‘And I wonder which of them will meet the White Cat,’ Laurie said to himself, hanging over his drawing-block with his pencil in hand, giving here and there a touch; ‘Frank, perhaps, as becomes a soldier; but I wish it might be Ben.’ And then he bent over his own part of the sketch, and did something to the imps on the National Gallery and sighed. With that soft ache in his heart, poor fellow! enchanted primrose-paths were not for him. So the next thing he did was to plant a lovely little ideal figure on the rocks through which his elder brother was to make his way, beckoning to Ben and cheering him on. That was how it should be. He spent a great deal of time over his drawing, and took pleasure in the comic burdens which were suspended from his own person,--brushes dangling at his heels, a lay figure suspended over his shoulder, and a little dog barking in amaze at the wonderful apparition. He laughed over it just as he had sighed. Fate was good to Laurie, who could find some way of extracting a little pleasure, a little amusement, out of everything. It was quite late in the afternoon when he put his drawing-block aside, placing it on the mantel-piece, where the drawing might catch his eye whenever he returned, and took his hat and went out. He was going to ask advice of old Welby, an old R.A. of his acquaintance, as to what course of study he should adopt, and what would be best for him in general, in the way of art. ‘And there’s the padrona as well, who understands a fellow better than Welby,’ he added to himself as he went out; and perhaps that was why he put one of Mrs. Brown’s monthly roses,--for lack of a better,--in his button-hole as he passed. For he was a young fellow who was fond of the society of women, and liked to appear well in their eyes, notwithstanding that ache in his heart.
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 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.