‘And Laurie here!’ said the padrona, ‘which is great luck for us. But, my friend, you are mistaken. There are heaps of people, as you say, who prefer bad art to good. It is of no use pretending to deny it;—and,’ Mrs. Severn added with a little sigh, ‘we all trade upon it, I fear, if the truth were told.’
‘No, indeed, I am sure not that,’ said the painter’s wife. ‘There stands one who never does, I say to him a hundred times, “Reginald dear, do think of a popular subject; do paint something for common sort of folks!”—but he never will. They say it is only the nouveaux riches that buy now-a-days,’ Mrs. Suffolk continued in injured tones, ‘or dealers; and we know nobody who writes on the “Sword.” You do, of course, Mr. Renton,—you have been so much in the world.’
‘I met Slasher the other day at the club,’ said Laurie, with a laugh which he could only half restrain. ‘He is not such a bad fellow. If you will let Suffolk bring you to my little place some time, I will show him to you. He does not bite in private life.’
‘Oh, I don’t know that I should like to meet such a man,’ the little woman said, with an anxious glance at her husband; and then she took Laurie a step aside, and became confidential. ‘If you would but make Reginald and him friends, Mr. Renton! I don’t mind speaking to you. Nobody knows what talent Reginald has; and I am so afraid he will get soured with never finding an opening; and he can’t afford to keep up a club like you young men, and we have been so much out of the world. What does it matter studying nature and studying the great masters, and staying out of London till everybody forgets you?’ the poor young woman continued, with tears in her eyes. She was young, and it was hard upon her to keep from crying when she met Laurie’s sympathetic look. ‘It is not so much the money I am thinking of,’ she said; ‘but if Reginald were to get soured——’
‘I’ll get Slasher to meet him directly,’ said Laurie, with eager promptitude; ‘and you may be sure everything I can do——’
‘Oh, thanks!’ said the painter’s wife. ‘It is not that he wants any favour, Mr. Renton, but only an opening; and we have been so much out of the world.’
‘I wonder you don’t get up a Trades-Union, and make a stand,’ said Mrs. Thurston, who was literary. ‘How anything can keep alive that is so badly written as the “Sword,” I don’t know. It is because you are all so eager to see what it says about you, even though you hate it. Just like the articles in all the papers about women! If women were not so curious to see “what’s next,” do you think any one would take the trouble to write all that? Don’t mind it, and you take away its power.’
‘Ah, it is so easy for you,’ cried Mrs. Suffolk;—‘you have nothing to do but to go to your publisher; but what with the Hanging Committee putting all their friends on the line, and those wicked papers that never think of merit, but only of some one the writers know——’
‘That’s enough, Helen,’ said her husband, with an attempt at a smile; ‘you talk as if we minded. But what is the criticism of an ignorant fellow, who does not know a picture when he sees it, to me,—or any one?’ he added, with the slightest half-perceptible quiver of his lip. ‘Constable has just come back from Italy, Renton;—one of our old set;’ and so the talk ran on.
This little party was assembled as before in the great drawing-room. There was a fire now which made it brighter and took away something of its quaintness, and the padrona and her guests had drawn near it, carrying the light and the circle of faces into the centre of the room. Now and then somebody would sing, or play,—but talk was what they all loved best, and music as an interruption of the latter was not greatly cultivated. The padrona herself was always working at something with her swift, dextrous fingers; and the ladies who formed her court had generally brought her work in their pockets, to add to their comfort while they talked. Laurie spent the next half-hour standing with Suffolk before the fire, talking of Italy, where they had met, and of the old set, with all that curious mingling of laughter and sadness which accompanies such recollections. Of ‘the old set’ so many had already dropped by the way, as the passengers dropped through the trapdoors in Mirza’s Vision, while yet the fun of their jokes and their adventures lasted vividly in their comrades’ minds. ‘You remember poor old So-and-so,’ the young men said to each other, looking down with their brown faces on the soft glow of the fire; ‘what fun he was! what scrapes he was always getting into! There was not a painter in Rome who did not turn out the day of his funeral!—and poor Untell, with his bad Italian. What nights those were in the Condotti! There never was a better fellow. Did you hear what an end his was?’ This was how the talk went on,—without any moral in it as of the vanity of human joys; nothing but pure fact, the laughter and the tragedy interlaced and woven together; while the ladies round the lamp with the light on their faces, talked too, but not with such historical calm, of the injustices of the ‘Sword,’ and of the Academy, and of the public; of the advantages of other professions,—literature, for example,—at which its representative shook her head; of the children’s education and their health, and, perhaps, a little of the ills of housekeeping,—subject sacred to feminine discussion. Women do not meet, I suppose, nor do women die, as men do. They had no such melancholy, jovial records behind them to go over,—their talk was of the present and the future,—a curious distinction,—and the padrona’s society numbered always more women than men.