixth from the first morning, he stepped out of the studio, locked the door, and walked slowly and a little feebly downstairs. He was scarcely recognisable.

He had not shaved during the whole time, and the dark shaggy beard bristled on his chin. His eyes were bright and sunken, his cheeks hollow and pale. He tottered as he walked. His chest was contracted, his arms hung nervelessly by his side. He looked like one recovering from a fever or rescued from a famine-stricken ship. " As I told you in that note, Mr. Poynts," he said to the old man, who stared at him aghast, " I wanted to paint something. It is done, and I feel a little knocked up. I think I shall not come to-morrow." His voice, from weakness and want of use, sounded like a child's. "Good gracious, Mr. Mallard!" cried the old man, in a tone of surprise and sorrow, " you don't look well. You look very ill indeed. Do go home at once, and don't think of coming here until you are quite well.