ENDYMION.
Lawrence Newt had told Aunt Martha that he preferred to hear from a young
woman's own lips that she loved him. Was he suspicious of the truth of
Aunt Martha's assertion?
When the Burt will was read, and Fanny Dinks had hissed her envy and
chagrin, she had done more than she would willingly have done: she had
said that all the world knew he was in love with Hope Wayne. If all the
world knew it, then surely Amy Waring did; "and if she did, was it so
strange," he thought, "that she should have said what she did to me?"
He thought often of these things. But one of the days when he sat in his
office, and the junior partner was engaged in writing the letters which
formerly Lawrence wrote, the question slid into his mind as brightly, but
as softly and benignantly, as daylight into the sky.
"Does it follow that she does not love me? If she did love me, but
thought that I loved Hope Wayne, would she not hide it from me in every
way--not only to save her own pride, but in order not to give me pain?"
So secret and reticent was he, that as he thought this he was nervously
anxious lest the junior partner should happen to look up and read it all
in his eyes.
Lawrence Newt rose and stood at the window, with his back to Gabriel, for
his thoughts grew many and strange.
As he came down that morning he had stopped at Hope Wayne's, and they had
talked for a long time. Gabriel had told his partner of his visit to Mrs.
Fanny Dinks, and Lawrence had mentioned it to Hope Wayne. The young woman
listened intently.
"You don't think I ought to increase the allowance?" she asked.
"Why should you?" he replied. "Alfred's father still allows him the six
hundred, and Alfred has promised solemnly that he will never mention to
his wife the thousand you allow him. I don't think he will, because he is
afraid she would stop it in some way. As it is, she knows nothing more
than that six hundred dollars seems to go a very great way. Your income
is large; but I think a thousand dollars for the support of two utterly
useless people is quite as much as you are called upon to pay, although
one of them is your cousin, and the other my niece."
They went on to talk of many things. In all she showed the same calm
candor and tenderness. In all he showed the same humorous quaintness and
good sense. Lawrence Newt observed that these interviews were becoming
longer and longer, although the affairs to arrange really became fewer.
He could not discover that there was any particular reason for it; and
yet he became uncomfortable in the degree that he was conscious of it.
When the Round Table met, it was evident from the conversation between
Hope Wayne and Lawrence Newt that he was very often at her house; and
sometimes, whenever they all appeared to be conscious that each one was
thinking of that fact, the cloud of constraint settled more heavily, but
just as impalpably as before, over the little circle. It was not removed
by the conviction which Amy Waring and Arthur Merlin entertained, that at
all such times Hope Wayne was trying not to show that she was peculiarly
excited by this consciousness.
And she was excited by it. She knew that the interviews were longer and
longer, and that there was less reason than ever for any interviews
whatsoever. But when Lawrence Newt was talking to her--when he was
looking at her--when he was moving about the room--she was happier than
she had ever been--happier than she had supposed she could ever be. When
he went, that day was done. Nor did another dawn until he came again.
Perhaps Hope Wayne understood the meaning of that mysterious constraint
which now so often enveloped the Round Table.
As for Arthur Merlin, the poor fellow did what all poor fellows do. So
long as it was uncertain whether she loved him or not, he was willing to
say nothing. But when he was perfectly sure that there was no hope for
him, he resolved to speak.
In vain his Aunt Winnifred had tried to cheer him. Ever since the morning
when he had told her in his studio the lovely legend of Latmos he could
not persuade himself that he had not unwittingly told his own story. Aunt
Winnifred showered the choicest tracts about his room. She said with a
sigh that she was sure he had experienced no change of heart; and Arthur
replied, with a melancholy smile, "Not the slightest."
The kind old lady was sorely puzzled. It did not occur to her that
her Arthur could be the victim of an unfortunate attachment, like the
love-lorn heroes of whom she had read in the evil days when she read
novels. It did not occur to her, because she could as easily have
supposed a rose-tree to resist June as any woman her splendid Arthur.
If some gossip to whom she sighed and shook her head, and wondered what
could possibly ail Arthur--who still ate his dinner heartily, and had as
many orders for portraits as he cared to fulfill--suggested that there
was a woman in the case, good Aunt Winnifred smiled bland incredulity.
"Dear Mrs. Toxer, I should like to see that woman!"
Then she plied her knitting-needles nimbly, sighed, scratched her head
with a needle, counted her stitches, and said,
"Sometimes I can't but hope that it is concern of mind, without his
knowing it."
Mrs. Toxer also knitted, and scratched, and counted.
"No, ma'am; much more likely concern of heart with a full consciousness
of it. One, two, three--bless my soul! I'm always dropping a stitch."
Aunt Winnifred, who never dropped stitches, smiled pleasantly, and
answered,
"Yes, indeed, and this time you have dropped a very great one."
Meanwhile Arthur's great picture advanced rapidly. Diana, who had looked
only like a portrait of Hope Wayne looking out of a cloud, was now more
fully completed. She was still bending from the clouds indeed, but there
was more and more human softness in the face every time he touched it.
And lo! he had found at last Endymion. He lay upon a grassy knoll. Long
whispering tufts sighed around his head, which rested upon the very
summit of the mountain. There were no trees, no rocks. There was nothing
but the sleeping figure with the shepherd's crook by his side upon the
mountain top, all lying bare to the sky and to the eyes that looked from
the cloud, and from which all the moonlight of the picture fell.
When Lawrence Newt came into the studio one morning, Arthur, who worked
in secret upon his picture and never showed it, asked him if he would
like to look at it. The merchant said yes, and seated himself comfortably
in a large chair, while the artist brought the canvas from an inner room
and placed it before him. As he did so, Arthur stepped a little aside,
and watched him closely.
Lawrence Newt gazed for a long time and silently at the picture. As he
did so, his face rapidly donned its armor of inscrutability, and Arthur's
eyes attacked it in vain. Diana was clearly Hope Wayne. That he had seen
from the beginning. But Endymion was as clearly Lawrence Newt! He looked
steadily without turning his eyes, and after many minutes he said,
quietly,
"It is beautiful. It is triumphant. Endymion is a trifle too old,
perhaps. But Diana's face is so noble, and her glance so tenderly
earnest, that it would surely rouse him if he were not dead."
"Dead!" returned Arthur; "why you know he is only sleeping."
"No, no," said Lawrence, gently, "dead; utterly dead--to her. If he were
not, it would be simply impossible not to awake and love her. Who's that
old gentleman on the wall over there?"
Lawrence Newt asked the same question of all the portraits so
persistently that Arthur could not return to his Diana. When he had
satisfied his curiosity--a curiosity which he had never shown before--the
merchant rose and said good-by.
"Stop, stop!"
Lawrence Newt turned, with his hand upon the door.
"You like my picture--"
"Immensely. But if she looks forever she'll never waken him. Poor
Endymion! he's dead to all that heavenly splendor."
He was about closing the door.
"Hallo!" cried Arthur.
Lawrence Newt put his head into the room.
"It's fortunate that he's dead!" said the painter.
"Why so?"
"Because goddesses never marry."
Lawrence Newt's head disappeared.