_ CHAPTER LXXVII. 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." _