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And I must repeat, and repeat again, and yet repeat, that in that hour Andriaovsky was immanent about me, in the whole of me, in the last fibre and cell of me, in all my thoughts, from my consciousness that I was sitting there at my own writing-table to my conception of God Himself.
I dismissed the amanuensis to whom I was dictating the last story of the fourth series of Martin Renard, gave a few hasty instructions to my secretary, and told the servant to show Miss Andriaovsky into the drawing-room, to ask her to be so good as to excuse me for five minutes, to order tea at once, and then to bring my visitor up to the library. A few minutes later she was shown into the room.
I worked for an hour; and then, for the purpose of making yet other notes, I rose, crossed the room, and took down the three or four illustrated books to which, in the earlier part of his career, Andriaovsky had put his name. I carried them to the table, and twinkled as I opened the first of them.
The light still shone within its pearly shade, and in the penumbra of its shadow the portrait of Andriaovsky occupied its accustomed place. About me were my papers, and my pen lay where it had fallen from my hand. At first I did not look at my papers. I merely saw that the uppermost of them was written on. But presently I took it up, and looked at it stupidly.
It was a sketch of Schofield's, imitative, deplorable, a dreadful show-up of incapacity. Well enough "drawn," in a sense, it was ... and I remembered how Andriaovsky had ever urged that "drawing," of itself, did not exist. I winked at the portrait. I saw his point.
But I'm going to tell the truth about it. I know better, you know...." Chancing, before I turned in that night, to reopen one of his folios, I came across a drawing, there by accident, I don't doubt, that confirmed me in my suspicion that Andriaovsky had had his quiet joke with Schofield, Hallard, Connolly and Co.
It did not need Maschka Andriaovsky to remind me that I had not attained my position without let us say splitting certain differences; the looseness of the expression can be corrected hereafter. Life consists very largely of compromises.
The worst of it was, however, that I had begun dimly to suspect that the Lancastrian had hit at least one nail on the head. "Your artistic soul's only to be saved by writing poor Michael's 'Life," he had informed me... and it was truer than I found it pleasant to believe. Perhaps, after all, my first duty was not to Andriaovsky, but to myself.
It was to nothing more than a glance, swift and momentary, directed by Andriaovsky to myself while the others had talked, that I traced this desire to see more of the little Polish painter; but a glance derives its import from the circumstance under which it is given.
So beautifully was the thing running that I had had the idle fancy of some actual urge from Andriaovsky himself; and each night, before sitting down to work, I set his portrait at my desk's end, as if it had been some kind of an observance. The most beautiful result of all was, that I felt what I had not felt for five years that I too was not "doing" my work, but actually living and being it.
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