CHAPTER XXI
ALL LOST BUT——
Mr. Alec Feilding paced the thick carpet of his studio with a restless step and an unquiet mind. Never before had he faced a more gloomy outlook. Black clouds, storm and rain, everywhere. Bad, indeed, is it for the honest tradesman when there is no money left, and no credit. But a man can always begin the world again if he has a trade. The devil of it is when a man has no trade at all, except that of lying and cheating in the abstract. Many men, it is true, combine cheatery and falsehood with their trade. Few are so unfortunate as to have no trade on which to base their frauds and adulterations.
Everything threatened, and all at once. Nay, it seemed as if everything was actually taken from him and all at once. Not something here, which might be repaired, and something there, a little later on, but all at once—everything. Nothing at all left. Even his furniture and his books might be seized. He would be stripped of his house, his journal, his name, his credit, his position—even his genius! Therefore his face—that face which Armorel found so wooden—was now full of expression, but of the terror-stricken, hunted kind: that of the man who has been found out and is going to be exposed.
On the table lay three or four letters. They had arrived that morning. He took them up and read them one after the other. It was line upon line, blow upon blow.
The first was from Roland Lee.
'I see no object,' he said, 'in granting you the interview which you propose. There is not really anything that requires discussion. As to our interests being identical, as you say—if they have been so hitherto they will remain so no longer. As to the market price of the pictures, which you claim to have raised by your judicious management, I am satisfied to see my work rise to its own level by its own worth. As to your threat that the influence which has been exerted for an artist may be also exerted against him—you will do what you please. Your last demand, for gratitude, needs no reply. I start again, exactly where I was when you found me. I am still as poor and as little known. The half-dozen pictures which you have sold as your own will not help me in any way. Your assertion that I am about to reap the harvest of your labours is absurd. I begin the world over again. The last picture—the one now in your studio—you will be good enough not to exhibit'—'Won't I, though?' asked the owner—'at the penalty of certain inconveniences which you will learn immediately. I have torn up and burned your cheque.'—'So much the better for me,' said the purchaser.—'You say that you will not let me go without a personal interview. If you insist upon one, you must have it. You will find me here any morning. But, as you can only want an interview in the hope of renewing the old arrangement, I am bound to warn you that it is hopeless and impossible, and to beg that you will not trouble yourself to come here at all. Understand that no earthly consideration will induce me to bear any further share in the deception in which I have been too long a confederate. The guilty knowledge of the past should separate us as wide apart as the poles. To see you will be to revive a guilty memory. Since we must meet, perhaps, from time to time, let us meet as a pair of criminals who avoid each other's conversation for fear of stirring up the noisome past. What has been resolved upon, so far as I—and another—are concerned, Miss Armorel Rosevean has undertaken to inform you.—R. L.'
'Deception! Criminals!' I suppose there is no depth of wickedness into which men may not descend, step by step, getting daily deeper in the mire of falsehood and crime, yet walking always with head erect, and meeting the world with the front of rectitude. Had anyone told Mr. Alec Feilding, years before, what he would do in the future, he would have kicked that foul and obscene prophet. Well: he had done these things, and deliberately: he had posed before the world as painter, poet, and writer of fiction. As time went on, and the world accepted his pretensions, they became a part of himself. Nay: he even excused himself. Everybody does the same thing: or, just the same, everybody would do it, given the chance: it is a world of pretension, make-believe, and seeming. Besides, he was no highwayman, he bought the things: he paid for them: they were his property. And yet—'Deception! Criminals!' The words astonished and pained him.
And the base ingratitude of the man. He was starving: no one would buy his things: nobody knew his work, when he stepped in. Then, by dexterity in the art of Puff, which the moderns call réclame—he actually believed this, being so ignorant of Art—he had forced these pictures into notice: he had run up their price, until for that picture on the easel he had been offered, and had taken, 450l.! Ungrateful!
'Deception! Criminals!'
Why, the man had actually received a cheque for 300l. for that very picture. What more could he want or expect? True, he had refused to cash the cheque. More fool he!