Fortunately the woman of the house was friendly, and the rooms were clean. But the airs of Soho are not as those breezes which come blowing over Yorkshire wolds and woods, with the breath of the German Ocean; nor had they the gay Tuileries garden and the Bois for Master Lovel's airings. Jane Target was sorely puzzled where to take the child. It was a weary long way to St. James's Park on foot; and the young mother had a horror of omnibuses—in which she supposed smallpox and fever to be continually raging. Sometimes they had a cab, and took the boy down to feed the ducks and stare at the soldiers. But in the Park Clarissa had an ever-present terror of being seen by some one she knew. Purposeless prowlings with baby in the streets generally led unawares into Newport-market, from which busy mart Mrs. Granger fled aghast, lest her darling should die of the odour of red herrings and stale vegetables. In all the wider streets Clarissa was afflicted by that perpetual fear of being recognised; and during the airings which Lovel enjoyed with Jane alone the poor mother endured unspeakable torments. At any moment Mr. Granger, or some one employed by Mr. Granger, might encounter the child, and her darling be torn from her; or some accident might befall him. Clarissa's inexperience exaggerated the perils of the London streets, until every paving-stone seemed to bristle with dangers. She longed for the peace and beauty of the country; but not until she had found some opening for the disposal of her sketches could she hope to leave London. She worked on bravely for a fortnight, painting half a dozen hours a day, and wasting the rest of her day in baby worship, or in profound plottings and plannings about the future with Jane Target. The girl was thoroughly devoted, ready to accept any scheme of existence which her mistress might propose. The two women made their little picture of the life they were to lead when Clarissa had found a kindly dealer to give her constant employment: a tiny cottage, somewhere in Kent or Surrey, among green fields and wooded hills, furnished ever so humbly, but with a garden where Lovel might play. Clarissa sketched the ideal cottage one evening—a bower of roses and honeysuckle, with a thatched roof and steep gables. Alas, when she had finished her fortnight's work, and carried half a dozen sketches to a dealer in Rathbone-place, it was only to meet with a crushing disappointment. The man admitted her power, but had no use for anything of that kind. Chromolithographs were cheap and popular—people would rather buy a lithograph of some popular artist's picture than a nameless water-colour. If she liked to leave a couple of her sketches, he would try to dispose of them, but he could not buy them—and giving her permanent employment was quite out of the question.
"Do you know anything about engraving?" he asked.
Clarissa shook her head sadly.
"Can you draw on the wood?"
"I have never tried, but I daresay I could do that."
"I recommend you to turn your attention that way. There's a larger field for that sort of thing. You might exhibit some of your sketches at the next Water-Colour Exhibition. They would stand a chance of selling there."
"Thanks. You are very good, but I want remunerative employment immediately."
She wandered on—from dealer to dealer, hoping against hope always with the same result—from Rathbone-place to Regent-street, and on to Bond-street, and homewards along Oxford-street, and then back to her baby, broken-hearted.
"It is no use, Jane," she sobbed. "I can understand my brother's life now. Art is a broken reed. We must get away from this dreadful London—how pale my Lovel is looking!—and go into some quiet country-place, where we can live very cheaply. I almost wish I had stayed in Belgium—in one of the small out-of-the-way towns, where we might have been safely hidden. We must go down to the country, Jane, and I must take in plain needle-work."
"I'm a good un at that, you know, mum," Jane cried with a delighted grin.