sharply advised; and he laughed, and promised to go out and buy a new hat. In truth, careless of comfort as he was, he adored luxury in women, and was resolved to let his wife ruin him if she did it handsomely enough. Doubtless she might have, had fate given her time; but soon after their marriage old Mr. Campton died, and it was found that a trusted manager had so invested the profits of the Mangle that the heirs inherited only a series of law-suits.

John Campton, henceforth, was merely the unsuccessful 44son of a ruined manufacturer; painting became a luxury he could no longer afford, and his mother and sisters besought him to come back and take over what was left of the business. It seemed so clearly his duty that, with anguish of soul, he prepared to go; but Julia, on being consulted, developed a sudden passion for art and poverty.

44

“We’d have to live in Utica—for some years at any rate?”

“Well, yes, no doubt——” They faced the fact desolately.

“They’d much better look out for another manager. What do you know about business? Since you’ve taken up painting you’d better try to make a success of that,” she advised him; and he was too much of the same mind not to agree.

It was not long before George’s birth, and they were fully resolved to go home for the event, and thus spare their hoped for heir the inconvenience of coming into the world, like his father, in a foreign country. But now this was not to be thought of, and the eventual inconvenience to George was lost sight of by his progenitors in the contemplation of nearer problems.

For a few years their life dragged along shabbily and depressingly. Now that Campton’s painting was no longer an amateur’s hobby but a domestic obligation, Julia thought it her duty to interest herself in 45it; and her only idea of doing so was by means of what she called “relations,” using the word in its French and diplomatic sense.

45

She was convinced that her husband’s lack of success was due to Beausite’s blighting epigram, and to Campton’s subsequent resolve to strike out for himself. “It’s a great mistake to try to be original till people have got used to you,” she said, with the shrewdness that sometimes startled him. “If you’d only been civil to Beausite he would have ended by taking you up, and then you could have painted as queerly as you liked.”

 Prev. P 26/246 next