Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/76

 his coffin, she told me that I must be to her every thing that he would have been. I made no end of vows, but I have n't kept them all. I've been very different from Stephen. I've been idle, restless, egotistical, discontented. I've done no vulgar harm, I believe, but I've done no vulgar good. My brother, if he had lived, would have made fifty thousand dollars and had the parlour done up. My mother, brooding night and day on her bereavement, has come to fix her ideal in little attentions of that sort. Judged by that standard I'm nowhere."

Rowland was at a loss what to believe of this account of his friend's domestic circumstances; it had an honourable candour, but would be probably open to control. "You must lose no time in producing some important thing," he answered; "then with the proceeds you can do up the whole house."

"So I've told her; but she only half believes in 'art,' anyway. She can see no good in my modelling from the life; it seems to her a snare of the enemy. She would fain see me all my days tethered to the law like a browsing goat to a stake. In that way I'm kept before her. 'It's a more natural occupation!'—that's all I can get out of her. A more natural damnation! Is it a fact that artists in general are such bold, bad men? I've never had the pleasure of knowing one, so I can't refute her with an example. She has the advantage of me, because she formerly knew a portrait-painter at Richmond, who did her miniature in black lace mittens (you may see it on the parlour table) and who used to drink raw brandy and beat his wife. I promised 42