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."