‘Oh, no,’ said Mary; ‘we have never thought so. You are not like,—the rest of us. I always understood how it was. You were waiting till you could come as you ought,—as you are. I would not write to you, Ben. I thought, perhaps, it was better you should not hear from any of us; but I felt how it was.’
This little speech, which came out of Mary’s very heart, and was founded upon utter conviction, struck Ben with the wildest perplexity. Could she know how he had in reality spent his time? Could she be mocking him? But a glance at her face made that idea impossible. Mary believed in him somehow, though he did not even guess why. It gave him a little uncomfortable thrill of self-consciousness; and, what was still more strange, it gave him just a momentary amusement; but, on the whole, perhaps its effect was encouraging, and set him at his ease with his new companion.
‘I have behaved like a brute,’ he said again; ‘though you, with your kind heart, make excuses for me; but, after all, it has been a little hard. A man cannot be twisted out of his socket and set into another without feeling it, Mary; though I do not dwell upon that now.’
‘Oh, I know,’ cried Mary, with all her heart; ‘and there has never been a day that I have not thought of you, Ben; but you have overcome it nobly,’ the girl cried in her enthusiasm, with tears in her eyes. Dear, little, soft, foolish creature!—what did she mean?
‘Put on your hat and come down with me to the river,’ said Ben. ‘My mother says you have no variety, nor even air. And she is to be left by herself till dinner. Come, and I will row you up to the Swan’s Nest. Do you remember?’
‘Do I remember!’ cried Mary, rushing into thehouse for her hat. Her heart beat as it had never beat before in its life. Ben to recollect the old story of the Swan’s Nest! It was natural that Laurie, her own playfellow, should think of all those childish follies,—but Ben! She came rushing out again, putting on her hat as she came, not to keep the prince waiting. If poor Mary had but known the use that had been made of her name six months before in Guildford Street, or why it was that her lordly cousin was so gracious to her now!
But, meanwhile, they went very pleasantly together down the winding road under the trees to the river. Both of them, in their different ways, had that enthusiasm for the beauty of their home which is common to well-educated young English people, not fine enough to beblasés. Mary,—to whom it was a delight at any time to approach the beautiful river near which she had been born, by this winding woodland road, shaded by those great trees under which her mother and her mother’s mother had watched it gliding past,—was this day wrapt in a tender content which gave additional beauty to everything around. There was splendour in the grass and glory in the flower wherever she set her foot on that day of days; and when the humblest things were thus enhanced, what was it to float forth on the blessed river, all encompassed by summer light, and the sweetest sounds and sights of nature! Even to Ben, pre-occupied as he was, there was apleasure in her gentle company, in the familiar home-look of everything, that penetrated his heart in spite of himself. The sense of life had risen strongly in him after his voluntary banishment. The unusual exercise, the soft gliding of the water round the boat, the glimmer and murmur of the stream, and Mary’s pleasant face,—not beautiful, like the other face he was thinking of,—her soft talk and tremulous, gentle laughter, her happiness and ingenuous confidence, all soothed and consoled him. It would have been rapture with that other; now, it was not rapture, but a certain soft content. She was a good girl, so kind to his mother, like a sister to them all,—a dear, little, sweet-voiced, bright-faced creature. Ben would have defended her against all the world; he would have pitched into the river, without a moment’s hesitation, any man who harmed her so much as by a thought;—he looked at her with a certain affectionate observation and loving-kindness,—poor Mary! and yet with his heart full of that other,—possessed by the enchantress all the time.
‘You are looking a little pale,’ he said, with that frank, affectionate interest in her; ‘but you must not let my mother keep you too much with her. She does not mean to be selfish, poor dear. You must run out and see your friends, Mary, and get your roses back.’
‘He cares for my roses then,’ said mistaken Maryto herself, with a flush of shy pleasure which restored them to her cheeks. But,—‘Indeed, I am quite well, Ben; and I like to be with godmamma. How strange you should tell me she is not selfish,—I who know her so well!’—was what she said.
‘Perhaps better than I do,’ said Ben. ‘I think women know each other best;’ and he stopped short with sudden gravity, and perhaps just a lingering doubt of what Mary’s opinion might be of another. He meant to ask her, but somehow he was embarrassed about it. It could wait for another time, at least till they had finished their row. And they began to talk of family matters, the familiar talk which is so pleasant in its mild interest;—how old Sargent was having it all his own way with the garden; how Willis the butler was tyrannical to the ladies; the littlemotsof the house, and its opinions upon things in general. And then they reached the Swan’s Nest, which Mary had made a child’s romance about once like little Ella in Mrs. Browning’s poem. The two knew every water-lily and every flag, and the separate droop of every willow-branch at that fairy nook.
‘I did not think you would have remembered,’ Mary said in her shy delight. And they turned and floated down again with the oars laid silent in the boat, and the sweet water plashing softly with a quiver and ripple of sound and sunshine, so twined together that they seemed but one, about its tinybows. Even Ben was hushed, and charmed, and softened by the exquisite tender stillness and brightness. Fancy what poor Mary must have been, shut up so long in Mrs. Renton’s shaded room, with one day of delight thus dropped unawares into her life!
They had reached the bank again, and were wandering slowly up the ascent towards the house before the charm was broken. It was just as they turned and stood still by mutual consent,—as everybody did who knew that view,—to look down upon the river from between the two great beeches, which framed it in, and made an ideal picture of the lovely reality. There was an opening below among the trees, and a silvery nook, with an island just appearing, a goodly bank opposite with groups of sleek cattle, and in the distance Cookesley Church with its ivied tower. The view was always perfect just there; a little ‘bit’ of nature’s own composition, in which the trees, and cows, and the very swans, posed themselves by instinct, as the most exquisite art would have posed them. Many a time afterwards Mary Westbury looked at that scene, and felt again the sudden twang of the bowstring and the quiver of the arrow in her heart. That was the metaphor under which she represented it to herself.
‘You have never been out of Berks, have you, Mary,’ said her cousin, ‘you home-keeping girl?—you were educated close by here, were you not?’
‘What people call educated,’ said Mary, with her soft, happy laugh. ‘I never learned anything. It was at Thornycroft, not more than ten miles off. But it is so odd that you should remember, Ben.’
‘Do you recollect a Miss Tracy there?’ said Ben, with a slight breathlessness,—the road was so steep; was that the cause?
‘Miss Tracy? Oh, you mean Millicent. What! do you know her?’ cried Mary, turning round upon him. He was taken by surprise, and perhaps his face betrayed him. At all events, she grew pale in a moment, poor child, and leaned her arm against one of the beech-trees. That was the moment at which she often thought the string of the bow twanged and the arrow came home.
‘I have met her,’ said Ben;—‘that is, I have seen a good deal of her; and she seemed to be fond of you.’
‘Millicent Tracy!’ repeated Mary, with a little tremulous movement. ‘Oh, I don’t think she was fond of me.’
‘You do not seem, at least, to have been fond of her,’ said Ben, with a little pique in his tone.
‘She was not in my set,’ said Mary, plucking up a little spirit. ‘We were younger. She was so pretty,—oh, so pretty! We all thought there never was any one like her. Is she as pretty now?’ Mary asked, with an attempt at interest; but her tone was not so eager and hearty as her words.
‘She is not pretty at all;—she is beautiful,’ said Ben, his passion betraying itself in spite of him. And then they stood silent, looking down on the river, and for some minutes not another word was said. It was Ben who was the first to speak. The man was angry, after the fashion of men, with the girl who up to this moment had been so sweetly ready to adopt what tone he pleased to give the conversation. ‘I seem to have been unfortunate in my subject,’ he said, turning abruptly to go in. ‘Miss Tracy, I see, cannot have been a favourite among the girls at Thornycroft. She was too beautiful, I suppose.’
‘Indeed, no,’ said Mary, with a little indignation, following him. ‘We were all very proud of her beauty. Though I don’t think we thought of beauty. We thought she was very pretty,—oh, so pretty! No girl at Thornycroft was ever so nice-looking; and nice too,’ she continued with a hesitating attempt to please him. ‘I always did think that she was nice, too.’
‘That was very good of you,’ Ben said, with a little scornful laugh; but Mary was silent again, and grew frightened, and felt as if her heart would break. What was Millicent Tracy to him? his cousin thought. If this was all he had come home for, only to ask about such a girl as that!—not for his mother at all, nor for Mary, nor for the sake of home. The idea so disturbed her temper and patience that shehad some difficulty in keeping the ready tears from falling; and this, of course, was going a great deal too far, for it was not for the sole purpose of asking about Millicent that Ben had gone home.
From that moment a cloud fell over the shining day,—not in reality, for the sun shone as bright as ever,—but upon the cousins, as they climbed the winding path. All its exquisite greenness and intervals of sunshine and shade,—all the play of light and colour about, the silvery gleam of the river, the soft, full verdure behind,—were lost upon them. A jar had struck into the magical harmony of the summer air. Mary, after the first moment, recovering herself from that pang of mortification and disappointment, began to struggle with herself for something to say. What could she say? Millicent had not been popular at Thornycroft. She had turned the heads of the young masters, and being new to the delights of conquest, had encouraged them to make fools of themselves, and had scandalised the entire community. She had tempted the curate, who was the brother of Miss Thorny, the head of the establishment at Thornycroft, into a flirtation, and broken his heart; and in consequence of this feat had left the school abruptly. ‘Perhaps she was not so very much to blame,’ Mary said to herself as she went painfully along by Ben’s side, watching his averted face. ‘Men are such fools;’—unconsciously she repeated in her innocence that sentiment which was the fruit ofMillicent’s experience;—‘they will do anything for beauty.’ Probably it was their own doing. Could it be Millicent’s fault if they went crazy about her lovely face? Thus the good girl reasoned herself into tolerance. She made a great many little feints to call Ben’s attention,—cleared her throat, dropped her gloves, tried what she could, by every innocent artifice which occurred to her, to get him to resume the interrupted conversation;—but Ben, with something of the brutality of a big brother mingling, as was inevitable, with his brotherly kindness, marched on and took no notice. She had to make a faltering beginning herself without any aid from him.
‘Ben,’ she said, ‘you are not to think I did not like Millicent, or that she was not very nice. I daresay it was not her fault. Everybody made a fuss about her wherever she went;—she was so very pretty. I don’t think it could have been her fault.’
‘Being pretty?’ said Ben, with the sneer that women hate.
‘You know I did not mean that,’ said Mary, injured. ‘I think it must have been the gentlemen’s own doing. Mr. Thorny was very silly to think she would ever have had him. I am sure that must have been his foolishness. She so pretty and so clever, and he only a common curate, you know;—just like other curates, nothing particular about him. It must have been his own fault.’
‘I have not the advantage of knowing what yourefer to,’ said Ben, with the haughtiest assumption of indifference, though his temper had taken fire and his pride was all in arms. A curate,—a common curate,—to have been associated anyhow, by any means whatever, with Millicent! In his heart he was furious, though he managed to keep some outward calm.
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ said Mary, faltering, and feeling that her attempt at making up had not been successful,—‘only they said it was that that threw him into a consumption. But it was not her fault,—it might have happened to any of us,’ said Mary, with a sudden blush; for had it not fallen to her lot, though she was no flirt and not even a beauty like Millicent, to inflict a passing wound without knowing it on a curate of her own?
Then Ben laughed, but it was a very unpleasant laugh. ‘When a lady frowns a man can but die,’ he said. ‘How could he do less? I suppose that is what you mean?’
‘Oh, Ben!’ cried Mary, with a hopeless appeal to his sense of justice. But he only shrugged his shoulders and began to whistle, and walked the rest of the way at such a pace that it was all she could do to keep up with him. Not another word did he say to her on the subject, nor did he pay any attention to her little faltering speeches. He whistled, which was very rude of him; and, after a while, Mary, who had a spirit of her own, grew indignant, and, if she did notwhistle, did what was equivalent,—she took up the air he was whistling, and sang it softly with a pretty little voice. ‘I did not know you had been fond of music, Ben,’ she said with a laugh; but it cost her a good cry when she got into her own room. Ben, who was so superior, who had borne his trial so nobly, who was going to work like a hero,—Ben, who had always been, more than she knew, her own ideal of man,—to think that Millicent Tracy with her pretty face——! ‘Why, even Laurie would have seen through her!’ Mary said to herself, and wept with the poignant prick of self-knowledge, which gives the chief bitterness to such a discovery,—not self-esteem, but that indignant, sorrowful, honest insight which, on such a provocation, reveals one’s worth to oneself in pain and not in vanity. ‘Having known me, to decline on a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!’ Mary did not say this, any more than Ben had said of whose image his heart was full; but she felt it with a sharp mingling of pride and humiliation. ‘Not that it can be anything to me,’ she added aloud, to save her own credit, as it were, with herself; and put on her prettiest dress, and was very cheerful and amusing at dinner, when the mother was rather melancholy and had need of enlivenment. Ben’s spirits had flagged, partly with the shock his pride had received, and partly with the associations which began to creep over him. The dinner-room, in which it was so strange to take his father’s place; theold servants, who were connected so completely with the old time; all the routine of the house, in which nothing was changed but one thing,—affected the young man in spite of himself. He had been defrauded, as it were, out of his natural grief for his father; and now the mute eloquence of the vacant place seized upon him. So good a father up to the last moment; so kind,—even at the last moment filled with special compunction for Ben! Mr. Renton’s son felt, almost for the first time, how much wisdom, and support, and guidance, how much tender affection and watchful care, were lost to him. When his mother, faltering, spoke, as to the boy she still felt him to be, of ‘your dear papa,’ Ben fell back into the boy she thought him, and soft tears came into his eyes. Perhaps the sadness did him more good than his former mood of satisfaction; but it somewhat defeated his cousin Mary, who meant to be gay, and prove to him that his enthusiasm for Millicent Tracy was nothing to her. On the contrary, the soft-hearted, sympathetic creature turned her pleasant eyes upon him, all shining with tears when his change of mood became visible, and forgave him his Millicent, and comforted herself that it was but a fancy; and they were all very affectionate together, and somewhat pathetic, with that common grief behind them and the common pang of parting before them, for the rest of the night.
Yet when Ben went to his room, he paused on his way at the great window on the staircase, from whichall the noble gardens of the manor, and the west wing, and the line of trees which overhung the river, were visible, all ghostly and mysterious in the moonlight, and stood looking out with a sudden flutter at his heart. His thoughts were not at home, nor of the past. The question which suddenly flashed across his mind was, Should he ever bring her here to be the mistress of it all? It was the first time he had ever allowed himself to speculate upon the distant future at the end of his seven years’ probation. Mrs. Renton had gone to bed weeping, yet consoled by her son’s presence and sympathy; and Mary was taking herself to task, in her maiden retirement, for having been hard upon poor Ben; while Ben stood at the window looking out on the moonlight, forgetting the very existence of these two, and asking himself, with a thrill that ran through all his veins, Should he ever bring her here? Mary’s hesitating story, her faint praise, her deprecation of all intention to blame, even the curate,—contemptible shadow!—angry as they had made him at the moment, had faded from his thoughts. He seemed to see her in her stately beauty coming across the lordly lawn. How lovely she was! Even the silly school-girls, unimpassioned, feminine creatures, impervious to that influence, were compelled to acknowledge it. What if she might stand with him here by this very window, and look out on the moonlight some other night?
This was how Ben Renton went out upon theworld,—in charity with his own people, even with his father who had been so hard upon him; and feeling, after all, that at five-and-twenty a man, even when disinherited, with work in his hands to occupy him, fresh air to breathe, and novel scenes to see, and energies to exercise in a big spacious world where there was room to do something, had no particular occasion to quarrel with life or fate. The thread of actual work, as soon as he got it into his hands, had enabled him to trace his way out of all the morbid labyrinths of solitary musing. Armida’s garden was left behind for ever; but the witch, who had enchanted him and possessed herself of his life, was so far from suffering by the change, that she had developed in his imagination into a white angelic woman, worthy reward of all labour. Poor, foolish Ben! And yet it could not have been anything but a high nature which emerged from that six months’ mist of self-inspection, bitterness, idleness, and insane passion, with at least a true sense of the realities of his position, and a true love in his heart.
And thus equipped he disappears from us for seven years into the vast and troubled world.
Laurence Renton’sstate of mind when he left the Manor immediately after his father’s death was very different from that of his brother Ben. He was a different man altogether, as will be seen. He had that unconscious natural generosity of temper and unselfishness of disposition which is more a woman’s quality than a man’s. By instinct, he put himself, as it were, on the secondary level, and considered matters in general rather as they affected other people. It was no virtue in him, and he did not even know it. Such a disposition could scarcely have existed with a passionate or energetic mind; and Laurie was not energetic. He could no more have absorbed himself in a foolish passion as Ben had done, than he could have set to work with the practical sense of his younger brother. He was lazy Laurence under all circumstances; fond of philosophising over his mischances, taking most things very quietly; and he had a faculty of contenting himself with what was pleasant in whatsoever aspect it mightcome, which is the very death of ambition in every shape and form. He had occupied some rooms at Kensington, with a pretty studio attached to them, in his father’s lifetime, when money was plentiful. No wonder Mrs. Westbury had mourned over him, and denounced so luxurious a mode of bringing up. He was of course a younger son, and had no pretensions to lead an idle life. Providence seemed indeed to have indicated a public office, or some such moderate occupation, which would have left him time for his favourite dilettantism and required no particular activity or exercise of intellect. But Laurence had been a perplexing subject to deal with all his life. He had been one of those trying boys who have no particular bent one way or another. He was a bright, intelligent, indolent, inaccurate lad, utterly incapable of dates or facts in general, but full of social qualities,—good-natured, tender-hearted, ready to do anything for anybody. And then he had travelled a little, and drifted among an artist set, and from that day hoped and imagined himself capable of art. He had always had a certain facility in drawing, and everybody knows how easy it is to glide into the busy dawdling, the thousand pleasant trifles of occupation which fill the time of an amateur. It seemed to Laurie, as it has seemed to many another, that a life made beautiful by that faculty of discovering beauty which the humblest artist prides himself on possessing,—and the privilege of claiminga kind of membership with a noble craft,—was superior to the loftiest stool and the most dignified desk even in a Foreign Office. He was proud to call himself, as he often did, ‘a poor painter;’ and, alas! a poor painter in the literal sense of the words Laurie was. He had no genius, poor fellow! only a tender, amiable, pleasant, little talent, which would have led him into verses had his turn been literary. His friends and relations would have been more deeply shocked still had they known what a toss-up it was whether Laurie’s amateurship had taken the literary or artistic turn,—but fortunately it was the latter; and as he made pretty little sketches, and had given them away with charming liberality, and harmed nobody, it was only the high moralists, such as his Aunt Lydia, who found any fault with what he was fond of calling his ‘trade.’ And there was this to be said in his favour, that he had no expensive tastes, and that, given this mode of idleness, which he called work, Laurie’s was about as harmless a life as a young man could lead;—‘especially as he will never need to maintain himself,’ people had been used to say.
All this, however, had changed for him as for his brother. Even Laurie’s modest establishment could not be kept on two hundred a-year; and he had been used to be liberal, and manage his money matters with an easy hand, always ready to help a comrade in distress. So that it was absolutely necessary for him now towork. He went into his Kensington rooms with feelings not unlike those which moved Ben when he made his melancholy inventory of his things at the Albany. There were accumulations of all kinds in the place. Bits of old carpet, bits of ‘drapery,’ bits of still life, a little china, a little of everything; and a north light, perfect of its kind, in the studio. He had fitted it all up to suit himself, with a hundred handy devices,—stands for his portfolios, velvet-covered shelves, all sorts of nooks for the artistic trumpery which is supposed to be necessary in a studio; and the tiny little sitting-room into which the studio opened had a queer, little, round bow-window, looking into the Park, which was something like a box at the opera without the music. All the world streamed under Laurie’s bow-window coming and going, and many a nod and pleasant smile reached the artist.—save the mark!—in his velvet coat, as he came now and then from behind his fresh flowers to look out upon the fashion and beauty, sometimes with a palette in his hand or maul-stick, on which he leaned as he looked out. It gave him a certain pleasure to pose in this professional way. Perhaps it was as well for the consistency of Laurie’s philosophy that it was September when he came back to Kensington Gore. He went and sat down in his bow-window, and nobody passed,—nobody except the unknown people who stream about London streets all day long, and of whom no one takes any notice. Nodoubt there were human figures enough; but the trees were very shabby in the Park, and the grass, as far as he could see, was burnt to a pale yellow, and two nursemaids and one Guardsman had all the expanse to themselves. In these circumstances, perhaps, it was easier to take leave of his pleasant little hermitage. He sat in his window and looked carelessly out, and mused on the change. A pot of China asters, showy enough, yet betokening the winter which approached, replaced all the roses and bright geraniums which generally filled the stand. The season was over, and this kind of thing was over, and the first part of life.
Well! he said to himself,—and no particular harm either. Life was not Kensington Gore. Many admirable artists had lived and died in Fitzroy Square; and there was Turner in Queen Anne Street,—not that one would choose to be like Turner. After all, it was but for half the year that Kensington Gore was desirable. When people were out of town, what did it matter? And then a smile crossed his face as it occurred to him that henceforward he was not likely to be one of those who go out of town. Looking down, his vacant eye caught the succession of figures passing along the pavement; many very well-dressed, well-looking people, not having the least appearance of being outcasts of society. And yet such they must be, or else they would scarcely be there in such numbers in September. Then he wenton to reflect what heaps of people he himself knew who lived in London all the year round, with the exception of a month or two, or a week or two, somewhere for health’s sake. Most painters were of this class. It was but identifying himself more entirely with the art he had chosen; and in that point of view it would be good for him. An amateur is never good for anything, thought Laurie; but a man who has to devote himself to his work without any vain interruptions has a chance to make something of it. Then a gleam of pleasant and conscious vanity, for which he smiled at himself, flitted over his meditations. He could almost see the people pausing before a picture in the Academy,—or two or three pictures for that matter,—why not?—when he had nothing else to do,—and telling each other how the painter had been maltreated by fortune, and how this was the result of it,—hard work and success, and substantial pudding and sweetest praise;—ay, and a reputation very different from that of the dilettante who strolled from his studio to the bow-window, and looked out in his professional costume to receive the salutations of the ladies. ‘There is poor Laurie Renton, who has been so foolish as to take to art and nonsense; but, fortunately, he will never need to be dependent on it.’ That was what the ladies used to say as they passed. How different it would be when they stood before the great picture in the Academy, and read the name in the catalogue.He saw the expression on certain faces as they read that name. ‘What, Laurie Renton! who would have thought he could ever have been good for anything?’ This was what Laurie called thinking over his changed affairs.
There was one drop of bitterness, however, in his cup which had not been in Ben’s. We have said that when Mrs. Westbury visited Laurie in his room on the night of his father’s funeral, there were some little notes lying on his table, over which he was making himself miserable, with his face hidden in his hands. It is not necessary to mention her name, as she has, unfortunately, nothing to do with this story; but the fact was that there had been somebody whose little notes made Laurie’s heart beat. They had been the simplest kind of letters:—‘Dear Mr. Renton,—Mamma bids me say that she will be very glad if you will come to dinner on Thursday;’—nothing more: and yet he had tied them up very carefully together and preserved them,—the foolish fellow,—as if they were pearls and diamonds.
It was one of those might-have-beens, which are in every life. She had very good blood, and very sweet looks, and that perfect homely training of an English girl which people try to persuade us has vanished from the world,—had we not eyes of our own to see otherwise. She knew no Latin nor Greek, but she was more brightly intelligent than her brother, for instance, who was a fellow of AllSouls. And she had not a penny; and if Laurie Renton had come in, as seemed likely, to as much money as would have produced him 1500l.or even 1000l.a-year——!
Alas! that is how things happen in this life. Laurie was not the kind of man, like Ben, to dare the impossible and keep his love at all hazards. He knew well enough it would not do. Years must pass before he painted that picture at which his friends should stare in the Academy; and in the interval no doubt some one would come in who could give her everything she ought to have, and for whom her sweet face would brighten, and not for him. This had been the first thought that had occurred to Laurie when his father’s will was read. He had seen her standing in her bridal veil beside some one else, five minutes after the sound of the lawyer’s voice had died on his ear. It had wrung his heart, but he had said, ‘God bless her!’ all the same. Never word of love had passed between them. When the returning season brought her back to the little house in Mayfair, she would wonder, perhaps sigh, perhaps ask what had become of Mr. Renton? But by that time Laurie knew his little boat would have been so long gone down under the sea that there would not be even a circle left on the smooth, treacherous water. It might cost her a little gentle expectation or disappointment,—a wistful look here and there for the face that was not to be seen again.Unselfish as he was, Laurie hoped it would cost her as much as that; but it would not cost her more. And long before the seven years were out or his great picture exhibited in the Academy—to which, perhaps, her friends would object as much as to his poverty—she would be some one else’s wife. And it would be better for her. She had always been too good for Laurie. Some one who could give her rank, wealth, whatever heart could desire——! Poor Laurie’s heart contracted with a sudden pang, and forced the moisture to his eyes. He was only four-and-twenty, poor fellow! But it was to be so. Not his the force or the passion to resist fate. It was one of the might-have-beens which gave so strange, so shadowy a character to this existence. Strange to stand amid the unalterable laws of nature and see what caprice moves the fate of the chief of nature’s works. If Aunt Lydia had held her peace! If Mr. Renton had not changed his mind! We are such stuff as dreams are made of! Laurie said to himself as he turned from the scentless China asters in his window and the empty Park, and this concluded phase of life.
But still things might have been worse. This overthrow might have happened a year ago, at the moment when Laurie had pledged all his credit, and given all his money to Geoffrey Sutton,—poor old fellow!—after the brigands sacked his little villa upon Lake Nemi, and took everything he had in the world. When old Geoff was going about, wild and penniless, girt round with pistols, to revenge his loss, without thinking that his life might go instead of Masaccio’s, and that nobody would be left to pay his friends at home! What a business it would have been had this happened then! But in the meantime Geoff’s old uncle had been so obliging as to die, and all was right again. Or had it occurred that time when Laurie took his last twenty pounds out of the bank to send Harry Wood to Rome to nurse his lungs and pursue his studies! Fortunately at this moment there was nothing in hand to make matters worse than they were by nature, which Laurie reflected was the greatest good luck,—a chance which he scarcely deserved, imprudent as he was. So that on the whole, except for the necessity of leaving Kensington Gore, it would not make much difference. That he should feel a little, of course;—everything was so handy, so nice, so bright, and Mrs. Brown understood his ways. But after all, what did it matter where a man lived? A good light to paint by, any sort of a clean room to sleep in, and a friendly face now and then to look in upon his work. Of that last particular he was always certain. Indeed, Laurie was fully aware that among his artist friends he was likely to be rather more than less popular when he ceased to be a ‘swell’ and amateur.
Such were the young man’s thoughts when he began to feel the ground under his feet again after his overthrow. Poor Ben! how hard it would be upon him! but after all for himself it was no such terrible business. Art is long; and so, for that matter, is life too, at four-and-twenty, or at least appears so, which comes to much the same thing. Laurie for his part would have been very glad to have stood by his brother and given him all the succour that brotherly sympathy can give, had the elder been so inclined; but, to tell the truth, Ben had been morose when they parted, and had requested to be left alone, and that no attempt should be made to condole with or help him until he himself took the initiative. Laurie went and made a sketch of the three fairy princes setting out on their travels, to solace himself when he had ‘thought over’ as above for a sufficiently long period. Such little sketches were the best things he ever did, his friends said. There was young Frank marching in advance on a noble steed, with the sun shining on his helmet and all his gorgeous apparel; and Laurie himself following after with his easel on his shoulder, his portfolios, half-finished canvases, palettes, colour-boxes, and accompanying trumpery hung about his person. Ben came last, with his coat buttoned, and his face set against the wind. Poor Ben! it was more difficult to make out how he would take it thanhow it would affect the others. Thus Laurie, even in the first shock, made light of his own share. There were three beautifully distinct paths on which the three were setting out. In Frank’s case the road was continuous, and led through sundry stormy indications of battle, and fantastic,—supposed,—Indian towers, to where a coronet hung in mid air,—the infallible reward, as everybody knows, of energetic young soldiers who leave the Guards for the line. In Laurie’s own path, the glorious cupolas of the National Gallery, with laughing little imps fondly embracing each pepper-pot, closed the vista. These were easy of execution; but what was to be the end of Ben’s painful way? It lay up hill in his brother’s sketch, a perfect alp of ascent. But on the height, though so austere, stood Renton Manor in full sunshine, at one side; while on the other appeared a stately Tudor interior, full of gentlemen in their hats, where some one with the features of the pedestrian below was addressing the interested audience. ‘For of course that is how it will end,’ Laurie said to himself; and yet his heart melted, poor foolish fellow, over the rocks and glaciers in his brother’s way.
‘And I wonder which of them will meet the White Cat,’ Laurie said to himself, hanging over his drawing-block with his pencil in hand, giving here and there a touch; ‘Frank, perhaps, as becomes asoldier; but I wish it might be Ben.’ And then he bent over his own part of the sketch, and did something to the imps on the National Gallery and sighed. With that soft ache in his heart, poor fellow! enchanted primrose-paths were not for him. So the next thing he did was to plant a lovely little ideal figure on the rocks through which his elder brother was to make his way, beckoning to Ben and cheering him on. That was how it should be. He spent a great deal of time over his drawing, and took pleasure in the comic burdens which were suspended from his own person,—brushes dangling at his heels, a lay figure suspended over his shoulder, and a little dog barking in amaze at the wonderful apparition. He laughed over it just as he had sighed. Fate was good to Laurie, who could find some way of extracting a little pleasure, a little amusement, out of everything. It was quite late in the afternoon when he put his drawing-block aside, placing it on the mantel-piece, where the drawing might catch his eye whenever he returned, and took his hat and went out. He was going to ask advice of old Welby, an old R.A. of his acquaintance, as to what course of study he should adopt, and what would be best for him in general, in the way of art. ‘And there’s the padrona as well, who understands a fellow better than Welby,’ he added to himself as he went out; and perhaps that was why he put one of Mrs. Brown’s monthly roses,—for lack of a better,—in his button-hole as he passed. For he was a young fellow who was fond of the society of women, and liked to appear well in their eyes, notwithstanding that ache in his heart.
OldWelby, R.A., lived in No. 375 Fitzroy Square. He had lived there or thereabouts all his life; but his immediate dwelling-place was one which he had not occupied for above a year or two, and to which he had come out of charitable, friendly motives which he would have denied reluctantly had he been accused of them. It was poor Severn’s house, and Severn’s widow never would have been able to keep it but for old Welby, who had suddenly become dissatisfied with his rooms, and discovered that the ground-floor of 375 was the very thing he wanted. The old gentleman was very well off and very famous; but he was a bachelor, and had never aspired to the honour and worry of a house of his own. He was a thorough painter, steeped to the lips in that theory of life which is more destructive of social follies and more wedded to liberty than any other. Of all things in this world there was nothing he cared so much for as art. He loved the artist and the artist hand wherever he met with them, thoughhe did not always display his feeling. Mere intelligence, even, when it was bright and genuine, the uncultivated eye that perceived an effect, though in utter ignorance of its why or wherefore, pleased him; but he was very little interested in fine people, or about enthusiasts who would come and rave to him of his lovely pictures. ‘And had never found out the meaning of one of them, sir,’ he would say with a little snort of indignation. He had had his day of society, and had been much petted as an original as well as a great painter, but had borne his distinction very soberly, with a head it proved impossible to turn; and now having surmounted that ordeal, he lived as he liked living, seeing such people as he liked, going out when he pleased, dining when he pleased, dressing according to his own taste, with an utter disregard of anybody’s opinions. He had taken to Laurie as he seldom took to young men, and it was of him that our amateur went to seek counsel,—one of the most foolish things, had Laurie but known it, that he ever did in his life.
The ground-floor of the mansion in Fitzroy Square consisted of the dining-room in the front, an immense dark room with sober-toned walls and great pictures in heavy old frames, which was Welby’s sitting-room. The room beyond, which opened into it by folding doors, was a bare, scantily-furnished ante-chamber, where strangers, and models, and Philistines in general, were sent to wait his pleasure: beyond thatagain, with a separate passage of its own, was the studio, which was not a part of the original building, but had been added to it by one of the many artists who had inhabited the house. Still farther on, following the plan of the original dwelling-place, was Mr. Welby’s bedroom, which was not very large, and looked into the dingy, smoky London garden, with a few trees in it which made your fingers black when you touched them, but which, nevertheless, flourished and threw out their fresh leaves every spring as if they had been in the depths of the country. It was Forrester, Mr. Welby’s man, who was almost as great an authority on art as himself, who opened the door to Laurie with frank salutation, and showed him into the studio, where his master was. ‘Mr. Renton, sir, come to see you,’ he said with the pleasant confidence that he was making an agreeable announcement, and lingered a moment in the room to shake down the contents of a portfolio which bulged inharmoniously and wounded his sensitive eye. ‘I told you, sir, as them Albert Doorers you went and bought was too big for any of the books,’ he said with a gentle reproach. ‘Then go and order some bigger,’ retorted his master; and with this little episode Laurie’s salutations were broken. Mr. Welby was not at work. He was looking over some tiny little scraps of drawings which were worth a great deal more than their weight in gold, carefully examining a frayed edge here and there, mounting them with his own hands,caressing them as if they had been his children. The studio was a great, solemn, stately place, not like Laurie’s little shed. There was a rich old mossy Turkish carpet on the floor, and wonderful pieces of old art-furniture worth a fortune in themselves. Two or three easels stood about, one bearing a picture, set there clearly for purposes of exhibition; and another honoured by a pure white square of canvas without a line upon it. The picture was not Welby’s own. He worked but little now-a-days, and that little only when the inspiration was upon him. It was by an old Italian master little known, who was the R.A.’s special pet and protégé. He had been pointing out its beauties to some bewildered visitors only that morning, who would much rather have seen a Welby, even in the most fragmentary condition, than the curious, quaint Angelichino which required a very profound artistic taste to understand. Nobody knew whether old Welby’s admiration for his pet master was genuine, or was his way of jeering at a partially educated amateur public. That and his pure white canvas were his favourite show-pieces, and these accordingly were the most prominent objects in the studio when Laurie went in. The painter himself was a little man with refined features, but many wrinkles; his eyes were very keen and bright under the shaggy mobile eyebrows with which he almost talked, and the colour on his cheek was as fresh as a winter apple. His hair was almost white, and so was his beard, but yet hewas not old. He had a black velvet bonnet on his white locks,—not a skull-cap, but a round bonnet such as the Dutch painters wear in their pictures,—and a velvet coat; and was not above adding,—it was apparent,—a skilful touch to the picturesqueness of his appearance by means of dress. Such was the man who held out both his hands to Laurie, with a half foreign warmth mingled with his English calm. ‘Ah, Renton, I am glad to see you,’ he said; ‘a young fellow like you in September is a rarity: and I wanted some one to look at my little Titians. I picked them up in Venice for an old song. There is where you boys should go. Such lights, such reflexions! Look here, my dear fellow,—what do you say to that?’
Laurie gazed and applauded as was expected of him; but somehow, though he had been moderately cheerful before, the sight of this life which was no life filled him suddenly with an uncalled-for depression. To go wild about a scrap of paper with some pencilled lines made how many hundred years ago, and never to think of the lives getting wrecked, the hearts getting broken round you! This was what Laurie suddenly thought,—with great injustice, as was natural,—and felt disposed to walk away again on the spot without betraying the troubles of which the other was unconscious. ‘The padrona would have known before I had said a word,’ he said to himself in his heart.
Whether Mr. Welby, whose eye was keen enough, whatever his sympathy might be, read his youngfriend’s thoughts at once it would be impossible to tell. If he did he showed no feeling for them. He went on calmly to the end of his new acquisitions, pointing out their beauties; and then when Laurie was sick and faint, and felt that he hated Titian, put them all together in a most leisurely way and locked them up in a drawer of a beautiful ebony cabinet all inlaid with silver. Then he returned to his visitor and drew a chair to a table and pointed to one near him. ‘Come and tell me all about it,’ he said with the most sudden change in his tone.
‘Ah, you have heard!’ cried Laurie, half indignant, half mollified.
‘I have heard nothing,’ said the painter; ‘but I see you have brought a heap of troubles to cast down at your neighbour’s door. Come, let us have them out.’ Whereupon poor Laurie told his story, brightening as he told it. Curiously enough, when he brought himself face to face with his misfortunes, the burden of them always was lightened for him,—a case so much unlike what it is with ordinary men. When he stood at a distance from them, so to speak, they swelled into great mystic, devouring giants; but they were only manageable human difficulties, and no more, when he faced them near. ‘I must take to work in earnest,’ said Laurie, ‘that’s all, so far as I am concerned. It is worse for Ben; but fortunately, as I have a profession——’
‘Have you a profession?’ Mr. Welby broke inabruptly, looking Laurie, without a shadow of a smile, in the face, as if moved by genuine curiosity; and the young man gave a little nervous smile.
‘You thought I was amateur all over,’ he said, ‘and I daresay I deserved it. But don’t tear me to pieces altogether; that stage of existence is past.’
‘I asked for simple information,’ said the R.A. ‘If you have a profession now is the time to stick to it. I thought you were only a virtuoso; but if you have really been brought up to anything——’
‘You make me feel very small,’ said poor Laurie, blushing like a girl up to his hair. ‘I have not been brought up to it, I know. I have been a virtuoso merely, but I am not too old to begin to work in earnest. And there is nothing I love like art.’
‘Art!’ said Mr. Welby, with great strain and commotion of his eyebrows. He gave his shoulders a little shrug, and he talked volumes with those shaggy brows. Laurie felt himself scolded, pushed aside as a puny pretender.
‘I did not mean to say anything so very presumptuous,’ he said with momentary youthful petulance, in answer to this silent lecture; and then added, with equally sudden youthful compunction, ‘I beg your pardon. I do want your advice.’
‘Art!’ repeated the R.A. with a little snort. ‘You had much better take to a crossing at once. I went at it, sir, when I was twelve years old. I never had a thought in my noddle but pictures. I’ve gonehere and there and everywhere to study my trade; and after fifty years of it, sir,’ cried the Academician, springing suddenly to his feet, seizing a canvas which stood against the wall and thrusting it upon one of the vacant easels up to Laurie,—‘look at that!’
It was the beginning of a sketch half smeared over. One exquisite pair of eyes, looking out as from a mist of vague colour, seemed to look reproachfully upon their creator; but there certainly was an arm and leg also visible, of which Laurie felt like poor Andrea in Mr. Browning’s wonderful poem, that if he had a piece of chalk——. Welby, R.A. was growing old. He knew it perfectly, and perhaps in his soul was not sorry; but when he saw the signs of it on his canvas it went to his heart.
‘Look at that!’ he said, with a sort of savage triumph; ‘drawing any lad in the Academy would be ashamed of!—after fifty years as hard work as ever man had. I might have been Lord Chancellor in those fifty years. I might have sat on the wool-sack or been Governor of India; and here I stand, a British painter, not able to draw the tibia! By Jove, sir, a man would need to be trained to bear mortification before he could stand that!’
‘I should think you might laugh at it if any man could,’ said Laurie, feeling half disposed to laugh himself; but he had too true an eye to attempt to contradict his master.
‘I can’t laugh at failure,’ said Mr. Welby, snatching the sketch he had just exhibited off the easel and thrusting it back into its place against the wall. ‘I had some people here to-day who would have given me a heap of money for that piece of idiocy. What do they care? It would have been a Welby, no matter what else it was. Welby in his drivelling stage, the critics would have called it, and just as good for a specimen of the master as any other. And that is what a man comes to, my dear fellow, after fifty years—of art!’
‘Yes,’ said Laurie, with the confidence which he had as a young man of the world, and not as an art student; ‘I don’t say anything about the tibia, for you know best; but to put a soul into a smeared bit of canvas is what no Lord Chancellor in the world could do; and you know quite well it would have made any young fellow’s fortune to have painted that pair of eyes.’
‘Eyes! Stuff!’ said the R.A., but he took back the canvas again and looked at it with a softened expression. ‘The short and long of it is, my dear boy,’ he said, ‘that Art is a hard mistress even to those who serve her all their lives; and you have done no more than flirt with her yet. Is there anything else open to you? You were quite right to come to me for advice. Nobody knows better the shipwrecks that have been made by art. Why, you cannot come into this house, sir, without feeling what an uncertainsyren she is. There was poor Severn, as good a fellow as ever breathed. I don’t say he could ever have been Lord Chancellor; but he might have made a very respectable attorney, perhaps, or merchant, or shoemaker, or something; and here he’s gone and died, the fool, at forty, leaving all those children, and not a penny, all along of art.’
‘But what do you say of the padrona?’ said Laurie, kindling into a little subdued enthusiasm. ‘What else could she have done? What would have become of the children?’
‘They would have gone to the workhouse, sir, and there would have been an end,’ said the Academician, sternly. ‘The padrona, as you call her—and, by Jove! had I been Severn, I’d have shut her up sooner than let a parcel of young fellows talk of her like that. Well, then, Mrs. Severn—as we’ll call her, if you please—the young woman has a pretty talent, and her husband taught her after a fashion how to use it. And her pictures sell—at present. But how long do you think it will be before everybody is stocked with those pretty groups of children? They’re very pretty, I don’t deny; and sometimes there’s just a touch that shows, if she had time, if she had not to work for daily bread, if she wasn’t a woman, and could be properly educated, why that she might do something with it which——. But everything is against her, poor soul! and she’s not wise enough to make hay while the sun shines;and when the sun has done shining, I wish you would tell me what the poor thing is to do?’
‘I hope the sun will shine as long as she needs it,’ said Laurie, warmly.
‘Ah! hope, I dare say; so do I. But that’s as much as wishing she may die early, like him,’ said Mr. Welby, rubbing his eyelid. ‘It can’t last, my dear fellow; and that’s why I say the workhouse at once, and have done with it. But anyhow. Mrs. Severn is no example for you. She was made for work, that woman. As long as she has her baby to carry about at nights, and her boys to make a row, and that child Alice, with her curls—why the woman is a tiger for work, I tell you. But you are made of different matter. And besides,’ said the R.A., with the faintest twist of a smile about his lip, ‘a woman may content herself with the homely sort of work she can do; but a young fellow aims at high art—or he’s a muff if he don’t.’ The old man concluded with a little half-affectionate fierceness, softening towards Laurie, who was everybody’s favourite, and who was thus affronted, stimulated, and solaced in a breath.
‘Perhaps I am a muff,’ said Laurie, laughing. ‘I am inclined to think so, sometimes. I am not sure that I want to go in for high art. I want to master my profession as a profession, as I might go and eat in the Temple. I am not too old for that,’ he said, wistfully, giving his adviser one of those half-feminine, appealing glances which never come amiss from young eyes.
Once more the R.A. became pantomimically eloquent. He shrugged his shoulders, he shook his head, he delivered whole volumes of remonstrance from his eyebrows. Then, after a few minutes of this mute animadversion, suddenly put his head between his hands, and stared right into Laurie’s eyes across the table. ‘Let us hear what chances you have otherwise,’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon for insinuating such a thing, but hasn’t your family some sort of connexion with—trade?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Laurie. ‘You need not beg my pardon. It is too big a connexion to be ashamed of—Renton, Westbury, and Co., at Calcutta, and there’s a house in Liverpool, I believe. Ben ought to have been sent out, had we stuck to the traditions of the family. It has been in existence for a hundred and fifty years.’
‘Well, then, suppose you go out in place of Ben,’ said Mr. Welby, musingly, as he might have asked him to take physic; upon which Laurie laughed, and grew rather red.
‘My cousin, Dick Westbury, went in Ben’s place,’ he said;—‘the very sort of fellow to make a merchant of. You might as well tell me to go and stand on my head.’
‘If I could make all the money by it that those fellows do, I should not mind standing on myhead,’ said Laurie’s counsellor, reprovingly. ‘Why shouldn’t you be “the very sort” as well? I don’t see that any particular talent is required. A good head, sir, and close attention, and a knowledge of the multiplication-table. But perhaps they did not teach you that at Eton?’ Mr. Welby added, with a gentle sneer, such as he loved.
‘If they did, I have forgotten it years ago,’ said Laurie. ‘Indeed it would not do. You know it would not do. A fellow has to be brought up to it; and besides, I shouldn’t go if I were asked,’ he added, with a sudden cloud on his face.
‘That settles the question,’ said his adviser. ‘You are a fool, my dear fellow; but I thought as much. Well, then, there are all the Government offices;—couldn’t your friends get you into one of them? The very thing for you, sir. Not too much to do, and plenty of time to do it in. You could keep up your studio still.’
‘But you forget the competitive examination,’ cried Laurie, just as his brother Ben had replied to a similar suggestion. ‘I don’t know Julius Cæsar from Adam,’ he said, laughing. ‘I have not an idea which Göthe it was that discovered printing. I can’t tell whereabouts are the Indian Isles. They’d pluck me as fast as look at me. You forget that we’re high-minded, and that influence is no good now.’
‘Confound it!’ said Mr. Welby, with energy,pausing to find something else more feasible. Then he bent confidentially across the table, coaxing, almost appealing, to his intractable neophyte. ‘My dear fellow, what do you say to literature?’ said the R.A. in his softest tone. Upon which Laurie burst into uncontrollable laughter.
‘I see no occasion for laughter,’ the Academician continued, half offended. ‘Why shouldn’t you write as well as another? I assure you, sir, I know half-a-dozen men who write, and they have not an ounce of brains among them. All you require is the knack of it. They tell me they make heaps of money; and it does not matter what lies you tell, or how much idiocy you give vent to,—especially about art,’ he said, with sudden fierceness. ‘And, to be sure, in this beautiful age of ours everybody reads. I don’t see why you should not go in for the newspapers or the magazines, or something. There is no study wanted for that; there’s the beauty of it. The more nonsense you talk the more people like it. And so far as I can see, it’s as easy to talk nonsense on paper as in company; easier, indeed, for there’s nobody to contradict you. All you want is the knack. I know the editor of the “Sword,” my dear fellow. I’ll get you an engagement on that.’
‘But I never wrote two sentences in my life,’ said Laurie; ‘and, as for literature, it cannot be less uncertain than art.’
‘Quite a different thing, my dear fellow,’ said theR.A., eagerly; ‘not one in fifty, let us say, knows a picture when he sees it. I might say one in a hundred. Whereas everybody, I suppose, understands the rubbish in the papers; everyone reads it, at least, which comes to the same thing. I know men who are making their thousands a-year. It is only getting the knack of it.’
Laurie gave a faint laugh; but the fun had by this palled upon him. For a moment he covered his face with his hands. It was part of his temperament to have these moments of impatience and disgust with everything. Then Mr. Welby got up and began to walk about the room in some excitement. ‘Confound the fellow, he will do nothing one tells him!’ he said. But after a while the old painter came back to his seat, and was very kind. He entered into the question, more gravely, even with a certain melancholy. He pointed out to him, again, how many wrecks there were on all the coasts, of men who had mistaken their profession, and gave him an impressive sketch of all the toils he ought to go through ere he could worthily bear the name of painter. ‘And, after all, find yourself like me, baffled by the tibia!’ he cried, with a kind of passion. But in this talk Laurie recovered his spirits. His friend, in his compunction, gave him practical advice which would have been of the highest importance to any beginner. ‘I warn you against it all the same,’ he said, working his eyebrows like the old-fashioned telegraph. ButLaurie took the information and the advice without the warning, and went away, once more seeing in a vision that picture on the line in the Academy with Laurence Renton’s name to it, and a crowd of his fine friends wondering around.
WhenLaurie left Mr. Welby’s studio he had not, however, satisfied himself either with No. 375, Fitzroy Square, or with the advice on art subjects which he had come to seek. Old Forrester replied to his inquiry if Mrs. Severn was at home with a benevolent smile:—‘It ain’t often as she’s anywhere else, sir,’ said that authority. ‘I never see such a lady to work,—and a-singing at it, as if it was pleasure. Them’s the sort, Mr. Renton, for my money,’ the old man added with enthusiasm. ‘Master, he’s ready to swear at it sometimes, which ain’t consistent with art.’
‘Don’t you think so?’ said Laurie. ‘But when art becomes a passion, you know——’
‘I don’t hold with passion,’ said Forrester. ‘It stands to reason, Mr. Renton, that a thing as is to hang for ages and ages on a wall, didn’t ought to have no violence about it. I hate to see them poor things a-hurting of themselves for centuries. You look at ’em, sir,’ he added, pointing to an old picture, inwhich the action was somewhat violent, which hung in the hall; ‘they couldn’t do that nohow, not if they were paid millions for it. Me and Shaw was talking it over the last time he was here. I don’t hold with that sort of passion, not in a picture. And I don’t always hold with master himself, Mr. Renton, between you and me. He’s been swearing hawful, sir, over that poor tibbie there. And what business has any man, sir, to have his tibbie in such a hattitude? It’s hoisted right round, nigh out of its socket. I wouldn’t do it, not for no money, if it was me.’
‘But you have no such fault to find with Mrs. Severn,’ said Laurie, who, in the impatience of youthful criticism, had made a similar observation to himself.
‘Bless you, sir, there’s never nothing out of harmony in them groups,’ said Forrester; ‘and easy, too, to tell why. Not as I’m a-making light of her heye; she’s got a fine heye for a lady, sir,—in composition;—but, seeing it’s her own little things as is the models, would she put ’em in hattitudes to hurt ’em, Mr. Renton? You may take your oath as a lady wouldn’t. Master, he pays his models, and he don’t care. Will you walk up, or will I go and say you’re here?’
‘I think I may go without being announced,’ said Laurie, who was a little proud of thepetites entrées, though it was only to a humble house. As he went up the great, dingy staircase he put hisfingers lightly through his hair, and looked with some dismay at the limp pinkness of the rose in his button-hole. It was hanging its head, as roses will when they feel the approach of frost in the air. There is a curious dinginess, which is not displeasing, in those old-fashioned houses. The walls were painted in a faint grey-green; the big stairs had a narrow Turkey carpet, very much worn, upon them, and went winding up the whole height of the house to a pale skylight in the roof. A certain size, and subdued sense, of airiness, and quiet, and space was in the house, though London raged all around, like a great battle. The arrangement of the first floor was much like that of Mr. Welby’s apartments. There was a great shadowy, dingy drawing-room, with three vast windows, always filled with a kind of pale twilight,—for it was the shady side of the Square,—and opening from that, by folding-doors, a second room, which did duty as Mrs. Severn’s dining-room; and behind that, again, the studio. The door of the dining-room was open, and Laurie paused, and went half in as he passed. The children were there with their daily governess, who was, poor soul! almost at the end of her labours. She was struggling hard to keep their attention to the last half of the last hour when the intruder’s head thrust in at the door made further control impossible. There were two small boys, under ten, and one little creature with golden locks, seated at the feet of the eldest of the family, who was working at the window.‘Alice, with her curls,’ was almost too big for Miss Hadley’s teaching. She was seated in that demure, soft dignity of the child-woman, with all the importance of an elder sister, working at little Edith’s frock; a girl who rarely said anything, but thought the more; not beautiful, for her features were not regular, but with lovely, thoughtful brown eyes, and a complexion so sweet in its varying colour that it felt like a quality of the heart, and one loved her for it. Her curls were what most people of the outside world knew her by. In these days ofcréelocks and elaborate hair-dressing, Alice’s soft, silken, perfect curls, nestling about her pretty neck, softly shed behind her ears, were distinction enough for any girl. They were chestnut,—that chestnut, with the gold in it, which comes next to everybody’s favourite colour in everybody’s estimation;—and there was a silken gloss upon them which was old-fashioned, but very sweet to see, once in a way. She sat,—in the perfectly unobtrusive dress of modern girlhood; simple frock up to the throat, little white frill, tiny gold locket, without even a ribbon on her hair,—against the afternoon light in the window, just raising her eyes with a smile in them to Laurie, and lifting up one slender finger by way of warning. ‘Mamma is in the studio,’ said Alice, under her breath. He thought he had never seen a prettier picture than that little interior he had peeped into. Miss Hadley was not bad-looking, Laurie decided. She had keen black eyes under those deep brows,and not a bad little figure. And little Frank, with such a despairing languor over his soft, round, baby face; and Edith, all crumpled up like a dropped rose by Alice’s feet; and the light slanting in through the big window, trying and failing to penetrate the dimness of the grey-green walls, all covered with pictures. Everything was in the shade, even little Edith, all overshadowed by her sister’s dress and figure;—an afternoon picture, with every tone subdued, and a touch of that weariness upon all things which comes with the waning light;—a weariness which would vanish as soon as it was dark enough to have lights, and when the hour came for the family tea.
When Laurie knocked at the studio door, he could hear, even before he was told to come in, the painter singing softly over her work, as Forrester had said. She was no musician, which, we suppose, may be understood from the fact of this singing at her work. Her voice was not good enough to be saved up for the pleasure of others, and accordingly was left free to hum a little accompaniment to her own not unmelodious life. Mrs. Severn was not a partisan of work for women, carrying out her theory, but a widow, with little children, working with the tools that came handiest to her for daily bread; and she had been accordingly adopted respectfully into a kind of comradeship by all the artists about, who had known her husband, and were ready to stand by heras much as men of the same profession might. Nobody ever dreamt of thinking she was going out of her proper place, or taking illegitimate work upon her, when she took up poor Severn’s palette. There are ways of doing a thing which people do not always consider when they are actuated by strong theoretical principles. The padrona took to her work quite quietly, as if she had been born to it; did not think it any hardship; worked her regular hours like any man, and asked little advice from any one. In short, if she had a fault, it was generally believed that it was her indifference to advice. She rarely asked it, and still more rarely took it. Since the time when poor Severn died, and when she passionately explained to her friends that it was less pain to manage her own affairs than to talk them over with others, she had gone on doing everything for herself. Whether that was a wise way of proceeding it would be hard to tell; but at least it was her way. Poor Severn had not been a great painter, poor fellow; he had done very well up to a certain point, but there he had stopped; and then he had travelled about a great deal with his family, and studied all the great pictures in the world, and made sketches of a great many novel customs and practices, with the view of making a new start,—‘as Phillip did.’ John Phillip, as every one knows, being an ordinary painter, went to Spain, and came home a great one; but poor Severn found no inspiration awaiting himat any wayside. One of the children had been born in Florence, and one in Dresden; they were almost the only evidences that remained of those piteous wanderings and labours.
But wherever the poor fellow went, a pair of bright, observant eyes were always by his side, taking note of things which he only tried to make use of, and by degrees his wife had got possession of the pencil as it dropped out of his failing hands. Of course, her drawing would not bear examination as his would have done. He did the best he could to give her a more masculine touch, but failed. She was feeble in her anatomy, very irregular in respect to everything that was classical; but, somehow, bits of life stole upon the forlorn canvases in Fitzroy Square under her hand. ‘You may trust her for the sentiment,’ he said, poor fellow! almost with his last breath, ‘and her eye for colour; but, Welby, I’d like to see her drawing a little firmer before I leave her.’ This he was never fated to see; and Mrs. Severn’s drawing was not likely to get firmer when her teacher was gone. It was never very firm, we are bound to admit; and we are also obliged to confess, against our will, that the padrona catered a great deal for the British public in the way of pretty babies, and tender little nursery scenes. Her pictures were domestic, in the fullest sense of the word. In her best there would be the little child saying its prayers at its mother’s knee, which never fails to touch the Cockney soul;and in her worse there would be baby at table breaking his mug and thrusting his spoon everywhere but where he ought. They were very pretty, and sometimes, as if by chance, they stumbled into higher ground, and caught a look, a gleam of heaven; an unconscious essay, as it were, at the English Mary and her Blessed Child, which has never yet been produced by an insular painter—only an essay—and it never had time or hope to come to more. But the British public, bless it! liked the pictures, and bought them—not for their gleams of loftier meaning, but for the exquisite painting of baby’s mug, and because the carpet under the mother’s feet was so real that you could count the threads. The painter did not ask herself particularly why her pictures became popular; she was very thankful, very glad, and took the money as a personal favour for some time, feeling that it was too good a joke. But all the freshness of the beginning was over long before the day on which Laurie knocked at the studio door. She painted now with a more swift and practised hand, but still very unequally; sometimes mere mugs and carpets, with little human dolls; and sometimes women with children, more and more like the divine ideal; and out of her sorrow had grown softly happy again without knowing how—happy in her work, and her freedom, and her independence, and her children. Alas! yes; in her independence and freedom. She liked that, though many a reader will think the worse of her for likingit. But it is not as a perfect creature she is here introduced, but as a woman with faults like others. Everybody knew that she had been very fond of poor Severn, and had stood by him faithful and tender till his last breath; and that she was very desolate when he was gone, and cried out even against God and His providence a little in her anguish and solitude—but pondered and was silent, and pondered and was cheerful—and, at last, things being as they were, got to be glad that she was free and could work for herself. And she was comparatively young, and had plenty to do, and there were her children. A woman cannot go on being heart-broken with such props as these. And it pleased her, we avow, since she could not help it, to have her own way.