Leslie's Loyalty

All through the breakfast she felt like one in a dream, as if she were suspended between life and death, and waiting for the verdict. Her father talked of his picture, of all he meant to do, now that he was on the high road to Fame, and his voice sounded in her ears like that of someone speaking afar off.

Yorke, her Yorke, might prove to be hers still! Oh, blessed hope. How mad, how wicked, how foolish she had been to put any trust in the woman who had slandered him!

The revulsion of feeling was so great that it sent a hectic flush to her face, and a feverish light to her eyes.

"That receipt and note, Leslie," said her father. "Tell Mr. Temple that I would rather not sell the picture, that I would rather return his money than forego the right of exhibiting the picture."

"Yes, yes, papa," she said at random. "Yes, it will all come right. It was wicked, foolish, to doubt him, to believe her."

He stared at her with irritable impatience.

"What are you talking of, Leslie?" he said peevishly. "You seem very strange this morning, and so you were last night."

"I know, I know, dear!" she broke in with something between a sigh and a sob. "Don't mind me. I am not very well. You want the receipt?" she sprang to the writing table. "There it is, and the note. Yes, yes! It will come right. I know it will; and – and – oh, how hot it is! I must have air, air!"

She caught up her hat, and with the receipt and note in her hand, ran to the door.

"I shall see Mr. Temple, papa, and I will give him these."

"And tell him," he called after her, "that I make it a condition that the picture shall be exhibited; mind that, Leslie!"

"Yes, yes!" she responded, and ran out.

She drew her breath hard as she paused for a moment on the doorstep, then she hurried to the quay.

A fisherman was drying his net in the sun, but there was no one else there, and she walked up and down, the note in her hand, repeating to herself the formula of hope; the woman, Finetta, had lied to her and deceived her. All would be well. Yorke would be her Yorke still!

She had not been walking thus very long before the bath chair, wheeled by Grey, was seen coming on to the quay.

She hurried toward it, and the duke motioned to Grey to stop.

"Good morning, Miss Leslie," he said, peering up at her. "It is a fine morning, isn't it." Then he paused and scanned her face curiously and earnestly. "Is anything the matter?"

"The matter?" she repeated with a laugh that sounded in her ears hollow and unnatural. "What should be the matter? I have brought you my father's receipt and a note, Mr. Temple."

He took it and glanced at it.

"Humph," he said. "Oh, yes, I'll do anything your father wishes. And there is nothing the matter, Miss Leslie?" and he peered up at her curiously from under his thick brows.

"Nothing, nothing," she responded feverishly. "But I wanted to ask you – the duke, the Duke of Rothbury – ."

His pale face flushed, and he motioned to Grey to withdraw out of hearing.

"I thought so!" he said. "Miss Leslie, sick men, like me, acquire a kind of second sight. Directly I saw you just now, I knew that you had learnt the truth."

She looked down at him, and her face, which had been flushed feverishly, paled.

"The truth?" she faltered.

"Yes," he said in a tone that suggested remorse. "You have been cruelly deceived!"

"Deceived!" she echoed the word as if its significance were lost upon her. "Deceived!"

"Yes. Cruelly. But you must not blame him altogether.

"Blame him. Whom?" she said slowly.

"Yorke, Yorke," he said in a low voice. "It was as much my fault as his. I ought to have told you. We have both deceived you wickedly, inexcusably."

Leslie put out her hand and caught the chair, and stood looking down at him.

"Blame me more than him," he went on. "Blame us both. We ought to have told you, at any rate, however we kept other people in the dark. But he was not free, and I – well, I held my tongue."

"He was not free?" she murmured mechanically.

"No! I don't ask you to forgive us; you'd find it too hard. I don't expect you even to understand the motive."

She put out her hand to him.

"Wait – stop! Let me think. He has deceived me, then?"

"He has, and I have, yes," he said, averting his eyes from the misery in her face. "Is it so hard and bitter a blow, Leslie?" he said after a pause.

"Yes," she responded almost unconsciously. "I hoped that – that – . But it does not matter. Nothing matters, now."

He fidgeted in his chair, and peered up at her curiously, strangely.

"Anyway, you know the truth now."

"Yes! I know the truth now," she echoed faintly. "Why," hoarsely, "why did he do it?"

The duke bit his lip.

"It was more my fault than his. I ought to have told you. I did not know – did not know that you would take it so much to heart. For God's sake don't look so wretched, so heartbroken," he burst forth. "Leslie, you make me feel like a criminal!"

She turned her white face to him.

"You let me – love him, go on loving him, knowing all the while – ."

He hung his head and plucked at the edge of the shawl across his knees.

"I did!" he said in a low voice. "I tell you so."

"God forgive you!" she panted. "God forgive you – and him!"

She stood a moment as if struggling for breath, and turned and walked swiftly away.

The duke sat for a full five minutes, staring at the front wheel of his chair; then he jerked his hand up and called to Grey.

"Take me home!" he snapped. "What the devil are you waiting for? Take me home and back to London as soon as possible."

Leslie sped along the quay, and staggered rather than walked into the sitting room, and a moment afterward her father hurried in.

"Leslie, Leslie!" he cried. "Where are you?"

She lifted her head from the sofa cushion with dull, blinded eyes.

"Here's a telegram! A telegram from one of the large dealers. He wants to see me in London at once! At once, do you hear? Why do you stare at me like that? There is no time to lose. We must go up to London at once. At once! Run upstairs and pack our things!"

She rose and staggered to her feet.

"No, no! It is – it is – ," she paused and clutched his arm, laughing hysterically. "Don't believe it, papa. It is not true. I can explain!"

"Explain? Not true? What are you talking about, Leslie! I tell you it is from one of the first dealers in London. Fame, fame, has come to me at last! Get ready at once! We will go by the first train we can catch!"

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.