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The cough and rattle had come as Maschka had rushed into the room. In ten seconds Andriaovsky had fallen back, dead. That same evening I began to make notes for Andriaovsky's "Life." On the following day, the last of the fourth series of the Martin Renards occupied me until I was thankful to get to bed.
I have spoken of Andriaovsky's contempt for such as had the conception of their work that it was something they "did" as distinct from something they "were"; and unless I succeed in making it plain that, not as a mere figure of speech and loose hyperbole, but starkly and literally, Andriaovsky was everything he did, my tale will be pointless.
It was a book of poems, and in making the designs for them Andriaovsky had certainly not found for himself. Almost any one of the "Art Shades," as he had called them, could have done the thing equally well, and I twinkled again. I did not propose to have much mercy on that.
This was Michael Andriaovsky, the Polish painter, who died four weeks ago. I knew the reason of Maschka's visit the moment she was announced. Even in the stressful moments of the funeral she had found time to whisper to me that she hoped to call upon me at an early date.
For any man, Sin is only mortal when it is Sin against that which he knows to be immortally true; and the things Andriaovsky knew to be immortally true were the things that he had gone down into the depths in order to bring forth and place upon his paper or canvas. These things are not for the perusal of many.
I had still retained his already cold hand; his brow had worked with that dreadful struggle; and his eyes had been closed. But suddenly he had opened them, and the next moment had sat up on his pillow. He had striven to draw his hand from mine. "Who are you?" he had suddenly demanded, not knowing me. I had come close to him. "You know me, Andriaovsky Harrison?" I had asked sorrowfully.
Then, with a start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that years before Andriaovsky had refused to sell me. The first check I experienced in the hitherto so easy flow of the "Life" came at the chapter that dealt with Andriaovsky's attitude towards "professionalism" in Art. He was inflexible on this point; there ought not to be professional artists.
I could have kicked myself that the fool had been perspicacious enough to see it, but that did not alter the fact. I saw that in the sense in which Andriaovsky understood Sin, I had sinned.... My only defence lay in the magnitude of my sin. I had sinned thoroughly, out-and-out, and with a will.
I was little better off than Andriaovsky at his very worst. I had read the first of the Martin Renards to him, by the way; the gigantic outburst of mirth with which he had received it had not encouraged me to read him a second. I wrote the others in secret. I wrote the things in the spring and summer of 1900; and by the last day of September I was confident that I had at last sold them.
Andriaovsky had appointed him his executor, and he had ever the air of suspecting that the appointment was going to be challenged. "A'm glad to be associated with ye in this melancholy duty, Harrison," he said. "Now we won't waste words. Miss Andriaovsky has told me precisely how matters stand.
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