Mrs. Oliphant

Nothing could be more satisfactory in every way than the notice in the ‘Sword.’ It was not eloquent, nor too long, and Slasher was pleased. ‘By Jove, Laurie, I was afraid you’d go in for fine writing, or for chaff, which is as bad,’ he said, with an air of relief. And it was very clear and distinct as to Suffolk’s merits. It made such a commotion through the whole district round Fitzroy Square as has seldom been equalled, except just at the opening of the Academy. The paper was lent about almost from house to house. ‘Have you seen what the “Sword” says of Suffolk’s picture?’ one would say to another. ‘I hear it was all through Laurie Renton.’ It almost seemed to Laurie as if people looked at him more respectfully in the streets. At all events, the fellows at Clipstone Street showed a difference in their manner; and yet there were some even there who shook their heads. ‘He would never have made much by art,’ said Spyer, who went now and then, and drew for an hour or two, by way of keeping himself up, ‘or I should have been sorry; the pen and the pencil don’t agree. But it’s a good thing for Suffolk. The dealers are beginning to look after him. It’s enough to make a man sick, by Jove! years of work go for nothing, when a paltry half-dozen words in a newspaper——! If I was a young fellow like the most of you, I’d do something to put a stop to that.’

‘What can any one do put a stop to it?’ said one of the young men. ‘We have no private patrons now-a-days. We have only got the public and the press, to do our best with them. Laurie Renton draws very well for an amateur; I hope he will not end in the “Sword.”’

‘Laurie Renton was born an amateur,’ said Spyer; ‘he never was anything better, and couldn’t be. Let him take to writing. That’s what heaps of people do after coquetting with art. He may make something of that; but he never will paint a picture that has any chance to live.’

‘He draws very well, all the same,’ said Laurie’s defender. But on the whole, though it gained him an amount of respect and importance among them, his little attempt at literature did not raise Laurie’s reputation. It looked like a defection to the painters round him. Though it was but for once, and took up but two columns in the ‘Sword,’ he was given up as having gone over to literature, which, in the opinion of the Clipstone Street fellows, was a very easy and well-rewarded trade. Suffolk himself did not quite know what to think. He lost not a moment in going to see his critic, and thanking him for the good word he had said for him. But yet he was a little unwilling to acknowledge that it was Laurie’s paper which brought that picture-dealer to see him. The very next week after, the ‘Looker-on’ had a notice of the Hydrographic, and followed Laurie’s lead, praising the picture with still greater effusion than he had allowed himself; and even Mrs. Suffolk, when she saw this, was moved in her heart by a momentary feeling that Laurie had been very measured and even cold, in his approbation. She was grateful, and so was her husband,—but——. There was a degree of pleasure in their satisfaction with the ‘Looker-on,’ which was wanting in their gratitude to Laurie. Gratitude is a cumbrous thing to move about with. And Laurie felt that even the padrona expected him, now he had begun, to go on writing articles. One morsel of print implied to all these innocent people an engagement on the ‘Sword’ at least, and ready entry into literature in general. If he had gone on writing, and stood up like a man for his friends, the society which surrounded him would have felt that he had done his duty. But there seemed to all his comrades a certain cowardice in contenting himself with one effort. That he should have exerted himself on Suffolk’s account was quite comprehensible; but to stop there, and do nothing further, and say no good word for anybody else! It was that he did not choose to take the trouble, people thought,—not even for the padrona;—for nobody suspected that Laurie would have been torn by wild horses rather than have put her sacred name into profane print. This was a refinement of sentiment which no man could be expected to enter into. Mrs. Severn herself was perhaps a little disappointed too. It would have been but natural that she, his closest friend, to whom he came with all his troubles, should reap the benefit of the pains she had taken in getting him to write; but never a word in celebration of the padrona’s pictures came into the ‘Sword.’ ‘He does not care for them, I suppose,’ she said to herself with a little sigh, not taking it unkindly, but with a doubt which clouded her sunny sky sometimes,—a secret suggestion in her mind that her pictures did not deserve admiration. She sighed, poor soul, because she could not make them better, not because it was not in her heart to conceive of higher things. But then she could not afford to wait and think, and collect her full strength, and do her very best. Sometimes she pulled at the tether that bound her, with that impulse towards excellence which is in every sensitive nature. But she could not stop long enough in her ordinary work to achieve anything beyond it. She thought Laurie did not consider her pictures worth talking about, and contented herself without any bitterness. He was not doing what in the merest commonplace way he might have done for her; but the padrona, who was fond of Laurie, did for him what few painters are disposed to do for one another,—she offered him a share in the one special piece of goods which no artist likes to share;—she had the magnanimity to send him a note to Charlotte Street, in the end of March, on one of those coldest of spring mornings, to come and meet her patrons, the Riches of Richmont, at lunch.

The padrona was not given to the writing of notes, nor indeed had she much occasion so far as Laurie was concerned, who seldom was absent from the Square for an entire day. But he had felt, without knowing how, a certain difference in his reception since the day on which he wrote his paper at Mrs. Severn’s writing-table. Not that she was less kind or less interested in him;—perhaps it was, though the young man did not think of that, that there was always somebody there, and that the third person, instead of keeping in the background, was brought into the conversation, and spoiled it. Perhaps Mrs. Severn, too, thought the interloper spoiled it. Talk is pleasant, a quattr’ occhi; but then the interloper was needful. This depressed Laurie’s spirits in spite of himself. There was not much that was exhilarating in his prospects generally. Nothing more had come of his literary ambition after that one paper, and his work as an artist went on by fits and starts, with no particular aim in it to spur him on; and his friends, who were all in the heat and fervour of their work for the exhibition, naturally felt that a man who was not preparing for the Academy, who had no share in their white heat of excitement as to the decision of the Hanging Committee, was still something of an outsider. And a cloud had risen on his intercourse with the Square. Laurie was low, and felt despondent about affairs in general. And the chilly spring and the east winds affected his—temper, he said. Probably it was something else besides his temper that was affected. He had begun to say to himself that he was a useless wretch, and not good for much, and that it was ridiculous to hope that he could ever make any mark in the world; and would come home from seeing his friends of nights, who were all so busy, with a certain sensation of misery. The padrona’s pictures had been put into their frames, though she was still working at that one for Mr. Rich, and her studio was beginning to get freshened up and decorated in preparation for the private view, which every painter affords to his or her friends and patrons. Even old Welby had taken down the white canvas and the Angelichino, and placed two of his own pictures to have the final touches given to them and to be exhibited before they went to the Academy. As for Suffolk, he was working with a kind of passion at the big picture which had been so unsparingly criticised; the canvas was as big as that one of Laurie’s, on which the chalk outlines still lingered,—and there were but two figures in it. The maid in the low arched doorway, in her white kirtle, was dismissing her lover with an inexorable sweetness and sadness; the young man was resisting, and refusing to be dismissed, his dark face glowing with love, and trouble, and angry protest against fate. They were the representatives of two races, hostile, yet fated to mingle; and there was in the picture, moreover, a deeper issue,—that struggle of love and duty which it is sometimes best for the world should not be decided on duty’s side. Laurie would stand and look at it, and wonder why he could not have done it as well. Sometimes a vision of the Edith of his imagination, with a still deeper force of expression in her face, would flit across this canvas; but he had discrimination enough to know that Suffolk, in his place, would have painted that Edith had all the world been against him. After all, it was his own fault, but that was no particular consolation; and he felt himself left outside, out of their calculations, almost out of their sympathy, at this particular crisis of fate, when everybody was too much excited about his own luck, and his neighbour’s, to have leisure to think of the rest of the world. The moment for sending in to the Academy was like the eve of a great battle in Fitzroy Square and its environs; and Laurie, who was not even a volunteer to come in the mÊlÉe, could not but find himself sometimes out of place among those excited groups, with their one subject. He was interested in their fate; but he was not himself putting his own to the touch—and he was a little low in consequence, and heartily wished the crisis over, and things going on again in their usual way. Let who would object, Laurie said to himself, with a kind of desperate resolution, he would have something to send next year.

It was while he was full of these melancholy thoughts that the padrona’s little note came to him. He had been there the night before, and Miss Hadley had been present,—even in the studio, to which, in former times, she never dreamt of penetrating. To be sure, there was a kind of a reason for that now in the renovation that everything was undergoing; but still it was rather hard never to be able to say a word to one’s friend, never to receive an expression of her opinion or of her kindness, without Miss Hadley’s keen eyes upon one’s face. And Laurie had grown almost angry at this perpetual intrusion. He was idling over one of his school studies when Mrs. Severn’s note was brought to him. It was the briefest little note,—but at least Miss Hadley had not interfered with that.

‘Come,’ it said, ‘and lunch with us at two, and meet the Riches. They have just sent me word they are coming to see my pictures. They are my great patrons, and they may be of use to you. I will tell them who you are,—a Grand Seigneur turned painter,—and they will be immensely interested. Don’t laugh at them; they are such good souls.

‘You were a little cross, do you know, the other day? and I cannot have you cross. We are all so busy there is no time for talk.

‘M. S.’

This was the note, and there was not much in it. It was the padrona’s soft heart which had made her add that last little coaxing, half-apologetic sentence, and perhaps it was foolish of her. But then, though it was certainly necessary that Laurie should be cured,—and that without mercy,—of any foolish notions that might have stolen into his foolish young head, still for one moment, once in a way, it was a comfort to be free of Miss Hadley; and she had said nothing that his mother might not have said. But perhaps Mrs. Severn would not have been so sure of the perfect judiciousness of her words had she seen how Laurie lighted up under them, and expanded into content. It was eleven then, and his invitation was for two; but yet he decided it was best to send a note in return. It is a species of communication which is very attractive sometimes. Laurie jumped at it with an exhilaration for which he did not attempt to account. It was a different thing altogether from those other little notes conveying mamma’s messages, which he still preserved somewhere; but not, it must be confessed, with such lively feeling as he once did. Quite a different matter! It was his friend who had written to him now,—only a dozen words, and yet herself was in them,—herself, always full of kind thought, of that gracious interest in him, wanting to help him on though he was so unsatisfactory, finding fault with him in that soft, caressing way, which was sweeter than praise. Laurie,—foolish fellow,—put away his work, and spent half-an-hour of the short time that was to elapse before he should see her in writing the following note. It could have been written in five minutes; but there was, it cannot be denied, a certain pleasure in lingering over it, and a certain skill was required to put a great deal of meaning into few words. He did not think he had succeeded, after all, when it was written. But here it is:—

It is not to be supposed that Laurie wrote ‘your’ in plain letters. He made a hieroglyphic of it. It might have been only ‘&c.;’ in short, it was as like that as anything else. He was beguiled into the use of the pronoun, he did not quite know how, as he hung over it with his pen in his hand like a pencil, anxious to add just a touch somewhere, as might have been done in the line of the lip or the droop of an eyelid, to express what he was feeling. It was of purpose and intention that he made it undecipherable. Perhaps she would find it out; and if not, still at least he had expressed himself, which was always something. He was not thinking of any result, or anything that might come of it, as Miss Hadley did. At the present stage such an idea would have been simple profanity. He did not think of it at all. He was her disciple, her servant, her subject. That she should reverse the position and be his, and subject to him, was an idea which had never entered Laurie’s mind. It would indeed, as we have said, have appeared sheer profanity to him. Such delicacies of feeling do not come within the range of the Miss Hadleys of life. And so Laurie made his hieroglyphic, expressive of the deepest devotion, and felt his heart and his face expand with a delicious softness, and put on his hat, and himself gave the note to the maid-servant in the Square. It was but a few steps round the corner; and when he was out, he went a few steps farther and got himself a lily of the valley to put in his coat. It was still early, and the flower cost him as much as a meal; but when a young man’s heart gives a sudden jump in his bosom, reasonably or unreasonably, it would be hard if he could not give utterance to his satisfaction with himself and the universe in general by so simple an expedient as a flower in his coat. And at the same time he ordered some pots of the same lilies to be sent to the Square, not for that day, but for to-morrow, on which Mrs. Severn was to exhibit her pictures to her friends before sending them to the Academy. This little matter occupied the morning until it was time to present himself at the Square. A very fine carriage stood before No. 375 when he reached the door, with a gorgeous coat-of-arms on the panel, and liveries and hammer-cloth, which looked like a duke’s at least. The big footman stared superciliously at Laurie as he went up the steps. He was but ‘a poor hartis’ it was evident to that splendid apparition. The patron had arrived with all the pomp which ought to attend such a celestial visitor, and naturally the house from top to bottom bore evidence of a certain excitement. Forrester, in his best coat, opened the door to Laurie, his face beaming with cordiality and smiles. ‘I can’t say as he knows much, Mr. Renton,’ said Forrester, ‘but he’s a stunning one to buy; and I wouldn’t take no notice, sir, if I was you, of his little ways,—nor the lady’s neither, sir,’ said the old man. Laurie laughed and nodded in answer to this advice, without any distinct idea what Mr. Rich’s little ways might be; and so walked into the great drawing-room, which it was strange to see by daylight, full of the grey spring atmosphere, out of which an east wind had taken all the colour. The white curtains hung over the long windows; the fire burned with a little cheerful noise; and the padrona, in her black dress, sat on a sofa beside a rich, rustling, luxurious woman, fifteen or twenty years older than herself. Mrs. Severn’s figure had filled out into the gracious fulness of matronhood. She was not a sylph, like her child; but she looked something like a sylph beside the vast form on the sofa. And in front of her stood a little man, very plump and rosy, with a double-eyeglass in his hand. The padrona looked a little flushed and a little excited. Perhaps it is not in human nature to receive unmoved a visit from a patron.

‘This is Mr. Renton,’ she said, as Laurie came in. ‘Mr. Laurence Renton, Mrs. Rich;’ and, to Laurie’s great surprise, the large lady got up from the sofa to shake hands with him, which was a great deal more than the padrona did. Mrs. Rich was very large and very wealthy, and looked as if she might be rather oppressive; but, nevertheless, she had been smiling very benignly on the padrona, and Laurie consequently saw some good in her face.

‘Mr. Renton, I ought to know you, for we are almost neighbours in the country,’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘Don’t you know Richmont? Ah, I daresay you have been a great deal from home, like so many young men. Mr. Rich, Mr. Renton has not seen Richmont. It is only six months since we took possession. Mr. Rich bought it for the situation, and gave I am ashamed to say how much money for it; and then the house wanted everything done to it,—new rooms built, and I can’t tell you all what. I believe your mamma does not visit anywhere, Mr. Renton. She is a great invalid, I hear; and of course, unless she was so kind as to signify a wish, I could not call first. But I am sure if you are at Renton when we are there, it will give us the greatest pleasure to see you at Richmont.’

‘Thanks,’ said Laurie, feeling rather aghast. He did not know what more to say till a half-comic, appealing glance reached him from the padrona’s eyes. Then he bestirred himself. ‘I have been a long time from home,’ he said, ‘and at present my mother goes nowhere; but I don’t know,—pardon me,—where Richmont is. I am so stupid about localities,—I never know anything that is not close to my eye.’

‘It was called Beecham once,’ said the rich woman; ‘but we are not the old family;—we are the new family, Mr. Renton; and Mr. Rich thinks it only right, when he has bought it, to give it his own name. We are not ashamed of being new people. I have just been talking to our friend here about painting one of the rooms for us,—in panels, you know. She is so clever. I never knew a woman so clever; but that is between you and me,’ said the patroness, patting the painter patronisingly on the arm. ‘She does not hear a word we are saying. I never would tell her she was anything out of the ordinary to her face.’ Such were the astounding manners and customs of the new species of humanity to which Laurie had been unexpectedly presented. It took him half-an-hour at least to realise the unfamiliar being. No doubt there are patrons in England of the type known in old days, when one monarch leaned on his painter’s shoulder, and another picked up his painting-brush. But these are chiefly patrons of the old masters, not of the new; and Mr. Rich and his wife were the specimens best known in Fitzroy Square. When they went in to luncheon the padrona looked more and more flushed, though Forrester was present to wait, looking as solemn as any family butler, and listening with a sore heart,—but no outward token,—to Mr. Rich’s views about art. He had his views, too, as well as his wife, though he was not so immediately audible. It was when he had swallowed some wine that he found his tongue, and then Mrs. Rich was silenced by the more influential stream.

‘Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Renton,’ he said. ‘We’d have been very glad if your mother had come to see us. It would have done her no harm, and it might have done Mrs. Rich a little good. We don’t pretend to be above that sort of thing. But of course all this fuss about the will must have been hard upon you. I’m told you’re one of the rising young men of the time. Stick to that. You may buy houses and lands, but you can’t buy talent. I’ll be very glad to go and see anything you may have to show. If our friend Mrs. Severn is to be trusted,—and I’ve always found her to be trusted, sir,—her eye is so true,—you’ve got something that will suit me very well; and I hope we shall know each other better before we part.’

‘I did not mean that Mr. Renton had anything to show this year,’ said the padrona. Laurie had never seen her so embarrassed. Was it that the people were overpowering?—or was it——? But there was no time to cogitate possibilities in the midst of this stream of talk.

‘Mr. Renton must come and see us at Richmont?’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘He must come with you, some day, Mrs. Severn. I have got some of her sweet pictures hung in my morning room; and she has been so kind in her suggestions about the furniture. It is such a thing to have an artist’s eye; and such pretty eyes too,’ added the stout lady, in an audible aside to Laurie, who was seated next to her. ‘Don’t you think so? To me she is prettier than ever she was. She is like Alice’s sister. She looks young,—and she is young,—and to think of all she has done!’

Laurie sat by her, and never said a word. He could not pay compliments to the padrona as a mere indifferent spectator might have done, entering into the fun of the situation. And Mrs. Severn sat at the head of the table, with a flush of embarrassment on her cheek. But perhaps even she was not so sensitive as Laurie; and they were patrons, and brought her commissions,—and they were bread! These are mean recommendations, no doubt, but they have a wonderful effect.

‘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!