‘What I like is a picture I can understand,’ said Mr. Rich. ‘What I say

to a painter is;--“Tell your story. Choose what subject you like, old,

or new, or middle-aged; but, whatever your incident is, stick to it, and

tell it, without need of any description in a book.” That’s my

principle, sir. And I like a good, warm wholesome colour; none of your

cadaverous-looking things. There are plenty of sad things and nasty

things in life without putting them in pictures. Like as I prefer a good

ending in a story. I have some pretty pictures to show you, sir, when

you come to see me. Crowquill painted that last series out of the “Vicar

of Wakefield” for me. I could have got twice the price I gave for them

from a gentleman I know in Manchester; but nothing but necessity would

make me part with these pictures. When a thing’s painted for you, it has

a value it would not have had otherwise. And I have as fine a little

Millais as you ever saw. I hope to have a picture from you in my

collection before all is done.’

‘You have not a Welby, I think,’ said the padrona, who worked rather

hard at her part of the conversation. ‘You should make haste to secure

that; for he paints very little now.’

‘I don’t care very much for Welby,’ said Mr. Rich, indifferent to the

awful countenance of Forrester behind his chair. ‘He’s a deal too

classical for me. I had not a classical education myself; and I am not

ashamed to say I don’t appreciate that sort of thing. Nature is what I

like. I don’t pretend to go in for the old masters. They’re very fine, I

daresay; but give me a nice modern picture with colours, sir, like what

you see in life. I hope you are of the real school, Mr. Renton,--not to

carry it to excess, you know. The thing for modern collections,--and I

know a great many collectors of my way of thinking,--is modern life; the

sort of thing one understands. How am I to know about your Greeks and

your Romans? I like pretty English girls, and nice young fellows making

love to them. Why shouldn’t they make love to ’em, Mrs. Severn? I did it

in my day. And as for your pictures, could anything be sweeter? It’s the

next step in life. We’ve all gone through that phase,’ said Mr. Rich,

waving his hands; ‘and that’s the sort of thing we want in our

collections. I say this to you, Mr. Renton, as a young man beginning

life.’

‘Mr. Renton will prefer the pretty girls, of course,’ said the patron’s

wife, with a good-humoured laugh. And Laurie sat by, not knowing what

reply to make, while the padrona, with that flush on her face, sat at

the head of the table, and let them talk. What was the use of arguing

the question? The finest reasoning in the world does not convince people

whose minds are incapable of receiving it. And they bought the pictures

they commended, which is what better critics seldom do.

‘There must be a variety of tastes,’ Mrs. Severn said, with a meekness

that was not natural to her. ‘I am not so pleased with my tame little

groups that you are so good-natured about. There are many things I would

rather do if I could.’

Then Mr. Rich laughed, and told the story of Listen, whose dream it was

that tragedy was his forte,--not a novel story certainly, but not

inappropriate at the moment. ‘I should like to see Welby’s pictures all

the same,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘We could not come to-morrow, so I

should like to make a round to-day. I’m going to Crowquill, and Baxter,

and some more,--as long as the light holds out;--and if you can tell me

of any others----’

‘There is Suffolk,’ said Laurie, looking at the head of the table; and

then he paused surprised. The padrona was but human. To let her own live

patron go out of her hands to the studios of celebrated painters whom

everybody knew was a thing inevitable, against which she could never

dream of struggling; but to send him, in cold blood,--her own precious

property,--to Suffolk,--a new name, a rising painter,--one of the men

whom it would be a credit to patronise! Mrs. Severn had a struggle with

herself. Generosity was easy where Laurie Renton was concerned; and she

would have shared her purse with the Suffolks, with all the unthinking

open-heartedness of her kind. But send him her patron! That was a trial.

Laurie looked at her surprised. He knew her face so well that he saw the

struggle in it, though without knowing what it meant; and he was

startled by the pause she made before she answered him. A flood of

thoughts rushed through the padrona’s mind at that moment. She thought

of herself and the children, and the need she had of patronage; and

then, on the other hand, she thought of Suffolk’s wife, with an

unmanageable man, who would not paint popular subjects, with no power to

help herself, with children too,--babies always coming,--and all sorts

of troubles. It was not of the artist she thought, and his long

unrewarded labours. She was only a woman, after all; and it was the

woman who came to her mind, anxious and powerless, and overwhelmed with

anxiety. All at once the face, obscured by some cloud which Laurie could

not penetrate,--to his supreme annoyance,--cleared up with a sudden

light, which he did not understand. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I should like Mr.

Rich to see that picture. It is not quite the kind of subject he likes;

but we all think it one of the finest things; Mr. Renton will tell you

about it. It was spoken very highly of the other day in the “Sword.”’

‘Ah; then it must be fine,’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘Perhaps Mr. Renton will

take a seat in the carriage with us, and introduce us. I like to see

everything I can see; and we have not much time for the light. And you

will not forget, dear, that you are engaged to us for Easter week. It

will be so nice to have you; and you shall plan out your pictures for

the east room. She is going to do the fairy tales for us, Mr.

Renton,--it will be charming. If the carriage is up, Mr. Rich, I am

afraid we ought to go.’

The padrona called Laurie to her as he was about to follow them

down-stairs. ‘They have given me a beautiful commission,’ she said, with

a little excitement,--‘a year’s work! And I was so mean that I hesitated

to send them to Suffolk after that. Try and make them buy the picture,

Laurie. They will, if you are clever, and talk to them a little of

Renton, and draw them on. I trust you to do it.’ It was only for a

moment at the drawing-room door. Was it the year’s work, and the contest

with herself about Suffolk’s picture, which gave her that look of

agitation and excitement? Or was it the time of year, the eve of the

Academy, and all the crowd that would come to-morrow? Laurie could not

give himself any answer as he rushed down-stairs to guide the Riches on

their beneficent course; but his eyes shone, too, and his heart beat

loud. As if he could have had anything to do with it,--a mere boy!

CHAPTER IV.

SUCCESS.

When Laurie Renton drove from the padrona’s door in Mr. Rich’s carriage,

opposite to that patron of art, it was his sense of the comicality of

the situation which came uppermost. Art student, art critic, artist, he

had been with a certain satisfaction in each office. But to be showman

and salesman too was a new branch. These are the vicissitudes to which a

man is subject who puts himself under the dominion of a woman, in the

absolute and unconditional way which Laurie had done. But that was not

how he regarded the matter. He was pleased to do it even for Suffolk’s

sake; though he could not but laugh within himself when he took his seat

on the luxurious cushions, with the couple opposite to him who breathed

wealth, and filled the very atmosphere with its exhalations. One of the

exhalations was not so pleasant as could be wished; for Mrs. Rich’s

favourite perfume was of a character too distinct and decided for the

narrow enclosure of a carriage; but the rustle of her silk, and the soft

warmth of her velvet and her furs, and the wealthy look about her

altogether,--wealthy and liberal and self-important and kindly,--was not

without a certain human interest. She had been a pretty woman. Laurie,

whose eyes were open to such particulars, was at once aware of that; and

she was a good-looking woman of her age still. Her husband had less

apparent character about him; but there was in both a consciousness of

being able to give pleasure and scatter benefit around them, which was

not unprepossessing. No doubt they were vulgar, perhaps

purse-proud,--horribly ostentatiously rich. But they meant to benefit

other people with their wealth, which was always something in their

favour. Laurie glided with natural skill into the part allotted to him.

He talked of Renton; of his mother’s invalid condition, which made it

impossible for her to call; and of his young brother Frank the

Guardsman,--for he had not yet negotiated his exchange,--whose battalion

was stationed at Royalborough, and who, he was sure, would be glad to

make their acquaintance. And then he went on to Suffolk’s story with the

most natural sequence;--a man so full of talent, so laborious, so

devoted to art, with such a pretty little wife!

‘Ah, there we have you, Mr. Renton!’ said jolly Mrs. Rich; ‘but it is

naughty to talk so of a married lady. You ought to have eyes only for

the pretty girls.’

‘A pretty young woman is a pretty young woman, whether she’s married or

single,’ said her husband; ‘but I don’t like a man who goes on painting

pictures that don’t sell. What is the good of it? No man in business

would think of such a thing. It’s a sinful waste of capital as well as a

waste of time. He ought to have changed his style. I’ll tell him so. You

do a many foolish things, Mr. Renton, you artists, for want of a plain

common-sense man of business to give you a little advice.’

‘That is very possible,’ said Laurie, with candour; ‘but even in

business a man may go on with a speculation for a long time, though it

is not immediately successful, if he is sure it will succeed in the

end;--so long as he can afford to wait.’

‘Ah, yes, that is the whole question,’ said Mr. Rich,--‘as long as he

can afford to wait; but a man should think of his wife and children. If

I had a little family dependent on me, and had to paint for a living,

I’d make them comfortable, Mr. Renton, if I had to change my style every

other day.’

‘But that is not so easy as you think,’ said Laurie; ‘and the wife and

children do not complain. Mrs. Suffolk is as proud of those boys in the

Forum as she is of her own babies.’

‘Are there boys in the picture?’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘Then I shall like it

for one. And she must be a nice little woman; but you young men, you

should not go paying attention to a married lady. It is not because it

is wrong,--for I never was so strait-laced as some, and never objected

to a bit of fun,--but it keeps you from marrying and settling, which is

dreadful. You are all so selfish, you gentlemen. As long as you have a

woman to go and tell your little tales to, and get her sympathy and so

forth, and no danger of going any further, you are quite satisfied;--and

the girls are left, and nobody pays any attention to them. That is what

I don’t approve of. We matrons have had our day, Mr. Renton, and we

should be content with it. When I see married women dancing and going

on, and young girls sitting without partners, I could beat them, though,

perhaps, it is vulgar of me to say so. I like a young man when he falls

in love honestly, as people did in my days, with a nice young girl.’

‘We can’t all afford to fall in love,’ said Laurie, laughing, yet with a

faint, distant recollection of the possibility he had himself given up.

Curious it was how far off that looked now! But, like most sinners, he

was utterly unconscious that there was any moral which he could apply to

his own case in this little sermon. His mind glanced off to somebody

else whom, perhaps, it might have touched. ‘And as for Mrs. Suffolk,’ he

added, ‘she does not think there is a man in the world who comes within

a hundred miles of her Reginald; and, as I said, she is as proud of

those boys in the Forum----’

‘What’s the Forum? Tell me the story; I like to know the story of every

picture,’ said Mr. Rich. And Laurie told, to ears which received it

with all the interest of ignorance, that well-known tale. Mr. Rich

thought he had read something about it in a book; and shook his head

over an incident so remote in antiquity. ‘I like English subjects,’ said

the patron. ‘I don’t care for your Italian things. I never was in Italy

myself, and how should I know if they are true or not? English pictures

are the things for me.’

Then Mrs. Rich reminded the millionnaire that he had promised to take

her to Italy next winter, and that it would be well in the meantime to

make a little acquaintance with that country. And Laurie fell back on

the ‘Sword,’ giving his companions the benefit of his own article,

which, being a solitary effort, he had kept in his memory. It was a

scene of genteel comedy, in which he was at once actor and

audience,--and perhaps no other description of audience had such an

exquisite sense of the points of the drama. He went through his part

with a fluency which amazed himself, and chuckled and clapped his hands

in secret with an infinite sense of his own humour. Mr. Rich’s grand

coachman was too fine to know the locality, and made a great many turns

and rounds before he reached Suffolk’s door, which left time for the

little play to play itself out. It was curious to see the vast woman of

wealth in her vast seal-skin cloak, in her rustling silken train, with

plumes nodding on her bonnet, and lace streaming, get in at the narrow

door. The house looked as if it could not possibly contain her. Laurie

gave a comical glance to the upper window, with a momentary idea that he

must see her head looking out there while still her train was on the

steps at the door. And when she shook hands with the painter’s little

wife, who got up from her work to receive them in a nervous flutter of

agitation, not knowing what to expect, it seemed to Laurie as if he had

brought a good-humoured ogress into this little fairy palace.

‘And a very pretty little woman she is,’ the patroness said in a

whisper, nodding to him aside. ‘I like your taste, Mr. Renton.’ Thus it

will be seen that Laurie’s hands were full.

‘We did not expect anybody till to-morrow; and I don’t know if Reginald

is ready. If you would but go up and tell him, Mr. Renton?’ Mrs. Suffolk

said, appealing to him also in an aside.

Suffolk was not the least ready to receive visitors. It was an east

wind, which had impaired his light and affected his temper. ‘I’ve no

time to go and change my coat,’ he said, like a savage. ‘What’s the

good? Laurie, you’re the best fellow in the world; but Thursday is the

last day, and you know what I’ve got to do. Look at that sky! By Jove!

stop a man in the middle of a sky like that, and ask him to be civil to

strangers! You might as well tell me to put this confounded east wind

out of my eyes!’

‘Only for ten minutes,’ said Laurie, ‘there’s a good fellow! You are

doing too much to that sky. Leave it for an hour, and you’ll see what’s

wanting twice as well as you do now. And I do believe there’s a chance

of selling the Angles! Think of Mrs. Suffolk and the children. Surely

they’re worth half-an-hour and the trouble of changing your coat.’

Suffolk paused in his painting, and grew pale, and stared at his friend.

‘Selling the Angles!’ he said; and then he put down his brush, and

turned away with an impatient exclamation. While Laurie stood looking

anxiously on, the painter went to the nearest window and began to open

the shutters, but stopped in the midst and turned back upon him. ‘It’s

all rubbish,’ he said; ‘I don’t believe in selling the Angles. Why do

you come here and mock a fellow even in the midst of his work? I say,

Laurie, tell me one thing,--who is it?--quick!’

‘It’s old Rich, the City man,--the padrona’s friend. It was she who sent

him,’ said Laurie, breathless with suspense.

Then the painter broke down; he gave a sudden sob all at once. ‘God

bless that woman!’ he said, and rushed at his shutters. As for Laurie,

he made himself housemaid, studio-boy, with his usual facility. It was

he who dragged out the spare easel to the best light, and took down the

picture from the wall where it hung somewhat in the shade. He took the

dust off it lovingly with his handkerchief, while Suffolk changed his

coat. His hands were rather black, and there was a cobweb on his breast

close to the lily in his button-hole when he went down-stairs; and it

would be hard to say which was the fairer ornament. Then he turned

himself into a groom of the chambers, and ushered the patron and

patroness up-stairs, Mrs. Suffolk following. The little woman trembled

all over, though she did her best to hide it; and Laurie’s heart went

jumping like a thing independent of him, in his breast. Suffolk was the

most self-possessed of the three, but he purchased his composure by

putting on a morose and forbidding aspect. Not that he meant to be

morose; on the contrary, his brain was in a greater whirl than that of

either of the others. If it might indeed come to pass,--if he too should

really possess a patron, giving commissions, making life secure

beforehand for his wife and the children! And then it occurred to him

that this was the padrona’s patron. The thought nearly overcame the

painter. If she had taken her children’s bread from her table and sent

it to his, he would not have felt it so much. ‘God bless that woman!’ he

said again in his heart. If the attempt failed or succeeded he was

equally bound to her for his life. But he did not think of Laurie’s good

offices with the same effusion, though Laurie by this time had come

forward equal to the emergency, and resumed the showman’s part.

‘When you are in Italy, Mrs. Rich,’ said Laurie, ‘I know what you will

say to yourself some spring morning. You will say, “Now I feel Mr.

Suffolk’s picture!” Look at that golden air; you can see the motes

dancing in it; and I can smell the orange-blossom out of the convent

gardens. I have seen English children look like that,--like little

roses,--with the dark Romans all round, admiring them.’

‘Have you now, Mr. Renton?’ cried Mrs. Rich; ‘I should like to see that.

Dear little angels! Though my own are all grown up, I adore little

children. And you never saw such a skin and such hair as my Nelly had

when she was a little thing. They are lovely, Mrs. Suffolk--I think they

are quite lovely. Mr. Rich, don’t you think that group is just like our

Charlie and Alf? I mean what they used to look. And that woman with the

white thing on her head,--that is a beauty! I am sure your husband must

have painted you scores of times,’ she went on, graciously laying her

hand upon little Mrs. Suffolk’s shoulders. ‘Now come and show me this

other one, and let the gentlemen talk. I hope Mr. Rich will buy that

picture. I think he will buy it. And they tell me there was something

very nice about it in the “Sword.”’

‘Yes,’ said the painter’s wife, all confused and breathless with

anxiety, straining her ears to hear what the gentlemen were saying; ‘and

the “Looker-on” had an article too. They were all very complimentary;

they said it was quite a work of genius----’

‘But it has not begun to pay just yet,’ said Mrs. Rich, with a little

wave of her hand. There was a melting, liberal grandeur about her

patroness. She looked like a conferrer of favours,--a rich, mellow,

embodied Fortune. ‘I think Mr. Rich will buy it,’ she repeated, looking

round upon her husband.

This was not a speech calculated to still Mrs. Suffolk’s agitation.

Could it be possible? Oh, if Reginald would only be civil! If he would

but condescend to talk and show it off to the best advantage! But it was

Laurie who was talking. It was he who was pointing out all its great

qualities. And then there was a pause, awful as the pause,--not before a

thunderstorm,--that is nothing,--a mere accident of nature,--awful

almost as the pause you make when you have opened the letter which is to

bring you news of life or death!

And then, once more, it was Laurie Renton’s voice that broke the

silence. If he had been pleading with a woman whom he loved, his tones

could scarcely have been more insinuating. ‘If I remember Beecham

rightly,’ he said, ‘there was a space left for a picture just opposite

the little organ in what used to be the music-room. Have you changed

that? or perhaps you have placed some picture there?’

‘That is just the thing,’ said Mr. Rich; ‘I knew there was a place. You

have got an eye, Mr. Renton, and a memory too. Fancy, my dear,’ he said,

calling to his wife, ‘he remembers the rooms at Richmont better than I

do myself,--calls it Beecham though; but of course that is quite

natural. Yes. And he is quite right too. I should not wonder if it was

the exact size. The music-room is Nelly’s particular room, Mr.

Renton;--my daughter Nelly, the only one I have at home. I think that is

just the sort of thing she would like. Girls are full of fancies. She

would not have my last Crowquill, though it is a lovely specimen, and

that one of Mrs. Severn’s that she fancied was not big enough. I should

think this was just about the size. Mr. Suffolk, a word with you, sir,’

said the patron, with all the confidence of a man whose cheque-book was

in his pocket. Laurie stood with his back to them, measuring the picture

with his handkerchief, and Mrs. Suffolk, before the new picture on the

easel, stood trembling, trying to show it to the patron’s wife. What a

moment it was! Mr. Rich was very audible; but Suffolk, in his agitation,

spoke low, and looked more nervous than ever. His wife thought, oh, if

Reginald should be disagreeable!--oh, if the rich man should be

affronted, driven away by his bad manners! And it was only manner all

the time. She stood in a fever of suspense, not knowing what Mrs. Rich

said, who chattered on, drowning even her husband’s voice. She gave

Laurie one look of appeal. Oh, if it were only ordained in Parliament,

or by nature, that artists’ wives and friends should do their business

for them;--at least when they were men like Suffolk! If it had lasted

long, Mrs. Suffolk must have fallen fainting at her patroness’s feet.

But just when the strain had reached its highest point, Mrs. Rich fell

silent by some chance, and took to examining one particular corner of

the picture, and the voice of the millionnaire became distinctly

audible. ‘If that’s all, I’ll give you a cheque at once,’ he said. ‘I’d

like to have the picture as soon as you can send it; for you see Nelly

is from home, and I’d like to give her a surprise. Perhaps Mr. Renton

and you would run down and see it hung? A day in the country would do

you good after all your hard work. Have you pen and ink? What, not pen

and ink in your place!--every man of business should be supplied with

that. I couldn’t put in my signature in paint, you know,’ the man of

wealth said, with his large laugh of ease and careless liberality. He

joked over it as if it were sixpence! as if it was a thing that happened

every day! while to two of the people who listened to him it was

something like coming back from the dead.

Suffolk, with his voice choked, made some feeble response. He tried to

laugh too; he tried to say it did not matter,--there was no hurry,--any

time would do. A poor little piece of hypocrisy, at which his wife

quailed, trembling lest he should be taken at his word.

‘No, no; I like to settle such matters off-hand,’ said the

patron;--‘there’s Renton, like a sensible fellow, off for the ink. I

like that young man; never saw him in my life till this morning; but he

feels like an old friend, and his people are our neighbours in the

country. You and he must make a run down by the one o’clock train,--I

don’t know a better train,--brings you down twenty-five miles in thirty

minutes,--not bad, that. And I’ll send over a trap for you. What day

will you come? Thank you, Renton; that’s practical; that’s the sort of

thing I like. I want you both to come down and have some luncheon, and

see the picture hung. Let it be a day in the end of the week; a day in

the country never harms any man. Settle it with my wife. My dear, come

here and look at the picture. It’s ours; or rather, it’s Nelly’s. Don’t

you think she’ll like it? And I want to have them down to see it hung.’

Thus was this extraordinary piece of business accomplished, in a

moment,--as it were in the twinkling of an eye. Neither Suffolk nor his

wife knew what their visitors said and did, or where they were, or what

had happened to them, till Mr. Rich suddenly recollected that there was

no time to lose, and so many other studios to visit in daylight. It was

all settled about that visit to Richmont, which Laurie, disagreeable

though it was to him, had not the heart to refuse. And I suppose Suffolk

talked and assented and behaved himself like any ordinary mortal, though

he knew no more of what had passed than a man in a dream. Laurie put

these blessed rich people into their carriage afterwards, and took as

much care of the vast woman as if she had been the queen. ‘I will ask

your brother over to meet you, Mr. Renton,’ she said, as she took leave

of him; and Mr. Rich followed her, rubbing his hands. ‘I have done a

good morning’s work,’ said that happy man. ‘Two hundred and fifty! I

don’t doubt I could sell it for six to-morrow,--that’s what it is to go

to the fountain-head.’ Laurie himself felt a little giddy as the

carriage drove away. And when he returned to the studio, he found that

Mrs. Suffolk was crying, and her husband not much more steady. The

painter had forgotten all about his sky. He had his cheque in his hand,

and was looking, first at that, and then at his Angles. ‘By Jove,

Laurie, you have done it at last!’ he said, bursting into a loud laugh,

and crushing Laurie’s hand as in a vice,--and then he went to the inner

room, and put on his old painting-coat, which was a good excuse.

But whether it was Laurie who was to be commended this time, or the

padrona, who,--let it be confessed,--with a moment’s hesitation and

reluctance, had sent the patron to her friend, was a doubtful matter.

They had both a hand in it. It was ‘our little business,’ as Laurie

said, pleasing himself, in his foolishness, with the thought of this

partnership. And he went, of course, to the Square, not by roundabout

ways, like the fine coachman, but as fast as his feet could carry him,

to report how everything had happened. Duty and courtesy both demanded

that not a moment should be lost till the report was made.

CHAPTER V.

A DISCOVERY.

When Laurie reached No. 375 with his budget of news, the padrona was

out! It was nothing very dreadful to be sure. She did go out sometimes,

like everybody else; and in all likelihood no very long time would

elapse before she returned. But, all the same, Laurie was intensely

_contrarié_, and felt as if this were a special spite of fortune. She

must have known he would come to make his report of what had happened at

Suffolk’s, and to inquire into the news she had given him as he left the

house. A beautiful commission,--work for a year! That was what she had

said. And then, without any regard for his curiosity, his interest in

everything that concerned her, she had gone out! He went up to the

studio to wait for her, passing the door of the dining-room very quietly

that Miss Hadley might not hear him, and rush in with her usual

officiousness to make one of the party. At this moment, after all his

excitement, he did not feel equal to general talk with three or four

people. It was the intimate conversation _à deux_ for which Laurie

longed. Never had he seen the studio in such preternatural good order

before. The pictures that were going to the Academy were placed all

ready for exhibition, each on its separate easel; a few touches were

still wanting to one of them, but that it was evident the padrona had

calculated upon doing with the morning light, before her visitors began

to arrive. The Louis Quinze fauteuil was placed in front of the

principal picture; a great Turkish curtain of many colours, one of poor

Severn’s acquisitions in the days when he was rich enough to buy things

that pleased his eye, had been put up across the farther window, to be

drawn as might be needful for the light. A great many sketches were

placed about the room,--poor Severn’s last drawing, unfinished, but

always holding the chief place among his wife’s treasures, hanging in

the best light. And everything was cleared away that impaired the

appearance of the studio, a proceeding which gave positive delight to

the housemaid, and even filled the padrona’s soul with a sense of

comfort. ‘If I could only keep it tidy like this!’ Mrs. Severn had said,

with a sigh. Whereas Laurie, with the untidiness natural to man, was

disgusted with it, and hated the place in its unusual decorum. He walked

about with his hands in his pockets, and stared blankly at everything.

What did she mean by going away? What did she mean by putting herself,

as it were, out of her studio, and filling it up with knickknacks that

did not belong to it? As for poor Severn’s last sketch, it was not a

drawing for a woman to be proud of. She might have known that at least

by this time. It might be valuable to her for the sake of association,

of course,--anything, a table, or a chair, might be dear for

association’s sake,--but she must have known better than to prize it as

a drawing. And then Laurie went and looked at the picture, which smiled

sweetly at him out of its frame, full of sweet nature and expression,

but undeniably wanting a few finishing touches still. How could she go

out roaming about in that strange way, and leave the picture unfinished?

Laurie in his heart was angry with his padrona. It was not like her to

go out and stay out like this,--doing shopping perhaps!--which any woman

without an ounce of brains could have done just as well;--which Miss

Hadley might have been sent to do: getting her out of the way at the

same time! Laurie in his impatience hunted up his friend’s brushes, and

mixed her colours, and went at the unfinished picture himself to fill up

those tedious moments. There was a pleasure, too, in thinking he would

have a hand in it; not that there was anything of the least importance

to do;--a touch of light upon the floor, a bit of perspective which was

not quite complete. When he had put in a few lines caressingly, with a

half sense that it was her hand, or her dress, or something belonging to

her that he was touching, another fit of impatience came upon him.

Where could she have gone? What could she be doing? It was of no use

waiting here, making himself angry in her absence. He might as well go

and see old Welby, and leave her to the surprise of finding that some

one had been doing her work while she was out. Of course if she came in,

Miss Hadley would be with her, or Alice, or somebody. Laurie accordingly

put down the brushes again, restoring the room to something of its

ordinary aspect, and took up his hat and went down-stairs. ‘She will

think of the lubber-fiend,’ said Laurie to himself; ‘and I wonder if she

will put me a bowl of cream for my hire.’ Would the bowl of cream answer

the purpose? or was there any other hire of which Laurie thought? There

came a little gleam over his face, and the shadow of a smile; but I do

not think it was in anticipation of anything in particular, only a

certain pleasant sentiment, half tenderness, half amusement. Laurie was

the kind of man whose eye softens and whose lip smiles under any

circumstances at the thought of a reward from a woman. It was as he went

down-stairs that he noticed for the first time the film of cobweb on his

coat beside the flower,--and he left it there, though he was very dainty

in point of personal appearance. Perhaps he thought it was a mark of the

work he had been doing, which the padrona would smile to see; or,

perhaps, that her hand was the hand which should brush it off.

With these ideas in his mind he went down-stairs, possessed by a kind of

sweet love-in-idleness; not the passion of a young man for a girl; a

tenderness made up of many things,--of that soft reverence just touched

with pity, which a man of generous temper has for a woman in such a

position; and yet pity is not the word,--or else it was a kind of pity

in which there was all the softness and none of the superiority which

usually mingles with that sentiment; and of admiration for the brave

creature who had gradually grown the central figure in his landscape;

and of a longing to help her; and of pride in the regard she gave him

and the sympathy between them. There was perfect sympathy between them,

though he had never, Laurie thought, seen any woman worthy to stand by

her side. This was part of his delusion, for there were women as good,

and with far greater gifts than the padrona, to be met with in the

world. But still it was not wonderful if the young man was proud of her

friendship. Friendship,--that was the word; with no result to come, no

thickening of the plot towards a climax; but only a delicious

accompaniment to life, an interchange of every thought and sentiment, a

soft but strong support in every chance that might befall a man. This

was all that was in Laurie’s mind. It was something more akin to

worship than the passion which appropriates can ever be. It had not

occurred to him to seize, to take possession of, to secure her as his

own; the idea itself would have been a profanity; only to be nearer to

her than any one else, to be her subject and yet her counsellor; an

indescribable perfect relationship such as exists only in imagination.

Laurie himself had never gone any deeper. The padrona’s life and

condition were to him as settled and everlasting as the skies, the

ordinary constitution of the world. And all would go on as it was going

on. And at the present moment he would not have exchanged that visionary

tie for anything actual in life.

Mr. Welby was standing before his picture when Laurie went in, looking

at it with that intense inspection of the cultivated eye, which no

uneducated critic can give. He held out his hand to his visitor, but did

not change his attitude. Welby, R.A., had his anxieties about the

Academy’s Exhibition as well as another. True, his picture was sure of a

place on ‘the line,’ and every advantage a benign Hanging Committee

could give it; but there were other dangers before the face of the

Academician from which the younger men were safe. Mr. Welby knew that if

there was a faltering line in his canvas, or one neglected detail, even

the critics who were his friends would say he was growing old. ‘It

would ill become us, who are indebted to Mr. Welby for so many noble

pictures, to be eager to mark the indications of approaching decadence;

but, alas! no man can remain of primitive strength for ever,’ would be

the philosophical comment of the ‘Looker-on.’ And the ‘Sword’ would be

still sharper in its judgment. Such words as these were echoing in the

old painter’s ear as he looked at his picture. He was aware he was old,

and life had no such charm to him that he should cling to it

unduly,--but such criticisms were hard to bear. He was going over the

picture himself, criticising its every detail, and he held up his hand

with an unspoken warning to Laurie, who understood, as he had a faculty

of doing, and waited behind till the inspection was over.

‘I think that will do,’ said Mr. Welby at last, with a long and

deeply-drawn sigh. ‘Come here, Renton, and give me your opinion.’ Laurie

was full of the natural instinct of admiring and believing in the work

of the old man,--who was leader and patriarch, as it were, of his own

special party;--and, besides, it was a fine picture, and he thought it

so, though very different no doubt from Suffolk’s ‘Saxon Maiden,’ or

from the lovely children in the padrona’s pictures upstairs. Art, to be

the everlasting thing it is, is as yet as much bound by fashion as any

silly woman. The fashion of the day had changed; but yet old Welby’s

picture was a fine picture still.

‘I don’t want those fellows to be picking holes in my coat,’ said the

R.A., ‘though of course they will do it all the same.’

‘I don’t see what holes there are to pick,’ said Laurie, strong in his

_esprit de corps_, and ready to swear to the excellence of his master in

contradiction of all the critics in the world. ‘We have just sold

Suffolk’s picture,’ he added suddenly, glad to deliver himself of the

wonderful news, which had been burning holes, as it were, for want of

utterance, in his heart.

‘Sold Suffolk’s picture!’ the Academician said with a start. It was the

most wonderful piece of news that had been heard in the artists’ quarter

for many a year. For no man had gone so consistently in the face of

popular opinion as Suffolk, or held so obstinately by his own style.

Laurie, nothing loth, told the whole story, with excitement and a

natural satisfaction; and how it was old Rich, the City man, who was

well known to be the padrona’s special property. And as he told it he

looked down upon the bit of cobweb, by this time gone to the merest

speck,--the sign in that particular matter, of his close partnership

with the padrona,--which was still on his coat.

‘So she sent him her own patron?’ said Mr. Welby; ‘that was good of her,

Renton,--that was very good of her. To be sure, he had just given her a

commission. I suppose you heard of that. A private patron is a great

institution, my dear fellow,--there is more satisfaction in it than in

dealers. He has given her a commission to fill one room with pictures.

There are to be twelve of them I think, and the subjects from the fairy

tales. She’ll do it very well. She has wonderful invention, you know, in

her way, and Cinderella and little Red Riding Hood, and all the rest

will just suit her; and there is a year’s living secured at once. I am

sorry for that woman, Renton. I am more sorry for her than I can tell,’

cried the R.A., with unquestionable emotion in his voice.

‘Sorry for--the padrona?’ cried Laurie, half laughing, half angry. He

would have liked to have knocked down the man who presumed,--and yet to

be sorry for that hopeful, dauntless woman, so full of life, and

strength, and energy, seemed too good a joke.

‘Yes, sorry for her,’ said Mr. Welby, severely, ‘though you don’t know

what I mean, of course. She is at her best now, and I suppose she is

making a good deal of money; but look at her principles, sir. Her

principles are,--you need not contradict me, I know her better than you

do,--never to shut her heart nor her purse against anybody she can help.

What kind of an idea is that, I ask you, for this world? Of course, she

can’t lay by a penny; and when the fellows in the newspapers begin to

say of her as they say already of me----’

‘But you!’ cried Laurie, ‘you----’ and then he stopped, not knowing how

to end his sentence.

‘I am old, that is what you were going to say,’ said Mr. Welby. ‘I am

two-and-twenty years older than she is,--just two-and-twenty years. It’s

almost as long as you have been in the world, my dear fellow, and you

think it’s centuries; but two-and-twenty years pass very quickly after

thirty-five. And she’ll age sooner than I did,--never having been, you

know, so thoroughly trained a painter. Her quick eye will fail her, and

her fine touch, and she will not have knowledge and experience to fall

back upon; and the public will tire of those pretty pictures. Her genius

will pall, and then her courage will fail, though she has pluck at

present for anything. Do you think I’ve never seen such things happen?

If she has ten years more of success it will be all she can hope for;

and the boys will scarcely be doing for themselves by that time; and she

will have to reduce her living, which will go sadly against the grain,

and struggle with all sorts of anxieties. When I look at that woman,

sir, my heart bleeds. It’s all very pleasant just now,--plenty of work

and plenty of strength, and a light heart, and her friends round her,

and her children; and she feels she is up to her work,--knows she is up

to her work. But when they come to say of her what they are beginning to

say of me----’

Laurie raised his hand with a speechless protest and denial of the

possibility, but the words he would have spoken died in his throat. What

could he say against this prophet of evil?--only that every pulse in him

and every nerve thrilled fiercely at the suggestion;--and that was no

answer, heaven knows.

‘Even if she did keep on long enough to get the boys launched in the

world,’ said Mr. Welby, who seemed, Laurie thought, to take a certain

pleasure in the torture he was inflicting,--‘what is to become of her

afterwards, unless she were to die off-hand, which is not likely? People

don’t die at the convenient moment. Most likely she’ll linger for years,

poor, and old, and unable to work, on some pittance or other,--lucky if

she has that. It’s hard upon such a woman, Renton. I tell you, when I

look at that fine creature and think what’s before her, it makes my

heart bleed.’

‘But, good heavens! why should you imagine such things?’ cried Laurie,

when he could speak. ‘Of course we may all go mad, or get ruined, or

perish miserably,--one as well as another;--but to forebode such a fate

for her----’

‘I said nothing about getting ruined or going mad,’ said Mr. Welby,

pettishly. ‘I said Mrs. Severn would outlive her market,--ay, and

outlive her powers,--and that my heart ached for her, poor thing! I

declare to you, Laurie, my heart so aches for her, that if I thought she

could make up her mind to it, I would marry her to-morrow,--though it

would break in upon all my habits,’ said the R.A., sinking his voice,

‘in a most annoying way.’

‘Marry--her--to-morrow!’ cried Laurie, and he made a step towards the

old painter with a savage impulse which he could scarcely restrain. He

was wild with sudden passion. ‘Marry her!’ It was hard to tell what kept

him from raising the hand which he had clenched in spite of himself. But

he did not, though it was a courageous thing of old Welby to keep facing

the young fellow with that sudden transport of fury in his eye.

‘Yes,’ he said, calmly. ‘I am getting old, and I have saved a little

money, and I have no near relations. If I thought she could make up her

mind to it, I would ask her to marry me to-morrow. I have thought of it

often. For her sake, that is what I would do.’

Laurie made no answer; he walked away from the old man to the very end

of the studio, and stood there staring at the Angelichino which stood

against the wall. His blood seemed to be boiling in all his veins, and

his heart throbbing as if it would burst. Why should he be angry? Why

should he object to old Welby for his desire to shield the padrona from

even a possible evil? But Laurie’s mind was in too great a ferment to

permit him to think articulately. He did not understand what was the

meaning of the sudden tumult within him,--the sharp shock which his

nature seemed to have sustained. To get away and be alone was the

immediate necessity upon him. If he could have gone through the wall, or

leaped out of the window, probably he would have done it. But that being

impossible, he composed himself as well as he could, and returned to

where old Welby stood calmly, taking no notice of him, looking once more

at his picture. At the sight of the old man’s tranquillity Laurie felt

ashamed of himself.

‘I suppose my nerves are more easily affected than most people’s,’ he

said, with an attempt at a laugh. ‘I can’t think of all those dreadful

things happening,--to--the padrona,--and take it calmly. Good-night! I

must go now.’

‘If such a thing as I said should ever happen,’ said Welby, shaking

hands with him,--‘I may as well warn you,--I’d have no more padronas.

How poor Severn put up with it is more than I can say.’

This parting speech sent Laurie forth in a renewed tempest of rage and

indignation. He had meant to return up-stairs after his visit to old

Welby, but that was now impossible. He had let himself out, and closed

the door sharply behind him, before old Forrester could make his

appearance. Daylight by this time was beginning to fail, and the lamps

were being lit along the street, twinkling across the Square through the

smoky trees, which were swelling with the fulness of spring. The look of

the outside world as he came thus suddenly into it,--the tall,

glimmering houses,--the lamps like candies in the pale, waning

daylight,--the trees all bristling with half-opened leaves, and the sky,

leaden yet light, with its remoteness, and colourless serenity, looking

down upon all, never went out of Laurie’s mind. He forgot all his

displeasure at her absence, all his wondering where she was. He did not

even look if she might be coming, or remember that he might meet her

suddenly face to face so near her own door. His mind was too full of her

idea to remember herself, if we may say so. He went round and round the

Square without any particular sense of where he was going, and then took

the first street, any street,--what did it matter?--and got out into a

crowded thoroughfare, where lights were gleaming, and men hurrying, and

every sound and stir of life. It was a long time before he could even

make out his own thoughts, what they were. All was dimness and chaos and

commotion, like the scene around at first; lights gleaming, cries coming

out of the obscurity,--a tumult he could not comprehend. Then by degrees

the clouds rolled off, each to its own corner; the foreground cleared,

the central figure reappeared. What was it? Laurie stood still for a

moment, and looked himself, as it were, in the face, aghast. He had not

so much as suspected it till now. She had been his friend; nothing so

tender, nothing so near, had ever been in his life; yet he had not

dreamed what the truth was until old Welby, with his detestable

suggestion, had thrust it thus unveiled in his face.

And Laurie stood aghast. It may injure him in some people’s eyes, yet I

cannot but avow that when the young man found that he loved a woman much

older than himself,--a woman with children, and a separate, independent

past, with twice his experience, and,--metaphorically at least,--twice

his age,--he was appalled by the discovery. He had known her another

man’s wife; he had himself been as a child beside her in the first days

of their acquaintance. There was less difference in point of age between

himself and her daughter than between himself and her; and yet he loved

her. No, it was not friendship. Friendship would not have resented hotly

and wildly, with a half-murderous passion, old Welby’s suggestion.

Friendship would not have moved any man’s heart into such a mad

commotion. He loved her. That it never had occurred to himself to change

the relationship between them, or seek a closer one, was nothing.

Another man had but to talk of marrying her, and lo! the whole world was

lit into conflagration. There was a sweetness in the discovery too. His

heart warmed and glowed in that fire; words which he but half understood

went whispering through the air about him,--‘There is none like her;

none.’ No girl, no young heroine of romance, could be such a creature as

was this woman, tried, and proved, and developed, with all the

sweetness in her still, and yet all the strength of life. If he had been

proud of her regard, proud of her sympathy, how much more proud would he

be of her love! If that were possible! Could it be possible? Going on in

this distracted range of thoughts, the fact gleamed upon Laurie that no

girl could make such sacrifice of pride and natural position in loving

him as this woman should,--if she would; and was it likely? It would be

as vain to attempt to follow him in the maze of passion that possessed

him, as in the streets he wound his way through, while the night

darkened round him, and the lights shone brighter. A storm of thunder

and lightning might have been going on, and he would never have known

it. Such a thing had befallen as he had never dreamt of. The soft love

which he had put aside with a pang of tender regret as a thing

impossible,--too sweet for him and too costly,--had come back at

unawares, and come in and taken possession, no longer soft and easy to

be vanquished, but twined in with every thread of life. It was so easy

to come away from Kensington Gore,--from the world he had lived in for

years,--from the pensive-pleasant hopes of his youth; but to leave this

place, which had not an attraction but one, would be tearing up his life

by the roots. This was the fact, though he had not known it. Wonder, and

terror, and delight, and a vague overwhelming dismay, filled Laurie’s

mind as he found himself standing thus after the earthquake, with the

solid ground rent under his very feet. There were flowers growing still,

so sweet that he was intoxicated with their breath; but yet there had

been an earthquake, and the sober soil was torn with that convulsion. He

walked and walked, charged with those thoughts, till he got to the very

skirts of far-reaching London, and came to himself in a gloomy, suburban

road. It was the rain falling in his face out of the almost invisible

skies that roused him first, and then he had to grope his way back to a

thoroughfare and get a cab, and go home. When he reached his room and

looked at himself in the little glass over the mantel-piece he saw a

pale apparition, with gleaming eyes and a visionary smile; appalled,

shaken to the very depths of his being, and yet with a subtle happiness

at his heart. He was happier, and more bewildered and utterly astray in

all his reckonings, than he had ever been in his life.

CHAPTER VI.

LAURIE’S FATE.

Next day was the day of the private exhibition made in the artists’

houses of their pictures before they were sent off to the Academy; not a

day in which a man could make his appearance with any passionate or

sentimental errand in the studio of a painter. All day long a stream of

carriages were flocking about Fitzroy Square, and driving into the

adjacent street, where carriages were not frequent visitors. There was a

suppressed excitement about the district generally. It was, as we have

said, like the eve of a battle, and every new spectator who appeared to

judge of the pretensions of the combatants increased the commotion.

Perhaps at another moment Laurie would have felt a certain oppression in

a day which was so exciting for all his friends and so indifferent to

himself; but now he had a shield against any such sentiment. He got up

that morning with something of the lassitude of a man exhausted by great

exertions. The sun was shining, which had been a rarity of late, and the

consternation of the previous night had somehow died out of his mind.

To-day he should see her, that was certain. To-day the sweetness of the

presence of the woman whom he loved would smooth away all perversity of

circumstances, and make rough places seem straight. He had a longing to

see her, to make sure that she at least was the same, notwithstanding

the wonderful change that had taken place in himself, or rather the

wonderful unsuspected revelation he had had of his own sentiments.

Somehow, with such a sympathy as there was between them, she must have

divined, must have been affected by the extraordinary convulsion he had

passed through. The daily impulse to seek her, and lay bare his thoughts

to her, which had become a second nature to him, was mingled now with

the curiosity a young man might have felt to see the person to whom he

had been betrothed in his cradle, but had never seen. In a manner,

Laurie had never seen this lady of his affections. When he parted with

her yesterday she had been his friend; now she was his love,--the first

and only woman in the world to him. It was impossible that she could be

the same, look the same, in the face of this amazing change. He hurried

to get one glimpse of her while the morning lasted,--to make

acquaintance with her,--to familiarise himself with her looks and her

ways.

But when Laurie reached the Square he found, alas! that he was not the

only one who had been moved to visit the padrona in the early sunshine.

Miss Hadley was there putting the finishing touches to the room; and so

was Mrs. Suffolk, leaning back in the Louis Quinze chair, laughing and

crying and chattering to the children in the picture as if they had been

real babies. ‘Oh, you darlings!’ the little woman was saying, ‘I wonder

how many people will go on their knees to you when you are out in the

world. But though you are little angels, you are not so nice as your

mother. You are sweet, but not so sweet as our padrona.’ This was the

chatter Laurie heard as he went in. And it gave him a shock which it

would be impossible to describe, when the padrona herself turned round

upon him, palette in hand, smiling and placid and gracious, the very

same woman from whom he had parted yesterday. All the heat and agitation

of suppressed passion might be in his eyes, but in hers there was only

the brightness of every day,--the composure of her usual, ordinary

looks. Nay, as if to emphasize more and more the perfect unity, so far

as she was concerned, of to-day and yesterday, she turned to him with

the very words which, when he left that room last, before heaven and

earth had changed for him, he had fancied her using. ‘Here comes the lob

of spirits,’ said the padrona, ‘and his bowl of cream has not been

placed for him as it ought to have been. Here is Robin Goodfellow, who

does his friends’ work, and never asks even to be praised for it. Where

were you that you never came near us all the night?’

‘Where was I?’ said Laurie. He was too much agitated to tune himself

immediately to the key of his present companions. Fortunately Miss

Hadley was busy arranging his lilies of the valley, and Mrs. Suffolk,

who had sprung up to take him by both his hands, was not sharp-sighted.

He looked over the little woman’s shoulder with dilated eyes, which

looked to the padrona as if he had been up all night, or in some

trouble. ‘I will tell you another time where I was,’ Laurie said, with a

voice full of tender meaning. The padrona gazed at him with wonder

unfeigned. ‘The boy has got into some scrape,’ she said to herself. And

then both the women plunged without drawing breath into the story of the

Angles and Mr. Rich, and Suffolk’s sudden and unhopedfor success.

‘We had given up thinking of it even,’ Mrs. Suffolk cried. ‘I did hope

if the Saxon Maiden got a good place at the Academy----but I never even

hoped for the Angles. Call him the lubber-fiend! when he rushed up to

poor Reginald yesterday, and made him put on his good coat, and did

everything for him, he was more like our guardian angel.’

What was it all about? Laurie had to stop and ask himself, glancing at

them in a kind of consternation. Suffolk’s picture! why that was months

and months ago! What did they mean by bringing that up again? And

before he had recovered himself, the visitors began to arrive. He stood

by her a little, watching, as in a dream, while the padrona shook hands

with her friends, and explained her pictures to them, and received their

plaudits. Yesterday he would have been proud of their universal

admiration; but to-day it made him sick to see her receive such vulgar

homage. He would have liked to take her hand publicly before them all,

and draw it within his arm, and lead her away from such a scene. ‘Do you

think your praise is anything to her?’ he felt himself saying; and then

he took his hat abruptly and disappeared. So far, at least, the

revelation to himself of the nature of his own feelings had not

increased his happiness. And I cannot tell what old Welby meant by

lifting the curtain so rudely from the poor young fellow’s dream;

whether it was done in spite or kindness, or whether it was entirely

unintentional,--a simple expression of his sentiments without any

reference to Laurie,--is what I cannot tell.

The next day was again a day of exhibition, and the day after that was

the one on which Laurie had engaged to go down with Suffolk to Richmont.

He had been very reluctant to go at the time, and it may be supposed how

much more reluctant he was now. It was his own country,--the very

journey in the railway would bring a hundred recollections before him.

His mother and his home would be within reach; but how could he go near

that peaceful place with this agitation in his heart? Two days before he

could have done it, and spoken of the padrona with that tender fervour

which knew no need of concealing itself. Now,--his mother would find him

out in a moment, and so would Mary Westbury. Indeed, it was wonderful to

him that Suffolk did not find him out. So that it would be Saturday

before he could actually see her with any chance of knowing her mind.

I will not enter into the visit to Richmont, which belongs to another

portion of this history and had nothing to do, so to speak, with

Laurie’s life. He got it over, and he got over those three days, but

from Wednesday to Saturday he never entered the house at which he had

hitherto been a daily visitor. He could not go now while she was

surrounded with people, and talk ordinary talk to her as if she was

anybody else. When he saw her, he must see her alone; and accordingly

Laurie denied himself, and passed by her door, and saw others admitted,

and watched the light come into the windows of the great drawing-room,

and shadows appear on the blinds. This curious experience he went

through as well as the rest, and gradually came to forget what was

unusual in the story of his love; though not even now, after three days’

brooding over it, could he see how it was to be, or how she was to

answer what he would have to say.

It was on Saturday morning that at last he made his way to the Square.

It was a holiday, thank heaven, and the children were out in the Park

with their maid, and Alice was at her music when he went in. To-day, at

least, there could be no Miss Hadley. To-day there was no excuse for the

presence of strangers. Somehow the sound of Alice’s piano struck him

with an unpleasant sensation as he went up the stairs almost stealthily,

fearing that a third person might start out from behind some door at the

sound of his step, to mar the interview he sought. Alice was no common

musician, even at her early age; and yet was her daughter. It may be

understood how this consciousness, and the sound of the music the girl

was playing, came in like one of the discords in his strange story. Had

Alice been a child like her little sister, the effect would have been

much lessened; but to love a woman whose daughter sat playing Mozart and

Beethoven! The thought which passed through Laurie’s mind was not

articulate, but yet the sound jarred upon him. Softly he went past the

door. If his love-tale had been for Alice there would have been no

incongruity in it. He went past the room where the young girl in her

meditations sat alone, and knocked softly at the door of the other, in

which her mother was pursuing her occupation. The padrona was not

painting on that particular afternoon. She was standing by the table,

with a portfolio of drawings open before her, searching for something.

She called him to come in, and looked up with a bright look of pleasure

when she saw who it was.

‘You have come at last,’ she said, holding out her hand to him. ‘What

has been wrong? I thought you had forsaken us;’ and looked at him full

in the face with candid, unembarrassed eyes.

‘Nothing has been wrong,’ said Laurie, holding her hand fast. His heart

began to beat, but what could a man say in cold blood with a pair of

frank, steady eyes looking at him, restraining him with their

friendliness? The padrona withdrew her hand without even any appearance

of wonder at his clinging clasp. She was glad to see him. She had wanted

to see him; and new events had come in, effacing from her mind for the

moment her temporary alarm on his account; and she could understand that

he was glad to come back, though his absence had lasted only three days.

‘I was looking over some old sketches,’ she said. ‘I told you of the

commission Mr. Rich had given me; I was looking for a drawing my dear

Harry made some years ago,--you may have seen it,--for Cinderella. It

would be a pleasure to me to go upon that; but I can’t find it in all

those great portfolios,’ she said, with a sigh. Why she should have

brought poor Severn in at that special moment it would have been hard to

say; perhaps it was chance alone; perhaps there was in her some

unconscious warning of nature as to what was coming. Laurie withdrew a

step or two with sudden discomfiture. He hated poor Severn for the

moment as he had never hated any man before.

‘You will do it much better yourself,’ he said, and his tone was such

that the padrona turned and looked at him with wonder in her eyes.

‘How strangely you speak!’ she said; ‘and now I look at you, how

strangely you look, Laurie! What is the matter? I have scarcely seen you

since you were so good to the Suffolks. Something has happened. I heard

from them last night that you had been in the country. Is it anything

about home?’

‘No,’ said Laurie, in a kind of despair, ‘it is nothing about home.’

‘Perhaps it is something you cannot tell me,’ said the padrona, ‘and in

that case never mind my questions; you may be sure of my sympathy

anyhow, even without explanation. If you are vexed, I am sorry; you know

that.’

‘How should I know it?’ said Laurie. ‘Yes, perhaps if I did not tell

you,--if I left it to your imagination,--you are so kind to

everybody,--you would be kind to me. If I did not tell you,--that might

be my safeguard!’ For by this time it had begun to appear to him that

madness itself could not be more mad than his dream.

‘It is strange to hear you speak so to me,’ said Mrs. Severn. ‘I never

thought of being kind to you, as I am kind to everybody. What is it,

Laurie,--tell me?’ And she laid her hand softly on his arm.

Then the young man’s composure and his boldness both abandoned him. He

took her hand and kissed it wildly. ‘Perhaps it would be best to go and

leave you,’ he cried, ‘never to come near you more!’ And then he left

her, and paced up and down the room, trying to master the strange tumult

of his thoughts. Nothing in the world could have disarmed him as her

kindness did, and sympathy. But as he turned away, the padrona came to

herself, or rather came to a recollection of the warning she had

received. In a moment she saw how it was; and, as was natural, in a

moment her anxiety to know what ailed him suddenly came to an end. Mr.

Rich’s commission, which was a great event to Mrs. Severn, had startled

her out of thought of Laurie. His little hieroglyph at the end of his

note had gone almost unnoticed in the excitement of the moment, and

every hour had been occupied since then. But now it all rushed back upon

her, and the error she had been guilty of in asking any questions. If

she had not made this discovery, most likely her sympathetic, kind

unconsciousness would have staved off what was coming. But the moment

she found it out, a thrill of tremulous knowledge came into her voice.

‘Well, never mind,’ she said, hastily; ‘you must not think that I want

to pry into your secrets. Come, I am not working now; let us go to Alice

and hear what she is about. You are pre-occupied,’ said the padrona,

closing her portfolio and talking against time, ‘and I am _désœuvrée_.

Let us go and listen to the child. Come, I will lead the way.’

‘Not yet,’ said Laurie. As soon as she knew the truth she lost her

power, and he recovered a portion at least of his courage. He came and

took her hand and brought her back. ‘Perhaps I may never ask it again,’

he said, ‘but you must listen to me now.’

‘Of course I will listen,’ said Mrs. Severn, much alarmed; ‘but just as

well beside the child as anywhere else. If you have anything to tell me,

she will be too much engaged with her music to hear. Come,--I was going

to her when you came in.’

‘But now you will stay with me,’ said Laurie, leading her back. She was

so much afraid of betraying any signs of trouble, that this time she did

not even withdraw her hand. She sat down in the great chair, growing

pale, but preserving with a great effort her composure, at least in

appearance.

‘This looks very solemn,’ she said, with an attempt at a laugh. ‘What

dreadful tale of misdemeanours has your mother-confessor to hear? Have

you been robbing an orchard, or running away with a lady? I will put the

Suffolks’ story against it, whatever it may be, and grant you

absolution. You never did an hour’s work that will give you more

pleasure than that. I suspect they had been badly off, much more than

they permitted any one to know.’

‘Do you think I care for Suffolk,’ said Laurie, ‘or anybody else?

Padrona! you know what I am going to say before I speak. You have found

it out as well as I. Don’t you know for months back,--since ever I came

here,--there has been but one person in the world for me,--but one!

Whatever I have done, it has been to please you;--whatever I have given

up, it has been for your sake. Night and day I have been thinking of

you,--contriving to get a word from you or a smile. And I tried to make

myself believe I could be content with what you give to your

friends;--but that delusion is over. Padrona mia, what will you do with

me?’ he cried, kneeling down by the arm of her chair.

It never occurred to him that he was kneeling, nor did he intend to

kneel. It was but the most practicable way of getting close to her, and

seeing into her face. There was something of the pleading look of a

child in Laurie’s eyes. He did not make any passionate claim on her, nor

appeal; he only put his fate into her hands, with a humility more like

the diffidence of age than the equality of love.

Then there was a pause. The padrona was too much overwhelmed, too

agitated, to speak. She said--‘For heaven’s sake, Laurie, rise, and do

not break my heart!’ and took away her hand which he was still holding;

but that was no answer,--rather the reverse.

‘Break your heart!’ he said. ‘I would heal every wound it ever had, if I

had the power. I don’t seem to care for anything else in the world. Give

me a right to stand by you, to take care of you. Padrona mia, you cannot

always do all things, as you are doing, for yourself. Let me be the man

to guard you, to labour for you. I don’t know what I am saying, and you

don’t answer me one word,--not one word!’

‘To labour for her, to take care of her!’ Such words to her who was far

better able to protect and care for another than he was. But that was

not the thought that entered her mind. Her eyes filled with tears. To

see this young man at her feet pleading with such passionate folly, woke

all the tenderness in her heart. She was fond of him at all times. She

put her hand caressingly on his head; her voice softened and broke as

she spoke to him.

‘Laurie, I am old enough to be your mother,’ she said.

‘It is not true!’ he cried, with sudden fierceness; ‘and if it were,

what matter? All the happiness I desire in life is in your hands.’

And then the woman, quite melted and overcome, was so weak as to cry,

leaving him to think for the moment that he had won his wild suit. This

love was so strange to her, so new, so old, such a sudden dash of the

sweetness of youth into her sober cup! She was roused by the words that

he began to pour into her ears, and with a little cry of pain drew back

from her lover,--her lover! What a word for such as she to speak! She

put him back with her outstretched hands.

‘Laurie,’ she said, ‘are we mad, both you and I? Do you know what you

are doing? For some moments you have made me as foolish as yourself. But

I am ashamed. Do you know who I am? Harry Severn’s wife,--Alice Severn’s

mother! Yes,--that, and nothing else, so long as this life lasts! Can a

woman make herself into two people? Laurie, let all this be as if it had

never been.’

‘It can never be as if it had not been!’ he cried. ‘For a punctilio, for

a form, for your pride,--you would cast aside a man’s love and life for

that! Padrona! that is no answer. The past has nothing to do between us.

To-day is to-day.’

Mrs. Severn turned upon him, and took his hand in hers. ‘Laurie,’ she

said, ‘let me speak.’ Her eyes were full of tears; her face lighted up

with a tremulous smile. ‘To-day is to-day, as you say. I am very fond of

you. I will say I love you, if you like. Patience, and hear me to an

end. If you go away, I shall miss you every hour; but if my child’s

finger were to ache I should forget your existence, Laurie. A single

hair on their heads is more to me than all the world beside. Do you

understand? My poor Harry is past, if you will. God forgive me for

saying so!--but to-day is so full there is no room in it for any other.

Laurie, I want my friend. I want nothing else;--nothing else that any

man can give.’

The young man stumbled up to his feet with the strongest passion he had

ever known in his life maddening him, as it seemed. His heart was

wounded, and so was his pride, bitterly,--beyond reach of healing. It

was he who drew away from her the hand she had retained in hers, with

kindness which felt to him like an insult.

‘Mrs. Severn, I have made an ass of myself!’ he said. ‘Don’t think of me

any more,--it is not worth your while. As for your friend----’

He went to the table and took up his hat, and made as though he would go

away. He was half blind, and did not see where he was going,--the room

and the house swimming round him in his agitation. His last word had

been said in a tone of contempt,--contempt to her, after all this

passion! The padrona had not moved; she sat looking after him with her

eyes full of tears and her hands clasped. Was it all to end and be over

like this,--like a bad dream? But poor Laurie had not hardness enough in

him to make such a conclusion. He faltered on his way to the door; he

turned round, only half conscious of what he was doing, to look once

more at the woman who had become the life of his life. And she, on her

part, made a half-conscious movement of her hands towards him. He went

back to her, and threw himself again at her feet. I don’t suppose

anything was said,--at least, anything that either recollected. They

kissed each other with that strange refinement of anguish which belongs

to those movements of human affection which are beyond the simplicity of

nature. The two beings met and clung together for a moment, and parted.

He was speeding along the streets, half wild, wrapt in a mist of

excitement and misery, not caring,--as he thought,--what became of him,

before the steady hand of the clock had moved two minutes farther on.

And she, in the great chair where her visitors used to sit and criticise

her work, lay back, trembling, with her face hidden in her hands.

Alice, meanwhile, had played through Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, the

pure, young soul carried away by it into a celestial dream; nothing

articulate in her mind,--soft breathings of blessedness present, of joy

to come, making an atmosphere around her,--a sacred creature, without a

single discord in her, or jar of pain or trouble. And old Welby in his

studio in the leisure of the moment,--his pictures gone to the Academy,

and his year’s work completed,--mounted, classified, and made a

catalogue of his Titians, with the truest satisfaction and content,

thinking no more of what he had said three days before to Laurie Renton

than of last year’s snow. The old painter and the young girl pursued

their serene occupations under the same roof while this scene was going

on, and knew no more than that the door had opened and closed abruptly,

when poor Laurie, with all his wounds fresh and bleeding, rushed out

into the outer world.

CHAPTER VII.

A FULL STOP.

The padrona was not a woman given to little ailments,--headaches, or the

other visionary sufferings which are conventional names for those aches

of the heart or temper to which we are all liable; but yet on the

evening of this day she found herself unable for once to face her little

world. It was not so much that her eyes were red, for eyes that have had

to weep the bitterest of tears, and which have watched and toiled

through most of life’s serious experiences, soon recover their outward

serenity; but her heart was sore. It has been said so often, that most

people by this time must be sick of hearing it, that love is the grand

occupation of a woman’s life; and that, while in man it is subordinate

to a hundred other matters, in her existence it is the chief interest.

Whether this is or is not the case with the great majority of women, is

a question which must be decided according to the experience of the

observer; but we doubt much whether in any case it applies to women over

thirty,--and it certainly did not apply to the padrona. There were many

interests in her life; and love, as ordinarily so called, had no more to

do with it than if she had been a stockbroker. Nothing more annoying,

more out of place and harmony with her existence, could have happened

than this curious interpolation of misplaced passion. Being a woman, her

heart had melted over the foolish boy. She was fond of him, as she had

avowed. His soft, devoted, tender ways,--the deference and subdued

enthusiasm which women love,--had made his society a very pleasant

feature in her life, and perhaps she had not seen as she ought to have

done the dangers that might attend it. And now this sudden awakening all

at once,--the force and reality of his feelings,--the doubt lest she had

been to blame,--the compunctions over his pain, and even her sorrow at

the loss of him, which was not the least poignant part of it

all,--overwhelmed her. She went to her room as soon as the little ones

had gone to bed. These little ones should of themselves have been a

safeguard to her. A certain shame came over her when she looked at her

own daughter, who was almost old enough to be herself the chief figure

in some episode of the universal drama, and remembered what words had

been said, what wild ovations made to Alice’s mother. The padrona’s

friends were aghast when they were told that she was not well enough to

receive them. Miss Hadley, who had come round to the Square with a

mixture of jealousy and alarm on finding out that no sign of life had

that day been seen at Laurie’s windows, was driven almost out of her

senses with curiosity to know what it could have been that had given the

padrona a headache. ‘Gone to bed with a headache!’ Miss Hadley did not

believe it. She was angry not to be admitted,--not to judge with her own

eyes what it was. But Alice, who suspected nothing, watched her mother’s

rest like a young lioness. ‘I cannot let you go up; she will be better

to-morrow,’ said Alice; and Miss Hadley could not for shame ask the

child, as she longed to do it, if this mysterious headache had come on

after a visit from Laurie. ‘She has been working too hard,’ people who

were more charitable concluded without question, and congratulated

themselves that the pictures had been sent in, and that now, if ever, a

painter might draw breath for a moment. But the padrona had not gone to

bed. She heard them come and go away as she sat up in her room; and she

heard Jane Hadley’s voice, and trembled lest that enterprising woman

should seek her out even in her retirement. She could not have borne any

keen eye upon her that night. Alice was different, to whom her mother

was as far lifted above such vanities or such suspicions as if she had

been a saint in heaven. ‘I think it would kill Alice!’ the mother said

to herself with a shudder. And I believe she would rather have died

herself than betray to her woman-child what had happened;--although

nothing had happened, except that a foolish young man had mistaken

himself and her, and put love in the place of friendship. But her

thoughts were very soft towards poor Laurie,--poor, foolish fellow!--to

throw away all his love and fresh heart and feelings upon a woman old

enough to be his mother! Anybody else might have laughed at him for it,

or despised him; but Mrs. Severn did not despise him. It went to her

heart to think of that gift being thrown at her feet. And she was fond

of the boy,--poor Laurie!--and if all the world scorned him for his mad,

boyish fancy, at all events it was not her place to scorn.

At the same time, after the edge of her compunction and regret and soft

yearning over the poor boy that loved her had become a little blunted,

the padrona had reason enough to be put out and vexed by the disturbing

influence of this unlucky event. Love,--vulgarly so called,--was, as we

have said, as much out of her way as if she had been an elderly

stockbroker. Love,--of another kind,--was, it is true, her whole life

and strength; but yet no man, however steeled by the world, could have

been less disposed to any sentimental play of emotion than was this

woman. Before Laurie came that morning her mind had been full of a

hundred fancies, all pleasant of their kind. They were not thoughts of

the highest elevation, perhaps. One of them was the rude, material

reflection that she had her work secured and clear before her for a year

certain; her living secured; no doubt about the sale of a picture; no

sharp reminder of the precariousness of her profession to keep her

uneasy;--but her work safe and sure for twelve months. And then it was

pleasant work, and such as her soul loved. She had been commended by her

visitors,--some of whom were people whose praise was worth having,--as

she had never been before. Things were going well with her. The children

were well, and developing their characteristics every day. She could

look the world in the face and know that she was doing her best for

them. When all at once,--in a moment,--the bitter-sweet of this boy’s

love was thrown into the crystal fountain, and the surface that had been

so clear, reflecting the heavens, was in a moment troubled and turbid.

With a certain impatient pang she said to herself, as so many have said,

that there was always something to lessen one’s satisfaction, always

some twist in the web of life to obscure its colours at its best. And

poor foolish Laurie, who had thrown away the best he had for nothing!

Poor boy! how her heart ached for him! how it hurt her to think of his

pain! and there was little, very little comfort in the thought that he

was lost to her. His friendly talk, his ready heart-service, his

difficulties and errors, and even his weakness, which it had been so

pleasant to minister to, to reprove, and exhort, and accept,--that was

all over now. A gap and dreary void was suddenly made in her closest

surroundings,--a gap which was hard on him and hard on her, and yet

inevitable,--to be made at all hazards. The padrona was very much

downcast about the business altogether, and shed a few tears over it in

her solitude. Nothing could have prevented, nothing could mend

it,--except, perhaps, Time; and Time is a slow healer, whom it is hard

to trust when one’s wound is of to-day.

If such was the effect this incident had on the padrona, it may be

imagined what sort of a tempest it was which swept through Laurie’s mind

and spirit when he left her. He disappeared under the bitter waves. Not

only was there no sign of life in his windows, but, so far as he was

himself conscious, there was no sign left in life to represent what he

had done with that distracted, incoherent day. The chances are that he

did most of the ordinary things he was in the habit of doing,--was seen

at his club, and talked to his friends somewhat in his usual strain.

Indeed, I have heard a _mot_ attributed to Laurie, which could have been

spoken but on that special evening, if it was spoken at all. I do not

suppose he made any exhibition of himself to the outer world; but I can

only take up the tale at the moment when, worn out and weary, he got

back to his room in Charlotte Street, and came to the surface, as it

were, and looked himself in the face once more. The agitation of the

past three days had told upon him. He had been shaken by the strange

sweet shock of his discovery that he loved her; and now upon that came

the other discovery, involved in the first, that he had spent his

strength for naught, and wasted all his wealth of emotion on a dream. Of

course he had known all along it must be a dream; so he said to himself.

He had poured out his heart as a libation in her honour. What more had

he ever hoped it could be? And now he was empty and drained of both

strength and joy. His pain was even mingled with shame,--that shame of

the sensitive mind when it discovers that its hopes have been beyond

what ought to be hoped for. His cheeks burned when he remembered that he

had dreamed it was possible for this woman, so much higher placed than

himself in the dignity of life, so far before him in the road, to turn

and stoop from her natural position, and love him in her turn. He would

have dragged her down, taken her from her secure eminence, placed her in

a false position, exposed her to the jeers and laughter of the

world,--all for the satisfaction of his selfish craving! He would have

gone in the face of nature, ignored all the sobering and maturing

processes which had made her what she was, and drawn her back to that

rudimentary place in the world which her own daughter was ready to fill.

Was not this what he would have done had he had his will? A hot flush of

shame came over Laurie’s face in his solitude. He felt humiliated at

the thought of his own vanity, his own folly. When she had held out her

hands to him, when she had given him that kiss of everlasting dismissal,

nature had asserted itself. Youth is sweet; it has the best of

everything; it is the cream of existence; but yet when the grave soul of

maturity drops back to youth, and gives up its own place, and ignores

all its painful advantages, is there not a certain shame in it? Had the

padrona been able to make that sudden descent,--could she have done what

on his knees he would have prayed her to do,--then she would no longer

have been herself. This consciousness, unexpressed, flashed across his

mind in heat and shame, aggravating all his sufferings. That it could

not be was bad enough; but to be compelled to allow that it was best

that it should not be,--to feel that success for him would have been

humiliation and downfall for her,--was not that the hardest of all?

It would be vain to follow Laurie through that long, distracted

monologue, confused ‘In memoriam’ of the past, with jars and broken

tones of the future stealing into it, through which every soul

struggles, after one of those shocks and convulsions which are the

landmarks of life. To be stopped every moment while forming forlorn

plans of practicable life by mocking gleams of what might have been, by

bitter-sweet recollections of what has been,--does not everybody know

how it feels? Laurie’s life was snapped in two, or so, at least, it

seemed to him. What was he to do with it? Where was he to fasten the

torn end of the thread? Could he stay here and turn his back upon the

past, and work, and see her at intervals with eyes calmed out of all his

old passion? But when he came to think of it, it had been for her he had

come here. At the first, perhaps, when he had dreamed of that gigantic

Edith and of fame, had he been permitted to go on, he might have found

for himself a certain existence belonging to this place which could have

been carried on in it after the other ties were broken. But he had not

been allowed to go on; and Charlotte Street had become to him only a

kind of lodge to the Square, a place where he could retire to sleep and

muse in the intervals of the real life which was passed in her service

or presence. He exaggerated, poor fellow! as was natural. It seemed to

him at this moment as if in all his exertions, even for Suffolk, who was

his friend, it had been her work he was doing. One thing at least was

certain,--it would never have been done without her. She was mixed up

with every action, every thought, even fancy, that had ever come into

his mind. He had done nothing but at her bidding, or by her means, or

with her co-operation. His work had languished for months past. If he

had pretended to study, it was to please her. And how could life go on

here, when it had but one motive, and that motive was taken away from

it? There are moments in a man’s life when everything that is painful

surges up around him at once, rising, one billow after another, over his

devoted head. That very morning, moved by some premonition of fate, he

had been collecting his papers together, and putting his affairs in

order; and though so vulgar a fact had made little impression on him in

his state of excitement, still Laurie had been aware that his accounts

were not in his favour, and that it might be necessary one day to look

them full in the face, and put order in his life. He had gone on all the

same, without pausing to think, in his mad love. That was perfectly

true, though he was the same Laurie Renton who, six months ago, had put

away the girl’s little notes whom he had begun to think might have been

his wife. He had given up that hope then without a moment’s doubt or

thought of resistance; and yet now, in a still worse position, he had

rushed on blindly to make confession of his love and throw himself at

another woman’s feet. I cannot account for the inconsistency.

But now,--whatever shock he may sustain, howsoever his hopes may perish,

a man must go on living all the same. His life may be torn up by the

roots; he may be thrown, like a transplanted seedling, into any corner;

but yet the quivering tendrils must catch at the earth again, and

existence go on, however broken. Laurie was a man easily turned from his

ambitions, as has been seen; a man not too much given to thought,

easily satisfied, of a facile temper,--and with more power to work for

others than for himself; but still he had to live. Something had to be

done to reconcile natural difficulties, something decided upon for the

future tenor of existence. Nor was he even the sort of man who could

come to an abrupt stop, and stand upon it. His thoughts were discursive,

and rushed forward. Even in the bitterest chords of that knell of the

past there was the impatient whisper of the future. I think there can be

no doubt, on the whole, that what would have been best for him would

have been that government office, to which he would have been tied by

the blind hand of routine, and which would still have left him leisure

for his amateur tendencies. Had he been so fortunate as to possess such

a prop of actual occupation, Laurie would probably have removed from

Charlotte Street,--to which, indeed, he never need have come,--and gone

on steadily with his work, composing his quivering nerves and healing

his wounds. He would have gone on doing kindnesses to his neighbours,

pleasing himself with little pensive sketches, reading more than usual

perhaps; subdued, like a man who had gone through a bad illness; and by

degrees he would have come back, calmed and healed, and able to take up

his old friendship. But that was impossible now. A change of some kind

or other he must have been compelled to make, even had there been no

personal cause for change. He must work; he must spare; he must recall

himself to a sense of the probation on which he had entered six months

before with a light heart. And the natural thing to do was at the same

time the wisest thing. Rightly or wrongly, the artist, whoever he may

be, trusts in Italy as the country of renovation, the fountain of

strength. Laurie scarcely hesitated as to his alternative. He could stay

no longer where he was; his experiment had failed, his position had

become untenable. The readiest suggestion of all was that one in which

there still lay a certain consolation,--he would go to Rome.

He resolved upon this step before he went to bed, and on the next

morning he began to pack up. Miss Hadley, from the other side, watched

his open windows with a curiosity much quickened by her sister’s

surmises and doubts, and saw, to her amazement, the great canvas moved

from its position in the corner,--a step which she found it difficult to

understand. ‘I suppose he is going to take to his painting again,’ she

said to Jane, when she came home. Jane shook her head, with dubious

looks. The truth was she did not understand it. The most strange of all

possible orders had proceeded that morning from Mrs. Severn’s studio. It

was that she was extremely busy, and that no one was to be admitted. No

one! Miss Jane Hadley had her doubts that, though this was the audible

command, an exception had been made in Laurie’s favour, and that so

unusual a step was taken by the padrona in order to secure to herself,

without interruption, the society of her lover. Though Miss Hadley loved

her friend truly in her way, and had a respect for her, and even

believed in her, this was the evil thought which had crossed her mind;

and consequently she was disposed to scoff at her sister’s suggestions.

But there were soon other facts to report of a still more bewildering

character. A van came to Laurie’s door, and carried off the big canvas;

and a workman in a paper cap became visible to the elder sister’s

curious eyes in the centre of Laurie’s room, packing in a vast

packing-case the young man’s belongings. ‘He is going away!’ Miss Hadley

said, with dismay, when her sister came home. She could have cried as

she said it. He was as good as a play to the invalid who never stirred

out of her parlour. Laurie, with his kindly ways, had made himself a

place in her heart. He had taken off his hat as he came out every day to

the shadow of her cap between the curtains; he had waved his hand to her

from his balcony; he had never found fault with her investigations; and

when he bought the flowers for his window he had sent her some pots of

the earliest spring blossoms to cheer her. She, too, had grown fond of

Laurie. ‘He is going away!’ she said, with the corners of her mouth

drooping. ‘And the very best thing he could do,’ said Miss Jane

decidedly; upon which, though she was a very model of decorum, old Miss

Hadley felt for the minute as if she would have liked to fling her

tea-cup at her sister’s head.

It did not take long to make Laurie’s preparations for this sudden

change. He pushed them on with a certain feverish haste, glad to occupy

himself, and eager to put himself at a distance from the house he could

no longer go to as a privileged and perpetual guest. Somehow Charlotte

Street, though it had two ends like other streets, seemed to converge

from both upon the Square. It suggested the Square every time he looked

out upon it; indeed, all roads led to that door which was shut upon him,

which he knew must be shut. But he had not gone back to hear of the

extraordinary barricade raised by the padrona against the world in

general. Laurie had nobody to consult,--nothing to detain him now. He

did not even see one of the ‘set’ for more than a week, during which all

his preparations were made. The day on which by chance he met Suffolk in

the street was ten days later, when everything was settled. Suffolk

stopped eagerly, and turned with him, and took his arm.

‘What has become of you?’ he said; ‘and what did you mean by sending me

that canvas? After all, I wish you had gone on with it. We waited,

thinking you were coming to explain; and I have called twice, but you

were always out; and you look like a ghost,--what does it mean?’

‘It don’t mean anything,’ said Laurie, with as gay a look as he could

muster, ‘but that I’m off to Rome to-morrow; where, you’ll allow, a man

cannot carry canvases with him measuring ten feet by six. I meant to

have come to bid you good-bye to-night.’

‘Off to Rome!’ cried Suffolk, amazed, ‘without a word of warning? Why,

nobody knows of it, eh? not the padrona, nor any of us? What do you

mean, stealing a march upon your friends like this?’

‘My friends won’t mind it much,’ said Laurie. ‘No; I didn’t mean that. I

should like you to miss me. I rather grudge going, indeed, till I know

how they’ve hung the Saxon Maiden----’

‘Oh, confound the Saxon Maiden!’ said Suffolk; ‘it is you I want to know

about, running off like this without a word. It is not anything that has

happened, Laurie?’

‘What could happen?’ said Laurie, with a forced smile. ‘The fact is I am

doing nothing here. You all set upon me, you know, about that picture;

and I must do something. It is no use ignoring the fact. I am going in

for our old work in the Via Felice. And I shall be in time for the Holy

Week,--it is so late this year;’ he said, with a half laugh, at his own

vain attempt at deception,--quite vain, as he could see, in Suffolk’s

eyes.

‘But you don’t care for the Holy Week,’ said the painter. ‘I don’t

understand you, Laurie. What does the padrona say?’

‘The padrona approves,’ said Laurie. He got out the words without

faltering, but he could not bear any more allusion to her. ‘Paint

something on my poor canvas. I have got fond of it,’ he said. ‘I’d like

to see something on it worth looking at.’

‘I won’t touch it!’ cried Suffolk. ‘By George, I won’t! I’ll beat Helen

if she rubs out a line, whisking out and in. Laurie, think better of it.

I don’t know the set at the Felice now; they are not equal to our old

set. Stay, there’s a good fellow, and paint at home.’

‘I can’t,’ said Laurie; ‘I must not. I will not. And the worst is, you

must take me at my word, and not ask why.’

‘I will never say another syllable on the subject,’ said Suffolk,

humbly, and they walked half a mile, arm in arm, without uttering a

word. This was the first notice Laurie’s friends had of his new

resolution. When he had parted from Suffolk, he went straight, without

pause or hesitation, to Mrs. Severn’s door. It was Forrester who opened

it to him; and Forrester, being a privileged person, paused to look at

Laurie as soon as he had closed the door.

‘You’ve been ill, sir,’ said Forrester; ‘the whites is all green, and

the flesh tints yellow in your face, Mr. Renton. Master was asking about

you just yesterday. Don’t you say a word, sir. I can see as you’ve been

ill.’

‘I can’t answer for my complexion,’ said Laurie; ‘but I’m not ill now,

Forrester. I am going away, and I’ve been awfully busy. I want to see

Mrs. Severn. I won’t disturb your master to-day.’

‘Master’s out, sir,’ said the man, ‘unfortunately; he’s at that blessed

gallery, a hanging or a deciding on the poor gentlemen’s pictures. And a

nice temper he do come home in, to be sure! And Mrs. Severn’s----

engaged, sir,’ said Forrester, making a stand in front of the stair.

‘Engaged!’ said Laurie, aghast.

‘Them’s the words, Mr. Renton,’ said the old man. ‘She’s a designing

them twelve pictures, as far as I can hear. She’s busy, and can’t see

nobody. It’s more than a week since them orders was give. And folks is

astonished. It ain’t her way. But I can’t say but what I approve, Mr.

Renton,’ said Forrester, stoutly; ‘designing of a series is hard work.

They’ve all to hang together, and there’s harmony to be studied as well

as composition. And she ain’t going to repeat herself if she can help it

and, on the whole, I approve----’

‘That will do,’ said Laurie, putting him aside; ‘I will make my own way;

and I will tell Mrs. Severn you did your duty, and stopped me. This

could not include me.’

‘But, Mr. Renton!’ cried Forrester, making a step after him.

‘That is enough,--quite enough,’--said Laurie. ‘It could not include

me.’

But his heart beat heavily as he went up the familiar stair. She had

shut out all the world that she might make sure of shutting him

out,--‘Though she might have known I would not molest her!’ poor Laurie

said to himself, with a swelling heart. It was unkind of the padrona.

Had he not been going away it would have wounded him deeply. He went up

heavily, not with the half-stealthy eagerness of his last visit. It

would not have troubled him had he encountered a dozen Miss Hadleys. ‘I

must see Mrs. Severn alone;’ was what he would have said without

flinching had he met her; but, as it happened, there was no one at all

apprehensive or curious now. The order had been given, and the stream of

callers had stopped, and there was an end of it. He went up without any

haste, his foot sounding dully,--he thought,--through all the silent

house. She would hear him coming, and she would know.

‘Come in,’ said the padrona.

She was standing at her easel, drawing, with a little sketch before her,

putting in the outlines of her future picture. Somehow she looked

lonely, deserted, melancholy; as if the stream of life that had flowed

so warmly about her had met with some interruption. In fact, she had

felt the withdrawal of that daily current more than she could have told;

and she had missed Laurie; and her mind had been full of wondering.

Where was the poor boy? What was he doing? How was he bearing it? This

was the thought that was uppermost in her mind as she put in the

Sleeping Beauty. Somehow the picture was appropriate. Life seemed to

have ebbed from her too, though it was her own doing. She did not feel

quite sure sometimes that it was not a dream; and lo, all in a moment,

without any warning, he appeared standing at the door!

The chalk dropped out of the padrona’s fingers. She trembled in spite of

herself. It took her such an effort to master herself, and receive him

with the tranquillity which was indispensable, that for some moments she

did not say a word. Then she recovered herself, and let the chalk lie

where she had dropped it, and made a step or two forward to meet him. ‘I

am glad you have come,’ she said, holding out her hand. And it was quite

true, notwithstanding that she had given orders to exclude the world for

the sole purpose of excluding him, if he should come.

And thus they met, shaking hands with each other in the same room, under

circumstances quite unchanged, except----

‘I am going away,’ said Laurie. ‘I would not have come,--you know I

would not have annoyed you. You need not have told the servants to keep

everybody out. You might have trusted me.’

‘You know I do trust you, with all my heart,’ she said, ‘and that is why

I tell you I am glad you are come; I am very glad;’ and then she sat

down feeling somewhat breathless and giddy, and pointed him to a chair.

He sat down, too, not knowing very well what he was about; and again

there was a pause.

‘I am going away,’ he said, abruptly. ‘Looking over everything, I found

it would be better on the whole to go away----’

The padrona bowed her head, feeling her guilt;--it was her fault;--how

could she say she was sorry, or appeal against his decision as any other

friend would have done? It was she who was the cause.

CHAPTER VIII.

YOUNG FRANK.

I have already mentioned that Frank Renton, being up in town on the

business of negotiating the change he desired into a regiment of the

line, was taken one evening by his brother Laurie to No. 375, Fitzroy

Square.

It was a thing very lightly done, as so many things are that affect our

lives. ‘Come with me and see the padrona,’ Laurie had said, as the

evening darkened, before they went out to dinner. ‘You’ve heard me talk

of her. She has such charming children.’ This was the first thing it

came into his head to say; for being foolish he could not launch into

praise of herself. And Frank had gone very carelessly, looking with open

eyes of amused wonder at all the artists’ houses, and at the dinginess

of the Square. Alice was playing when they went in, and Frank, sitting

down in the shade before the lamp was lighted, and observing, still with

a half-amused surprise, how familiar his brother was in the house, was

softly penetrated by those unknown strains coming from he could not

tell where, and made by he knew not whom. The door of the great

drawing-room was open, and there came from it the usual gleam of red

firelight, the usual ghostly appearance behind of the curtained windows.

When he had listened for a long time in silence, not feeling himself

quite able to join in the conversation which was going on, Frank at last

took heart to ask who was the musician. The lamp was brought into the

room at this moment, and the padrona turned to him, with a smile as soft

and tender as the music, just dawning about her lips. ‘It is my child,’

she answered, in that full tone of love and pride which comes only out

of the heart of a woman who has a daughter. There was such softness in

the tone, such love and profound complacency and content, that it

touched the young soldier. Somehow it occurred to him for the moment

that there must be some painful defect about the creature whose name

came thus from her mother’s lips--blind, perhaps, or sick, or somehow

not just an ordinary child. Then with a curious impulse, which she could

not have explained, the padrona lifted her voice and called ‘Alice!’

Frank turned to the open door as the music stopped, with unusual

curiosity, expecting some pale vision, with signs of decay in its

countenance, or sightless eyes at the least; when all at once there

looked out upon him, ‘Alice with her curls,’ like a rose between the

falling folds of the vague, dim-coloured curtains, with eyes like stars,

half dazzled, confused with the sudden light, and those sweet tints for

which, as I have said, the beholder was grateful to her. He looked and

looked, and the young man’s eyes were touched as by Ithuriel’s spear. No

man had yet seen in her what, all at once, Frank Renton saw. She was to

him no child, but a woman. He got up off his chair stumbling, confused.

And Laurie was sitting calmly there talking to the mother with this

fairy princess coming to them! It seemed incredible. And, in fact,

Laurie scarcely looked at Alice even as he shook hands with her. He gave

her a kind, half-paternal smile, and went on talking, which was to Frank

such a mystery as no explanation could clear away. Then she sat down and

took her work with the quiet of a child, totally unaware of young

Frank’s reverential admiration. Fortunately he knew a little about

music. ‘Was that so-and-so that you were playing?’ he said, when he had

sat for some minutes looking at her work and listening to Laurie’s

interminable talk with the padrona. The young soldier had a certain

contempt for them as they sat and chattered--talking nonsense about any

stupid subject that came into their heads, when they might have been

talking to Alice, or listening to her music. ‘You must practise a great

deal,’ then said the young man, in the safe obscurity into which his

silence had thrown him--for, though the padrona had received him very

graciously as Laurie’s brother, what was she to find that could be said

to a speechless young Guardsman who probably had not an idea in his

head? Frank, however, had several ideas; but he was discomposed, as most

people are when brought suddenly into the company of familiar friends

who know all each other’s ways of thinking and habits of mind. He could

not strike into the full stream of their conversation, and it was

natural that he should draw towards Alice, who was also left out of it.

‘You must practise a great deal or you could not play so well,’ he

repeated, taking a little courage. And nobody paid any great heed to the

two sitting apart, as it were, in the shade.

‘I am very fond of music,’ said Alice; ‘I like it better than anything;’

and then there was a long pause, and the conversation on the other side

of the table thrust itself into prominence again, and became offensively

audible. There was talk chiefly about pictures of which Frank did not

know very much, and about people of whom he knew nothing--not the kind

of people talked of in society whom he would have known. Laurie had

always had strange friends; but how odd it was to find him in the midst

of a new world like this, and a world so entirely apart and separate

from the known hemisphere! But yet Frank did not find it disagreeable to

sit silent against the wall now that Alice was at the table with her

work. After ten minutes more he made another attempt at conversation.

‘Have you heard Madame Schumann play that?’ he said; and Alice glanced

up at him and softly shook her curls.

‘I have not heard much music,’ she said. ‘We never go out. It bores

mamma going out in the evening. I shall when I am older, perhaps; but

not now.’

‘But if you never go out in the evening, what do you do with yourself?’

said Frank, with some consternation. Upon which Alice startled him

completely by answering, in the softest matter-of-course voice, ‘We have

mostly people with us at home.’

Here Frank came to a dead standstill. He glanced round upon the room,

which, though pleasant, and cheerful, and homelike, bore no appearance

of being adapted for such perpetual hospitality. ‘We have mostly people

with us at home.’ Did they give dinners or dances, or what did they give

in this curious, grey-green, picture-hung, half-lighted place? As if in

answer to this question Mary at that moment came in with the tea,

carrying a vast tray before her, with heaps of cups and saucers,

substantial bread and butter, steaming urn, and all the paraphernalia of

that modern meal. The young Guardsman looked on bewildered to see Alice

rise, in the same calm, matter-of-course way, and rinse the teapot and

make the tea. Was it the tea-party of humble life which he was in for?

Would the guests come in presently and take their seats round the table

and munch their bread and butter? And what if there might be muffins,

perhaps, or buttered toast? Frank would have been amused had not Alice

been there in the midst of it. He would have concluded that his brother

had brought him to make acquaintance with the habits of the aborigines

in these dingy regions out of the world. But then how came this creature

there? He was relieved when he saw little Edith clamber up to her high

chair, and became aware that it was only to be a family party after all.

Frank was not sufficiently philanthropical, being a Guardsman, to

interest himself much in the children and the bread and butter; but by

degrees Alice surmounted all the obstacles of her surroundings, and

began to cast a lovely haze upon the whole scene. He did not say much;

he sat, if the truth must be told, in rather an embarrassed, sheepish

way in his chair against the wall, with very little of the assurance

natural to his profession. But then it must be taken into account that

this was an undiscovered country,--such an America, as Columbus

discovered, full of strange new beings, new customs,--a foreign world to

Frank. He was out of his depth. When the padrona now and then turned to

address him, with a vain attempt to make him comfortable, he felt

himself drawl and yaw-haw as does the ordinary young swell of romance.

And it was evident to him that his brother’s friend gave him up as quite

impracticable. Little Edith, however, was less fastidious. She got down

out of her high chair and placed it close to the stranger, and took him

under her little wing.

‘Sit next to me,’ said Edith, ‘and you shall have some cake. Are you

Laurie’s little brother? You are bigger than he is. Didn’t he say it was

his little brother, Alice? But I always say Harry is my little brother,

and he is a great deal,--such a great deal,--about six feet taller than

me.’

‘And older too,’ said Harry. ‘I am eight and you are six. You’re not six

till your birthday, and Alice is sixteen, and me and Frank----’

‘Nurse says girls are quite different,’ said little Edie. ‘You are only

boys, you two. Are you Mr. Renton, as well as Laurie, Mr. Laurie’s

brother?--how funny it would be to call you that!--or have you another

name all to yourself?’

‘I am Frank,’ said the Guardsman, laughing; and then the boys drew near

him, and Alice looked up smiling from her tea-making, and a certain

acquaintance sprang up. To know that Alice was sixteen on the one

side,--and to know that this young fellow, who gazed and addressed her

in a tone so different from Laurie’s tone, for instance, was Frank,

seemed somehow to give each of them a certain hold on the other. Frank

put down his hat, and drew his chair to the table; and by-and-by they

were all sitting round it, drinking tea and talking.

‘Laurie’s brother is not so stupid as I thought he was,’ the padrona

said afterwards, as she made her _resumé_ of the whole proceedings; and

with that slight remark Mrs. Severn dismissed the matter from her

thoughts. Laurie himself was trouble enough, the foolish fellow; but

that any further complication should arise through Laurie’s brother was

a thing which never entered into her mind.

When the two brothers left the house there was silence between them for

some time. Indeed, little was said till they had got as far as Harley

Street. Then, all at once, Laurie spoke.

‘You were out of your element in the Square,’ he said, with a little

forced laugh. ‘You don’t understand the kind of thing; but I can tell

you it is no small matter to me to have such a house to go to.’ This was

uttered abruptly, and was not at all what he meant to say. To seem to

apologise for the padrona and her house was as far as possible from his

intention, and yet it sounded like an apology in his brother’s ears.

‘I daresay,’ said Frank; and then he too added hastily, with a shade of

embarrassment,--‘She is quite lovely, I think.’

‘No;--do you though?’ cried Laurie, with a mixture of amaze, and

delight, and indignation. ‘I never saw you look at her even, all the

time we were there.’

‘And she plays wonderfully,’ said Frank. ‘Music goes to one’s heart, you

know, coming like that, out of the dark, one can’t tell how. I thought

she must be blind, or consumptive, or something; and then to see a face

like a little rose!’

‘Oh, you mean Alice,’ said Laurie, drawing a long breath of relief, and

amusement, and kindly contempt. Alice was a very nice little thing; but

how it should occur to any one to put her in the first place! To be

sure, the boy was only twenty. Laurie, who was twenty-four, felt the

difference strongly.

‘Who else could I mean?’ said Frank, calmly;--‘there was no other girl

there. But, Laurie, really you ought to mind what you are about. We may

have come down in the world, you know, and seen better days, and all

that; but we need not fall quite out of the habits of gentlemen all the

same.’

‘Am I falling out of the habits, &c.?’ said Laurie, laughing. ‘I am only

a poor painter, my dear fellow. I am not a swell and a Guardsman like

you.’

‘I shan’t be a Guardsman a minute longer than I can help it, and you

know that,’ said Frank, with a little indignation; ‘but I hope I shall

never see a girl like that come into a room without treating her with

proper respect.’

‘Proper respect!’ cried Laurie, much mystified; and then he laughed.

‘Alice is only a child,’ he said. ‘I have known her since she was that

height. She thinks me a kind of old uncle, or godfather, or something.

Yes, of course, she plays charmingly,--but she is only a child all the

same.’

‘A child! she is sixteen,’ said Frank; ‘and lovely, I think. I don’t

know the family, of course; they are your friends; but a young lady

like Miss Severn is generally considered entitled to a little ceremony.

I don’t want to be didactic,’ said the Guardsman, ‘but----’

This remonstrance furnished Laurie with laughter for the rest of the

evening; but Frank did not see the joke. Of course the young lady was

nothing to him. This he explained fully. But it vexed him to think that

his brother was falling into the free and easy habits which, he

supposed, were current among the people who lived in those dingy

streets, where every house boasted a long, central window, and the very

atmosphere was redolent of paint;--beings who lived all their lives in

shooting-coats and wide-awakes,--wild, untrimmed, hairy men, not fit to

come into a lady’s society at any time. People on that level might be

utterly indifferent and irreverent, and treat a woman as they treated

their comrades; but that Laurie should fall into such ways vexed Frank.

This was the chief subject of his thoughts as he bowled down through the

darkness in the twelve o’clock train to Royalborough, where his

battalion was quartered. It was another of the results of his father’s

unfortunate will. Frank had been, as Mr. Renton foresaw, the one who

felt it least. His nominal allowance had always been just what it now

was, and his mother was as ready now as ever to supply him with those

odd five-pound notes which drop in so pleasantly to a youthful pocket.

It made no more difference than his father’s death must have made under

any circumstances. There was no longer a bright and pleasant house to

take his friends to, but that had nothing to do with the will, and was

at the present moment a necessity of nature. And then he had his

profession, and liked it, and might hope for advancement in it. And in

the meantime he had made up his mind to go to India, a proceeding which

had its pleasant as well as unpleasant aspects. He had sold his pet

horse, to be sure, which cost him a pang; but still a man may get over

that. And he was noway banished from the society he had been used to, or

from the kind of life. Nothing was changed with him to speak of, but

everything was changed with Laurie; and as for Ben, he had disappeared

under the waters altogether,--disgusted, or indignant, or furious with

fate. Frank’s heart was heavy as he went back in the dreary ‘last

train,’ dropping people at all the stations,--coming every now and then

to a jarring, tedious stoppage in the blackness of the night. It is not

a cheerful mode of locomotion when a man is alone, and has thoughts

which are the reverse of agreeable. Laurie’s intimacy in the painter’s

house, the accustomed, familiar way in which he sat down amongst all

those children and took his tea, the homely table, the talk in which his

brother was so absorbed as to forget everything,--even common

politeness,--how fatal was all this! Had he gone there, indeed, kindly

as a chance visitor,--as any potentate from Belgravia might look in now

and then, it might have been well; but to become an _habitué_ of such a

house, to give up for it,--as he seemed to be doing,--all the charms of

society, could that be well? ‘Why should it be so?’ Frank asked himself.

No doubt Lady Grandmaison would have invited Laurie all the same,--as,

indeed, she had invited himself, Frank,--notwithstanding the temporary

cloud under which they all were living. No doubt the Barnards and the

Courtenays would have been just as kind as ever. He might have kept up

all his friends, Frank concluded to himself, with the premature prudence

of a young man of society; why shouldn’t he? Nothing but the absence of

a coat or a pair of gloves could have absolutely shut out Laurie Renton

from society; and his coat, Frank felt, was quite presentable, and had

even a flower in it, the extravagant wretch; and yet his world had

become Fitzroy Square!