The visit began inauspiciously. When he had passed the ivy-clad turreted church, which was the one picturesque object on the road from the station, he was back in the old familiar mesh of gray streets, any one like any other, with rows of shabby semi-genteel stone-fronted houses, exactly alike, broken at corners by baker-shops and green-grocers. The August afternoon was depressed, with misty, sputtering rain. A few tradesmen’s carts rattled forlornly down the drab avenues of apathetic houses. A diminutive barrel-organ wheezed a lively air. Never had his street seemed so hopeless. His ardor grew chill.
He paused before the door of the little studio where he had painted his first success—“Motherhood.” The discolored wood—set in the blankness of a long brick wall—was scrawled over with chalk inscriptions and sketches by the urchins of the neighborhood. The house was round the corner, and, after a melancholy moment, he walked listlessly towards the front gate, swung it on its creaking hinges, and mounted the chipped stone steps, washed ashen-gray by the drippings of rain.
There was a new face, heavy and smudged, under the ill-adjusted cap of the maid-of-all-work who opened the door, and as he entered the narrow hall the sickly smell of boiled cabbage saluted his nostrils, and justified him to himself. But he was grimly embarrassed at having to explain himself to the girl.
“Is your mistress in?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Will you wait in the drorin’-room, sir? What name, sir?”
He felt mortified and a whit ashamed. The servant’s ignorance was an unconscious rebuke that counterbalanced the boiled cabbage.
“Oh, tell her Matthew,” he said, flushing. “She’ll know.”
“Yes, sir.” And the girl’s cap, stuck on askew for the edification of unexpected company, disappeared down the kitchen stairs.
He would have liked to brush majestically past her, but delicacy prevented so abrupt an intrusion upon his wife in the recesses of domesticity. His coming was already sufficient surprise. A few hours ago he himself had not foreseen that a swamping wave of moral emotion would sweep him homeward. He walked about the room, morbidly fascinated by the flashy vases with the hand-painted shepherds, and wondering what Rosina would say if he made away with them, as decency demanded. To his bitter amusement he heard her voice from the passage remonstrating with Billy—in a very audible whisper—for the servant’s indiscretion in admitting to the drawing-room a stranger who might do havoc among her cherished possessions.
“Goodness knows what he may not pocket,” she grumbled, uneasily, as she approached the door.