Callous as the wretch was, Percival’s emotion and his proposal struck Varney with a sentiment like compunction. He had designed to appropriate the lover’s gold as it was now offered; but that Percival himself should propose it, blind to the grave to which that gold paved the way, was a horror not counted in those to which his fell cupidity and his goading apprehensions had familiarized his conscience.
“No,” he said, with one of those wayward scruples to which the blackest criminals are sometimes susceptible,—“no. I have promised Helen to regard this as a loan to her, which she is to repay me when of age. What you may advance me is for the pictures. I have a right to do as I please with what is bought by my own labour. And the subjects of the pictures, what shall they be?”
“For one picture try and recall Helen’s aspect and attitude when you came to us in the garden, and entitle your subject: ‘The Foreboding.’”
“Hem!” said Varney, hesitatingly. “And the other subject?”
“Wait for that till the joy-bells at Laughton have welcomed a bride, and then—and then, Varney,” added Percival, with something of his natural joyous smile, “you must take the expression as you find it. Once under my care, and, please Heaven, the one picture shall laughingly upbraid the other!”
As this was said, the cabriolet stopped at Percival’s door. Varney dined with him that day; and if the conversation flagged, it did not revert to the subject which had so darkened the bright spirits of the host, and so tried the hypocrisy of the guest. When Varney left, which he did as soon as the dinner was concluded, Percival silently put a check into his hands, to a greater amount than Varney had anticipated even from his generosity.
“This is for four pictures, not two,” he said, shaking his head; and then, with his characteristic conceit, he added: “Well, some years hence the world shall not call them overpaid. Adieu, my Medici; a dozen such men, and Art would revive in England.”
When he was left alone, Percival sat down, and leaning his face on both hands, gave way to the gloom which his native manliness and the delicacy that belongs to true affection had made him struggle not to indulge in the presence of another. Never had he so loved Helen as in that hour; never had he so intimately and intensely felt her matchless worth. The image of her unselfish, quiet, melancholy consideration for that austere, uncaressing, unsympathizing relation, under whose shade her young heart must have withered, seemed to him filled with a celestial pathos. And he almost hated Varney that the cynic painter could have talked of it with that business-like phlegm. The evening deepened; the tranquil street grew still; the air seemed close; the solitude oppressed him; he rose abruptly, seized his hat, and went forth slowly, and still with a heavy heart.
As he entered Piccadilly, on the broad step of that house successively inhabited by the Duke of Queensberry and Lord Hertford,—on the step of that mansion up which so many footsteps light with wanton pleasure have gayly trod, Percival’s eye fell upon a wretched, squalid, ragged object, doubled up, as it were, in that last despondency which has ceased to beg, that has no care to steal, that has no wish to live. Percival halted, and touched the outcast.
“What is the matter, my poor fellow? Take care; the policeman will not suffer you to rest here. Come, cheer up, I say! There is something to find you a better lodging!”