THE PADRONA.
When Laurie 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, in which 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 the _petites entrées_, though it was only to a humble
house. As he went up the great, dingy staircase he put his fingers
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 of _crée_ locks 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 her as
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 him at 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 liking it. 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.
It was her husband who had called her padrona caressingly to everybody
when they came back from Italy--the ‘missis,’ as he would explain--and
what had been a joke at first had become the tenderest of titles now.
Those only who had been Severn’s friends dared continue to address her
by that name, and Laurie was one of them, young though he was. When she
said ‘Come in,’ he opened the door softly. She was standing by her
easel, hastily finishing something with the little light that remained.
‘Don’t disturb me, please, for five minutes,’ she said, without looking
round, ‘whoever you are. I must not lose this last little bit of light.’
‘Don’t hurry,’ said Laurie, sitting down behind her in a Louis Quinze
fauteuil, which had figured in many pictures.
‘Ah, it is you!’ said the padrona; but she did not turn round for the
moment, or take any further notice of him. This third studio was not
like any of the others. It was much barer, and, indeed, poorer. There
was in it none of the classic wealth of casts and friezes which adorned
Laurie’s sanctuary. There were no pictures in it, as in Mr. Welby’s
stately studio. Had the padrona possessed ebony cabinets inlaid with
silver, or a rare Angelichino, no doubt she would have sold them for
some mean-spirited consideration of Alice’s music-lessons, or a month at
the seaside for the bundle of children whose pleasure was more to her,
alas! though she was a painter, than all the pictures in the world.
There were some prints only on the walls, grey-green here as elsewhere
throughout the house--prints of Raphael’s Madonnas--she of San Sisto
within reach of the painter’s eye as she worked, and she of Fogligno, in
her maturer splendour, on the mantel-piece; but there was a great dearth
of the usual ‘materials’ with which an artist’s studio abounds. The
padrona’s work was of a kind which did not require much consultation of
examples; her draperies were chiefly modern, her subject the
ever-varying child-life, which she had under her eye. A little
lay-figure, which little Edith called her wooden sister, was in a
corner, dressed--alas! for art--in one of Edith’s frocks, considerably
torn and ragged, which was about the highest touch of effect Mrs.
Severn permitted herself. There was something curious altogether in the
commonplace, untechnical air of the room. It is the defect of women in
general when they adopt a profession to be rather too technical; but the
padrona took her own way. She had given in so far, however, to the use
and wont of the craft as to wear a grey garment over her gown, which
fitted very nicely, and looked as well as if it had been the gown
itself. She was a middle-sized woman, fully developed, and not girlish
in any way, though her face had the youthfulness of a gay temperament
and elastic disposition. Her eyes were hazel, with a great deal of light
in them; her mouth full of laughter and merriment, except when she was
thinking, and then it might perhaps be a trifle too firm; her hair
brown, and soft, and abundant. Laurie sat in the fauteuil and watched
her taking the good of the last remnant of the light with a curious
mixture of kindness and admiration, and a kind of envy. ‘If I could but
go at it like that!’ he said to himself, knowing that had he been in her
place he would so gladly have thrown down his brush on the pleasant
excuse of a visitor. There was a certain professional ease in the way he
seated himself to wait her leisure, such as perhaps could have been bred
in none other but this atmosphere, softly touched with the odour of
pigments, and with the lay figure in the corner. Literature has less of
this brotherhood of mutual comprehension--at least, in England--being a
morose art which demands to a certain extent seclusion and silence; but
art is friendly, gregarious, talkative. The padrona began to talk to him
immediately, though she did not turn her head.
‘I am so glad to see you,’ she said; ‘at least I shall be glad to see
you whenever I have finished this arm. It has worried me all day, and if
I don’t do it at once it will slip out of my mind again. I wish one
could paint without drawing; it is hard upon an uneducated person; and I
am sure if it was not for those horrid critics, the British public does
not care if one’s arm is out of drawing or not.’
‘Welby does not think so,’ said Laurie. ‘Have you seen his tibia that he
is raving about?’
‘Ah, but then that wounds his own eye,’ said Mrs. Severn, half turning
round; ‘just as a false note in music wounds my child, though it does
not disturb me much. The dreadful thing is not to know when you’re out
of drawing or out of tune. One feels something is wrong, but one is not
clever enough to see what it is.’
‘I don’t think you are often out of tune, padrona nostra, or out of
drawing either,’ said poor Laurie, with a sigh.
‘Dear, dear!’ said Mrs. Severn, ‘what does this mean I wonder--that our
friend is out of tune himself?’
‘Dreadfully out of tune,’ said Laurie, ‘all ajar and not knowing what
to do with myself, and come to you to set me right.’
Then there was a pause of a minute or two, and the painter turned from
her easel and put down her palette with a sigh of relief. ‘That’s over
for to-day at least,’ she said, and came and held out her hand to her
visitor. ‘I saw it in the papers,’ she said, ‘but I would not say
anything till I could give you my hand and look you in the face. Was it
sudden? We have all to bear it one way or other; but it’s very hard all
the same, and especially the first blow.’
It was the first time since the reading of the will that anybody had
sympathised honestly with one of Mr. Renton’s sons for their father’s
death; and, near as that event was, the voice of natural pity startled
Laurie back to natural feeling. The twilight, too, which hid the tears
that rushed to his eyes, and the soft, kind clasp of the hand which had
come into his, and the voice full of all sympathies, united to move him.
A sudden ache for his loss, for the father who had been so good to him,
struck, with all its first freshness, into the mind where dwelt so many
harder thoughts. When Mrs. Severn sat down, and bade him tell her about
it, the young man went back to the sudden death-bed, and was softened,
touched, and mollified in spite of himself; his voice trembled when he
told her those wanderings of the dying man,--as everybody thought
them,--and of his affectionate confidence that ‘Laurie would not mind.’
‘I see there is something more coming,’ said the padrona, with that
insight in which he had trusted; ‘but whatever it is I am sure he was
right, and Laurie will not be the one to mind.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Laurie, with a sob that did no discredit to his
manhood; and if there had been a shadow of resentment in his heart for
the injury done him, in these words it passed away; and instead of
asking the padrona’s advice as he had intended, as he had asked old
Welby’s, he told her, on the contrary, about his father, and his
anxieties touching Ben, and all the sinkings of heart, of which he did
not himself seem to have been conscious till sympathy called them forth.
I do not know whether the softness of the domestic quiet, and the
padrona’s face shining upon him across the table, with all the light in
the room concentrated in her hazel eyes, and the soft monosyllables of
sympathy--the ‘poor Laurie’--that dropped from her lips now and
then,--one cannot tell what effect these might have had in making the
character of this interview so different from that he had held with Mr.
Welby. Had it been her daughter to whom he was talking there could of
course have been no doubt about it. But anyhow this was how it happened.
Laurie made it apparent to her and to himself that it was the tender
anguish of bereavement which had brought him here to be comforted, and
was perfectly real and true in thus representing himself; and Mrs.
Severn was very sorry for him, and thought more highly of him than
ever. It had grown almost dark before she rose from her chair and
brought the conversation to an end.
‘You are too young to dwell always on one subject,’ she said, ‘Come in
now and have tea with the children. They are all very fond of you, and
it will do you good. Of course you have not dined: you can go and dine
later at eight or nine: it does not matter to you young men. And, if the
talk is too much, Alice will play to you.’
‘The talk will not be too much,’ said Laurie; but as he followed the
padrona out of the room he plucked the rose out of his button-hole and
crushed it up in his hand and let it drop on the floor. A rose in a
man’s coat is perhaps not quite consistent with the deepest phase of
recent grief. But he was no deceiver in spite of this little bit of
involuntary humbug. Other thoughts had driven his grief away, and
diminished its force perhaps; but those were true and natural tears he
had been shedding, and he felt ashamed of himself for having been able
to think of the rose, and did not want the padrona’s quick eye to light
upon that gentlest inconsistency; but on the whole it did not appear to
him that he was unequal to their talk. So he went and played with the
children while Mrs. Severn withdrew to change her dress for the evening,
seating himself in the inner room where the lamp was burning and the
table arrayed for tea, while Alice in the dim grey drawing-room, with
the folding-doors open, played softest Lieder, such as her soul loved,
in the dusk; and Miss Hadley sat and knitted, casting now and then a
keen look from under her deep brows at Laurie in his mourning; and the
urn bubbled and steamed, and little Edith climbed up into her high seat
by the table, waiting till the padrona in her lace collar should come
down to tea.