FACE TO FACE.
"Signore Pittore! what brings a bird into the barn-yard?" said Lawrence
Newt, as Arthur Merlin entered his office.
"The hope of some crumb of comfort."
"Do you dip from your empyrean to the cold earth--from the studio to a
counting-room--to find comfort?" asked Lawrence Newt, cheerfully.
Arthur Merlin looked only half sympathetic with his friend's gayety.
There was a wan air on his face, a piteous look in his eyes, which
touched Lawrence.
"Why, Arthur, what is it?"
"Do you remember what Diana said?" replied the painter. "She said, 'I am
sure that that silly shepherd will not sleep there forever. Never fear,
he will wake up. Diana never looks or loves for nothing.'"
Lawrence Newt gazed at him without speaking.
"Come," said Arthur, with a feeble effort at fun, "you have
correspondence all over the world. What is the news from Latmos? Has
the silly shepherd waked up?"
"My dear Arthur," said Mr. Newt, gravely, "I told you long ago that he
was dead to all that heavenly splendor."
The two men gazed steadfastly at each other without speaking. At length
Arthur said, in a low voice,
"Dead?"
"Dead."
As Lawrence Newt spoke the word the air far off and near seemed to him
to ring again with that pervasive murmur, sad, soft, infinitely tender,
"Good-by, Mr. Newt, good-by!"
But his eye was calm and his face cheerful.
"Arthur, sit down."
The young man seated himself, and the older one drawing a chair to the
window, they sat with their backs to the outer office and looked upon
the ships.
"I am older than you, Arthur, and I am your friend. What I am going to
say to you I have no right to say, except in your entire friendship."
The young man's eyes glistened.
"Go on," he said.
"When I first knew you I knew that you loved Hope Wayne."
A flush deepened upon Arthur's face, and his fingers played idly upon the
arm of the chair.
"I hoped that Hope Wayne would love you. I was sure that she would. It
never occurred to me that she could--could--"
Arthur turned and looked at him.
"Could love any body else," said Lawrence Newt, as his eyes wandered
dreamily among the vessels, as if the canvas were the wings of his memory
sailing far away.
"Suddenly, without the least suspicion on my part, I discovered that she
did love somebody else."
"Yes," said Arthur, "so did I."
"What could I do?" said the other, still abstractedly gazing; "for I
loved her."
"You loved her?" cried Arthur Merlin, so suddenly and loud that Thomas
Tray looked up from his great red Russia book and turned his head toward
the inner office.
"Certainly I loved her," replied Lawrence Newt, calmly, and with tender
sweetness; "and I had a right to, for I loved her mother. Could I have
had my way Hope Wayne's mother would have been my wife."
Arthur Merlin stole a glance at the face of his companion.
"I was a child and she was a child--a boy and a girl. It was not to be.
She married another man and died; but her memory is forever sacred to me,
and so is her daughter."
To this astonishing revelation Arthur Merlin said nothing. His fingers
still played idly on the chair, and his eyes, like the eyes of Lawrence,
looked out upon the river. Every thing in Lawrence Newt's conduct was at
once explained; and the poor artist was ready to curse his absurd folly
in making his friend involuntarily sit for Endymion. Lawrence Newt knew
his friend's thoughts.
"Arthur," he said, in a low voice, "did I not say that, if Endymion were
not dead, it would be impossible not to awake and love her? Do you not
see that I was dead to her?"
"But does she know it?" asked the painter.
"I believe she does now," was the slow answer. "But she has not known it
long."
"Does Amy Waring know it?"
"No," replied Lawrence Newt, quietly, "but she will to-night."
The two men sat silently together for some time. The junior partner came
in, spoke to Arthur, wrote a little, and went out again. Thomas Tray
glanced up occasionally from his great volume, and the melancholy eyes of
Little Malacca scarcely turned from the two figures which he watched from
his desk through the office windows. Venables was promoted to be second
to Thomas Tray on the very day that Gabriel was admitted a junior
partner. They were all aware that the head of the house was engaged
in some deeply interesting conversation, and they learned from Little
Malacca who the stranger was.
The two men sat silently together, Lawrence Newt evidently tranquilly
waiting, Arthur Merlin vainly trying to say something further.
"I wonder--" he began, at length, and stopped. A painful expression of
doubt clouded his face; but Lawrence turned to him cheerfully, and said,
in a frank, assuring tone,
"Arthur, speak out."
"Well," said the artist, with almost a girl's shyness in his whole
manner, "before you, at least, I can speak, and am not ashamed. I want
to know whether--you--think--"
He spoke very slowly, and stopped again. Before he resumed he saw
Lawrence Newt shake his head negatively.
"Why, what?" asked Arthur, quickly.
"I do not believe she ever will," replied the other, as if the artist had
asked a question with his eyes. He spoke in a very low, serious tone.
"Will what?" asked Arthur, his face burning with a bright crimson flush.
Lawrence Newt waited a moment to give his friend time to recover, before
he said,
"Shall I say what?"
Arthur also waited for a little while; then he said, sadly,
"No, it's no matter."
He seemed to have grown older as he sat looking from the window. His
hands idly played no longer, but rested quietly upon the chair. He shook
his head slowly, and repeated, in a tone that touched his friend to the
heart,
"No--no--it's no matter."
"But, Arthur, it's only my opinion," said the other, kindly.
"And mine too," replied the artist, with an inexpressible sadness.
Lawrence Newt was silent. After a few moments Arthur Merlin rose and
shook his hand.
"Good-by!" he said. "We shall meet to-night."