Old Welby, R.A., lived in No. 375 Fitzroy Square. He had lived there or thereabouts all his life; but his immediate dwelling-place was one which he had not occupied for above a year or two, and to which he had come out of charitable, friendly motives which he would have denied reluctantly had he been accused of them. It was poor Severn’s house, and Severn’s widow never would have been able to keep it but for old Welby, who had suddenly become dissatisfied with his rooms, and discovered that the ground-floor of 375 was the very thing he wanted. The old gentleman was very well off and very famous; but he was a bachelor, and had never aspired to the honour and worry of a house of his own. He was a thorough painter, steeped to the lips in that theory of life which is more destructive of social follies and more wedded to liberty than any other. Of all things in this world there was nothing he cared so much for as art. He loved the artist and the artist hand wherever he met with them, though{233} he did not always display his feeling. Mere intelligence, even, when it was bright and genuine, the uncultivated eye that perceived an effect, though in utter ignorance of its why or wherefore, pleased him; but he was very little interested in fine people, or about enthusiasts who would come and rave to him of his lovely pictures. ‘And had never found out the meaning of one of them, sir,’ he would say with a little snort of indignation. He had had his day of society, and had been much petted as an original as well as a great painter, but had borne his distinction very soberly, with a head it proved impossible to turn; and now having surmounted that ordeal, he lived as he liked living, seeing such people as he liked, going out when he pleased, dining when he pleased, dressing according to his own taste, with an utter disregard of anybody’s opinions. He had taken to Laurie as he seldom took to young men, and it was of him that our amateur went to seek counsel,—one of the most foolish things, had Laurie but known it, that he ever did in his life.
The ground-floor of the mansion in Fitzroy Square consisted of the dining-room in the front, an immense dark room with sober-toned walls and great pictures in heavy old frames, which was Welby’s sitting-room. The room beyond, which opened into it by folding doors, was a bare, scantily-furnished ante-chamber, where strangers, and models, and Philistines in general, were sent to wait his pleasure: beyond that{234} again, with a separate passage of its own, was the studio, which was not a part of the original building, but had been added to it by one of the many artists who had inhabited the house. Still farther on, following the plan of the original dwelling-place, was Mr. Welby’s bedroom, which was not very large, and looked into the dingy, smoky London garden, with a few trees in it which made your fingers black when you touched them, but which, nevertheless, flourished and threw out their fresh leaves every spring as if they had been in the depths of the country. It was Forrester, Mr. Welby’s man, who was almost as great an authority on art as himself, who opened the door to Laurie with frank salutation, and showed him into the studio, where his master was. ‘Mr. Renton, sir, come to see you,’ he said with the pleasant confidence that he was making an agreeable announcement, and lingered a moment in the room to shake down the contents of a portfolio which bulged inharmoniously and wounded his sensitive eye. ‘I told you, sir, as them Albert Doorers you went and bought was too big for any of the books,’ he said with a gentle reproach. ‘Then go and order some bigger,’ retorted his master; and with this little episode Laurie’s salutations were broken. Mr. Welby was not at work. He was looking over some tiny little scraps of drawings which were worth a great deal more than their weight in gold, carefully examining a frayed edge here and there, mounting them with his own hands,{235} caressing them as if they had been his children. The studio was a great, solemn, stately place, not like Laurie’s little shed. There was a rich old mossy Turkish carpet on the floor, and wonderful pieces of old art-furniture worth a fortune in themselves. Two or three easels stood about, one bearing a picture, set there clearly for purposes of exhibition; and another honoured by a pure white square of canvas without a line upon it. The picture was not Welby’s own. He worked but little now-a-days, and that little only when the inspiration was upon him. It was by an old Italian master little known, who was the R.A.’s special pet and protégé. He had been pointing out its beauties to some bewildered visitors only that morning, who would much rather have seen a Welby, even in the most fragmentary condition, than the curious, quaint Angelichino which required a very profound artistic taste to understand. Nobody knew whether old Welby’s admiration for his pet master was genuine, or was his way of jeering at a partially educated amateur public. That and his pure white canvas were his favourite show-pieces, and these accordingly were the most prominent objects in the studio when Laurie went in. The painter himself was a little man with refined features, but many wrinkles; his eyes were very keen and bright under the shaggy mobile eyebrows with which he almost talked, and the colour on his cheek was as fresh as a winter apple. His hair was almost white, and so was his beard, but yet he{236} was not old. He had a black velvet bonnet on his white locks,—not a skull-cap, but a round bonnet such as the Dutch painters wear in their pictures,—and a velvet coat; and was not above adding,—it was apparent,—a skilful touch to the picturesqueness of his appearance by means of dress. Such was the man who held out both his hands to Laurie, with a half foreign warmth mingled with his English calm. ‘Ah, Renton, I am glad to see you,’ he said; ‘a young fellow like you in September is a rarity: and I wanted some one to look at my little Titians. I picked them up in Venice for an old song. There is where you boys should go. Such lights, such reflexions! Look here, my dear fellow,—what do you say to that?’
Laurie gazed and applauded as was expected of him; but somehow, though he had been moderately cheerful before, the sight of this life which was no life filled him suddenly with an uncalled-for depression. To go wild about a scrap of paper with some pencilled lines made how many hundred years ago, and never to think of the lives getting wrecked, the hearts getting broken round you! This was what Laurie suddenly thought,—with great injustice, as was natural,—and felt disposed to walk away again on the spot without betraying the troubles of which the other was unconscious. ‘The padrona would have known before I had said a word,’ he said to himself in his heart.
Whether Mr. Welby, whose eye was keen enough, whatever his sympathy might be, read his young{237} friend’s thoughts at once it would be impossible to tell. If he did he showed no feeling for them. He went on calmly to the end of his new acquisitions, pointing out their beauties; and then when Laurie was sick and faint, and felt that he hated Titian, put them all together in a most leisurely way and locked them up in a drawer of a beautiful ebony cabinet all inlaid with silver. Then he returned to his visitor and drew a chair to a table and pointed to one near him. ‘Come and tell me all about it,’ he said with the most sudden change in his tone.
‘Ah, you have heard!’ cried Laurie, half indignant, half mollified.
‘I have heard nothing,’ said the painter; ‘but I see you have brought a heap of troubles to cast down at your neighbour’s door. Come, let us have them out.’ Whereupon poor Laurie told his story, brightening as he told it. Curiously enough, when he brought himself face to face with his misfortunes, the burden of them always was lightened for him,—a case so much unlike what it is with ordinary men. When he stood at a distance from them, so to speak, they swelled into great mystic, devouring giants; but they were only manageable human difficulties, and no more, when he faced them near. ‘I must take to work in earnest,’ said Laurie, ‘that’s all, so far as I am concerned. It is worse for Ben; but fortunately, as I have a profession——’
‘Have you a profession?’ Mr. Welby broke in{238} abruptly, looking Laurie, without a shadow of a smile, in the face, as if moved by genuine curiosity; and the young man gave a little nervous smile.
‘You thought I was amateur all over,’ he said, ‘and I daresay I deserved it. But don’t tear me to pieces altogether; that stage of existence is past.’
‘I asked for simple information,’ said the R.A. ‘If you have a profession now is the time to stick to it. I thought you were only a virtuoso; but if you have really been brought up to anything——’
‘You make me feel very small,’ said poor Laurie, blushing like a girl up to his hair. ‘I have not been brought up to it, I know. I have been a virtuoso merely, but I am not too old to begin to work in earnest. And there is nothing I love like art.’
‘Art!’ said Mr. Welby, with great strain and commotion of his eyebrows. He gave his shoulders a little shrug, and he talked volumes with those shaggy brows. Laurie felt himself scolded, pushed aside as a puny pretender.
‘I did not mean to say anything so very presumptuous,’ he said with momentary youthful petulance, in answer to this silent lecture; and then added, with equally sudden youthful compunction, ‘I beg your pardon. I do want your advice.’
‘Art!’ repeated the R.A. with a little snort. ‘You had much better take to a crossing at once. I went at it, sir, when I was twelve years old. I never had a thought in my noddle but pictures. I’ve gone{239} here and there and everywhere to study my trade; and after fifty years of it, sir,’ cried the Academician, springing suddenly to his feet, seizing a canvas which stood against the wall and thrusting it upon one of the vacant easels up to Laurie,—‘look at that!’
It was the beginning of a sketch half smeared over. One exquisite pair of eyes, looking out as from a mist of vague colour, seemed to look reproachfully upon their creator; but there certainly was an arm and leg also visible, of which Laurie felt like poor Andrea in Mr. Browning’s wonderful poem, that if he had a piece of chalk——. Welby, R.A. was growing old. He knew it perfectly, and perhaps in his soul was not sorry; but when he saw the signs of it on his canvas it went to his heart.
‘Look at that!’ he said, with a sort of savage triumph; ‘drawing any lad in the Academy would be ashamed of!—after fifty years as hard work as ever man had. I might have been Lord Chancellor in those fifty years. I might have sat on the wool-sack or ............