Meanwhile, the Lady Letitia had heard strange and distorted accounts of the person and profession of her nephew’s visitor. Peter Gladden had unpacked Mr. Wilson’s knapsack and red bundle, and had discovered besides canvas, brushes, and paints, a tooth-brush, a few handkerchiefs, a razor, a soiled shirt, two night-caps, a piece of flannel, and a prayer-book. It was all over the house and into Aunt Letitia’s ears in half an hour that this eccentric person had borrowed Mr. Jeffray’s waistcoat and a pair of Peter Gladden’s shoes. The dowager’s pride bristled, despite the saintly emotions of the morning. A common painter fellow, a mere vulgar artist, whose name she did not even know, received as a guest at Rodenham Priory! What could Richard be thinking of, by associating with such a low and uncultured creature! Why, he would be for entertaining next that awful author fellow, Mr. Johnson, a man who spilled soup down his waistcoat, sneezed over the table, and was so bold as to contradict a lady flatly.
Hence, the Lady Letitia’s reception of Mr. Richard Wilson in the parlor that afternoon, was not calculated to put that gentleman at his ease. The dowager was polite, portentously and oppressively polite, “to please poor Richard,” as she would have phrased it. Her eyes searched Mr. Wilson from wig to buckles, started at his wrinkled and complaining waistcoat, and recognized Peter Gladden’s shoes. She deigned to listen to the painter’s stumbling platitudes about the weather, and then discovered suddenly that she was afflicted with deafness and a sick headache, and declared that she would go and rest in her bedroom until dinner.
When the Lady Letitia had sailed out of the room, Wilson stood and stared pathetically at Jeffray.
“There, sir,” he exclaimed, with tragic emphasis, “you see, my poor face always frightens them away, and I fall over my own tongue as well as over my feet. Nature did not breed me for a courtier, Jeffray. Damn it, I can’t flatter the fools in the gallant style. Beg pardon, Richard, I was not referring to your august and noble relative.”
“A mere whim, sir—a mere whim,” quoth the painter, with a queer twist of the mouth.
A mysterious change had fallen upon the Lady Letitia’s temper by dinner-time, a change that betrayed itself in her attitude towards Richard Wilson. She was peculiarly gracious and urbane, and no one could be more gracious than the Lady Letitia when she so chose. The painter, astonished at his sudden acceptance into favor, found himself talking to the dowager with an ease and a fervor that made him fancy for the moment that Jeffray’s wine had got into his noddle. Aunt Letitia beamed and sparkled, crowed and chuckled at Dick’s jokes, and seemed wholly to have abandoned the air of hauteur that had repulsed Wilson in the afternoon. Jeffray himself was thoroughly mystified as to the miracle. He could only conclude that the dear old lady had spoken the truth when she had complained of a headache, and that it was not the painter’s shabby clothes or his rough and unfashionable face that had shocked her aristocratic susceptibilities.