“My father,” answered the young man, “was a respectable print-seller and frame-maker in Southampton Row. He gave me a good education. My mother, who died young, I never knew.”
“And yourself?” asked Gilead.
“When I was twenty-one,” said the young man, a sudden pink suffusing his wan features, “my father procured me a situation in the studio of Mr Auguste Lerroux, who dealt with him.”
He appeared to have prepared himself for the slight start which his words evoked. He looked up quickly, and dropped his eyes again, a deadly pallor replacing the momentary flush on his cheeks.
“The well-known artist and sculptor?” asked Gilead, resolutely commanding himself. “Well?”
“My father,” went on the visitor, in a low voice, “over-estimated some small ability which I possessed, and persuaded Mr Lerroux to take me on as his assistant, with a view to better things. I had not been with Mr Lerroux a year when my father died.”
He paused, in painful embarrassment, and again Gilead encouraged him to proceed.
“My father,” continued the young man, with evident difficulty, “was always, I fear, improvident and unpractical. It was deemed necessary after his death to sell the stock and goodwill of the business in order to discharge the debts with which it was encumbered. They proved greater than expected, and, for nett result, I found myself thrown virtually penniless upon the world. It was then that I succumbed to temptation.”
“Ah!” said Gilead, in a tone which he strove to make appear unconcerned. “And now we come to it, Mr Dobell.”
“Yes, sir,” said the visitor. He looked up, his eyes shining; but there was a piteous tremor about his lips. “I succumbed, sir,” he said, “and to my everlasting shame. I want to put it before you quite plainly, without extenuation or self-defence. It was this way. Mr Lerroux had engaged to pay me a certain small salary, but, as a matter of fact, he did not keep to his promise, or only so scantily and fitfully that, at the time of my father’s death, I had been able to put by no more than a pound or two, which represented my entire savings. There was a reason for this, as I knew. My employer figured large before the world of critics, but he was not a popular artist, and his patrons were few. He was generally hard-pressed for cash, and I knew, and know now most bitterly to my cost, that he had recourse to the money-lenders. At the time of which I speak he was in a desperate state, and I must believe that he had no choice but to discharge me. Anyhow he did discharge me, I thought harshly and cruelly, and at twenty-two I found myself cast adrift without means or prospects.”