“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.