‘Then somebody has been undermining us, my dear madam,’ said the R. A. ‘Somebody has been egging up the foolish boy to make a name for himself, and win fame, and so forth. Forrester brings me word that he has begun a great picture. High art, life-size, Edith finding the body of Harold. The young fellow must be mad.’
‘Edith finding the body of Harold!’ repeated Mrs. Severn, bewildered;—and then, what with her personal agitation, what with the curious anti-climax of this announcement after her fears about Laurie, the padrona, we are obliged to confess, burst into a sudden fit of nervous laughter. She laughed till the tears came into her eyes; and, to be sure, old Welby had no way of knowing how near to the surface were those tears before.
‘I confess I do not see the joke,’ he said, slowly. ‘Of course I have nothing to do with the boy. If he goes and makes a fool of himself, like so many others, it is nothing to me. Indeed, I don’t know who advised him to come here, where one can’t help seeing what he’s about. He would have been a great deal better, and out of one’s way, had he stayed at Kensington Gore.’
‘He was paying four guineas a-week for his rooms at Kensington Gore,’ said the padrona, meekly. ‘It was I who advised him to come to Charlotte Street. A man cannot live on nothing. If he had given all his income for rent——’
‘When I was like him I lived on nothing,’ said the R.A.; ‘but young men now-a-days must have their clubs and their luxuries. Why, what education has he had that he should begin to paint pictures? A few lines scratched on a bit of paper, or dabs of paint on a canvas do well enough for an amateur; but, good heavens, a painter! You don’t see it, ma’am; you don’t see it! Women never do. You think it’s all genius, and nonsense. You will tell me it’s genius that makes a Michael Angelo, I suppose; but, I tell you, it’s hard work.’
‘I do see it,’ said the padrona. ‘Sit down, please, and don’t be angry with me. I see it very well; but I can’t help laughing all the same. It is Laurie’s way. He will never be a Michael Angelo. It is so like him to go and set up a great picture to surprise us. One of these days, if you take no notice, he will come like Innocence itself, and invite us to go and look at it. I was afraid something was wrong with him; but this quite explains why he stayed away.’
‘And that is all a woman cares for!’ said Mr. Welby. ‘The boy’s quite well, and his absence accounted for; and what does it matter if he makes an ass of himself?’ Here the painter rose, and made a little giro round the room, pausing at the easel with a certain vindictiveness. ‘I wouldn’t give much for that baby’s chances of life,’ he said. ‘The creature will be a cripple if it grows up. It has no joints to its legs; and that little girl’s got her shoulder out. There’s where the elbow should come,’ he went on, making an imaginary line in the air. It was the same picture he had made a pretty speech about when he came into the room, from which it may be perceived that Mrs. Severn’s terror of her lodger’s visit was not without cause.
‘I shall be so glad if you tell me what you see wrong,’ the padrona said, with, I fear, more submission than she felt.
‘Wrong, ma’am,—it’s all wrong!’ cried the R.A.; ‘there’s not a line that could not be mended, nor a limb that is quite in its right place;—but I couldn’t paint such a picture for my life,’ Mr. Welby continued, with a sudden melting in his voice; ‘nor anybody else but yourself. The body’s out of drawing, but the soul’s divine. Light!—nonsense,—the light’s all as it ought to be; the light’s in that woman’s face. I don’t know how to better it. But this is not what we were talking of,’ he continued, suddenly turning his back on the picture. ‘We were talking of Laurie Renton. What is to be done about this ridiculous boy?’
The padrona was a little disturbed. She was overwhelmed by the praise, feeling all the sweetness of it; and she was pricked, and stung to smarting by the blame. It cost her a considerable effort to master herself, and to bring back her thoughts even to Laurie Renton. ‘You must not be too hard upon him,’ she said, with her voice a little tremulous. ‘A mind that has any energy in it must work in its own way.’ This was said half on Laurie’s account, no doubt, but also half on her own, after the assault she had sustained. ‘I think it would be best not to say too much about his big picture. He will read your disapproval in your eye.’