PTER IV.

Being a chapter that links the past to the future by the gradual
elucidation of antecedents.

O wayside inns and pedestrian rambles! O summer nights, under
honeysuckle arbours, on the banks of starry waves! O Youth, Youth!

Vance ladled out the toddy and lighted his cigar; then, leaning his head
on his hand and his elbow on the table, he looked with an artist's eye
along the glancing river.

"After all," said he, "I am glad I am a painter; and I hope I may live
to be a great one."

"No doubt, if you live, you will be a great one," cried Lionel, with
cordial sincerity. "And if I, who can only just paint well enough to
please myself, find that it gives a new charm to Nature--"

"Cut sentiment," quoth Vance, "and go on."

"What," continued Lionel, unchilled by the admonitory interruption,
"must you feel who can fix a fading sunshine--a fleeting face--on a
scrap of canvas, and say 'Sunshine and Beauty, live there forever!'"

VANCE.--"Forever! no! Colours perish, canvas rots. What remains to us
of Zeuxis? Still it is prettily said on behalf of the poetic side of the
profession; there is a prosaic one;--we'll blink it. Yes; I am glad to
be a painter. But you must not catch the fever of my calling. Your poor
mother would never forgive me if she thought I had made you a dauber by
my example."

LIONEL (gloomily).--"No. I shall not be a painter! But what can I be?
How shall I ever build on the earth one of the castles I have built in
the air? Fame looks so far,--Fortune so impossible. But one thing I am
bent upon" (speaking with knit brow and clenched teeth), "I will gain an
independence somehow, and support my mother."

VANCE.--"Your mother is supported: she has the pension--"

LIONEL.--"Of a captain's widow; and" (he added with a flushed cheek) "a
first floor that she lets to lodgers."

VANCE.--"No shame in that! Peers let houses; and on the Continent,
princes let not only first floors, but fifth and sixth floors, to say
nothing of attics and cellars. In beginning the world, friend Lionel,
if you don't wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride
carefully, put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air upon
grand occasions. Pride is a garment all stiff brocade outside, all
grating sackcloth on the side next to the skin. Even kings don't wear
the dalmaticum except at a coronation. Independence you desire; good.
But are you dependent now? Your mother has given you an excellent
educat