63. CHAPTER LXIII.
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 at
tachment, 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.
