In Friendships Guise | Page 5

level," he
muttered. "It is for the best. I am a free man once more."

CHAPTER II.
FIVE YEARS AFTERWARDS.
Jack Vernon looked discontentedly at the big canvas on the easel, and
with a shrug of the shoulders he turned his back on it. He dropped his
palette and flung his sheaf of brushes into an open drawer.
"I am not fit for anything to-day," he said petulantly. "I was up too late
last night. No, most decidedly, I am not in the mood for work."
He sauntered to the huge end window of the studio, and looked out
over the charming stretch of Ravenscourt Park. It was an ideal morning
toward the close of April, 1897--such a morning as one finds at its best
in the western suburbs of mighty London. The trees were in fresh leaf
and bud, the crocuses were blooming in the well-kept beds, and the
grass was a sheet of glittering emeralds. The singing of birds vied with
the jangle of tram-bells out on the high-road.
"A pull on the river will take the laziness out of me," thought Jack, as
he yawned and extended his arms. "What glorious weather! It would be
a shame to stop indoors."
A mental picture of the silvery Thames, green-wooded and sunny,
proved too strong an allurement to resist. Jack did not know that
Destiny, watchful of opportunity, had taken this beguiling shape to lead
him to a turning-point of his life--to steer him into the thick of troubled
and restless waters, of gray clouds and threatening storms. He
discarded his paint-smeared blouse--he had worn one since his Paris
days--and, getting quickly into white flannel and a river hat, he lit a
briar pipe and went forth whistling to meet his fate.
He was fond of walking, and he knew every foot of old Chiswick by
heart. He struck across the high-road, down a street of trim villas to a
more squalid neighborhood, and came out by the lower end of
Chiswick Mall, sacred to memories of the past. He lingered for a

moment by the stately house immortalized by Thackeray in Vanity Fair,
and pictured Amelia Sedley rolling out of the gates in her father's
carriage, while Becky Sharpe hurled the offending dictionary at the
scandalized Miss Pinkerton. Tempted by the signboard of the Red Lion,
and by the red-sailed wherries clustered between the dock and the eyot,
he stopped to quaff a foaming pewter on a bench outside the old inn.
A little later he had threaded the quaint passage behind Chiswick
Church, left the sonorous hammering of Thorneycroft's behind him,
and was stepping briskly along Burlington Lane, with the high wall of
Devonshire House on his right, and on his left, far over hedges and
orchards, the riverside houses of Barnes. He was almost sorry when he
reached Maynard's boat-house, where he kept a couple of light and
serviceable craft; but the dimpled bosom of the Thames, sparkling in
the sunlight, woke a fresh enthusiasm in his heart, and made him long
to transfer the picture to canvas.
"Even a Turner could not do it half justice," he reflected.
It was indeed a scene to defy any artist, but there were some bold
enough to attempt it. As Jack pulled up the river he saw, here and there,
a fellow-craftsman ensconced in a shady nook with easel and
camp-chair. His vigorous strokes sent him rapidly by
Strand-on-the-Green, that secluded bit of a village which so few
Londoners have taken the trouble to search out. A narrow paved quay,
fringed with stately elm trees, separated the old-fashioned,
many-colored houses from the reedy shore, where at high tide low great
black barges, which apparently go nowhere, lie moored in picturesque
array.
It was all familiar to Jack, but he never tired of this stretch of the
Thames. He dived under Kew Bridge, shot by Kew Gardens and
ancient Brentford, and turned around off Isleworth. He rowed leisurely
back, dropping the oars now and again to light his pipe.
"There's nothing like this to brace a fellow up," he said to himself, as he
drew near Maynard's. "I should miss the river if I took a studio in town.
I'll have a bit of lunch at the Red Lion, and then go home and do an

afternoon's work."
A churning, thumping noise, which he had disregarded before,
suddenly swelled louder and warned him of possible danger. He was
about off the middle of Strand-on-the-Green, and, glancing around, he
saw one of the big Thames excursion steamers, laden with passengers,
ploughing up-stream within fifty yards of him, but at a safe distance to
his right. The same glimpse revealed a pretty picture midway between
himself and the vessel--a young girl approaching in a light Canadian
canoe. She could not have been more than