CHAPTER XI
Lucas painted, but not so fiercely as before; and again from the deck-chair Hillary watched him. He rented the studio next door, and having a comfortable private income of £80 a year, generally spent his afternoons encouraging his friend. Occasionally, however, he considered it advisable to supply chastening reflections.
"I don't like it," he observed.
"Don't like what?"
"If he really meant to buy those pictures, I can't help thinking you would have heard from him again."
The artist turned abruptly.
"It was only three days ago. I don't expect to hear yet."
"Dear old Lucas, I don't want to discourage you, but I call it fishy. Supposing he has met some one since who really knew something about pictures?"
His friend resumed work in silence.
"There is also another possibility," continued Hillary in his gentle voice. "He struck me as suspiciously extravagant—supposing he has gone bankrupt? I noticed, too, that his complexion was somewhat rubicund—supposing he has had an apoplectic fit? In that case, would his executors be bound by his verbal promise? Honestly, Lucas, I don't think so."
There came a sharp rap on the door.
"It will relax the strain on your intellect if you go and see who that is," suggested the painter.
"A telegram," said Hillary, strolling back from the door.
"Good heavens!" cried Lucas. "Read that."
Hillary read—
"Come immediately. Unfortunate complication here. Require you to explain fully.—Heriot Walkingshaw."
He looked considerably sobered.
"Of course I didn't really mean what I was saying—"
Lucas interrupted him brusquely.
"I'm off. Look after things here. What the devil—"
He strode down the lane, hailed a cab, and drove off to an accompaniment of the most anxious speculations.
"This way, sir," said the attendant at the Hotel Gigantique.
Lucas followed him, still racking his brains for some explanation not too disastrous to his hopes. The man opened the door of a sitting-room and closed it quietly behind him. In the room there was only one person, a girl with the sunniest hair and the straightest little nose and the most delightfully astonished face imaginable.
"Jean!" he cried.
He took a quick step towards her and then remembered the gravity of the summons.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
"Then it was you!" she exclaimed.
"Me?"
"Father only told me that some one—a man—"
He held out the telegram abruptly.
"What do you make of that?"
She read it, and then read it again, and her bewilderment seemed to change into another emotion.
"What did your father tell you to do?" asked Lucas.
She gave him the queerest look.
"Get rid of the man if I could," she said.
He ran his fingers through his mop of brown hair.
"But I don't understand—what's the 'complication'?"
She began to smile shyly—
"Lucas, don't you think—don't you see—there's nothing else. I must be the complication here."
"Ahem!" coughed Mr. Walkingshaw.
The lovers endeavored to look as though the artist had been merely posing his patron's daughter.
"Well?" inquired that patron genially.
Lucas had not altogether lost his ready audacity.
"I came at once, sir," he replied, "and I have explained fully. The complication has been cleared up."
Laughing gleefully, chattering away much more like the prospective best man than the future father-in-law, he led them (an arm thrown about each) towards the sofa, where they sat together, crowded but happy.
"What would you put your income at now, Lucas?" he inquired mischievously.
Lucas looked a little rueful.
"The same fluctuating figures, I'm afraid," he confessed.
"My dear fellow, don't worry," said Heriot kindly. "Money isn't everything in this world. Youth and love and pluck are the main things. Hang it, what if you do get into debt occasionally? You've got a pretty oofy father-in-law. Of course, my dear chap, I don't encourage extravagance; far from it"—he glanced complacently at the chaste upholstery of the Hotel Gigantique. "I believe in paying your way, and laying by for a rainy day, and all that kind of thing, just as much as ever I did—in theory, anyhow. But in practice I may just as well tell you at once, to ease your mind, that Jean will have three hundred a year to keep the pot boiling."
He pooh-poohed their gratitude with the most genial air.
"Don't mention it, my dear young people, don't mention it. It comes out of Andrew's share, so it's all right."
"But I couldn't dream of robbing Andrew!" cried Jean warmly.
"He spends his days in robbing our clients," chuckled the senior partner, "so you needn't worry about him. Besides, he doesn't know how to spend money even when he has got it." He lowered his voice confidentially. "Andrew hasn't a spark of the sportsman in him; he's all very well as a partner—one wants 'em tough; but as a son—good Lord!"
And then the good gentleman tactfully retired to the billiard-room, leaving behind him the two happiest people in London.