In Friendships Guise | Page 8

who must ultimately have dragged him down to
her own level. The sale of his mother's London residence, a narrow
little house in Bayswater, put him in possession of a fairly large sum of
money. He left Paris with his friend Jimmie Drexell, and the two spent
a year in Italy, Holland and Algeria, doing pretty hard work in the way
of sketching. Jack returned to Paris quite cured, and with a
determination to win success in his calling. He saw Drexell off for his
home in New York, and then he packed up his belongings--they had
been under lock and key in a room of the house on the Boulevard St.
Germain--and emigrated to London. His great sorrow was only an
unpleasant memory to him now. He had friends in England, but no
relations there or anywhere, so far as he knew. His father, an artist of
unappreciated talent, had died twenty years before. It was after his
death that Jack's mother had come into some property from a distant
relative.
Taking his middle name of Vernon, Jack settled in Fitzroy Square. A
couple of hundred pounds constituted his worldly wealth. His ambition
was to be a great painter, but he had other tastes as well, and his talent
lay in more than one channel. Within a year, by dint of hard work, he
obtained more than a foothold. He had sold a couple of pictures to
dealers; his black-and-white drawings were in demand with a couple of
good magazines, and a clever poster, bearing his name, and advertising
a popular whisky was displayed all over London. Then, picking up a
French paper in the Monico one morning, he experienced a shock. The
body of a woman had been found in the Seine and taken to the Morgue,
where several persons unhesitatingly identified her as Diane Merode,

the one-time fascinating dancer of the Folies Bergere.
Jack turned pale, and crushed the paper in his hand. Evening found him
wandering on the heights of Hampstead, but the next morning he was at
his easel. He was a free man now in every sense, and the world looked
brighter to him. He worked as hard as ever, and with increasing success,
but he spent most of his evenings with his comrades of the brush, with
whom he was immensely popular. He was indifferent to women,
however, and they did not enter into his life.
But a few months before the opening of this story Jack had taken his
new studio at Ravenscourt Park, in the west of London. It was a big
place, with a splendid north light, and with an admirable train service to
all parts of town; in that respect he was better off than artists living in
Hampstead or St. John's Wood. He had a couple of small furnished
rooms at one end of the studio, in one of which he slept. He usually
dined in town, Paris fashion, but his breakfast and lunch were served by
his French servant, Alphonse, an admirable fellow, who had lodgings
close by the studio; he could turn his hand to anything, and was
devoted to his master.
Jack had achieved success, and he deserved it. His name was well
known, and better things were predicted of him. The leading magazines
displayed his black-and-white drawings monthly, and publishers
begged him to illustrate books. He was making a large income, and
saving the half of it. Nor did he lose sight of his loftier goal. His picture
of last year had been accepted by the Academy, hung well, and sold,
and he had just been notified that he was in again this spring. Fortune
smiled on him, and the folly of his youth was a fading memory that
could never cloud or dim his future.
* * * * *
It was two days after the adventure on the river, late in the afternoon.
Jack was reading over the manuscript of a book, and penciling possible
points for illustration, when Alphonse handed him a letter. It was
directed in a feminine hand, but a man had clearly penned the inclosure.
The writer signed himself Stephen Foster, and in a few brief sentences,

coldly and curtly expressed, he thanked Mr. Vernon for the great and
timely service he had rendered his daughter. That was all. There was no
invitation to the house at Strand-on-the-Green--no hope or desire for a
personal acquaintance.
Jack resented the bald, stereotyped communication. He felt
piqued--slightly hurt. He had been trying to forget the girl, but now,
thinking of her as something out of his reach, he wanted to see her
again.
"A conceited, crusty old chap--this Stephen Foster," he said to himself.
"No doubt he is a money-grubber in the city, and regards artists with
contempt. If I had a daughter