Fiction > Book editions > London, 1885 - Dynamiter

98 NEW AKABIAN NIGHTS.
In the course of a few clays, the genteel inhabitants
of the square began to remark the customs of their
neighbour. The sight of a young gentleman discussing
a clay pipe, about four o'clock of the afternoon, in the
drawing-room balcony of so discreet a mansion ; and
perhaps still more, his periodical excursion to a decent
tavern in the neighbourhood, and his unabashed return,
nursing the full tankard : had presently raised to a high
pitch the interest and indignation of the liveried servants
of the square. The disfavour of some of these gentle-
men at first proceeded to the length of insult ; but
Somerset knew how to be afialjle with any class of men ;
and a few rude words merrily accepted, and a few
glasses amicably shared, gained for him the right of
toleration.
The young man had embraced the art of Raphael,
partly from a notion of its ease, partly from an inborn
distrust of offices. He scorned to bear the yoke of any
regular schooling ; and proceeded to turn one half of the
dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of still
life. There he amassed a variety of objects, indiscrimi-
nately chosen from the kitchen, the drawing-room, and
the back garden ; and there spent his days in smiling
assiduity. Meantime, the great bulk of empty building-
overhead lay, like a load, upon his imagination. To hold
so great a stake and to do nothing, argued some defect of
energy ; and he at length determined to act upon the hint
given by Mrs. Luxmore herself, and to stick, with wafers,
in the window of the dining-room, a small handbill
announcing furnished lodgings. At half-past six of a
fine July morning, he affixed the bill, and went forth
into the square to study the result. It seemed, to his
eye, promising and unpretentious ; and he returned to
the drawing-room balcony, to consider, over a studious
pipe, the knotty problem of how much he was to
charge.
Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to the
art of painting. Indeed, from that time forth, he would
spend the best part of the day in the front balcony, like the
attentive angler poring on his float ; and the better to