‘If I might make so bold, sir,’ said Forrester, mildly, ‘what is the subject of the picture, Mr. Renton?’ which was not an encouraging remark.
‘Of course I ought to have told you,’ cried Laurie, very red and hot. ‘It is an incident after the Battle of Hastings,--Edith looking for the body of Harold. Edith, you know, was----’
‘I’ve seen a many Hediths,’ said Forrester. ‘I ought to know. I’m an old stupid, sir, not to have seen what it was; but being as it’s in the chalk, and me not having the time to study it as I could wish----. I don’t doubt, Mr. Renton, as it’s a fine subject. It did ought to be, seeing the many times as it’s been took.’
‘I don’t think I have seen it many times,’ said Laurie, profoundly startled; ‘I only remember one picture, and that very bad,’ the young man added hastily. Forrester shook his head.
‘Not in the exhibitions, I daresay, sir,’ said the critic, solemnly; ‘but there’s a many pictures, Mr. Renton, as never get as far as the Academy. Mr. Suffolk, he did it, sir, for one; and young Mr. Warleigh, as has give up art, and gone off a engineering; and Robinson, as has fallen into the portrait line,’ Forrester continued, counting on his fingers; ‘and poor Mr. Tinto, as died in Italy; and there’s the same subject,’ the old man added, solemnly, after a pause, ‘turned with its face again the wall in our hattic, as Mr. Severn hisself, sir, did when he was young.’
Laurie was overwhelmed. He gazed at the ruthless destroyer of his dreams with a certain terror. ‘Good heavens, I had no idea!’ said the young man, growing green with sudden despair. Then, however, his pride came to his aid. ‘It’s a dreadful list,’ he said; ‘but, you perceive, as they never came under the public eye, and nobody was the wiser----’
‘To be sure, sir--to be sure,’ said Forrester, with pitying complacency. ‘A many failures ain’t what you may call a reason for your failing as is a new hand. I hope it’ll be just the contrary; but if you hadn’t a begun of it, Mr. Renton,--and being as it’s but in the chalk, it ain’t to call begun;----couldn’t Hedith be a looking out for her lover, sir, of an evening, as young women has a way? I don’t suppose there was no difference in them old times. And a bit o’ nice sunset, and him a-coming out of it with his shadow in front of him, like. I don’t say as the subject’s as grand, but it’s a deal cheerfuller. And when you come to think of it, Mr. Renton, to hang up all them dead corpses and a skeered woman, say, in your dining-room, sir, when it’s cheerful as you want to be----’