He forgot how fair some poisonous weeds are, how beautiful the scarlet berries of the nightshade look when they star the brown autumn hedges.
So La Chicot went her way triumphantly. There was no danger to life or limb for her in the new piece—no perilous ascent to the sky borders. She drank as much brandy as she liked, and, so long as she contrived to appear sober before the audience, Mr. Smolendo said nothing.
“I’m afraid she’ll drink herself into a dropsy, poor thing,” he said compassionately one day to a friend at the Garrick Club. “But I hope she’ll last my time. A woman of her type could hardly be expected to draw for more than three seasons, and La Chicot ought to hold out for another year or so.”
“After that, the hospital,” said his friend.
Mr. Smolendo shrugged his shoulders.
“I never trouble myself about the after-career of my artists,” he answered pleasantly.
XV
Edward Clare Discovers a Likeness
“Hazlehurst Rectory, February 22nd.—Dear Ned—Do you remember my saying, when Laura refused to have a proper wedding gown, that her marriage was altogether an ill-omened business? I told her so, I told you so; in fact, I think I told everybody so; if it be not an unpardonable exaggeration to call the handful of wretched dowdier and frumps in such a place as Hazlehurst everybody. Well, I was right. The marriage has been a complete fiasco. What do you think of our poor Laura’s coming home from her honeymoon alone? Without even so much as her husband’s portmanteau! She has shut herself up in the Manor House, where she lives the life of a female anchorite, and is so reserved in her manner towards me, her oldest friend, her all but sister, that even I do not know the cause of this extraordinary state of affairs.
“ ‘My dear Celia, don’t ask me anything about it,’ she said, when we had kissed each other, and cried a little, and I had looked at her collar and cuffs, to see if she had brought a new style from Paris.
“ ‘My dearest, I must ask you,’ I replied; ‘I don’t pretend to be more than human, and I am burning with curiosity and suppressed indignation. What does it all mean? Why have you challenged public opinion by coming home alone? Have you and Mr. Treverton quarrelled?’
“ ‘No,’ she said, decisively; ‘and that is the last question about my married life that I shall ever answer, Celia, so you need not ask me any more.’
“ ‘Where did you part with him?’ I asked, determined not to give way. My unhappy friend was obstinately silent.
“ ‘Come and see me as often as you like, so long as you do not talk to me of my husband,’ she said, a little later. ‘But if you insist upon talking about him, I shall shut my door upon you.’
“ ‘I hear he has acted most generously with regard to the settlements, so he cannot be altogether bad,’ I said—for you know I am not easily put down—but Laura was adamant. I could not extort another word from her.
Perhaps I ought not to tell you this, Ned, knowing what I do about your former affection for Laura; but I felt that I must open my heart to somebody. Parents are so stupid that it’s impossible to tell them things.
‘I can’t conceive what this poor girl is going to do with her life. He has settled the whole estate upon her, papa says, and she is awfully rich. But, she is living like a hermit, and not spending more than her own small income. She even talks of selling the carriage-horses, Tommy, and Harry, or sending them back to the plough, though I know she dotes upon them. If this is meanness, it is too awful. If she has conscientious scruples about spending John Treverton’s money, it is simply idiotic. Of the two, I could rather think my friend a miser than an idiot.
“And now, my dear Ned, as there is nothing else to tell you about the dismalest place in the universe, I may as well say goodbye. — Your loving sister,
This letter reached Edward Clare in his dingy lodgings, in a narrow side street near the British Museum, lodgings so dingy that it would have grieved the heart of his country-born and country-bred mother to see her boy in such a den. But the apartments were quite dear enough for his slender means. The world, had not yet awakened to the stupendous fact that a new poet had been born into it. Stupid reviewers went on prosing about Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne, and the name of Clare was still unknown; even though it had appeared pretty often at the foot of a neat triplet of verses filling an odd page in a magazine.
“I shall never win a name in the magazines,” the young man told himself. “It is worse than not writing at all. I shall rot unknown in my garret, or die of hunger and opium, like that poor boy who perished within a quarter of a mile of this dismal hole, unless I can get some rich publisher to launch me properly.”
But in the meantime a man must live, and Edward was very glad to get an occasional guinea or two from a magazine. The supplies from home fell considerably below his requirements, though to send them strained the father’s resources. The embryo Laureate liked to take life pleasantly. He liked to dine at a popular restaurant, and to wash down his dinner with good Rhine wine, or sound claret. He liked good cigars. He could not wear cheap boots. He could do without gloves at a pinch,
