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F
A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY 89
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH MR. FITCH PROCLAIMS HIS LOVE, AND MR.
BRANDON PREPARES FOR WAR
ROM the splendid hall in which Mrs. Gann was dispensing
her hospitality, the celebrated painter, Andrea Fitch, rushed
forth in a state of mind even more delirious than that which
he usually enjoyed. He looked abroad into the street : all there
was dusk and lonely; the rain falling heavily, the wind playing
Pandean pipes and whistling down the chimney-pots. " I love the
storm," said Fitch solemnly ; and he put his great Spanish cloak
round him in the most approved manner (it was of so prodigious a
size that the tail of it, as it whirled over his shoulder, whisked
away a lodging-card from the door of the house opposite Mr. Gann's).
" I love the storm and solitude," said he, lighting a large pipe filled
full of the fragrant Oronoko; and thus armed, he passed rapidly
down the street, his hat cocked over his ringlets.
Andrea did not like smoking, but he used a pipe as a part of
his profession as an artist, and as one of the picturesque parts of
his costume ; in like manner, though he did not fence, he always
travelled about with a pair of foils ; and quite unconscious of music,
nevertheless had a guitar constantly near at hand. Without such
properties a painter's spectacle is not complete; and now he
determined to add to them another indispensable requisite—a
mistress. " What great artist was ever without one ?" thought he.
Long long had he sighed for some one whom he might love, some one
to whom he might address the poems which he was in the habit of
making. Hundreds of such fragments had he composed, addressed
to Leila, Ximena, Ada—imaginary beauties, whom he courted in
dreamy verse. With what joy would he replace all those by a real
charmer of flesh and blood ! Away he went, then, on this evening
—the tyranny of Mrs. Gann towards poor Caroline having awakened
all his sympathies in the gentle girl's favour—determined now and
for ever to make her the mistress of his heart. Monna-Lisa, the
Fornarina, Leonardo, Raphael—he thought of all these, and vowed
that his Caroline should be made famous and live for ever on his
canvas. While Mrs. Gann was preparing for her friends, and enter-