He was a man approaching sixty, but in perfect health, and with no painful physical reminders that he had already accomplished the greater part of life’s journey. He was a successful man, who had attained at a comparatively early age the heights of his profession, and gained a name for himself. No painter in England was better or more favourably known. He had never been emphatically the fashion, or made one of those great “hits” which are far from being invariably any test of genius; but his pictures had always been looked for with pleasure, and attracted a large and very even share of popular approbation. From year to year, for what was really a very long time, though in his good health and cheerful occupation the progress of time had never forced itself upon him unduly, he had gone on doing very well, getting both praise and pudding—good prices, constant commissions, and a great deal of agreeable applause. A course of gentle uninterrupted success of this description has a curiously tranquillising effect upon the mind. It did not seem to Mr. Sandford, or his wife, or any of his belongings, that it could ever fail. His income was more like an official income, coming in at slightly irregular intervals, and with variations of amount, but wonderfully equal at the year’s end, than the precarious revenues of an artist. And this fact lulled him into security in respect to his pecuniary means. He had a very pleasant, ample, agreeable life—a pretty and comfortable house, full of desirable things; a pleasant, gay, not very profitable, but pleasant family; and the agreeable atmosphere of applause and public interest which gave a touch of perfection to all the other good things. He had the consciousness of being pointed out in every assembly as somebody worth looking at: “That’s Sandford, you know, the painter.” He did not dislike it himself, and Mrs. Sandford liked it very much. Altogether it would have been difficult to find a more pleasant and delightful career.

His wife had been the truest companion and helpmeet of all his early life. She had made their small means do in the beginning when money was not plentiful. She had managed to do him credit in all the many appearances in society which a rising painter finds to his advantage, while still spending very little on herself or her dress. She had kept all going, and saved him from a thousand anxieties and cares. She had sat to him when models proved expensive so often that it was a common joke to say that some reflection of Mrs. Sandford’s face was in all his pictures, from Joan of Arc to Queen Elizabeth. Now that the children were grown up, perhaps the parents were a little less together than of old. She had her daughters to look after, who were asked out a great deal, and very anxious to be fashionable and to keep up with their fine friends. The two grown-up girls were both pretty, animated, and pleasant creatures, full of the chatter of society, yet likewise full of better things. There were also two grown-up sons: one a young barrister, briefless, and fond of society too; the other one of those agreeable do-nothings who are more prevalent nowadays than ever before, a very clever fellow, who had just not succeeded as he ought at the University or elsewhere, but had plenty of brains for anything, and only wanted the opportunity to distinguish himself. They were all full of faculty, both boys and girls, but all took a good deal out of the family stores without bringing anything in. Ever since these children grew up the family life had been on a very easy, ample scale. There was never any appearance of want of money, nor was the question ever discussed with the young ones, who had really no way of knowing that there was anything precarious in that well-established family income which provided them with everything they could desire. Sometimes, indeed, Mrs. Sandford would shake her head and declare that she “could not afford” some particular luxury. “Oh, nonsense, mamma!” the girls would say, while Harry would add, “That’s mother’s rÔle, we all know. If she did not say so she would not be acting up to her part.” They took it in this way, with the same, or perhaps even a greater composure than if Mr. Sandford’s revenues had been drawn from the three per cents.

It was only after this position had been attained that any anxieties arose. At first it had seemed quite certain that Jack would speedily distinguish himself at the bar, and become Lord Chancellor in course of time; and that something would turn up for Harry—most likely a Government appointment, which so well known a man as his father had a right to expect. And Mrs. Sandford, with a sigh, had looked forward with certainty to the early marriage of her girls. But some years had now passed since Ada, who was the youngest, had been introduced, and as yet nothing of that kind had happened. Harry was pleasantly about the world, a great help in accompanying his sisters when Mrs. Sandford did not want to go out, but no appointment had fallen in his way; and the briefs which Jack had procured were very few and very trifling. Things went on quite pleasantly all the same. The young people enjoyed themselves very much—they were asked everywhere. Lizzie, who had a beautiful voice, was an acquisition wherever she went, and helped her sister and her brothers, who could all make themselves agreeable. The life of the household flowed on in the pleasantest way imaginable; everything was bright, delightful, easy. Mrs. Sandford was so good a manager that all domestic arrangements went as on velvet. She was never put out if two or three people appeared unexpectedly to lunch. An impromptu dinner party even, though it might disturb cook, never disturbed mamma. There was no extravagance, but everything delightfully liberal and full. The first vague uneasiness that crept into the atmosphere was about the boys. It was Mrs. Sandford herself who began this. “Did you speak to Lord Okeham about Harry?” she said to her husband one day, when she had been particularly elated by the appearance of that nobleman at her tea-table. He had come to look at a picture, and he was very willing afterwards, it appeared, to come into the drawing-room to tea.

“How could I? I scarcely know him. It is difficult enough to ask a friend—but a man I have only seen twice——”

“Your money or your life,” said Harry, with a laugh. He was himself quite tranquil about his appointment, never doubting that some day it would turn up.

“It is easier to ask a stranger than a friend,” said Mrs. Sandford. “It is like trading on friendship with a man you know; but this man’s nothing but a patron, or an admirer. I should have asked him like—I mean at once.”

“Mother was going to say like a shot—she is getting dreadfully slangy, worse than any of us. Let’s hope old Okeham will come back; there’s not much time lost,” said the cheerful youth.

“When your father was your age he was making a good deal of money. We were beginning to see our way,” said Mrs. Sandford, shaking her head.

“What an awfully imprudent pair you must have been to marry so early!” cried Jack.

“I wonder what you would say to us if we suggested anything of the kind?” said Miss Ada, who had made herself very agreeable to Lord Okeham.

“A poor painter!” said Lizzie, with a tone in her voice which her mother understood—for, indeed Mrs. Sandford did not at all encourage the attentions of poor painters, having still that early certainty of great matches in her mind.

The young people were quite fond of their parents, very proud of their father, dutiful as far as was consistent with the traditions of their generation: but naturally they were of opinion that fathers and mothers were slightly antiquated, and did not possess the last lights.

“The young ones are too many for you, Mary,” said Mr. Sandford; but he added, “It’s true what your mother says; you oughtn’t to be about so much as you are, doing nothing. You ought to grind as long as you’re young——”

“At what, sir?” said Harry, with mock reverence. Mr. Sandford did not reply, for indeed he could not. Instead of giving an answer he went back to the studio, which indeed he had begun to find a pleasant refuge in the midst of all the flow of youthful talk and laughter, which was not of the kind he had been used to in his youth. Young artists, those poor painters whom Mrs. Sandford held at arms’ length, are not perhaps much more sensible than other young men, but they have at least a subject on which any amount of talk is possible, and which their elders can understand. Mr. Sandford was proud of his children, and loved them dearly. Their education, he believed, was much better than his own, and they knew a great deal more on general subjects than he did. But their jargon was not his jargon, and though it seemed very clever and knowing, and even amusing for a while, it soon palled upon him. He went back to his studio and to the picture he was painting, for the daylight was still good. It was the largest of his Academy pictures, and nearly finished. It occurred to him as he stood looking at it critically from a distance, with his head on one side and his hand shading now one part now another, that Lord Okeham, though very complimentary, had not said anything about a desire to possess in his small collection a specimen of such a well-known master as ——. He remembered, now, that it was with this desire that his lordship had been supposed to be coming. Daniells, the picture dealer, had said as much. “He wants to come and see what you’ve got on the stocks. Tell you w’at, old man, ’e’s as rich as Cressus. Lay it on thick, ’e won’t mind—give you two thou’ as easy as five ’undred.” This was what, with his usual elegant familiarity, Mr. Daniells had said. It occurred to Mr. Sandford, with a curious little pang of surprise, that Lord Okeham had not said a word on the subject. He had admired everything, he had lingered upon some of the smaller sketches, making little remarks in the way of criticism now and then which the painter recognised as very judicious, but he had not said a word about enriching his collection with a specimen, &c. The surprise with which Mr. Sandford noticed this had a sort of sting in it—a prick like the barb of a fish-hook, like the thorn upon a rose. He did not at the moment exactly perceive why he should have felt it so. After a little while, indeed, he began to smile at the idea that it was from Okeham that this sting came. What did one man’s favour, even though that man was a cabinet minister, matter to him? It was not that, it was the discussion that followed which had left him with a prick of disquiet, a tingling spot in his mind. He must, he felt, speak to some one about Harry—not Lord Okeham, whom he did not know, who had evidently changed his mind about that specimen of so well-known, &c. He would not dream of saying anything to him, a man not sympathetic, a stranger whom, though he might offer him a cup of tea, he did not really know; but it was very clear that Harry ought to have something to do.

So ought Jack. Jack had a profession, but that did not seem to advance him much. Mr. Sandford had early determined that his sons should not be artists like himself—that they should have no precarious career, dependent on the favour of picture dealers and patrons, notwithstanding that he himself had done very well in that way. He had always resolved from the beginning to give them every advantage. Mr. Sandford recalled to mind that a few years ago he had been very strenuous on this point, talking of the duty of giving his children the very best education, which was the best thing any father could do for his children. He had been very confident indeed on that subject; now he paused and rubbed his chin meditatively with his mahl-stick. Was it possible that he was not quite so sure now? He shook himself free from this troublesome coil of thought, and made up his mind that he must make an effort about Harry. Then he put down his brushes and went out for his afternoon walk.

In earlier days Mrs. Sandford would have come into the studio; she would have talked Lord Okeham over. She would have said, “Oh, he did not like that forest bit, didn’t he? Upon my word! I suppose my lord thinks he is a judge!”

“What he said was reasonable enough. He does know something about it. I told you myself I was not satisfied with the balance of colour. The shadow’s too dark. The middle distance——”

“Oh, Edward, don’t talk nonsense: that’s just like you—you’re so ridiculously modest. If the cook were to come in one morning and tell you she thought your composition bad, you would say she approached the picture without any bias, and probably what she said was quite true. Come out for a walk.”

This, be it clearly understood, was an imaginary conversation. It did not take place for the excellent reason that Mrs. Sandford was in the drawing-room, smiling at the witticisms of her young ones, and saying at intervals, “Come, come, Lizzie!” and “Don’t be so satirical, Jack.” They were not nearly such good company as her husband, nor did they want her half so much, but she thought they did, and that it was her duty to be there. So Mr. Sandford, who did not think of it at all as a grievance, but only as a natural necessity, had nothing but an imaginary talk which did not relieve him much, and went out for his walk by himself.

It would be foolish to date absolutely from that day a slight change that began to work in him—but it did come on about this time: and that was an anxiety that the boys should get on and begin their life’s work in earnest which had not affected him before. He had been too busy to think much except about his work so long as the young ones were well; and the period at which the young ones become men and women is not always easy for a father to discern so long as they are all under his roof as in their childish days. He, too, had let things flow along in the well-being of the time without pausing to inquire how long it was to last, or what was to come of it. A man of sixty who is in perfectly good health does not feel himself to be old, nor think it necessary to consider the approaching end of his career. Something, however, aroused him now about these boys. He got a little irritable when he saw Harry about, playing tennis with the girls, sometimes spending the whole day in flannels. “Why can’t he do something?” he said to his wife.

“Dear Edward,” said Mrs. Sandford, “what can the poor boy do? He is only too anxious to do something. He is always talking to me about it. If only Lord Okeham or some one would get a post for him. Is there no one you can speak to about poor Harry?”

This was turning the tables upon Harry’s father, who, to tell the truth, was very slow to ask favours, and did not like it all. He did speak, however—not to Lord Okeham, but to an inferior potentate, and was told that all the lists were full, although everybody would be delighted, of course, to serve him if possible; and nothing came of that. Then there was Jack. The young man came into dinner one day in the highest spirits. He had got a brief—a real brief—a curiosity which he regarded with a jocular admiration. “I shall be a rich man in no time,” he said.

“How much is your fee?” asked one of the girls. “You must take us somewhere with it Jack.”

“It is two guineas,” Jack said, and then there was a general burst of laughter—that laughter young and fresh which is sweet to the ears of fathers and mothers.

“That’s majestic,” Harry said; “lend us something, old fellow, for luck,” and they all laughed again. They thought it a capital joke that Jack should earn two guineas in six months. It did not hurt him or any of them; he had everything he wanted as if he had been earning hundreds. But Mr. Sandford did not laugh. This time it vexed and disturbed him to hear all the cheerful banter and talk about Jack’s two guineas.

“It is all very well to laugh,” he said to his wife afterwards, “but how is he ever to live upon that?”

“Dear Edward, it’s not like you to take their fun in earnest,” said the mother. “The poor boy has such spirits—and then it’s always a beginning.”

“I am afraid his spirits are too good. If he would only take life a little more seriously——”

“Why should he?” said Mrs. Sandford, taking high ground; “it is his happiest time. If he wanted to marry and set up for himself it might be different. But they have no cares—as yet. We ought to be thankful they are all so happy at home. Few young men love their home like our boys. We ought to be very thankful,” she repeated with a devout look upon her upturned face. It took the words out of his mouth. He could not say any more.

But he kept on thinking. The time was passing away with great rapidity—far more quickly than it had ever done. Sunday trod on the heels of Sunday, and the months jostled each other as they flew along. Presently it was Jack’s birthday, and there was a dance and a great deal of affectionate pleasure; but when Mr. Sandford remembered how old the boy was, it gave him a shock which none of the others felt. At that age he himself had been Jack’s father, he had laid the foundation of his reputation, and was a rising man. If they did not live at home and had not everything provided for them, what would become of these boys? It gave him a sort of panic to think of it. In the very midst of the dance, when he was himself standing in the midst of a little knot of respectable fathers watching the young ones enjoying themselves, this thought overtook him and made him shiver.

“Getting on, I hear, very well at the bar,” one of the gentlemen said.

“He is not making very much money as yet,” replied Mr. Sandford.

“Oh, nobody does that—at first, at least; but so long as he has you to fall back upon,” this good-natured friend said, with a nod of his head.

Mr. Sandford could not make any reply. He kept saying to himself, “Two guineas—two guineas—he could not live very long on that.” And Harry had not even two guineas. It fretted him to have this thought come back at all manner of unlikely times. He did not seem able to shake it off. And Mrs. Sandford was always on the defensive, seeing it in his eyes, and making responses to it, speaking at it, always returning to the subject. She dwelt upon the goodness of the boys, and their love of their home, and how good it was for the girls to have them, and how nobody made their mark all at once, “except people that have genius like you,” she said with that wifely admiration and faith which is so sweet to a man. What more could he say?

CHAPTER II.

About the same time, or a little later, another shadow rose up upon Mr. Sandford’s life. It was like the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, like a mere film upon the blue sky at first. Perhaps the very first appearance of it—the faintest shadow of a shade upon the blue—arose on that day when Lord Okeham visited the studio and went away without giving any commission. Not that great personages had not come before with the same result; but that this time there had been supposed to be a distinct purpose in his visit beyond that of taking a cup of tea with the artist’s wife and daughters—and this purpose had not been carried out. It was not the cloud, but it was a sort of avant-coureur of the cloud, like the chill little momentary breath which sometimes heralds a storm. No storm followed, but the shadow grew. The next thing that made it really shape itself as a little more than a film was the fact of his Academy picture, the principal one of the year, coming back—without any explanation at all; not purchased, nor even with any application from the print-sellers about an engraving; simply coming back as it had gone into the exhibition. No doubt in the course of a long career such a thing as this, too, had happened before. But there was generally something to account for it, and the picture thus returned seldom dwelt long in the painter’s hands. This time, however, it subsided quite quietly into its place, lighting up the studio with a great deal of colour and interest—“a pleasure to see,” Mrs. Sandford said, who had often declared that the worst thing of being a painter’s wife was that she never liked to see the pictures go away. This might be very true, and it is quite possible that it was a pleasure to behold, standing on its easel against a wall which generally was enlivened only with the earliest of sketches, and against which a lay figure grinned and sprawled.

But the prospect was not quite agreeable to the painter. However cheerfully he went into his studio in the morning, he always grew grave when he came in front of that brilliant canvas. It was the “Black Prince at Limoges,” a picture full of life and action, with all the aid of mediÆval costume and picturesque groups—such a picture as commanded everybody’s interest in Mr. Sandford’s younger days. He would go and stand before it for an hour at a time, trying to find some fault in the composition, or in the flesh tints, or the arrangements of the draperies. It took away his thoughts from the subject he was then engaged in working out. Sometimes he would put up his hand to separate one portion from another, sometimes divide it with a screen of paper, sometimes even alter an outline with chalk, or mellow a spot of colour with his brush. There was very little fault to be found with the picture. It carried out all the rules of composition to which the painter had been bred. The group of women which formed the central light was full of beauty; the sick warrior to whom they appealed was a marvel of strength and ferocity, made all the keener by the pallor of his illness. There was nothing to be said against the picture; except, perhaps, that, had not this been Mr. Sandford’s profession, there was no occasion for its existence at all.

When the mind has once been filled with a new idea it is astounding how many events occur to heighten it. Other distinguished visitors came to the studio, like Lord Okeham, and went away again, having left a great deal of praise and a little criticism, but nothing else, behind them. These were not, perhaps, of importance enough to have produced much effect at an ordinary moment, but they added to the general discouragement. Mr. Sandford smiled within himself at the mistakes the amateurs made, and the small amount of real knowledge which they showed; but when they were gone the smile became something like that which is generally and vulgarly described as being on the wrong side of the mouth. It was all very well to smile at the amateurs—but it was in the long run their taste, and not that of the heaven-born artist, which carried the day; and when a man takes away in his pocket the sum which ought to supply your balance at your banker’s, the sight of his back as he goes out at the door is not pleasant. Mr. Sandford had not come to that pitch yet; but he laughed no longer, and felt a certain ruefulness in his own look when one after another departed without a word of a commission. There were other things, too, not really of the slightest importance, which deepened the impression—the chatter of Jack’s friends, for instance, some of whom were young journalists, and talked the familiar jargon of critics. He came into the drawing-room one day during one of his wife’s teas, and found two or three young men, sprawling about with legs stretched out over the limited space, who were pulling to pieces a recent exhibition of the works of a Royal Academician. “You would think you had got among half a dozen different sorts of people dressed for private theatricals,” said one of the youths. “Old models got up as Shakespearian kings, and that sort of thing. You know, Mrs. Sandford; conventional groups trying to look as if they were historical.”

“I remember Mr. White’s pictures very well,” said Mrs. Sandford. “I used to think them beautiful. We all rushed to see what he had in the exhibition, upon the private view day, when I did not know so much about it as I do now.”

“Ah, yes; before you knew so much about it,” said the art authority. “You would think very differently to-day.”

“The whole school is like that,” said another. “Historical painting is gone out like historical novel-writing. The public is tired of costume. Life is too short for that sort of thing. We want a far more profound knowledge of the human figure and beauty in the abstract——”

“Stuff!” said Harry; “the British public doesn’t want your nudities, whatever you may think.”

“The British public likes babies, and sick girls getting well, and beautiful young gentlemen saying eternal adieux to lovely young ladies,” said one of the girls.

“To be sure, that sort of thing always goes on; but everybody must feel that in cultured circles there is a far greater sense of the beauty of colour for itself and art for art than in those ridiculous old days when the subject was everything——”

“You confuse me with your new lights,” said Mrs. Sandford. “I always did think there was a great deal in a good subject.”

“My dear Mrs. Sandford!” cried one of the young men, laughing; while another added, with the solemnity of his kind—

“People really did think so at one time. It was a genuine belief so long as it lasted. I am not one of those who laugh at faith so naÏf. Whatever is true even for a time has a right to be respected,” said this profound young man.

Mr. Sandford came in at this point, having paused a little to enjoy the fun, as he said to himself. It was wonderful to hear how they chattered—these babes. “I am glad to hear that you are all so tolerant of the old fogeys,” he said, with a laugh as he showed himself. And one at least of the young men had the good taste to jump up as if he were ashamed of himself, and to take his legs out of the way.

“I suppose that’s the new creed that those fellows were giving forth,” he said to Jack, when the other young men were gone.

“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said Jack, with an embarrassed laugh. “We all of us say our say.”

“But that is the say of most of you, I suppose,” said his father.

“Well, sir, I suppose every generation has its own standard. ‘The old order changeth,’ don’t you know—in art as well as in other things.”

“I see; and you think we know precious little about it,” said Mr. Sandford, with a joyless smile which curled his lip without obeying any mirthful impulse. He felt angry and unreasonably annoyed at the silly boys who knew so little. “But they know how to put that rubbish into words, and they get it published, and it affects the general opinion,” he said to himself, with perhaps a feeling, not unnatural in the circumstances, that he would like to drown those kittens with their miauling about things they knew nothing about. Angry moods, however, did not last long in Mr. Sandford’s mind. He went back to his studio and looked at the “Black Prince” in the light of these criticisms. And he found that some of the old courtiers in attendance on the sick warrior did look unfeignedly like old models, which indeed they were, and that there was more composition than life in the attitudes of the women. “I always thought that arm should come like this,” he said to himself, taking up his chalk.

One day about this time he had a visit from Daniells, the picture dealer, leading a millionaire—a newly-fledged one—who was making a gallery and buying right and left. Daniells, though he was very dubious about his h’s, was a good fellow, and always ready to stand by a friend. He was taking his millionaire a round of the studios, and especially to those in which there was something which had not “come off,” according to his phraseology. The millionaire was exceptionally ignorant and outspoken, expressing his own opinion freely. “What sort of a thing have we got here?” he said, walking up to the “Black Prince;” “uncommon nice lot of girls, certainly; but what are they all doing round the fellow out of the hospital? I say, is it something catching?” he cried, giving Mr. Sandford a dig with his elbow. Daniells laughed at this long and loudly, but it was the utmost the painter could do to conjure up a simple smile. He explained as well as he could that they were begging for life, and that the town was being sacked, a terrible event of which his visitor might have heard.

“Sacked,” said the millionaire; “you mean that they’re factory hands and have got the sack, or that they have been just told they’ve got to work short time. I understand that; and it shows how human nature’s just the same in all ages. But I can tell you that in Lancashire it’s a nice rowing he’d have got instead of all these sweet looks. They would not have let him off like that, don’t you think it. Wherever you get your women from, ours ain’t of that kind.”

Sandford tried to explain what kind of a sack it was, but he did not succeed, for the rich man was much pleased with his own view.

“It’s a fine picture,” said Daniells; “Mr. Sandford, he’s one of the very best of our modern masters, sir. He has got a great name, and beautiful his pictures look in a gallery with the others to set ’em off. Hung on the line in the Academy, and collected crowds. I shouldn’t ’a been surprised if they’d ’ad to put a rail round it like they did to Mr. Frith’s.”

He gave a wink at Mr. Sandford as he spoke, which made our poor painter sick.

“I’ve got one of Frith’s,” said the millionaire.

“You’ll ’ave got one of every modern artist worth counting when you’ve got Mr. Sandford’s,” said Daniells, with a pat upon the shoulder to his wealthy client. That gentleman turned round, putting his hands into his pockets.

“I’ve seen some pictures as I liked better,” he said.

“Yes, I know. You’ve seen that one o’ Millais’, a regular stunner; but, God bless you, that’s but one figger, and twice the money. Look at the work in that,” cried the dealer, turning his man round again, who gave the picture another condescending inspection from one corner to the other.

“I don’t deny there’s a deal of work in it,” he said, “if it’s painted fair with everything from the life; and I don’t mind taking it to complete my collection; but I’ll expect to have that considered in the price,” he added, turning once more on the painter. “You see, Mr. —— (What’s the gentleman’s name, Daniells?) I am not death on the picture for itself. It’s a fine showy picture, and I don’t doubt ’t’ll look well when it’s hung; but big things like that, as don’t tell their story plain, they’re not exactly my taste. However, it’s all right since Daniells says so. The only man I know that goes in for that sort of thing thinks all the world of Daniells. ‘Go to Daniells,’ he says, ‘and you’ll be all right.’ So I’ll take the picture, but I’ll expect a hundred or two off for ready money. I suppose there’s discount in all trades.”

“Say fifty off, and you’ll do very well, and get a fine thing cheap,” said Daniells.

Mr. Sandford’s countenance had darkened. He was very amiable, very courteous, much indisposed to bargaining, but he felt as if his customer had jumped upon him, and it was all he could do to contain himself. “I never make——” he began, with a little haughtiness most unusual to him; but before he had said the final words he caught Daniells’ eye, who was making anxious signs to him. The picture dealer twisted his face into a great many contortions. He raised his eyebrows, he moved his lips, he made all kinds of gestures; at last, under a pretence of looking at a sketch, he darted between Mr. Sandford and the other, and in a hoarse whisper said “Take it,” imperatively, in the painter’s ear.

Mr. Sandford came to an astonished pause. He looked at the uncouth patron of art, and at the dealer, and at the picture, in turn. It was on his lips to say that nothing would induce him to let the “Black Prince” go; but something stopped and chilled him—something, he could not tell what. He paused a moment, then retired suddenly to the back of the studio. “I’m not good at making bargains—I will leave myself,” he said, “in Mr. Daniells’ hands.”

“Ah, a bad system—a bad system. Every man ought to make his own bargains,” said the rich man.

Mr. Sandford did not listen. He began to turn over a portfolio of old sketches as if that were the most important thing in the world. He heard the voices murmur on, sometimes louder, sometimes lower, broken by more than one sharp exclamation, but restrained himself and did not interfere. Many thoughts went through his mind while he stooped over the big portfolio, and turned over, without seeing them, sketch after sketch. Why should he be bidden to “take it” in that imperative way? What did Daniells know which made him interfere with such a high hand? He was tempted again and again to turn round, to put a stop to the negotiation, to say, as he had the best right, “I’ll have none of this;” but he did not do it, though he could not even to himself explain why.

He found eventually that Daniells had sold the picture for him at a reduction of fifty guineas from the original price, which was a thing of no importance. He hated the bargain, but the little sacrifice of the money moved him not at all. He recovered his temper or his composure when the arrangement was completed, and smiled with a reserved acceptance of the millionaire’s invitation to “come to my place and see it hung,” as he showed the pair away. They were a well-matched pair, and Daniells was no doubt far better adapted to deal with each a man than a sensitive, proud artist, who did not like to have his toes trodden upon. After a while, indeed, Mr. Sandford felt himself quite able to smile at the incident, and shook off all his annoyance. He went in to luncheon with the cheque in his hand.

“I have sold the ‘Black Prince,’” he said, with a certain pleasure, even triumph, in his voice, remembering how Jack’s friends had scoffed, if not at the picture, at least at the school to which it belonged.

“Ah!” cried Mrs. Sandford, half pleased, half regretful. “I knew we should not have to give it house-room long.” She gave a glance round her as if she had heard something derogatory to the picture too.

“Who have you taken in and done for this time, father?” said Harry, who was given to banter.

“Was it that horrid man who came with Mr. Daniells?” cried Lizzie. “Oh, papa, I should not have thought you would have sold a nice picture to such a man.”

“Art-patrons are like gift-horses; we must not look them in the mouth,” said the painter. “There are quantities of h’s, no doubt, to be found about the studio; but if we stood upon that——”

“So long as he doesn’t leave out anything, either h’s or 0’s, in his cheque.”

Mr. Sandford felt slightly, unreasonably offended by any reference to the cheque. He gave it to his wife to send to the bank, with an annoyed apprehension that she would make some remark upon the fifty guineas which were left out. But Mrs. Sandford had not been his wife for thirty years without being able to read the annoyance in his face. And though she did not know what was its cause she respected it, and said not a word about the difference which her quick eye saw at once. Could it be that which had vexed Edward? she asked herself—he was not usually a man who counted his pounds in that way.

The sending off of the “Black Prince,” its packing and directing, and all the details of its departure, occupied him for some time. It was August, the beginning of holiday time, when, though never without a protest at the loss of the light days, even a painter idles a little. And the youngest boy had come from school, and they were all going to the seaside. Mr. Sandford did not like the bustle of the moment. He proposed to stay in town for a few days after the family, and join them when they had settled down in their new quarters. Before they went, however, he had an interview with one of those friends of Jack’s who were always about the house, and whose opinions on art were so different from Mr. Sandford’s, which gave another touch of excitement to the household. The young fellow wanted to marry Lizzie, as had been a long time apparent to everybody but her father. There was nothing to be said against him except that he had not much money; but Mr. Sandford thought that young Moulton looked startled when he had to inform him that Lizzie would have no fortune. “Of course that was not of the least consequence,” he said, but he gave his future father-in-law a curious and startled look.

“I think he was disappointed that there was no money,” the painter said afterwards to his wife.

“Oh, Edward! there is nothing mercenary about him!” said Mrs. Sandford; but she sighed and added, “If there only had been a little for her—just enough for her clothes. It makes such a difference to a young married woman. It is hard to have to ask your husband for everything.”

“Did you think so, Mary?” he asked, with a smile but a sense of pain.

“I—but we were not like ordinary people, we were just two fools together,” said the wife, with a smile which brightened all her face; “but,” she added, shaking her head, “we don’t marry our daughters like that.”

“If she is half as good to him as you have been to me——”

“Oh, don’t speak,” she said, putting up her hand to stop his mouth. “Lance Moulton can never be the hundredth part so good as my husband.” But she stopped after this little outburst, and laughed, and again shaking her head, repeated, “But we don’t marry our daughters like that.”

He felt inclined to ask, but did not, why?

When they all went away Mr. Sandford felt a little lonely, left by himself in the house, and perhaps it was that as much as anything else that set him thinking again. His wife had pressed the question of what Lizzie would want if she married young Moulton, who was only a journalist, on several occasions, until at last they had both decided that a small allowance might be made to her in place of a fortune.

“Fifty pounds is the interest of a thousand, and that is what she will have when we die,” Mrs. Sandford said, who was not learned in per cents. “I think we might give her fifty pounds a year, Edward.”

“Fifty pounds will not do much good,” he said.

“Not in their housekeeping, perhaps; but to have even fifty pounds will be a great thing for her. It will make her so much more comfortable.” Thus they concluded the matter between them, though not without a certain hesitation on Mr. Sandford’s part. It was strange that he should hesitate. He had always been so liberal, ready to give. There was no reason why he should take fright now. There was the millionaire’s cheque for the “Black Prince,” which had just been paid into the bank, leaving a comfortable balance to their credit. There was no pressure of any kind for the moment. To those who had known what it was to await their next payment very anxiously in order to pay very pressing debts, and had seen the little stream of money flowing, flowing away, till it almost seemed to be on the point of disappearing altogether, the ease of having a considerable sum to their credit was indescribable; but Mrs. Sandford was more and more wrapped up in the children, and though never indifferent, yet a little detached in every-day thought and action from her husband. She did not ask him as usual about his commissions and his future work. She seemed altogether at ease in her mind about everything that was not the boys and the girls.

CHAPTER III.

The house was very quiet when they were all away. Merely to look into the drawing-room was enough to give any one a chill. The sense of emptiness where generally every corner was full, and silence where there were always so many voices, was very depressing. Mr. Sandford consoled himself by a very hard day’s work the first day of the absence of his family, getting on very well indeed, and making a great advance in the picture he was painting—a small picture intended for one of his oldest friends. In the evening, as he had nothing else to occupy him, he moved about the studio, not going into the other parts of the house at all, and amused himself by making a little study of the moonlight as it came in upon the plants in the conservatory. His house was in a quarter not fashionable, somewhere between St. John’s Wood and Regent’s Park, and consequently there was more room than is usual in London, a pretty garden and plenty of air. The effect of the moonlight and the black exaggerated shadows amused him. The thought passed through his mind that if perhaps he were one of the newfangled school which Jack’s friends believed in, he might turn that unreal scene which was so indubitable a fact into a picture and probably make a great success as an impressionist—an idea at which he smiled with a milder but not less genuine contempt than the young impressionist might have felt for Mr. Sandford’s school. He had half a mind to do it—to conceal his name and send it to one of the lesser exhibitions, so as afterwards to have a laugh at the young men, and prove to them how easy the trick was, and that any old fogey who took the trouble could beat them in their own way. Next morning, however, he threw the sketch into a portfolio, with a horror of the black and white extravagance which in the daylight offended his artist-eye, and which he had a suspicion was not so good after all, or so easy a proof of the facility of doing that sort of thing as he had supposed. And that day his work did not advance so quickly or so satisfactorily. He listened for the swing of the door at the other end of the passage which connected the studio with the house, though he knew well enough there was no one who could come to disturb him. There are days when it is so agreeable to be disturbed! And it was when he was painting in this languid way, and, as was natural, not at all pleasing himself with his work, that there suddenly and most distinctly came before him, as if some one had come in and said it, a thing—a fact—which strangely enough he had not even thought of before. When it first occurred to him his hand suddenly stopped work with an action of its own before the mind had time to influence it, and there was a sudden rush of heat to his head. He felt drops of moisture come out on his forehead; his heart for a second paused too. His whole being received a shock—a start. For the first moment he could scarcely make out what this extraordinary sudden commotion, for which his mind seemed only partially responsible, could be.

This was what had in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, occurred to the painter. He had, of course, been aware of it before without giving any particular importance to the fact. The fact, indeed, in a precarious, uncertain profession like his, in which a piece of good fortune might occur at any moment, was really not of the first importance; but it flashed upon him now in a significance and with a force which no such thing had ever held before. It was this—that when he had completed the little picture upon which he was working he had no other commission of any kind on hand. It sounds very prosaic to be a thing capable of giving such a tragic shot—but it was not prosaic. One can even conceive circumstances in which despair and death might be in such words; and to no one in Mr. Sandford’s position could they be pleasant. Even if the fact represented no material loss, it would represent loss—which at his age could never be made up—loss of acceptance, loss of position, that kind of failure which is popularly represented as being “shelved,” put aside as a thing that is done with; always a keen and grievous pang. But to our painter the words meant more than that. They meant a cutting off of the ground from under his feet, a sudden arrest of everything, a full stop, which in his fully flowing liberal life was a tragic horror and impossibility, a something far more terrible than death. It had upon him something of the character of a paralytic stroke. His hand, as we have said, stopped work sharply, suddenly; it trembled, and the brush with which he was painting fell from it; his limbs tottered under him, his under lip dropped, his heart gave a leap and then a dead pause. He stumbled backwards for a few steps and sank into a chair.

Well! it was only for a few moments that he remained under the influence of this shock. He picked himself up again, and then picked up his brush and dried the perspiration from his forehead, and his heart with a louder beat went on again as if also crying out “Well!” When he had recovered the power of thought—which was not for a moment or two—he smiled to himself and said, “What then?” Such a thing had happened before. In an artist’s life there are often hair-breadth ’scapes, and now and then the most prosperous comes, as it were, to a dead wall—which is always battered through by a little perseverance or else opens by itself, melting asunder at the touch of some heaven-sent patron or happy accident, and so all goes on more prosperously than before. Mr. Sandford had passed through many such crises at the beginning of his career, and even when fully established had never been entirely certain from whence his next year’s income was to come. But it had always come; there had never been any real break in it—no failure of the continuity. He had seemed to himself to be as thoroughly justified in reckoning upon this continuity as any man in an office with so much a year. It might be a little more or a little less, and there was always that not unpleasant character of vagueness about it. It might even by a lucky chance for one fortunate year be almost doubled, and this had happened on rare occasions; but very seldom had there been any marked diminution in the yearly incomings. He said, “Pooh, pooh,” to himself as he went up to his picture again smiling, with his brush in his hand; not for such a matter as that was he going to be discouraged. It was a thing that had happened before, and would no doubt happen again. He began to work at his picture, and went on with great spirit for perhaps a quarter of an hour, painting in (for he had no model that morning) a piece of drapery from a lay figure, and catching just the tone he wanted on the beautiful bit of brocade which figured in the picture as part of a Venetian lady’s majestic dress. He was unusually successful in his work, and also succeeded for ten perhaps of these fifteen minutes in amusing himself and distracting his thoughts from that discovery. A bit of success is very exhilarating; it made him more confident than anything else could have done. But when he had got his effect his smile began to fade away, and his face grew grave again, and his hand trembled once more. After a while he was obliged to give up and take a rest, putting down his palette and brush with a sort of impatience and relief in getting rid of them. Could he have gone straight to his wife and made her take a turn with him in the garden, or even talked it over with her in the studio, no doubt the impression would have died off; but she was absent, and he could not do that; most likely, indeed, if she had been at home she would have been absorbed in some calculation about Lizzie’s wedding, and would not have noticed his preoccupation at all.

He sat down again in that chair, and said once more to himself, “What then?” and thought over the times in which this accident had happened before. But there now suddenly occurred to him another thought which was like the chill of an icy hand touching his heart. The same thing had happened before—but he had never been sixty before. He felt himself struck by this as if some one had given him a blow. It was quite true; he had called himself laughingly an old fogey, and when he and his old friends were together they talked a great deal about their age and about the young fellows pushing them from their seats. How much the old fellows mean when they say this, heaven knows. So long as they are strong and well they mean very little. It is an amusing kind of adoption of the folly of the young which seems to show what folly it is—a sort of brag in its way of their own superiority to all such decrepitudes, and easy power of laughing at what does not really touch them. But alone in their own private retirements, when a thought like this suddenly comes, a sharp and sudden realisation of age and what it means, no doubt the effect is different. For the moment Mr. Sandford was appalled by the discovery he had made, which had never entered his mind before. Ah! a pause in one’s means of making one’s living, a sudden stop in the wheels of one’s life, is a little alarming, a little exciting, perhaps a discouragement, perhaps a sharp and keen stimulant at other times: at forty, even at fifty, it may be the latter; but at sixty!—this gives at once a new character to the experience—a character never apprehended before. His heart, which had begun to spring up with an elasticity natural to him, stopped again—nay, did not stop, but fell into a sudden dulness of beating, a subdued silence as if ice-bound. Sensation was too much for thought; his mind could not go into it; he only felt it, with a dumb pang which was deeper than either words or thought.

He could not do any more work that day. He tried again two or three times, but ended by putting down his palette with a sense of incapacity such as he thought he had never felt before. As a matter of fact, he might have felt it a hundred times and attached no importance to it; he would have gone into the house, leaving his studio, and talked or read, or gone out for a walk, or to his club, or to see a friend, saying he did not feel up to work to-day, and there would have been an end of it. But he was alone, and none of these distractions were possible to him. Luncheon came, however, which he could not eat, but sat over drearily, not able to get away from the impression of that thought. Afterwards it occurred to him that he would go and see Daniells and ask him—he was not quite clear what. He could not go to one of his friends and ask, “Am I falling off—do you see it? Has my hand lost its cunning—am I getting old and is my mind going?” He could not ask any one such questions as these. He smiled at it dolefully, feeling all the ridicule of the suggestion. He knew his mind was not going—but—— At last he made up his mind what he would do. It was a long walk to Bond Street, but it was now afternoon and getting cooler, and the walk did him good. He reached Daniells’ just before the picture dealer left off business for the day. He was showing some one out very obsequiously through the outer room all hung with pictures when he saw Sandford coming in. The stranger looked much interested and pleased when he heard Sandford’s name.

“Introduce me, please,” he said, “if this is the great Mr. Sandford, Daniells.”

“It is, Sir William,” said Daniells; and Sir William offered his hand with the greatest effusion. “This is a pleasure that I have long desired,” he said.Mr. Sandford was surprised—he was taken unawares, and the greeting touched his heart. “After all, perhaps it isn’t that,” he said to himself.

“What a piece of luck that you should have come in just then! Why, that’s Sir William Bloomfield—just the very man for you to know.”

“Why for me more than another? I know his name, of course,” said Mr. Sandford, “and he seems pleasant; but I’m too old for new friends.”

“Too old; stuff and nonsense! You’re always a-harping on that string. He’s just the man for you, just the man,” said Daniells, rubbing his hands.

Mr. Sandford was amused—perhaps a little pleased by this encounter; and the pressure of his heavy thoughts was stilled. He began to look at the new pictures which had come into the gallery, to admire some and criticise others. Daniells had the good sense always to listen to Mr. Sandford’s criticisms with attention. They had furnished him with a great many telling phrases, and given to his own rough and practical knowledge of art a little occasional polish which surprised and overawed many of his customers. He listened admiringly now as usual.

“What a deal you do know, to be sure!” he said after a while. “I don’t know one of them that can make a thing clear like you, old man. It’s a shame——” and here he coughed and broke off, as if endeavouring to swallow his last words.

“What is a shame?” The broken sentence changed Mr. Sandford’s mood again—the momentary cheer died away. “Daniells,” he said, “I want you to tell me what you meant the other day by forcing me to accept that man’s offer. Yes, you did. I should not have let him have the picture but for you.”

“Forcing him! Oh, that’s a nice thing to say—the most obstinate fellow in all London!”

“Never mind that; I can see you are fencing. Come, why did you do it?”

Daniells paused for some time. He said a great many things to stave off his confusion, many half-things which involved others, and made his answer perhaps more clear than if he had put it directly into words.

“I see,” Mr. Sandford said at last, “you thought it very unlikely that I should sell it at all to any one who knew better.”

“It ain’t that. They don’t know half enough, hang ’em! or they wouldn’t run after a booby like Blank and neglect you.”

Mr. Sandford smiled what he felt to be a very sickly smile. “We must let Blank have his day,” he said, “I don’t grudge it him; but I’d like to know why my chances are so bad. I have always sold my pictures.”

Daniells gave him a sudden look, as if he would have spoken; then thought better of it, and said nothing.

“I have had no reason to complain,” Mr. Sandford continued; “I have done very well on the whole. I have never had extravagant prices like Em or En.”

“No,” said Daniells; “you see, you’ve never made an ’it. You’ve gone on doing good work, and you’ve always done good work. I’d say that if I were to die for it; but you’ve never made an ’it.”

“I suppose that’s true; but you need not put it so very frankly,” said the painter, with a laugh.

“Frankly! I’ve got occasion to put it frankly; and I say it’s a d——d shame—that’s what it is,” cried Daniells, raising his voice.

“You’ve had occasion? Now that we’re on this subject, I should like to get to the bottom of it. You’ve had occasion?”

“Well, of course,” said the picture dealer, “if you drive me into a corner. I’m in the middle of everything, and I hear what people say——”

“What do they say? That I’ve lost my sense of colour like old Millrain, or fallen into my dotage like——”

“Nonsense, Sandford! You know it’s nothing of the kind. Don’t talk such confounded nonsense. You are painting quite as well as ever, you know you are. They—people don’t care for that sort of thing. It’s too good for them, or you’re too good for them, or I don’t know what.”

Mr. Sandford kept smiling—not for pleasure; he was conscious of that sort of fixed smile that might be thought a sneer, at those people for whom he was too good. “And you’ve had occasion,” he said, “to prove this?”

“Don’t smile at me like that—don’t look like that. If you knew how I’ve argued and put it all before ’em—— I’ve said a hundred times if I’ve said once, ‘Sandford! why, Sandford’s one of the best. There isn’t a better educated painter not in England. You can’t pick a hole in his pictures, try as you like.’”

“Am I indeed so much discussed?” said the victim. “I did not know I was of such importance. And on what ground have you held this discussion, Daniells? There must have been some occasion for it. I don’t see anything here of mine.”

“Look here,” cried the picture dealer, roused, “if you won’t believe me.” He opened the door of an inner room, into which Mr. Sandford followed him. And there, with their faces turned to the wall, were three pictures in a row. The shape of them gave him a faint, uneasy feeling. By this time Daniells had been wound up to self-defence, and thought of the painter’s feelings no more.

“Look ’ere,” he said, “I shouldn’t have said a word if you had let well alone—but look ’ere.” Before one of the pictures was visible Mr. Sandford knew what he was going to see. Three pictures of his own, of a kind for which he had been famous—cabinet pictures, for which there had always been the readiest market. He recognised them all with a faintness that made his brain swim and the light go from his eyes. They seemed so familiar, like children. At the first glance, without looking at them, he knew what they were and all about them, and had a sick longing that the earth would open and swallow them, and hide his shame, for so it seemed.

“If that don’t show how I’ve trusted you, nothing can,” said the dealer. “I thought they were as safe as the bank. I bought them all on spec, thinking I’d get a customer as soon as they were in the shop—and, if you’ll believe me, nobody’ll have them. I can’t tell what people are thinking of, but that’s the truth.”

Mr. Sandford stood with the light going out of his eyes, gazing straight before him. “In that case—in that case,” he began, “you should—I must——”

“I say, don’t take it like that, old man. It’s the fortune of war. One up and another down. It can’t be helped, don’t you know. Sandford, I say, why, it’ll come all right again in half-a-dozen years or so. It’ll come all right after a time.”

“What did you say?” said Mr. Sandford, dazed. Then he answered vaguely, “Oh yes; all right—all right.”

“What’s the matter? I’ve been a wretched fool. Sandford, here, I say, have a glass of wine.”

“There’s nothing the matter. It seems to me a little—cold. I know—I know it’s not a cold day; but there’s a chill wind about, penetrating—thanks, Daniells, you’ve cleared up my problem very well. Now, I think—I think I understand.”

“Don’t go now, Sandford; don’t go like this.”

“I want,” he said, smiling again, “to think it over. Much obliged to you, Daniells, for helping me to understand.”

“Sandford, don’t go like this. You make me awfully anxious—I’m sure you’re ill. I can’t let you go out of my place, looking so dreadfully ill, without some one with you.”

“Some one with me! I hope you don’t mean to insult me, Daniells. I am perfectly well—a little startled, but that’s all. I shall go and take a walk, and blow away the cobwebs, and—think it over. That’s the best thing. I’m much obliged to you, Daniells. Good-bye.”

“Have a hansom, at least,” Daniells said.

“No hansom,” Mr. Sandford answered, turning upon the dealer with a curious smile. He even laughed a little—low, but quite distinct. “No, I’ll have no hansom. Good-bye, Daniells, good-bye.”

And in a minute he was gone. The picture dealer went out to the door after him, and followed him with his eyes until his figure was lost in the crowd. Daniells was alarmed. He blamed himself for his frankness. “I never thought he’d have taken it to heart like that,” he said to himself. “Yes, I did; or I might have done—he’s awful proud. But I’m ’asty. I can’t help it; I’m always doing things I’m sorry for. Anyhow, he must have found it out some time, sooner or later,” the dealer said to himself; and this philosophy silenced his fears.

CHAPTER IV.

Mr. Sandford knew nothing till he found himself in the Regent’s Park, not far from his house. He had passed through the crowds in the street with his life and thoughts suspended, feeling that to think was impossible, seeing only before him the line of the three pictures standing against the wall. They seemed to accompany him on his way, showing against the front of the houses wherever he turned his eyes. Three pictures, painted cheerfully, without a premonition, or any sense of failure, or a moment’s fear that they would ever stand with their faces against a dealer’s wall. One of them had been a great favourite with his wife. The youngest girl—little Mary—had sat for one of the figures, and Mrs. Sandford had not wished to let it go. “I wish we could afford to keep this,” she said; “it is like selling our own flesh and blood.” But most painters have to accustom themselves to that small trouble, and even she had laughed at herself. And now to think that it had never been sold at all—that it was unsaleable, oh, heaven! The sense of a dreadful humiliation, far more than was reasonable, filled the painter’s mind. The man whom he had always liked, but partly despised—Daniells, who was as ignorant as a pig, who knew a picture indeed when he saw it, but had not a notion why he liked it, nor could render a reason or tell how he knew one to be bad or another good—that he should be losing by his kindness, should be out of pocket, burdened by three “Sandfords” with their faces against the wall! Mr. Sandford’s gentle contempt came back upon him with a shock of humiliation and shame. To sneer at a man who had suffered by him, who had given money for his unsaleable work—a man who had thus shown himself a better man than he: for Daniells had never said a word, probably never would have said a word, listened to the painter’s calm assumptions and taken no notice, having it in his power all the time to shame him! Nay, he had done even more than this—he had brought his own customer out of his way, in pity and friendship, to buy that “Black Prince,” no doubt equally unsaleable, though—heaven help the poor painter!—he had not found it out. The pang of this humiliation, mingled with tingling shame and a painful gratitude and admiration, quivered through and through him, penetrating the dark dismay and pain of his suspended thoughts.

He began to notice everything more clearly when he got into the park. The August afternoon was softening every moment into the deeper sweetness of the evening. He avoided instinctively the frequented parts, where the children were playing and people walking about, and made a long circuit round the outskirts of the park, where only a rare passenger was to be met with now and then. The air was sweet, though it was the air of town. The leaves were fluttering in a light breeze, the birds singing their evening songs, thrushes repeating a hundred questions, blackbirds unconditional, piping loud and clear, almost as good as nightingales. He was a man who was not hard to please, and even Regent’s Park delighted him on a summer evening. He felt it even now, notwithstanding the shadow that was over him. Never, up to this time, had care hung so heavy on Mr. Sandford but what he could escape from it by help of the artist-eye, ever ready to seize a passing effect, or by the gentle heart which was full of sympathy with every human emotion or even whim of passing fancy. His heart was unaccustomed to anything tragical. It tried even now to beguile him and escape; to withdraw his attention to the long, streaming, level rays of the sinking sun; to get him out of himself to the aid of the child who had broken its toy and was crying with such passion—far more than a man can show for losses the most terrible—by the side of the road. And these expedients answered for the moment. But what had befallen him now was not to be eluded as other troubles had been. He could not escape from it. The most ingenious imagination could not lessen it by turning it over and over. Behind the sunset rays a strange vision of the unsold pictures came out into the very sky. They shaped themselves behind the child, whom it was so easy to pacify with a shilling, against the park palings. Three—which was one of the complete numbers, as if to prove the fulness of the disaster—three pictures unsold in Daniells’ inner room, and not a commission in hand, nothing wanted from him, no one to buy. After thus trying every device to escape, his heart grew low and faint within him, giving up the conflict; he felt a dull buzzing in his ears, and a dull throbbing in his breast.

But thinking was not so easy a matter as it seemed. Think it over? How was he to think it over? If it were possible to imagine the case of a man who, walking serenely over a wide and peaceful country, should suddenly, with the softest, scarcely audible, roll of the pebbles under his feet, see the earth yawn before him and find himself on the brink of a fearful precipice, that would have been like his case: but not so bad as his case, for the man would have it in his power to draw back, to retire to the peaceful fields behind: whereas, to Mr. Sandford, there were no peaceful fields, but a gulf all round that one spot of undermined earth on which he stood. Presently he found himself at his own door, very tired and a little dazed in mind, thinking of that precipice, of nothing more distinct. The house stood very solid, very tranquil, its red roof all illumined with the last level line of the sun, the garden stretching into shady corners under the trees, the flower-beds blazing in lavish colours, the little lawn all burnt bare by the ardent sun and worn with the feet of the tennis players: all so peaceful, certain, secure—an old-established home with deep foundations, and the assured, immovable look of household tranquillity and peace. If the walls had been tottering, the garden relapsing into weeds and wildness, he would not have been surprised—that would have been suitable to his circumstances. The thing unsuitable was to come back to that trim order and well-being, to that modest wealth and comfort and beauty, and to know that all this too, like himself, was on the edge of the precipice. Tired as he was, he went round the garden before he went in, and gazed wistfully at the pleasant dwelling with its open windows, wondering, when the next shock of the earthquake came, whether it would all fall to pieces like a house of cards, and everybody become aware that the earth was rent and a great chasm yawning before the peaceful door.

He never seemed to have realised, before now, how full of modest luxury and exquisite comfort that house was. It was not yet covered up and dismantled, though the fingers of the maid-servants had been itching to get at that delightful task since ever “the family” left. All was empty and still, but all in good order; no false pretension or show, everything temperate and well chosen; rich, soft carpets in which the foot sank, curtains hanging in graceful folds, the cosiest chairs, Italian cabinets, Venice glass, pictures, not only of his own but of many contemporary artists—a delightful interior, without a bare corner or vacant spot anywhere. He went over it with a sort of despairing pleasure and admiration, his head aching and giddy, with a sense that at any moment the next shock might come, and everything collapse like the shadows of a dream. Presently he was served with his dinner, which he could not eat, in the cool dining-room, with a large window opening to the garden and the sweet air breathing about him as he sat down at the vacant table. What a mockery of all certitude and safety it was!—for nothing could seem more firmly established, more solid and secure. If he had been a prince of the blood he might have had a more splendid dwelling, but not more comfort, more pleasantness. All that a sober mind could desire was there—the utmost refinement of comfort, beautiful things all around, every colour subdued into perfection, no noise or anything to break the spell. He was glad that the others were absent—it was the only alleviation to the dismay within him. There would have been questions as to what was the matter—“Are you ill, Edward?” “What is wrong with papa?” and other such questions, which he could not have borne.

Afterwards he went into the studio. The first thing that caught his eye was the glow of that piece of drapery which he had painted under the keen stimulant of the first warning. It had been a stimulant then, and he was startled by the splendour of the colour he had put into that piece of stuff—the roundness of it, the clear transparence of the shadows. It stood out upon the picture like something by another hand, painted in another age. Had he done that only a few hours ago—he with the same brushes which had produced the rest of the picture which looked so pale and insignificant beside it? How had he done it? it made all the rest of the picture fade. He recognised in a moment the jogtrot, the ordinary course of life, and against it the flush of the sudden inspiration, the stronger handling, the glory and glow of the colour. He had never done anything better in his life; he whose pictures were drugs in the market, who had not a commission to look forward to. He stood and looked at it for a long time, growing sadder and sadder. He was not a man who had failed, and who could rail against the world; he was a man who had succeeded; not a painter in England but would laugh out if any one said that Sandford had been a failure. Why, who had been successful if he had not? they would have said. He had not a word to say against fate. Nobody was to blame, not even himself, seeing that now, in the midst of all, he could still paint like that. He knew the value of that as well as any man could know it. He could not shut his eyes to it because he himself had done it. If he saw such a bit of painting in a young fellow’s picture he would say, “Well done;” he would say, “Paint like that, and you have your fortune in your own hand.” Ah, but he was himself no longer a young fellow. Success was not before him; he had grasped her, held her, and now it seemed his day was past.

It is never cheerful to have to allow that your day is past. But there are circumstances which make it less difficult. Sometimes a man accepts gracefully enough that message of dismissal. Then he will retire with a certain dignity, enjoying the ease which he has purchased with his hard work, and looking on henceforward at the struggle of the others, not sorry, perhaps, or at least saying to the world that he is not sorry, to be out of that conflict. Mr. Sandford said to himself that in other circumstances he might have been capable of this; might have laid aside his pencil, occupied himself with guiding the younger, helping the less strong, standing umpire, perhaps, in the strife, giving place to those who represented the future, and whose day was but beginning. Such a retirement must always seem a fit and seemly thing: but not now; not in what he felt was but the fulness of his career; not, above all—and this gave the sting to all—not while he was still depending upon his profession for his daily bread. His daily bread, and what was worse than that, the daily bread of those he loved. How many things that simple phrase involved! Oh for the simplicity of those days when it meant but what it said! He asked himself with a curious, fantastic, half-amused, half-despairing curiosity whether it had ever meant mere bread? Bread and a little fruit, perhaps; a cake, and a draught from a spring in the primitive Eastern days when the phrase was invented. “Day by day our daily bread:” a loaf like that of Elijah which the angel brought him: the cakes of manna in the wilderness of which only enough was gathered to suffice for one day: and the tent at night to retire to, or a cave, perhaps—a shelter which cost nothing. How different now was daily bread; so many things involved in it, that careful product of many men’s work, the house which was his home: and all the costly nameless necessities, so much more than food and clothing; the dainty and pleasant things, the flowers and gardens, the amusements, the trifles that make life delightful and sweet. Give us our daily bread: had it ever been supposed to mean all that? All these many years these necessities had been supplied, and all had gone on as if it were part of the constitution of the world. But now the time had come when the machinery was stopped, when everything was brought to a conclusion. Mr. Sandford turned his eye from that bit of painting which stood out upon his picture as if the sun had touched it, to the sheaves of old studies and sketches in the portfolios, the half-finished bits about the walls, all those scraps and fragments, full of suggestion, full of beautiful thoughts, which make the studio of a great painter rich. He had thought a few days ago that all this meant wealth. Now his eyes were opened, and he saw that it meant nothing, that all about him was rubbish not worth the collection, and himself, who could work no longer, who was no more good for anything, only one piece of lumber the more, the most valueless of all.

He paused, and tried to say to himself that this was morbid. But it was not morbid, it was true. With that curious hurrying of the thoughts which a great calamity brings about, he had already glimpsed everything, seeing the whole situation and all that was involved. There was a certain sum of money in the bank, no more anywhere, except after his own death. There were his insurances, a little for every one, enough, he had hoped, though in a much changed and subdued manner, to support his wife and the girls, enough for that daily bread of which he had been thinking; but it could not be had till he died; and that was all. There was nothing, nothing more; nothing to live upon, nothing to turn to. If you have losses, if your income is reduced, you can retrench and diminish your expenses. But when everything is cut off in a moment, when you have no income at all? such utter loss paralyses the unfortunate. He stood in his studio with a sort of vague smile upon his face, and something of the imbecility of utter helplessness taking possession of him. Everything cut off. Nothing to turn to. Vague visions passed through his mind of the expenses of that seaside house, for instance, which could not be got rid of now; of Lizzie’s fifty pounds a year which he had promised not without forebodings; of Jack’s fee of two guineas which the children had all made so merry about; of the easy course of their existence, their life, which was so blameless, so innocent, so kind: they were all ready to give, ready to be hospitable; none of the family could see another in want and not eagerly offer what they had. Good God! and to think they had nothing, nothing! It was not a question of enough, it was that there was nothing; that all the streams were closed, and all the doors shut, and the successful man, with his large income, had suddenly become like a navvy out of work, like a dock labourer, or whatever was most pitifully unprovided for in the world.

It made Mr. Sandford’s brain whirl. So much in the bank, and after that nothing; and all the liberal life going on; the servants, who could not be sent off at a moment’s notice; the house, which could not be abandoned; the family, all so cheerful in their false security, who had no presentiment of evil. He asked himself what people did who were ruined? He had no great acquaintance with such things. What did they do? He was very helpless. He could not realise the possibility of breaking up the house, having no home; of dispersing all the pleasant things which had been part of his being so long; of stopping short—— He could not understand how such things were done. And those people who were ruined generally had something upon which they could fall back. A merchant could begin again. He might have friends who would help him to a new start, and there was always hope that he might do as well at last as at first. But an artist (at sixty) could have no new start. The public would have none of him. He had done his best; he could not begin anew. His career when once closed was over, and nothing more could be made of it. He remembered with a forlorn self-reproach of having himself said that So-and-so should retire; that it would be more dignified to give up work before work gave him up. Ah! so easy a thing to say, so cruel a thing to say; but he had not realised that it was cruel, or that such an end was cruel. He had never supposed it possible that such a thing could happen to himself.

The insurances: yes, there were always the insurances: a thousand pounds for each child, that was the calculation they had made. They had said to each other in the old times, Mary and he, that they never could save money enough to make any appreciable provision for so many children, but that if they could but secure for each a thousand pounds, that would always be something. It would help to give the boys a start; it would be something for the girls. That the boys should all have professions in which they would be doing well, and the girls husbands to provide for them, had seemed too commonplace a certainty even to be dwelt upon: and a thousand pounds is never to be despised; it would help the young ones over any early struggle, it would make all the difference. “So long as we live,” Mrs. Sandford had said, “they will always have us to fall back upon: and afterwards—what a thing it would have been for us, Edward, to have a thousand pounds to the good to begin upon!” They had thought they made everything safe so, for the young ones. Mr. Sandford, indeed, still felt a faint lightening of his heart as he thought of the insurances. It had always done him good to think of them; that would be something at least to leave behind. But then it was necessary first that he should die.

He had never thought urgently of that necessity. So long as there is nothing pressing about it, no appearance of its approach, it is easy enough to speak of that conclusion. Sometimes there is even a pensive pleasure in it. “When I am out of the way,” “When our day is over,” are things quite simple to say. For of course that must come one time or another, as everybody knows. It is more serious, but still not anything very bad, to speak now and then of what is to be done “if anything happens.” These things make but little impression upon the mind, even when old age is on its way. And Mr. Sandford at sixty had as yet felt very few premonitions of old age. He had called himself an old man with a laugh, for his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated; and it was still pleasantly absurd to think that he could be supposed an old man. But now all this took a different aspect. He felt no older, indeed, but his position was altogether changed. In the shock of his new circumstances he stood helpless, not knowing how to meet this unfeared, unthought-of contingency. But his mind went off with a spring to further eventualities. The only comfort was this, they had a thousand pounds apiece laid up for them. But it would be necessary first that he should die.

Thinking it all over, he thought, on the whole, that this was the best thing that could happen. The changes which he surveyed with such a sense of impossibility, not knowing how they could be brought about, would become quite natural if he died. There was always a change on the death of the father. It was the natural time for remodelling life, for altering everything. The family would not be able, of course, to remain in this house, to keep up their present superstructure of existence: but then in the change of circumstances that would seem quite natural and they would not feel it. They could put everything, then, upon a simpler footing. And they would have an income, not much of an income, perhaps, but yet something that would come in punctually to the day, and which would be independent of anything they did, which would have nothing to do with picture dealers or patrons of art, or the changes of taste that affected them. What a thing that was, when one came to think of it, to have an income—something which came in all the same whether you worked or not, whether you were ill or well, whether you were in a good vein and could get on with your picture, or whether it dragged and did not satisfy you! It gave him a sensation of pleasure to think of it: but then he reflected on the one preliminary which was not so easy to bring about, which no planning of his could accomplish just when it was wanted, just when it would be of most use.

For before this state of things could ensue, it would be necessary that Mr. Sandford should be dead; and so far as he was aware there was no immediate prospect of anything of the kind. People do not die when it is most necessary, when it would be most expedient. It is a thing independent of your own will, horribly uncertain, happening just when it is not wanted. This difficulty, when he had begun to take a little comfort in the possible arrangement of everything, sent the painter back into all the confusion of miserable thoughts. Was it possible that he was in circumstances which made it impossible for him to do anything, even to die?

CHAPTER V.

Mr. Sandford went down next day to the seaside to join his family. They had got a very pleasant house, in full sight of the sea. “What was the use of going to the sea at all,” Mrs. Sandford said, “unless you got the full good of it? All the sunsets and effects, and its aspect at every hour of the day, which was so very different from having merely glimpses of it—that is what my husband likes,” she said. And of course this meant the most expensive place. He was met at the station by his wife and little Mary, the youngest, who was always considered papa’s favourite. The others had all gone along the coast with a large pic-nic party, some of them in a boat, some riding—for there were fine sands—and a delightful gallop along that crisp firm road, almost within the flash of the waves, was most invigorating. “They all look ever so much the better for it already,” said the fond mother.

“There was not much the matter with them before that I could see.”

“Oh, nothing the matter! But they do so enjoy the sea. And I find there are a great many people here whom we know—more than usual; and a great deal going on.”

“There is generally a good deal going on.”

“My dear Edward, staying behind has not been good for you; you are looking pale; and I never heard you grudge the children their little pleasures before.”

“I stayed at home, papa,” said little Mary, not willing to be unappreciated, “to be the first to see you.”

“You are always a good little girl,” said the father gratefully.

“I assure you they were all anxious to stay: but I did not think you would like them to give up a pleasure,” said Mrs. Sandford, never willing to have any of her children subjected to an unfavourable comparison.

“No; oh no,” he said, with a sigh. It was almost impossible not to feel a grudge at the thought of that careless enjoyment, no one taking any thought; but he could not burst out with any disclosures of his trouble before little Mary, looking up wistfully in his face with a child’s sensitiveness to the perception of something wrong. Mary was more ready to perceive this than Mrs. Sandford, who only thought that her husband was perhaps a little out of temper, or annoyed by some trifling matter, or merely affected by the natural misanthropy of three days’ solitude. She clasped his arm caressingly with her hand as she led him along.

“You have got some cobwebs into your mind,” she said, “but the sea breezes will soon blow them away.”

The sea breezes were very fresh; the sea itself spread out under the sunshine a dazzling stretch of blue; the wide vault of heaven all belted with lines of summer cloud, “which landward stretched along the deep” like celestial countries far away. The air was filled with the soft plash of the water, the softened sound of voices. The whole population seemed out of doors, and all in full enjoyment of the heavenly afternoon and the sights and sounds of the sea. Walking along through these holiday groups, with his wife by his side and his little girl holding his hand, Mr. Sandford felt an unreasonable calm—a sense of soothing quiet—come over him. He could not dismiss the phantom which overshadowed him, but he felt for the moment that he could ignore it. It was necessary that he should ignore it. He could not communicate to his wife so tragical a discovery there and then, in her ease and cheerful holiday mood. He must prepare her for it. Not all in a moment could that revelation burst upon her. Poor Mary! so happy in her children, so full of their plans and pleasures, so secure in the certainty of prosperous life: even the child, strange to think it, understood him better, being nearer, he supposed, to those springs of life where there are no shades of intervening feeling, but all is either happiness or despair. A profound sorrow for these innocent creatures came into his mind; he could not overcloud them, either the mother or the child. They were so glad to have him again; so proud to walk on either side of him, pointing out everything: and all was so happy, were it not for one thing; nothing to trouble them, all well, all full of pleasure, confidence, health, lightheartedness; not a cloud—except that one.

“You have been tiring yourself—doing too much while you have been alone; the servants have made you uncomfortable; they have been pulling everything, to pieces, though I left the most stringent orders——”

“No, the servants were very good; they disturbed nothing, though they were longing to get at it.”

“They always are; they take a positive pleasure in making the house look as desolate as possible—as if nobody was ever going to live in it any more.”

“Nobody going to live in it more!” he repeated the words with a faint smile. “No—on the contrary, it looked the most liveable place I ever saw. I never felt its home-look so much.”

“It is a nice little place,” she said, with a little pressure of his arm. “Whatever may happen to the children in after life, we can always feel that they have had a happy youth and a bright home.”

“What should happen to them?” he said, alarmed with a sudden fear that she must know.

“Oh, nothing, I hope, but what is good; but the first change in the family always makes one think. I hope you won’t mind, Edward: Lance Moulton is here.”

“Oh, he is here!”

“If it is really to be so, Edward, don’t you think it is better they should see as much of each other as possible?” his wife said, with another tender pressure of his arm. “And somehow, when there is a thing of that kind in the air, everything seems quickened; I am sure I can’t tell how it is. It gives a ‘go’ to all they are doing. There are no end of plans and schemes among them. Of course, Lance has a friend or two about, and the Dropmores are here, who are such friends of our girls.”

“And all is fun and nonsense, I suppose?”

“Well, if you call it so—all pleasure, and kindness, and real delightful holiday. Oh, Edward,” said Mrs. Sandford, with the ghost of a tear in her eye, “don’t let us check it! It is the brightest time of their lives.”

The sunset was blazing in glory upon the sea, the belts of cloud all reddening and glowing, soft puffs of vapour like roses floating across the blue of the sky. And the air full of young voices softened and musical, children playing, lovers wandering about, happy mothers watching the sport, all tender gaiety, and security, and peace. Everything joyful—save one thing. “No; God forbid that I should check it,” he said hastily, with a sigh that might have been a groan.

They all came back not long after, full of high spirits and endless talk; they were all glad to see their father, who had never been any restraint upon their pleasure, whose grave, gentle presence had never checked or stilled them. They were sure of his sympathy more or less. If he did not share their fun, he had at least never discouraged it. And soon in the plenitude of their own affairs they forgot him, as was so natural, and filled the room with laughing consultations over to-morrow’s pleasure, and plans for it. “What are we going to do?” they all cried, one after another, even Lizzie and Lance, coming in a little dazzled from the balcony, where they had been enjoying the last fading lights of the ending day, while the others had clamoured for lamps and candles inside; “What are we going to do?” Mrs. Sandford sat beaming upon them, hearing all the suggestions, offering a new idea now and then. “I must know to-night, that the hampers may be got ready,” she said; and then there was an echoing laugh all round. “Mother’s always so practical.” Mr. Sandford sat a little outside of that lively circle with a book in his hand. But he was not reading; he was watching them with a strange fascination; not willing to check them; oh no! feeling a helpless sort of wonder that they should play such pranks on the edge of the precipice, and that none of them should divine—that even his wife should not divine! The animated group, full in the light of the lamps—girls and young men in the frank familiarity of the family interrupting each other, contradicting each other, discussing and arguing—was as charming a study as a painter could have desired; the mother in the midst with her pencil in her hand and a sheet of white paper on the table before her, which threw back the light; and behind, the lovers stealing in out of the soft twilight shadows, the faint glimmer of distant sea and sky. He watched it with a strange dull ache under the pleasure of the father and the painter: the light touching those graceful outlines, shining in those young eyes, the glimmer of shining hair, the play of animated features, the soft, dreamlike, suggestive shadows of the two behind. And yet the precipice yawning, gaping at their feet, though nobody knew.

“Papa,” said suddenly a small voice in his ear, “I am not going to-morrow. I want to stay with you.”

“My little Mary! But I am a dull old fellow, not worth staying with.”

“You are sorry about something, papa!”

“Sorry? There are a great many things in the world to be sorry about,” he said, stroking her brown head. The child had clasped her hands about his arm, and was nestling close up to him whispering. They were altogether outside of the lively group at the table. This little consoler comforted Mr. Sandford more than words could say.

It was thus that the holiday life went on. The young people were always consulting what to do, making up endless excursions and expeditions, Mrs. Sandford always explaining for them. What was the use of being at the seaside if they did not take full advantage of it? What was the use of coming to a new part of the country if they did not see everything? Sometimes she went with them, compelled by the addition of various strangers with whom the girls could not go without a chaperon; sometimes stayed at home with her husband, calculating where they would be by this time; whether they had found a pleasant spot for their luncheon; when they might be expected back. Meanwhile, Mr. Sandford took long solitary walks—very long, very solitary—along the endless line of the sands, within sight and sound of the sea. Little Mary and her next brother, the schoolboy, always started with him; but the fascination of the rocks and pools was too much for these little people, and the father, not ill-pleased, went on with a promise of picking them up again on his way back. He would walk on and on for the whole of the fresh shining morning, with the sea on one side and the green country on the other, and all the wonderful magical lights of the sky and water shining as if for him alone. They beguiled him out of himself with their miraculous play and shimmer and wealth of heavenly reflection; and sometimes he seemed to feel a higher sensation still—the feeling as of a silent great Companion who filled the heavenly space, yet moved with him, an all-embracing, all-responsive sympathy, till he thought of God coming down to the cool of the garden and walking with His creatures, and all his trouble seemed to breathe away in a heavenly hush, which every little wave repeated, softly lapping at his feet.

But when he came back into the midst of his cheerful family other subjects got the upper hand. There was not the least harm in the gaiety that was about him—not the least harm; it was mere exuberance of youthful life and pleasure. If things had been running their usual course, and his usual year’s work had been in front of him, Mr. Sandford said to himself that he too would have come out to the door to see the children start on their expeditions, as his wife did, with pleasure in their good looks, and in the family union and happiness. He might have grumbled a little over Harry’s idleness, or even shaken his head over the expense; but he too would have liked it—he would have admired his young ones, and taken pleasure in seeing them happy. But to stand by and watch all that, and know that presently the revenue which kept it all up would stop, and the ground be cut from under their feet, sheer down, like a precipice! Already he had begun to familiarise himself with this idea. It had a sort of paralysing effect, as well as one of panic and horror. It is not a thing that happens often. People grow poorer, or even they get ruined at a blow, but there is generally something remaining upon which economy will tell; he went over these differences in his lonely hours, imagining a hundred cases. A merchant, for instance, who ruins himself by speculation, if he is an honourable man, has means at his disposal of trying again, or at least can get a situation in an office (at the worst), where he will still have an income—a steady income, though it may be small; his friends, and the people who had business relations with him, would be sure to exert themselves to secure him that; or if his losses were but partial, of course nothing could be easier than to retrench and live at a lower rate. So Mr. Sandford said to himself. But what can a few economies do when at a critical moment, at a period close at hand, all incoming must cease, and nothing remain? It did not now give him the violent shock of sensation which he had felt at first when this fact came uppermost. He had become accustomed to it. It was not aprÈs moi, but in three months or so, the deluge: an end to everything, no half measures, no retrenchment, but the end. He began to wonder when that time came what would be done. The house could be sold, and all that was in it, but where then would they go for shelter? They would have to pay for the poorest lodgings, and at least there was nothing to pay for the house. Mr. Sandford was not a man of business, he was a man of few resources; he did not know what to do, or where to turn when his natural occupation failed him.

These thoughts went through his mind in a painful round. Three months or so, and then an end of everything. Three months, and then the precipice so near that the next step must be over it. Perhaps in other circumstances, or if he had not been known to be so near the head of his profession, he might have thought of artists’ work of some other kind which he could do. He might have tried to illustrate books, to take up one of the art manufactures; might have become a designer, a decorator, something that would bring in money. But in this respect he was so helpless, he knew no more what to do than the most ignorant; his heart failed him when he tried to penetrate into the darkness of that future. The only thing that came uppermost was the thought of the insurances, and of the thousand pounds for each which the children would have. It was not very much, but still it was something, a something real and tangible, not like a workman’s wages for work, which may fail in a moment as soon as he fails to please his employer, or loses his skill, or grows too old for it. It had never occurred to Mr. Sandford before how precarious these wages are, how little to be relied on. To think of a number of people depending for their whole living upon the skill of one man’s hand, upon the clearness of his sight, the truth of his instincts, even the fashion of the moment! It seems, when you look at it in the light of a discovery such as that which he had made, so mad, so fatal! A thing that may cease in a moment as if it had never been, yet with all the complicated machinery of life built upon it, based on the strange theory that it would go on for ever! On the other hand a thousand pounds is a solid thing; it would be a certainty for each of them. Harry might go to one of the colonies and get an excellent start with a thousand pounds in his pocket. Jack would no doubt be startled into energy by the sense of having something which it would be fatal to lose, yet which could not be lived upon. A thousand pounds would make all the difference to Lizzie on her marriage. When he thought of his wife a quiver of pain went over him, and yet he tried to calculate all the chances there would be for her. All friends would be stirred in sympathy for her; they would get her a pension, they would gather round her: it would be made easy for her to break up this expensive way of living, and begin on a smaller footing. There would be the house, which would bring her in a little secure income if it was let. Whatever she had would be secure—it would be based on something solid, certain—not on a man’s work, which might lose its excellence or go out of fashion. He felt himself smile with a kind of pleasure at the contemplation of this steady certainty—which he never had possessed, which he never could possess, but which poor Mary, with a pension and the rent of the house, would at last obtain. Poor Mary! his lip quivered when he thought of her. He wondered if the children would absorb her interest as much when he was no longer in the background, whether she would be able to find in them all that she wanted, and consolation for his absence. It was not with any sense of blame that this thought went through his mind. Blame her! oh no. To think of her children was surely a mother’s first duty. She was not aware that her husband wanted consolation and help more than they did. How could she know when he did not tell her? And he felt incapable of telling her. He had meant to do it. When he came he had intended as soon as possible to prepare her for it, to lead by degrees to that revelation which could not but be given. But to break in upon all their innocent gaieties, to stop her as she stood kissing her hand to the merry cavalcade as they set out, her eyes shining with a mother’s delight and pride; to call her away from among her pretty daughters (she, her husband thought the fairest of them all), and their pleasant babble about pleasures past and to come, and pour black despair into the cheerful heart, how could he do it, how could any one do it? Such happiness was sacred. He could not interrupt it, he could not destroy it; it was pathetic, tragic, beyond words: on the edge of the precipice! Oh no, no! not now, he could not tell her. Let the holidays be over, let common life resume again, and then—unless by the grace of God something else might happen before.

They all noticed, however, that papa was dull—which was the way in which it struck the young people—that he had no sympathy with their gaiety, that he was “grumpy,” which was what it came to. Lizzie thought that this probably arose from dissatisfaction with her marriage, and was indignant. “If he doesn’t think Lance good enough, I wonder what would please him. Did he expect one of the princes to propose to me?” she cried.

“Oh, Lizzie, my love, don’t speak so of your father!”

“Well, mamma, he should not look at us so,” cried the girl.

Mrs. Sandford herself was a little indignant too. Her sympathies were all with the children. She saw disapproval in his subdued looks, and was ready at any moment to spring to arms in defence of her children. And indeed sometimes, in his great trouble, which no one divined, Mr. Sandford would sometimes become impatient.

“I wish,” he would say, “that Jack would do something—does he never do anything at all? It frets me to see a young man so idle.”

“My dear Edward!” cried his wife, “it is the Long Vacation. What should he have to do?”

“And Harry?” Mr. Sandford said.

“Poor boy! You know he would give his little finger to have anything to do. He has nothing to do. How can he help that? When we go back to town you must really put your shoulder to the wheel. Among all your friends surely, surely, something could be got for Harry,” said his mother, thus turning the tables. “And in the meantime,” she added, “to get all the health he can, and the full good of the sea, is certainly the best thing the poor fellow could do.”

What answer could be made to this? Mr. Sandford went out for his walk—that long silent walk, in which the great Consoler came down from amid all the silvery lights and shining skies, and walked with him in the freshness of the morning, all silent in tenderness and great solemnity and awe.

CHAPTER VI.

“Unless, by the grace of God, something should happen”—that was what he kept saying to himself when he reflected on the disclosure which must be made when the seaside season was over. The great events of life rarely happen according to our will. A man cannot die when he wishes it, though there should be every argument in favour of such an event, and its advantages most palpable. The moment passes in which that conclusion would have all the force and satisfactory character of a great tragedy, and a dreary postscript of existence drivels on, destructive of all dignity and appropriateness. We live when we should do much better to die, and we die sometimes when every circumstance calls upon us to live.

Most people will think that it was a very dreary hope that moved Mr. Sandford’s mind—perhaps even that it was not the expedient of a brave man to desire to leave his wife and children to endure the change and the struggle from which he shrank in his own person. But this was not how it appeared to him. He thought, and with some reason, that the change which becomes inevitable on the death of the head of a house is without humiliation, without the pang of downfall which would be involved in an entire reversal of life which had not that excuse; he thought that everybody who knew him would regret the change, and that every effort would be made to help those who were left behind. It would be no shame to them to accept that help; it would seem to them a tribute to his position rather than pity for them. His wife would believe that her husband, a great painter, one of the first of the day, had fully earned that recognition, and would be proud of the pension or the money raised for her as of a monument in his honour. And then the insurances. There could be no doubt, he said to himself, with a rueful smile, that so much substantial money would be much better to have than a man who could earn nothing, who had become incapable, whose work nobody wanted. He had no doubt whatever that it would be by far the best solution. It would rouse the boys by a sharp and unmistakable necessity; it might, he thought, be the making of the boys, who had no fault in particular except the disposition to take things easily, which was the weakness of this generation. And as for the others, they would be taken care of—no doubt they would be taken care of. Their condition would appeal to the kindness of every friend who had ever bought a “Sandford” or thought it an honour to know the painter. He would even himself be restored to honour and estimation by the act of dying, which often is a very ingratiating thing, and makes the public change its opinion. All these arguments were so strongly in favour of it that to think there was no means of securing it depressed Mr. Sandford’s mind more than all. By the grace of God. But it is certain that the Disposer of events does not always see matters as His creatures see them. No one can make sure, however warmly such a decree might be wished for, or even prayed for, that it will be given. If only that would happen! But it was still more impossible to secure its happening than to open a new market for the pictures, or cause commissions to pour in again.

It may be asked whether Mr. Sandford’s conviction, which was so strong on this subject, ever moved him to do anything to bring about his desire. It was impossible, perhaps, that the idea should not have crossed his mind—

And we can scarcely say that it was, like Hamlet, the fear of something after death that restrained him. It was a stronger sentiment still. It was the feeling that to give one’s self one’s dismissal is quite a different thing. It is a flight—it is a running away; all the arguments against the selfishness of desiring to leave his wife and children to a struggle from which he had escaped came into action against that. What would be well if accomplished by the grace of God would be miserable if done by the will of the man who might be mistaken in his estimate of the good it would do. And then another practical thought, more tragical than any in its extreme materialism and matter-of-fact character, it would vitiate the insurances! If the children were to gain nothing by his death, then it would certainly be better for them that he should live. On that score there could be no doubt. This made suicide as completely out of the question from a physical point of view as it was already from a spiritual. He could not discharge himself from God’s service on earth, though he should be very thankful if God would discharge him; and he could not do anything to endanger the precious provision he had made for his family. It can scarcely be said that Mr. Sandford considered this case at leisure or with comparison of the arguments for and against, for his decision was instinctive and immediate; nevertheless the idea floated uppermost sometimes in the surging and whirl up and down of many thoughts, but always to be dismissed in the same way.

Two or three weeks had passed in this way when one evening Mr. Sandford received a letter from Daniells, the dealer, inviting him to join a party on the Yorkshire moors. Daniells was well enough off to be able to deny himself nothing. He was not a gentleman, yet the sports that gentlemen love were within reach of his wealth, and gentlemen not so well off as he showed much willingness to share in his good things. Some fine people whose names it was a pleasure to read were on his list, and some painters who were celebrated enough to eclipse the fine people. That all these should be gathered together by a man who was as ignorant as a pig, and not much better bred, was wonderful; but so it was. Perhaps the fact that Daniells was really at heart a good fellow had something to do with it: but even had this not been the case, it is probable that he could still have found guests to shoot on his moor, and eat the birds they had shot. Mr. Sandford was no sportsman, and at first he had little inclination to accept. It was his wife who urged him to do so.

“You are not enjoying Broadbeach as you usually do,” she said; “you are bored by it. Oh, don’t tell me, Edward, I can see it in your eyes.”

“If you think so, my dear, no denial of mine——”

“No,” she said, shaking her head; “nothing you say will change my opinion. I am dreadfully sorry, for I am fond of the place; but I have made up my mind already never to come here again: for you are bored—it is as plain as possible: you want a change: you must go.”

“It is not much of a change to visit Daniells,” said Mr. Sandford.

“Oh, it isn’t Daniells; it’s the company, and the distance, and all you will find there. I have no objection to Mr. Daniells, Edward.”

“Nor I; he is a good fellow in spite of his ’h’s.’”

“I don’t care about his ’h’s.’ He’s very hospitable and very friendly, and all the nice people go to him. I saw in the papers that Lord Okeham was there. You might be able to speak a word for Harry.”

Mr. Sandford smiled. “I am to go, then, as a business speculation,” he said; but his smile faded away very soon, for he reflected that Lord Okeham was the first to give him that sensation of being wanted no longer, of having nobody to employ him, which had risen to such a tragic height since then.

“Don’t laugh,” said his wife. “I do think indeed it is your duty—anything that may help on the children; and you do like Mr. Daniells, Edward.”

“Yes, I do like Daniells; he is a very good fellow.”

“And the change will do you good. You must go.”

It was arranged so almost without any voluntary action on his part. His wife’s anxiety that he should “speak a word for Harry” seemed to him half-pathetic, half-ridiculous in what he knew to be the position of affairs; but then she did not know. It can scarcely be said that it was other than a relief to him to leave his family to their own light-hearted devices, or that the young ones were not at least half-pleased when he went away. “Papa was not a bit like himself,” they said; probably it was because the heat was too much for him (he preferred cold weather), and the freshness of the moors would put him all right. Mrs. Sandford was by no means willing to confess to herself that she, too, was relieved by her husband’s departure. It was the first time she had ever been conscious of that feeling in thirty years of married life; but she, too, said that he would be the better of the freshness of the moors, and they all gave themselves up to “fun” with a new rush of pleasure when his grave countenance was away.

“I am sure he did not mean it,” said Lizzie, “but I could not help feeling that it was poor Lance that was the cause.”

“Nothing of the sort, my dear,” said Mrs. Sandford. “Your father would have told you if he had any objections. No; I know what it is; he is very anxious about the boys—and so am I.”

No one, however, who had seen her among them could have believed that Mrs. Sandford was very anxious. She was so glad that they should enjoy themselves. Afterwards, when the holidays were over, when they were all back in town again, then something, no doubt, must be done about Harry. He was very thoughtless, to be sure; he took no trouble about what was going to happen to him. Mrs. Sandford threw off any shade of distress, however, by saying to herself that now his father was fully roused to the necessity of doing something, now that he was about to meet Lord Okeham and other influential people, something must be found for Harry, and then all would go well. But the look in her husband’s eyes haunted her, nevertheless, for the rest of the day. She had gone to the railway with him to see him off, as she always did, and when the train was just moving, he looked at her, waving his hand to her. The look in his eyes was so strange and so sad, that Mrs. Sandford felt disposed to rush after her husband by the next train. Failing that, she drew her veil over her face as she turned away and shed tears, she could not tell why, as if he had been going away never to return. How ridiculous! how absurd! when he was only a little out of sorts and sure to be set right by the freshness of the moors. The impression very soon wore out, and the young people had already organised a little impromptu dance for the evening, which gave Mrs. Sandford plenty to do.

“It looks a little like taking advantage of your father’s absence—as if you were glad he was gone.”

“Not at all,” they all cried. “What a dreadful idea! The only thing is that it would have bored him horribly; otherwise,” added Harry, “we are always glad of my father’s company,” with an air of protection and patronage which made the others laugh. And Mrs. Sandford keenly enjoyed the dance, and felt it better that her husband’s face, never so grave before, should not be there to over-shadow the evening’s entertainment. He would be so much more in his element discussing light and shade with the other R.A.s, or talking a little moderate politics with Lord Okeham, or breathing in the freshness of the moors.

And he did like the freshness of the moors, and the talk of his brother artists, and the discussions among the men. It was entirely a man’s party, and perhaps a very domestic man like Mr. Sandford, a little neglected amid the exuberances of a young family, his very wife drawn away from him by the exigencies of their amusements, is specially open to the occasional refreshment of a party of his fellows, when congenial pursuits and matured views, and something of a like experience—at all events something which is a real experience of life—draw individuals together. The “sport” of the painters was apt to be interrupted by realisations of the “effects” about them, and by discussions on various artistic-scientific points which only masters in the art could settle; and that semi-professional flavour of the party was extremely interesting to the other men, the public personages and society magnates, who found it very piquant to be thrown amid the painters, and who were inspired thereby to talk their best, and tell their most entertaining stories. No atmosphere of failure accompanied Mr. Sandford into this circle, which was kept hilarious by the host’s jovialities and social mistakes. If anybody knew that Daniells kept in his inner room three “Sandfords” which he could not sell, there was no hint of that knowledge in anything that was said, or in the manner of the other painters towards their fellow, to whom all appealed as to as great an authority as could be found on all questions of art. He was restored, thus, to the position which, indeed, nobody could take from him, though he should never sell a picture again. It soothed him to feel and see that, to all his brethren, he was as much as ever one of the first painters of his time, and to give his opinion and sustain it with the experience of his long professional life, and much experiment in art. A forlorn hope had been in his mind that Daniells might have some good news for him; that he might say some day, “That was all a false alarm, old man—I’ve sold the pictures;” but this unfortunately did not come to pass. Daniells never said it was a false alarm; he even said some things in his rough but not unkindly way which to Mr. Sandford’s ear, quickened by trouble, confirmed the disaster; but perhaps Daniells, who had no particular delicacy of perception, did not intend this.

The change, however, did Mr. Sandford a great deal of good: though sometimes, when he found himself alone, the settled shadow of calamity which had closed upon his life, and which must soon be known to all, came over him with almost greater force than at first. It was but seldom that he was alone, when he was indoors: yet now and then he would find himself on the moors in the sun-setting, when the western sky was still one blaze of yellow or orange light, varied by bands of cloudy red, with the low hills and sweeps of moor standing black against that waning brightness which, magnificent as it was, sent out little light. Mr. Sandford did not compare his own going out of practical life and possibility, yet preservation of a glow of fame which neither warmed nor enlightened, with that show in the west. People seldom see allegories of their own disaster. But as he strayed along with the sense of dreariness in his heart which the dead and spectral aspect of hill and tree was so well calculated to give, his own circumstances came back to him in tragic glimpses. He thought of the gay group he had left behind, the heedless young creatures singing and dancing on the edge of the precipice, and of the peaceful home lying silent awaiting them, to which they had no doubt of returning, with all its security of comfort and peace, but on the edge of the precipice too. And he thought of Jack’s fee, his two guineas, which they had all taken as the best joke in the world, and of Lizzie, who was to have fifty pounds a year from her father, and of Harry, quite happy and content on his schoolboy allowance; and all this going on as if it were the course of nature, unchangeable as the stars or the pillars of the earth. These things glided before him as he looked over all the inequalities of the moor standing black against the western sky. They were the true facts about him, notwithstanding that in the shelter of this momentary pause he only felt them as at a distance, and less strongly than before realised the ease it would bring if by the grace of God something happened—before——

It was the time of the year when there are various race meetings in the north, and Mr. Daniells had planned to carry his party to the most famous of them. He had his landau and a brake, royally charged with provisions, and filled with his guests. Mr. Sandford had done his best to get off this unnecessary festivity, for which he had little taste. But all his friends, who by this time had begun to perceive that his spirits were not in their usual equable state, resisted and protested. He must come, they said: to leave one behind would spoil the party; he was not to be left alone with all the moorland effects to steal a march upon the other painters. And he had not sufficient energy to stand against their remonstrances. It was easier to yield, and he yielded. The race was not unamusing. Even with all his preoccupation, he took a little pleasure in it, more or less, as most Englishmen do: though it glanced across his mind that somebody might say afterwards, “Sandford was there, amusing himself on the edge of the precipice.” These vague voices and glimpses of things were not enough to stand against the remonstrances and banter of his friends: and after all, what did it matter? The plunge over the precipice is not less terrible because you may have performed a dance of despair on the edge. It was about sunset on a lovely September evening when the party set out on their return home. They were merry; not that there had been any excess or indulgence unbecoming of English gentlemen. Daniells, it is true, who was not a gentleman, had, perhaps, a little more champagne under his belt than was good for him. But his guests were only merry, talking a little more loudly than usual about the events of the day and the exploits of the favourite, and settling some moderate bets which neither harmed nor elated any one. Mr. Sandford, who had not betted, was the most silent of party; the lively talk of the others left him free to retire to his own thoughts. He had got rather into a tangle of dim calculations about his insurances, and how the money would be divided, when somebody suddenly called out “Hallo! we’ve got off the road!”

For some time Mr. Sandford was the only one who paid any attention to this statement. Looking out with a little start, he saw the same scene against which his musings had taken form on previous nights. A sky glowing with a stormy splendour, deep burning orange on the horizon rising through zones of yellow to the daffodil sky above, every object standing out black in the absence of light; not the hedgerows and white line of the road alone, but the blunt inequalities of the moor, here a lump of gorse or gnarled hawthorn bush, there a treacherous hollow with a gleam of water gathered as in a cup. The coachman and grooms had not been so prudent as their masters; their potations had been heavier than champagne. How they had left the road and got upon the moor could never be discovered. It was partly the perplexing glow above and blackness below, partly the fumes of a long day’s successive drinkings in their brains; partly, perhaps, as one of the passengers thought, something else. The horses had taken the unusual obstacles on their path with wonderful steadiness at first, but by the time the attention of the gentlemen was fully attracted to what was happening, the coachman had altogether lost control of the kicking and plunging animals. The man was not too far gone to have driven home by the road, but his brain was incapable of any effort to meet such an emergency. He began to flog the horses wildly, to swear at them, to pull savagely at the reins. The groom jumped down to rush to their heads, and in doing so, as they made a plunge at the moment, fell on the roadside, and in a moment more was left behind as the terrified horses dashed on. By this time everybody was roused, and the danger was evident. Mr. Sandford sat quite still; he was not learned about horses, while many of his companions were. One of them got on to the box beside the terrified coachman to try what could be done, the others gave startled and sometimes contradictory suggestions and directions. He was quite calm in the tumult of alarm and eager preparation for any event. He was sensible, profoundly sensible, of the wonderful effect of the scene: the orange glow which no pigments in the world could reproduce, the blackness of the indistinguishable objects which stood up against it like low dark billows of a motionless sea. The shocks of the jolting carriage affected him little, any more than the shouts of the alarmed and excited men. He did not even remark, then, that some sprang off and that others held themselves ready to follow. His sensations were those of perfect calm. He thought of the precipice no more, nor even of the insurances. Some one shook him by the shoulder, but it did not disturb him. The effect was wonderful; the orange growing intense, darker, the yellow light pervading the illuminated sky. And then a sudden wild whirl, a shock of sudden sensation, and he saw or felt no more.

CHAPTER VII.

Presently the light came back to Mr. Sandford’s eyes. He was lying upon the dry heather on the side of the moor, the brown seed-pods nestling against his cheek, the yellow glow in the west, to which his eyes instinctively turned, having scarcely faded at all since he had looked at it from the carriage. A confused sound of noises, loud speaking, and moans of pain reached him where he lay, but scarcely moved him to curiosity. His first sensation was one of curious ease and security. He did not attempt to budge, but lay quite peacefully smiling at the sunset, like a child. His head was confused, but there was in it a vague sense of danger escaped, and of some kind of puzzled deliverance from he knew not what, which gave the strangest feeling of soothing and rest. He felt no temptation to jump up hastily, to go to the help of the people who were moaning, or to inquire into the accident, as in another case he would have done. He lay still, quite at his ease, hearing these voices as if he heard them not, and smiling with a confused pleasure at the glow of orange light in the sky.

He did not know how long it was till some one knelt down and spoke to him anxiously. “Sandford, are you badly hurt? Sandford, my dear fellow, do you know me? Can you speak to me?”

He burst into a laugh at this address.

“Speak to you? Know you? What nonsense! I am not hurt at all. I am quite comfortable.”

“Thank God!” said the other. “Duncan, I fear, has a broken leg, and the coachman is—— It was his fault, the unfortunate wretch. Give me your hand, and I’ll help you to get up.”

To get up? That was quite a different matter. He did not feel the least desire to try. He felt, before trying and without any sense of alarm, that he could not get up; then said to himself that this was nonsense too, and that to lie there, however comfortably, when he might be helping the others, was not to be thought of. He gave his hand accordingly to his friend, and made an effort to rise. But it would have been as easy (he said to himself) for a log of wood to attempt to rise. He felt rather like that, as if his legs had turned to wood—not stone, for that would have been cold and uncomfortable. “I don’t know how it is,” he said, still smiling, “but I can’t budge. There’s nothing the matter with me, I’m quite easy and comfortable, but I can’t move a limb. I’ll be all right in a few minutes. Look after the others. Never mind me.” He thought the face of the man who was bending over him looked strangely scared, but nothing more was said. A rug was put over him and one of the cushions of the carriage under his head, and there he lay, vaguely hearing the groans of the man whose leg was broken as (apparently) they moved him, and all the exclamations and questions and directions given by one and another. What was more wonderful was the dying out of that wild orange light in the sky. It paled gradually, as if it had been glowing metal, and the cold night air breathing on it had paled and dwindled that ineffectual fire. A hundred lessening tints and tones of colour—yellows and faint greens, with shades of purple and creamy whiteness breaking the edges—melted and shimmered in the distance. It was like an exhibition got up for him alone, relieved by that black underground, now traversed by gigantic ebony figures of a horse and man, moving irregularly across the moor. A star came out with a keen blue sparkle, like some power of heaven triumphant over that illumination of earth. What a spectacle it was! And all for him alone!

The next thing he was conscious of was two or three figures about him—one the doctor, whose professional touch he soon discovered on his pulse and his limbs. “We are going to lift you. Don’t take any trouble; it will give you no pain,” some one said. And before he could protest, which he was about to do good-humouredly, that there was no occasion, he found himself softly raised upon some flat and even surface, more comfortable, after all, than the lumps of the heather. Then there was a curious interval of motion along the road, no doubt, though all he saw was the sky with the stars coming gradually out; neither the road nor his bearers, except now and then a dark outline coming within the line of his vision; but always the deep blue of the mid sky shining above. The world seemed to have concentrated in that, and it was not this world, but another world.

He remembered little more, except by snatches; an unknown face—probably the doctor’s—looking exceedingly grave, bending over him; then Daniells’ usually jovial countenance with all the lines drooping and the colour blanched out of it, and a sound of low voices talking something over, of which he could only make out the words “Telegraph at once;” then, “Too late! It must not be too late. She must come at once.” He wondered vaguely who this was, and why there should be such a hurry. And then, all at once, it seemed to him that it was daylight and his wife was standing by his bedside. He had just woke up from what seemed a very long, confused, and feverish night—how long he never knew. But when he woke everything was clear to him. Unless, by the grace of God, something were to happen—— Something was about to happen, by the grace of God.

“Mary!” he cried, with a flush of joy. “You here!”

“Of course, my dearest,” she said, with a cheerful look, “as soon as I heard there had been an accident.”

He took her hand between his and drew her to him. “This was all I wanted,” he said. “God is very good; He gives me everything.”

“Oh, Edward!” This pitiful protest, remonstrance, appeal to heaven and earth—for all these were in her cry—came from her unawares.

“Yes,” he said, “my dear, everything has happened as I desired. I understand it all now. I thought I was not hurt; now I see. I am not hurt, I am killed, like the boy—don’t you remember?—in Browning’s ballad. Don’t be shocked, dear. Why shouldn’t I be cheerful? I am not—sorry.”

“Oh, Edward!” she cried again, the passion of her trouble exasperated by his composure; “not to leave—us all?”

He held her hand between his, smiling at her. “It was what I wanted,” he said—“not to leave you; but don’t you believe, my darling, there must be something about that leaving which is not so dreadful, which is made easy to the man who goes away? Certainly, I don’t want to leave you; but it’s so much for your good—for the children’s good——”

“Oh, never, Edward, never!”

“Yes; it’s new to you, but I’ve been thinking about it a long time—so much that I once thought it would almost have been worth the while, but for the insurances, to have——”

“Edward!” She looked at him with an agonised cry.

“No, dear—nothing of the kind. I never would, I never could have done it. It would have been contrary to nature. The accident—was without any will or action of mine. By the grace of God——”

“Edward, Edward! Oh, don’t say that; by His hand, heavy, heavy upon us!”

“It is you that should not say that, Mary. If you only knew, my dear. I want you to understand so long as I am here to tell you——”

“He must not talk so much,” said the voice of the doctor behind; “his strength must be husbanded. Mrs. Sandford, you must not allow him to exhaust himself.”

“Doctor,” said Mr. Sandford, “I take it for granted you’re a man of sense. What can you do for me? Spin out my life by a few more feeble hours. Which would you rather have yourself? That, or the power of saying everything to the person you love best in the world?”

“Let him talk,” said the doctor, turning away; “I have no answer to make. Give him a little of this if he turns faint. And send for me if you want me, Mrs. Sandford.”

“Thanks, doctor. That is a man of sense, Mary. I feel quite well, quite able to tell you everything.”

“Oh, Edward, when that is the case, things cannot be so bad! If you will only take care, only try to save your strength, to keep up. Oh, my dear! The will to get well does so much! Try! try! Edward, for the love of God.”

“My own Mary: always believing that everything’s to be done by an effort, as all women do. I am glad it is out of my power. If I were in any pain there might be some hope for you, but I’m in no pain. There’s nothing the matter with me but dying. And I have long felt that was the only way.”

“Dying?—not when you were with us at the sea?”

“Most of all then,” he said, with a smile.

“Oh, Edward, Edward! and I full of amusements, of pleasure, leaving you alone.”

“It was better so. I am glad of every hour’s respite you have had. And now you’ll be able easily to break up the house, which would have been a hard thing and a bitter downfall in my lifetime. It will be quite natural now. They will give you a pension, and there will be the insurance money.”

“I cannot bear it,” she cried wildly. “I cannot have you speak like this.”

“Not when it is the utmost ease to my mind—the utmost comfort——”

She clasped her hands firmly together. “Say anything you wish, Edward.”

“Yes, my poor dear.” He was very, very sorry for his wife. It burst upon her without preparation, without a word of warning. Oh, he was sorry for her! But for himself it was a supreme consolation to pour it all forth, to tell her everything. “If I were going to be left behind,” he said, soothingly, “my heart would be broken: but it is softened somehow to those that are going away. I can’t tell you how. It is, though; it is all so vague and soft. I know I’ll lose you, Mary, as you will lose me, but I don’t feel it. My dearest, I had not a commission, not one. And there are three pictures of mine unsold in Daniells’ inner shop. He’ll tell you if you ask him. The three last. That one of the little Queen and her little Maries, that our little Mary sat for, that you liked so much, you remember? It’s standing in Daniells’ room; three of them. I think I see them against the wall.”

“Edward!”

“Oh no, my head is not going. I only think I see them. And it was the merest chance that the ‘Black Prince’ sold; and not a commission, not a commission. Think of that, Mary. It is true such a thing has happened before, but I never was sixty before. Do you forget I am an old man, and my day is over?”

“No, no, no,” she cried with passion; “it is not so.”

“Oh yes; facts are stubborn things—it is so. And what should we have done if our income had stopped in a moment, as it would have done? A precipice before our feet, and nothing, nothing beyond. Now for you, my darling, it will be far easier. You can sell the house and all that is in it. And they will give you a pension, and the children will have something to begin upon.”

“Oh, the children!” she cried, taking his hand into hers, bowing down her face upon it. “Oh, Edward, what are the children between you and me?” She cast them away in that supreme moment; the young creatures all so well, so gay, so hopeful. In her despair and passion she flung their crowding images from her—those images which had forced her husband from her heart.

He laughed a low, quiet laugh. “God bless them,” he said; “but I like to have you all to myself, you and me only, for the last moment, Mary. You have been always the best wife that ever was—nay, I won’t say have been—you are my dear, my wife. We don’t understand anything about widows, you and I. Death’s nothing, I think. It looks dreadful when you’re not going. But God manages all that so well. It is as if it were nothing to me. Mary, where are you?”

“Here, Edward, holding your hand. Oh, my dear, don’t you see me?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, with a faint laugh, as if ashamed at some mistake he had made, and put his other hand over hers with a slight groping movement. “It’s getting late,” he said; “it’s getting rather dark. What time is it? Seven o’clock? You’ll not go down to dinner, Mary? Stay with me. They can bring you something upstairs.”

“Go down? Oh, no, no. Do you think I would leave you, Edward?” She had made a little pause of terror before she spoke, for, indeed, it was broad day, the full afternoon sunshine still bright outside, and nothing to suggest the twilight. He sighed again—a soft, pleasurable sigh.

“If you don’t mind just sitting by me a little. I see your dear face in glimpses, sometimes as if you had wings and were hovering over me. My head’s swimming a little. Don’t light the candles. I like the half-light; you know I always did. So long as I can see you by it, Mary. Is that a comfortable chair? Then sit down, my love, and let me keep your hand, and I think I’ll get a little sleep.”

“It will do you good,” said the poor wife.

“Who knows?” he said, with another smile. “But don’t let them light the candles.”

Light the candles! She could see, where she sat there, the red sunshine falling in a blaze upon a ruddy heathery hill, and beating upon the dark firs which stood out like ink against that background. There is perhaps nothing that so wrings the heart of the watcher as this pathetic mistake of day for night which betrays the eyes from which all light is failing. He lay within the shadow of the curtain, always holding her hand fast, and fell asleep—a sleep which, for a time, was soft and quiet enough, but afterwards got a little disturbed. She sat quite still, not moving, scarcely breathing, that she might not disturb him; not a tear in her eye, her whole being wound up into an external calm which was so strangely unlike the tumult within. And she had forsaken him—left him to meet calamity without her support, without sympathy or aid! She had been immersed in the pleasures of the children, their expeditions, their amusements. She remembered, with a shudder, that it had been a little relief to get him away, to have their dance undisturbed. Their dance! Her heart swelled as if it would burst. She had been his faithful wife since she was little more than a child. All her life was his—she had no thought, no wish, apart from him. And yet she had left him to bear this worst of evils alone!

Mrs. Sandford dared not break the sacred calm by a sob or a sigh. She dared not even let the tears come to her eyes, lest he should wake and be troubled by the sight of them. What thoughts went through her mind as she sat there, not moving! Her past life all over, which, until that telegram came, had seemed the easy tenor of every day; and the future, so dark, so awful, so unknown—a world which she did not understand without him.

After an interval he began to speak again, but so that she saw he was either asleep still or wandering in those vague regions between consciousness and nothingness. “All against the wall—with the faces turned,” he said. “Three—all the last ones: the one my wife liked so. In the inner room: Daniells is a good fellow. He spared me the sight of them outside. Three—that’s one of the perfect numbers—that’s—I could always see them: on the road and on the moor, and at the races: then—I wonder—all the way up—on the road to heaven? no, no. One of the angels—would come and turn them round—turn them round. Nothing like that in the presence of God. It would be disrespectful—disrespectful. Turn them round—with their faces——” He paused; his eyes were closed, an ineffable smile came over his mouth. “He—will see what’s best in them,” he said.

After this for a time silence reigned, broken only now and then by a word sometimes unintelligible. Once his wife thought she caught something about the “four square walls in the new Jerusalem,” sometimes tender words about herself, but nothing clear. It was not till night that he woke, surprising them with an outcry as to the light, as he had previously spoken about the darkness.

“You need not,” he said, “light such an illumination for me—al giorno as the Italians say; but I like it—I like it. Daniells—has the soul of a prince.” Then he put out his hands feebly, calling “Mary! Mary!” and drew her closer to him, and whispered a long, earnest communication; but what it was the poor lady never knew. She listened intently, but she could not make out a word. What was it? What was it? Whatever it was, to have said it was an infinite satisfaction to him. He dropped back upon his pillows with an air of content indescribable, and silent pleasure. He had done everything, he had said everything. And in this mood slept again, and woke no more.

Mr. Sandford’s previsions were all justified. The house was sold to advantage, at what the agent called a fancy price, because it had been his house—with its best furniture undisturbed. Everything was miserable enough indeed, but there was no humiliation in the breaking up of the establishment, which was evidently too costly for the widow. She got her pension at once, and a satisfactory one, and retired with her younger children to a small house, which was more suited to her circumstances. And Lord Okeham, touched by the fact that Sandford’s death had taken place under the same roof, in a room next to his own (though that, to be sure, in an age of competition and personal merit was nothing), found somehow, as a Cabinet Minister no doubt can if he will, a post for Harry, in which he got on just as well as other young men, and settled down into a very good servant of the State. And Jack, being thus suddenly sobered and called back to himself, and eager to get rid of the intolerable thought that he, too, had weighed upon his father’s mind, and made his latter days more sad, took to his profession with zeal, and got on, as no doubt any determined man does when he adopts one line and holds by it. The others settled down with their mother in a humbler way of living, yet did not lose their friends, as it is common to say people do. Perhaps they were not asked any longer to the occasional “smart” parties to which the pretty daughters and well-bred sons of Sandford the famous painter, who could dispense tickets for Academy soirÉes and private views, were invited, more or less on sufferance. These failed them, their names falling out of the invitation books; but what did that matter, seeing they had never been but outsiders, flattered by the cards of a countess, but never really penetrating beyond the threshold?

Mrs. Sandford believed that she could not live when her husband was thus taken from her. The remembrance of that brief but dreadful time when she had abandoned him, when the children and their amusements had stolen her heart away, was heavy upon her, and though she steeled herself to carry out all his wishes, and to arrange everything as he would have had it done, yet she did all with a sense that the time was short, and that when her duty was thus accomplished she would follow him. This softened everything to her in the most wonderful way. She felt herself to be acting as his deputy through all these changes, glad that he should be saved the trouble, and that humiliation and confession of downfall which was not now involved in any alteration of life she could make, and fully confident that when all was completed she would receive her dismissal and join him where he was. But she was a very natural woman, with all the springs of life in her unimpaired. And by-and-by, with much surprise, with a pang of disappointment, and yet a rising of her heart to the new inevitable solitary life which was so different, which was not solitary at all, but full of the stir and hum of living, yet all silent in the most intimate and closest circle, Mrs. Sandford recognised that she was not to die. It was a strange thing, yet one which happens often: for we neither live nor die according to our own will and previsions—save sometimes in such a case as that of our painter, to whom, as to his beloved, God accorded sleep.

And more—the coming true of everything that he had believed. After doing his best for his own, and for all who depended upon him in his life, he did better still, as he had foreseen, by dying. Daniells sold the three pictures at prices higher than he had dreamed of, for a Sandford was now a thing with a settled value, it being sure that no new flood of them would ever come into the market. And all went well. Perhaps with some of us, too, that dying which it is a terror to look forward to, seeing that it means the destruction of a home, may prove, like the painter’s, a better thing than living even for those who love us best. But it is not to every one that it is given to die at the right moment, as Mr. Sandford had the happiness to do.