CHAPTER XXIII.
GOOD-BY, AND NOT ADIEU
Leslie's heart seemed to stand still as she listened to her father's excited words. What should she do? she asked herself. Should she tell him that she had deceived him, that the message from the picture dealer was a mere subterfuge, a trick to get him and her up to town?
But she could not tell him this without explaining fully, without disclosing the whole story of her love for Yorke and the deceit he had practiced on her, and she shrank from the ordeal as one shrinks from fire.
She stood pale and trembling, her hands writhing together, her brain swimming, watching her father as he hurried to and fro picking up some article and putting it down again in another place under the impression that he was packing.
"Oh, papa," she faltered out at last, "don't go! Do not go. Write and – and ask. Oh, I implore you not to go!"
Francis Lisle stopped in his flurried fidgeting about the room, and stared at her with impatient annoyance.
"My dear Leslie, have you taken leave of your senses?" he exclaimed. "You look half distraught."
"I am, I am! Ah, if you only knew!" she almost sobbed.
"Knew what?" he demanded irritably. "What is it you are talking about! Any one would think we were going to – to Australia instead of only to London! And not go? Good heavens, why should we not go? I tell you this is one of the first dealers in London, and – and it is the great opening I have been waiting for, expecting all my life – ."
It was unendurable. She went to him and put her arm round his neck and let her head fall on his shoulder.
"Oh, papa, papa! Do not be too confident, too hopeful. You – you may be disappointed! Life is full of disappointment – ." Her voice broke. "You may be sorry that you have gone up. Write – let me write to this dealer – ."
He put her from him almost roughly.
"You are talking nonsense!" he said. "Sheer nonsense. Why should this dealer write to me and ask me to come up at once – at once, mind – unless he had some important commission for me?"
She knew why, but she could not answer. She dared not. She dreaded the effect of the shock which the disclosure, the disappointment would cause him. He was trembling with excitement as it was, and the reaction would be more than he could endure.
"There," he said with an attempt at soothing her, "I can understand your being upset and unnerved. It is only natural. I – even I – am a little – er – flurried. But do collect yourself, and get ready. We shall go up by the evening train. Take all our clothes, for we may be up some time. I can't tell what this dealer may want, or – or where he may send me. There, do collect yourself and get ready. Wait; give me a little brandy and water. The suddenness of this – this change in our fortunes has agitated me."
She got him some weak brandy and water, and she noticed as he drank it how his hand shook.
Then she stole up to her own room and began to pack, mechanically, like one in a dream.
Gradually she began to realize that after all it was better perhaps that they should leave Portmaris. Yorke – the mere passing of his name across her mind caused her a pang – might come down after her when he found that she had not gone to London and sent him her address, and she felt that a meeting with him would nearly kill her. At all costs that must be avoided. In her heart throbbed only one prayer; that, while life lasted, she might be spared the agony of seeing his face, hearing his voice again.
She finished her preparations for herself and her father, and went downstairs and helped him pack the absurd and worthless canvases; then she went out to say good-by to the old place.
Something, a presentment as strong as certainty, told her that she was indeed saying good-by and not adieu.
She wandered along the quay and stood looking sadly at the breakwater against which she had sat when Ralph Duncombe had declared his love and given her his ring; on which Yorke had been lying the night she and he had gone for a sail. Was it only a few weeks, or years ago that all this had happened to her?
There were some children on the quay, the children who had learned to love her, and amongst them the mite she had held in her arms the morning Yorke had asked her to be his wife. They clustered around her as usual, and she had hard work to keep the tears from her eyes – they were in her voice – as she kissed them.
"'Oo coming back soon, Mith Lethlie?" lisped Trottie, her favorite; and Leslie murmured, Yes, she would come back soon.
When she got back to Sea View, she found her father ready to start, and in an impatient anxiety to do so.
"We are going to London on important business, Mrs. Merrick," Leslie heard him saying to Mrs. Merrick, "Most important business. I – er – anticipate a change in our circumstances; a great change. The world has at last awakened to the fact that my pictures are not – er – without merit," he laughed with a kind of bombastic modesty. "Oh, yes, we shall come back to our old friends, Mrs. Merrick. We shall not forget Sea View, and – er – if I am not mistaken the world of art will not forget it. Some day, possibly, Sea View will become celebrated as the temporary residence of one of England's first artists; eh, Leslie?" and he smiled at her with a childish conceit.
Mrs. Merrick, not understanding in the least, smiled and curtseyed.
"I'm sure we're very sorry to lose you, sir, and Miss Leslie especially. I don't know what Portmaris will do without her, that I don't. We shall be quite dull now for a bit, for Mr. Temple, the crippled gentleman, has gone off to-day. You will be sure and send me your address?"
"Yes, yes," said Francis Lisle, "and – er – if we hear of anyone wanting clean and comfortable sea-side lodgings, we shall certainly remember to recommend you, Mrs. Merrick."
He went off in the broken down fly like a prince with his canvases piled round him, and oblivious of everything but them.
During the journey up to town he spoke very little, but sat in his corner looking out of the window, a smile of self-satisfaction every now and then passing over his thin, worn face.
"I shouldn't be surprised, Leslie," he said once, "if this should prove to be the last time we travel third class. I shall ask, and no doubt obtain, a fair price for my pictures, and we shall at last – at last – be rich enough to afford a little luxury. They say that everything comes to him who can wait, and I think I have waited long enough, long enough!"
Leslie's pale face flushed, and her conscience tortured her, but she could not summon up courage to tell him the truth.
They reached town late in the summer evening, and Leslie calling a cab told the man to drive to a house in Torrington square, at which they had stayed on previous visits to London.
Torrington Square is a quiet secluded spot in the great metropolis. It is central, and yet retired. Nearly every house is let in apartments, and the square is the favorite residence of the journalists and artists who pay occasional visits to London.
The landlady of No. 23 received Leslie and her father as if they were old friends instead of transient lodgers, and she expressed her concern at the appearance of Mr. Lisle.
"He don't look well, Miss Lisle," she said in a stage whisper, as they went in with their baggage. "Been in the country, too! Ah, I often says there's no place like London for health. And you, too, begging your pardon, miss, don't look too rosy. What you want is brightening up, and there's no place like London for brightening up, that I will say."
Leslie smiled sadly. She knew that she looked pale and wan, but it hurt her to hear that her father was not looking well.
She got him to bed early, but directly after breakfast he was all anxiety to go down to the picture dealer who had brought him to town.
"Can I not go alone, dear, while you rest?" she said. But he scouted the suggestion.
"No, no, I will go. Women are all very well, but a man is needed for business of this kind. Get some of the best of my pictures together, and we will go in a cab."
Leslie got ready, and all the time she was putting on her outdoor things she thought of the arrangement with Yorke. She was to have sent him her address to the Dorchester Club. He was waiting for it now, expecting it every minute. She could imagine his impatience, could picture to herself how he would walk up and down fuming for the telegram.
With a heavy heart she tied up the least ridiculous of her father's pictures and sent out for a cab, and told the man to drive to Bond Street, to the picture dealer's.
A hectic flush burned in Francis Lisle's thin cheeks, and Leslie saw his lips move as if he were speaking to himself, telling himself that Fame and Prosperity were awaiting him. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! If she had not consented to deceive her father she would not now be in this awful strait; she was actually leading him to the bitterest disappointment of his life.
There are picture dealers and picture dealers. Mr. Arnheim, of Bond Street, is one of the best known men and the most respected. Many an artist now famous and wealthy owes his first step up the ladder to Mr. Arnheim. He will buy anything that shows promise, and for great works will give as much and more than a private purchaser. His judgment is almost infallible, and to be spoken well of by Arnheim is to have a passport to artistic fame. The cab drew up at his house, which was near the corner in one of the turnings out of Bond Street, and had nothing about it to indicate the nature of his business save and excepting a very small brass plate with "H. Arnheim" on it.
A page boy opened the door in response to Leslie's ring, and, on learning her name, ushered her and her father upstairs into a room hung round with pictures, and, giving them chairs, disappeared through a door in a partition which seemed to screen off a kind of office.
Leslie's heart beat apprehensively, and her face grew paler, but Francis Lisle looked round with a kind of suppressed exultation.
"There are examples of some of our best known artists here, Leslie," he said in a voice quavering with excitement. "There's one of so-and-so's," he mentioned the name, "and that is Sir Frederick's. This Mr. Arnheim is one of the first, the first dealers in the world, and never makes a mistake. Never! He would not have sent for me unless he had seen some of my pictures, and meant taking me up, as they call it."
"Oh, do not be too buoyed up, papa," she murmured in an agony of shame and remorse. "If it should not be so, if there should be some mistake. Oh, if you had let me come alone."
"Mistake? What can you mean, Leslie?" he responded almost angrily. "There is no mistake, can be none. Anyone would think you doubted my – my ability, my artistic capacity."
"Hush, hush!" she whispered, for he had raised his voice unconsciously, and she heard footsteps approaching.
The next moment the door in the partition opened, and a short, stout man with closely cropped hair of silvery white, and small shrewd eyes, entered the room or gallery.
He bowed and looked at them keenly, and it seemed to Leslie that his glance rested longer upon her than on her father.
"Mr. Lisle?" he said.
Francis Lisle rose and held out his hand in a stately kind of way, as if he were Peter Paul Rubens receiving a deputation.
"That is my name, sir," he said, with a kind of kingly affability, "and I am here in obedience to your summons."
CHAPTER XXIV.
"MAD AS A HATTER!"
Mr. Arnheim looked rather puzzled for a moment, then he looked as if he remembered.
"Oh, yes, yes, Mr. Lisle," he said, with a slightly foreign accent; he was German. "I remember – ."
"You sent for me, doubtless, to make arrangements for the inclusion of some of my pictures in your coming exhibition," said Francis Lisle in a nervously pompous voice, which quivered with suppressed excitement and importance.
"Not exact – ," began Mr. Arnheim, but he happened to glance at Leslie, and something in her pale, wan face stopped him. He was a shrewd man, and the anxiety of the daughter of the half pompous, half frightened creature before him touched him.
"Possibly, possibly, Mr. – er – Lisle," he said. "But my reason for communicating with you was the fact that I had been requested by – " he was going to say Lord Auchester, but he glanced at Leslie's face again, and seeing the imploring expression on it, faltered a moment, then went on suavely – "by a valued client of mine to procure a work by your hand."
Francis Lisle's face fell for a moment, then it brightened again.
"A commission?" he said. "Yes, yes. May I ask the name of your client?"
Mr. Arnheim opened his lips to give the name, but once again met the imploring gaze of the sweet eyes, and kept the name back.
"It is not usual to give our clients' names, Mr. Lisle," he said with an affectation of shrewdness. "We dealers are business men pure and simple, and are never too ready with information that may injure us. I hope you will consider it sufficient that a gentleman has made inquiries after some work of yours, and – er – be prepared to come to terms with me. Of course, I only act as the agent."
Francis Lisle flushed and bit his lip, but a gratified smile was creeping over his thin, wan face.
"I understand, Mr. Arnheim," he said pompously. "I am very busy just at present; indeed, I have only just finished a picture for – er – a patron, for which I have received a fairly large sum, and I have a number of studies in hand; but – er – I think I may say that I shall be willing to paint a picture for you – or your unknown client, if you prefer to put it in that way; but I can only do so on one condition, Mr. Arnheim."
The dealer bowed.
"And what is that condition, Mr. Lisle?" he asked gravely.
"That your client permit any picture he may purchase of me to be exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition."
"Certainly, certainly. I'll undertake that he shall accord that permission," said Mr. Arnheim.
"Very good," said Francis Lisle. "And now I should like to show you some of my pictures. We have brought a few – the best, in my judgment; but there are several others, if you would like to see more. Leslie – ."
Leslie rose and took up a couple of the canvases, and as she did she looked at the keen, shrewd face of the dealer. It was the look with which she had appealed to Mr. Temple, and it said as plainly as if she had spoken —
"Spare him; oh, spare him!"
Francis Lisle took one of the pictures from her hand, and nervously, excitedly, placed it on an empty easel which stood ready for the purpose.
"A seascape, Mr. Arnheim," he said, waving his hand. "It would savor of impertinence to point out its merits to you who are so experienced and able a critic; but I may venture to hint that there is something in the treatment of that sky which you will not meet with every day."
For a moment the eminent dealer's face expressed a wide gaping astonishment, then it seemed to writhe as if with the effort to suppress a burst of laughter, but lastly it turned to an impassive mask, and, carefully avoiding the anguish in Leslie's eyes, he said, shading the view with his hand:
"Remarkable, very; very remarkable, Mr. Lisle."
"I thought you would say so," said Francis Lisle, with a triumphant glance at Leslie, who had stood with downcast eyes. "But if you think that worthy of notice, what do you say to this?" and he replaced the canvas by another. "'View of Cliffs by Moonlight.' Remark the shadows, the foam on the rocks, the birds, Mr. Arnheim!"
"Yes, yes, yes," said Mr. Arnheim in a kind of still voice. "Most – most singular and admirable!"
He glanced at Leslie, and an expression of pity and sympathy came into his shrewd face.
"And here is another," said Francis Lisle, catching up a third picture. "'The Wreck.' I spent months – months, Mr. Arnheim, over this; and if I may be permitted to say so I consider it one of my masterpieces," and he waved his hand to the fearful daub in a kind of ecstasy.
Mr. Arnheim stood speechless with what the unfortunate painter took to be admiration; and Leslie, trembling and pale, came forward and took the canvas from the easel.
"We – we must not take up any more of Mr. Arnheim's time, papa," she faltered, with an appealing glance at the dealer.
"No no, certainly not," responded Lisle. "But it is only right that Mr Arnheim should have an opportunity of judging of my work. You may be surprised, sir, that I am still, so to speak, an unknown artist. I may say that that surprise is shared by myself. But no one can be better acquainted with the fact that fame and fortune do not always fall to the deserving. No! Art is a lottery, and the best of us may, and, alas! too often do, only draw blanks. But I am confident that now you, who have so many opportunities of directing the attention of the world to what is most worthy of notice in art, have become acquainted with my pictures, that – that – in short – ." He put his hand to his head and looked round confusedly.
"Yes, yes!" said Mr. Arnheim soothingly. "I quite understand. You will hear from me – I will see my client."
"Yes, certainly," cut in Francis Lisle. "I – I leave the whole of the negotiations to you. I have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Arnheim."
Mr. Arnheim bowed, and assisted Leslie's trembling hands to repack the pictures, but the artist stopped them by a gesture.
"Wait, wait, Leslie. I am content to leave these works with Mr. Arnheim. He will like to place them in this gallery with his other masterpieces."
The expression on Mr. Arnheim's face at this proposition beggars description, but he mastered his emotion, and managed to bow and mumble out some unintelligible words, which Francis Lisle mistook for expressions of gratitude.
"Do not mention it, my dear sir," he said, waving his hand. "I commit them to your care with every confidence, assured that they will receive every consideration and appreciation from you. Come, Leslie, as you said, we must not take up too much of Mr. Arnheim's time. Good morning, sir. I leave you to conduct all negotiations with your client. I have every confidence in you. Good morning!"
He gave his hand to Mr. Arnheim with the air of a painter-prince, and with a glance round the room as if he already saw his pictures placed among the other gems, stalked nervously out.
Leslie hesitated for a moment, then held out her hand. For a moment she seemed incapable of speech, then her trembling lips parted, and she faltered:
"You have been very good, and – and patient, and forbearing, sir, and I am grateful, very grateful."
"Don't mention it, Miss Lisle," he said, touched by her loveliness and sadness. "I quite understand – that is – well, I can't quite understand!"
Leslie's face burnt like fire.
"Why his – his grace – ," she faltered.
Mr. Arnheim looked puzzled.
"His lordship!" he corrected her, but Leslie was too agitated to notice the correction.
"I cannot explain," she said in a troubled voice. "But – you will see him?"
"Yes, certainly," assented Mr. Arnheim.
"Will you tell him, please – " her voice broke, and her hands clasped and unclasped – "will you tell him that I came here against my will – that I was obliged to come, and that – that I wish him to forget everything that has passed. That neither my father nor I wish to see him again. That we wish to pass out of his life as if we had never seen, never known him. Will you tell him this? You – you think it strange, unbecoming, that I should give you this message, Mr. Arnheim but – " her voice broke – "but, perhaps you have a daughter of your own, and – and thinking of her you will not refuse – ."
She broke down, and covered her face with her hands.
Mr. Arnheim had a daughter, as it happened, and he did think of her.
"I don't understand, quite, Miss Lisle," he said, in a low voice; "but I understand enough to convey your message."
Leslie gave him her hand without another word, and hurried after her father.
She found him descending the stairs slowly, and he stopped as she reached him, and nodded at her.
"One moment, Leslie," he said, in nervous accents. "I forgot to ask Mr. Arnheim if his gallery is insured. Such works as I have left with him are – are priceless!"
Before she could stop him, he had turned and reascended the stairs, and re-entered the gallery. Leslie followed him. The gallery was empty, but voices were heard behind the partition, and Mr. Arnheim could be heard exclaiming in mingled indignation, pity, and amusement:
"The man is as mad as a hatter!"
Leslie laid her hand upon her father's arm.
"Come away, dear!" she implored; but he shook her hand off, and put his finger to his lip warningly.
"Hush! Be silent! I want to hear what he is saying! These men never express themselves fully about the pictures in the presence of the artists. Now, listen, and you will hear what he really thinks. Hush! It is quite fair, quite!" and he chuckled confidently.
Leslie, turned to stone with apprehension and dread, stood still and waited.
"Mad as a hatter!" continued Mr. Arnheim to some one behind the partition. "The pictures he raves about are simply daubs! The daubs of a lunatic who has had access to paint and brushes. Look at this! He called it a seascape! Look at it! Why, a schoolboy of fourteen would blush to have painted it! In fact, no human being in possession of his senses could have produced it! Did you ever see anything like it? I never did, and I've had some queer experiences in the course of business. If it hadn't been for that sweet creature, his daughter, I should have burst out laughing. But something – dash me if I know what – kept me quiet. Look here, it's a dashed shame, that's what it is. He told me to write for the man, and I thought it was all on the square. But it's my opinion he's got some game in hand with the daughter. I might have guessed that, seeing the sort of man he is. These swells are all alike. Yes it's a dashed shame! She's too good to be made a fool of and deceived. But did you ever see such an awful lunatic daub as this, and this, and this!" the speaker's voice rose in crescendo as he evidently showed each of Francis Lisle's pictures. "There was never anything like 'em out of a madhouse!"
The voice ceased, for lack of breath, and Leslie, horror-stricken, turned to her father. He was leaning against the wall, his face white, livid, his jaw dropped, his eyes staring vacantly.
"Father! father!" she cried in a low voice.
He did not seem to hear her, but his lips moved and she could hear a faint, horrible echo of the words that had been spoken behind the screen.
"Come away, dear!" she implored him. "Come away!"
He dropped his eyes to her face and tried to smile; but it was a hideous grimace.
"Yes, yes," he said, hoarsely, almost inarticulately, "let us go home. Let us – ."
She took his hand, drew his arm through hers, and led him down the stairs. He went with the docility, the helplessness of a child, and sank into a corner of the cab with his eyes dull and lifeless, but his lips still moving.
Presently he beckoned to her. "What – what did he say?" he asked tremulously, his face working.
"It – it does not matter what he said, dear," she said soothingly. "Do not think of it. Try to forget it! Lean against me, dear!"
But he put her from him, not with his old impatient irritability, but with a gentleness that was quite new with him; and lying back in the cab stared at the floor, his lips moving, and Leslie could hear him still repeating the words they had heard from Mr. Arnheim.
It seemed an age before the cab reached Torrington Square, and when it did so the man Leslie helped out was an older man by twenty years than he who had left it that morning.
She helped him up to his room and tried to cheer and comfort him; but, for the first time in her life, her loving flattery proved of no avail.
He listened with vacant eyes and wan, hopeless face, and at last, he suddenly flung his hands before his eyes and uttered a low cry of despair, and awakening.
"God help me!" he cried. "I am a fraud and a lie! I see it all, now. A fraud and a lie! The man was right; I cannot paint!" He caught up a canvas that lay against the wall, and gazed at it. "It is a hideous daub, as he said. It is the work of a madman. I have been mad. Oh, God, if I could have remained so."
"My dear, my dear!" she murmured, kneeling beside him and gently drawing the picture from his weak, trembling hands. "Don't think of what – what he said."
"Not think of it!" he cried, shaking with emotion. "I must think of it, for he spoke the truth. I have been mad, mad! But my eyes are open now. Take them away from me," he motioned to the pictures, "take them away. I cannot bear the sight of them. And – and yet I have been so happy, so hopeful!" and he hid his face with his hands.
Leslie watched beside him till he fell into a deep, deathlike sleep; then she stole downstairs and sent for a doctor. A young man from one of the neighbouring squares came, and though he was young he was not foolish. A glance at the sleeping man told him the sad truth.
"Have you – has your father any relations, any friends who – whom he would like to see?" he asked gently.
Leslie, kneeling beside the bed, looked up at him with sharp and sudden dread in her eyes.
"Do you – do you mean – ? Oh, what is it you mean?" she moaned.
The doctor laid his hand upon her shoulder. "The truth is always best, always," he said gently. "Your father has suffered a severe shock; the heart – ." He stopped. "For his sake try and be calm, my dear young lady."
Leslie knelt beside him all through the night, and all through the long hours her conscience whispered accusingly, "It is you – you, who have done it. But for you he would have gone on dreaming and living; but for you – and Yorke!"
Toward dawn Francis Lisle awoke. The doctor was standing beside the bed, Leslie on her knees.
He raised his wan, wasted face from the pillow and seemed to be looking for something; then his eyes rested on her anguished ones, and he knew her and forced a smile.
"Is – is that you, Leslie?" he said, in so low a voice that she had to lay her face against his to hear him. "Is that you? I have had a singular dream. Most singular!"
"What – what was it, dear?" she said at last.
He smiled again.
"I dreamt that my picture had been refused by the Academy. Absurd, wasn't it? Fancy them refusing one of my pictures! Mine! Francis Lisle's! Ridiculous as it is, it – it upset me. I – I must be out of sorts. There is only one thing for that kind of complaint: Work. Get – get a fresh canvas stretched for me, Leslie, and I will commence a new picture. Let me see, what did we get for the last? Three thousand pounds, wasn't it?"
"Yes, yes, dear!" she murmured.
"A large sum, a large sum, but not half what we shall get. Fame, fame and fortune at last, Leslie! I always told you it would come."
He put out his wasted hand and smoothed her hair lovingly – and, alas! patronizingly. "Always knew it would come, Leslie! Art is long and – and life is brief. I must work hard now fame and success have brought me the victor's laurels. How dark it is – " the sunlight was streaming through the window – "how dark! Too dark to commence to-day; but to-morrow, Leslie dear, to-morrow – ." His voice grew fainter and ceased. The doctor bent over him, then stood upright and laid his hand upon Leslie's shoulder with a touch that told her all.
Francis Lisle had gone to the land where to-morrow and to-day are swallowed up in Eternity.