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!