Laurie’s removal was not accomplished with the passionate haste which distinguished that of his brother Ben. There was no particular hurry about it. The padrona, with the natural impatience of a woman, found a lodging almost immediately, which he saw and approved; but Laurie took his time, and consoled poor Mrs. Brown at Kensington Gore, and found her a lodger in the shape of a ‘real hartis-gentleman,’ as she herself perspicuously expressed it, having felt in her soul from the beginning that Laurie was something of a sham. Her new tenant was a young painter who had made a successful debút at the last Academy, and was for the moment a man whom the picture-dealers delighted to honour. He was ready to take Laurie’s pretty fittings, his contrivances, everything he had done for himself; but Laurie’s good sense deserted him on that point. The money would have been convenient no doubt; but he could not part with the rubbish of his own collecting and contriving, which represented to him{v.1-280} not so much money, but so many moments of amusement and pleasant thoughts. There was not room for half of them in Charlotte Street, where he was going; so he carried his shelves, and stands, and quaint little cupboards, to No. 375, Fitzroy Square, and put them up in every corner he could find, the children hanging on him as he did so in an admiring crowd. So that he got a great deal more good of his belongings than Ben did of the marqueterie and buhl; and his successor furnished the rooms at Kensington Gore with conveniences of a much more expensive kind, and was altogether more splendid, and lavish, and prodigal than Laurie, whose tastes were very unobtrusive. His new lodging in Charlotte Street was on the first floor; the front room,—called the drawing-room,—had three windows in it, one of which was cut up into the wall a few feet higher than the others, giving that direct sky-light which is necessary to a painter; and there was a sleeping-room behind. This was all Laurie’s domain now-a-days, and the rooms were not large. There was a table in the corner near the fireplace, as much out of the way as possible of the great easel and the professional part of the room, where he ate his breakfast, and anything else he might find it necessary to regale himself with at home, in a meek kind of humble way,—under protest, as it were, that he could not help himself. His new landlady’s ideas on the subject of cooking were of the most limited{v.1-281} character. She gave him weak tea and bacon for breakfast without any apparent consciousness of the fact that such luxuries pall upon the taste by constant repetition, and that a diet of toujours perdrix wearies the meekest soul. Laurie thought it most expedient, on the whole, not to inquire into her sentiments in respect to dinner, but swallowed his morning rasher with a grimace, and was, on the whole, ‘a comfortable sort of gentleman,’ the woman reported;—‘not like some as thinks they can’t give too much trouble.’ But he missed the mistress of Kensington Gore. He missed the neat maid, and his boy, who exasperated him in the studio, and kept all his friends in amusement; and it was a different thing looking out from the dreary windows in Charlotte Street upon the dreary houses opposite,—upon the milkman and the potboy wending their rounds, and the public-house at the corner, and the awful blank of gentility in the windows on the other side, to what it used to be when he could glance forth upon the sunny Park from among his flowers, with, even at this time of the year, the old ladies taking their airing, and the nurserymaids under the leafless trees. Nurserymaids and old ladies are not entrancing objects of contemplation except to their respective life-guards and medical men; but still it was better than in Charlotte Street. Miss Hadley lived opposite to him, and was by no means of his opinion; and when she was at home watched with a little amusement for such{v.1-282} glimpses of her neighbour as were to be had. In the morning,—when there was not a fog,—Laurie, to start with, barricaded his windows, leaving only the upper part of the middle one unshuttered, and then set himself to work before his easel with Spartan heroism. Old Miss Hadley, who knew all his story, had her chair near her window, entering into the little drama with zest, and kept her eye upon him. For the first day or two he would remain in this sheltered condition until the afternoon light began to fail, when all at once he would sally forth with an alacrity and air of relief which much amused the watcher. But by-and-by this power of activity began to wane. ‘My dear, he’s getting a little tired,’ the old lady said, with a chuckle, to her sister, a week after Laurie’s arrival. ‘I heard the bolts go about one o’clock, and the window opened; and there he was in his velvet coat, with his palette and all the rest of it. I am sure Mr. Welby never looked so professional; and he has a nice brown beard coming, and I like the looks of the lad,’ said Miss Hadley, who was a soft-hearted old soul.
‘He is not such a lad,’ said Miss Jane, ‘and his beard has been come this twelvemonth at least; but I never thought it would last very long. I hate amateurs.’ For all that, however, she would look up and nod at Laurie, when she came home early and the young man appeared at his window. As the days went on old Miss Hadley found her life quite bright{v.1-283}ened up by the new neighbour, whose proceedings she watched with so good-humoured an interest.
‘He had Shaw the Guardsman to sit to him to-day,’ was her next report; ‘and dreadfully bored the poor boy did look to be sure. I saw the warrior go away, and then our friend stepped out on his balcony and yawned as if his head would have come off.’ Next time the report was of a different character. ‘The boy is getting used to us,’ the old lady said; ‘he has been buying some plants for his window. He stood a long time to-day and watched the Jenkinses getting into their dog-cart. He took off his hat, my dear, when he was going out, when he saw me come to the window. He knows I am your sister, I suppose.’
‘I do not admire his taste watching the Jenkinses,’ said Miss Jane, with a momentary frown of jealousy. She would have been very indignant had any one called her a match-maker, and yet almost without knowing it there had come into her head a little plan about Laurie and ‘the child.’
‘Bless you, he was only amusing himself,’ said the elder sister. ‘I have no doubt it looked very funny to him,—and the fuss and the cloaks, and the bottles sticking out of the basket. They were going to see their married sister at Battersea, my dear. Her husband is a coal-merchant, and I believe they are very well to do. But I am very glad, I must say, that Mr. Renton went opposite to live, and not{v.1-284} at the Jenkinses. So many girls in a house when people let lodgings is not nice; a young man may be inveigled before he knows; and Mrs. Robinson is a very respectable sort of a person; I am very glad he has gone there.’
‘I daresay he thinks it miserable enough,’ said the governess. These little talks occurred every evening; and though Miss Hadley did not confide all the vicissitudes of Laurie’s life to Mrs. Severn, yet the main incidents became generally known ‘in the Square.’ They knew that Shaw had been sitting to him, and that he had been bored, and the incident afforded no small amusement to a circle of admiring friends.
‘It must be Miss Hadley who has betrayed me,’ said Laurie; ‘the fellow has such heaps of talk. I declare I know everything about his family, from the first of his name down to his sister’s little Polly. Little Polly it was. And if a man may not be permitted to yawn after two hours of that——’
‘A man might be permitted to yawn in the midst of it,’ said the padrona, ‘which I am sure you didn’t. But it was droll to rush out into your balcony, and relieve yourself as soon as he was gone.’
‘There is no air in that little hole of a place,’ said Laurie; and then he bethought himself that the other people about him were all of them inmates of similar holes. ‘I mean it’s very nice, you know,’ he added, ‘and close to everything,—schools, and{v.1-285} British Museum, and everything a man can desire. But I am very fond of as much air as I can get.’
‘I always thought this was a very airy neighbourhood,’ said little Mrs. Suffolk, who lived in another of the streets near Fitzroy Square, ‘and so handy for the children, in five minutes they can be in the Park.’
‘One gets never to listen to those fellows,’ said her husband; ‘if you take an interest in them they go and make money of you. Their wives are always ill, and their children dying, and that sort of thing. Glossop’s got your old rooms over at Kensington, do you know, Renton? And come out no end of a swell. I don’t know why, I am sure, unless that he has a friend on the “Sword.”’
‘Not so bad as that,’ said Laurie. ‘Those were two very pretty pictures of his this year.’
‘Oh, ah, pretty enough,’ said the other; ‘if that is all you want in a picture. British taste! But I’d like to know what sort of people they must be who like to hang these eternal simperings on their walls. I believe there are heaps of men who don’t care twopence for art. But to choose bad art where good is to be had, out of mere perverseness!—I don’t believe in that. They pin their faith on the “Sword,” and the “Sword” lies and cheats right and left, and looks after its own friends; and the British public pays the piper. When one thinks of Glossop, that{v.1-286} one has known all over the world, in Laurie Renton’s pretty rooms at Kensington Gore!’
‘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{v.1-287} 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;{v.1-288}—‘you have nothing to do but to go to yo............