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diff --git a/2366.txt b/2366.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f320c3b --- /dev/null +++ b/2366.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1236 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Beldonald Holbein, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Beldonald Holbein + + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: May 8, 2005 [eBook #2366] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BELDONALD HOLBEIN*** + + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1922 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk. Proofing by Andy and his wife. + + + + + +THE BELDONALD HOLBEIN +by Henry James + + +CHAPTER I + + +Mrs. Munden had not yet been to my studio on so good a pretext as when +she first intimated that it would be quite open to me--should I only +care, as she called it, to throw the handkerchief--to paint her beautiful +sister-in-law. I needn't go here more than is essential into the +question of Mrs. Munden, who would really, by the way, be a story in +herself. She has a manner of her own of putting things, and some of +those she has put to me--! Her implication was that Lady Beldonald +hadn't only seen and admired certain examples of my work, but had +literally been prepossessed in favour of the painter's "personality." Had +I been struck with this sketch I might easily have imagined her ladyship +was throwing me the handkerchief. "She hasn't done," my visitor said, +"what she ought." + +"Do you mean she has done what she oughtn't?" + +"Nothing horrid--ah dear no." And something in Mrs. Munden's tone, with +the way she appeared to muse a moment, even suggested to me that what she +"oughtn't" was perhaps what Lady Beldonald had too much neglected. "She +hasn't got on." + +"What's the matter with her?" + +"Well, to begin with, she's American." + +"But I thought that was the way of ways to get on." + +"It's one of them. But it's one of the ways of being awfully out of it +too. There are so many!" + +"So many Americans?" I asked. + +"Yes, plenty of _them_," Mrs. Munden sighed. "So many ways, I mean, of +being one." + +"But if your sister-in-law's way is to be beautiful--?" + +"Oh there are different ways of that too." + +"And she hasn't taken the right way?" + +"Well," my friend returned as if it were rather difficult to express, +"she hasn't done with it--" + +"I see," I laughed; "what she oughtn't!" + +Mrs. Munden in a manner corrected me, but it _was_ difficult to express. +"My brother at all events was certainly selfish. Till he died she was +almost never in London; they wintered, year after year, for what he +supposed to be his health--which it didn't help, since he was so much too +soon to meet his end--in the south of France and in the dullest holes he +could pick out, and when they came back to England he always kept her in +the country. I must say for her that she always behaved beautifully. +Since his death she has been more in London, but on a stupidly +unsuccessful footing. I don't think she quite understands. She hasn't +what I should call a life. It may be of course that she doesn't want +one. That's just what I can't exactly find out. I can't make out how +much she knows." + +"I can easily make out," I returned with hilarity, "how much _you_ do!" + +"Well, you're very horrid. Perhaps she's too old." + +"Too old for what?" I persisted. + +"For anything. Of course she's no longer even a little young; only +preserved--oh but preserved, like bottled fruit, in syrup! I want to +help her if only because she gets on my nerves, and I really think the +way of it would be just the right thing of yours at the Academy and on +the line." + +"But suppose," I threw out, "she should give on my nerves?" + +"Oh she will. But isn't that all in the day's work, and don't great +beauties always--?" + +"_You_ don't," I interrupted; but I at any rate saw Lady Beldonald later +on--the day came when her kinswoman brought her, and then I saw how her +life must have its centre in her own idea of her appearance. Nothing +else about her mattered--one knew her all when one knew that. She's +indeed in one particular, I think, sole of her kind--a person whom vanity +has had the odd effect of keeping positively safe and sound. This +passion is supposed surely, for the most part, to be a principle of +perversion and of injury, leading astray those who listen to it and +landing them sooner or later in this or that complication; but it has +landed her ladyship nowhere whatever--it has kept her from the first +moment of full consciousness, one feels, exactly in the same place. It +has protected her from every danger, has made her absolutely proper and +prim. If she's "preserved," as Mrs. Munden originally described her to +me, it's her vanity that has beautifully done it--putting her years ago +in a plate-glass case and closing up the receptacle against every breath +of air. How shouldn't she be preserved when you might smash your +knuckles on this transparency before you could crack it? And she is--oh +amazingly! Preservation is scarce the word for the rare condition of her +surface. She looks _naturally_ new, as if she took out every night her +large lovely varnished eyes and put them in water. The thing was to +paint her, I perceived, in the glass case--a most tempting attaching +feat; render to the full the shining interposing plate and the general +show-window effect. + +It was agreed, though it wasn't quite arranged, that she should sit to +me. If it wasn't quite arranged this was because, as I was made to +understand from an early stage, the conditions from our start must be +such as should exclude all elements of disturbance, such, in a word, as +she herself should judge absolutely favourable. And it seemed that these +conditions were easily imperilled. Suddenly, for instance, at a moment +when I was expecting her to meet an appointment--the first--that I had +proposed, I received a hurried visit from Mrs. Munden, who came on her +behalf to let me know that the season happened just not to be propitious +and that our friend couldn't be quite sure, to the hour, when it would +again become so. She felt nothing would make it so but a total absence of +worry. + +"Oh a 'total absence,'" I said, "is a large order! We live in a worrying +world." + +"Yes; and she feels exactly that--more than you'd think. It's in fact +just why she mustn't have, as she has now, a particular distress on at +the very moment. She wants of course to look her best, and such things +tell on her appearance." + +I shook my head. "Nothing tells on her appearance. Nothing reaches it +in any way; nothing gets _at_ it. However, I can understand her anxiety. +But what's her particular distress?" + +"Why the illness of Miss Dadd." + +"And who in the world's Miss Dadd?" + +"Her most intimate friend and constant companion--the lady who was with +us here that first day." + +"Oh the little round black woman who gurgled with admiration?" + +"None other. But she was taken ill last week, and it may very well be +that she'll gurgle no more. She was very bad yesterday and is no better +to-day, and Nina's much upset. If anything happens to Miss Dadd she'll +have to get another, and, though she has had two or three before, that +won't be so easy." + +"Two or three Miss Dadds? is it possible? And still wanting another!" I +recalled the poor lady completely now. "No; I shouldn't indeed think it +would be easy to get another. But why is a succession of them necessary +to Lady Beldonald's existence?" + +"Can't you guess?" Mrs. Munden looked deep, yet impatient. "They help." + +"Help what? Help whom?" + +"Why every one. You and me for instance. To do what? Why to think Nina +beautiful. She has them for that purpose; they serve as foils, as +accents serve on syllables, as terms of comparison. They make her 'stand +out.' It's an effect of contrast that must be familiar to you artists; +it's what a woman does when she puts a band of black velvet under a pearl +ornament that may, require, as she thinks, a little showing off." + +I wondered. "Do you mean she always has them black?" + +"Dear no; I've seen them blue, green, yellow. They may be what they +like, so long as they're always one other thing." + +"Hideous?" + +Mrs. Munden made a mouth for it. "Hideous is too much to say; she +doesn't really require them as bad as that. But consistently, +cheerfully, loyally plain. It's really a most happy relation. She loves +them for it." + +"And for what do they love _her_?" + +"Why just for the amiability that they produce in her. Then also for +their 'home.' It's a career for them." + +"I see. But if that's the case," I asked, "why are they so difficult to +find?" + +"Oh they must be safe; it's all in that: her being able to depend on them +to keep to the terms of the bargain and never have moments of rising--as +even the ugliest woman will now and then (say when she's in +love)--superior to themselves." + +I turned it over. "Then if they can't inspire passions the poor things +mayn't even at least feel them?" + +"She distinctly deprecates it. That's why such a man as you may be after +all a complication." + +I continued to brood. "You're very sure Miss Dadd's ailment isn't an +affection that, being smothered, has struck in?" My joke, however, +wasn't well timed, for I afterwards learned that the unfortunate lady's +state had been, even while I spoke, such as to forbid all hope. The +worst symptoms had appeared; she was destined not to recover; and a week +later I heard from Mrs. Munden that she would in fact "gurgle" no more. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +All this had been for Lady Beldonald an agitation so great that access to +her apartment was denied for a time even to her sister-in-law. It was +much more out of the question of course that she should unveil her face +to a person of my special business with it; so that the question of the +portrait was by common consent left to depend on that of the installation +of a successor to her late companion. Such a successor, I gathered from +Mrs. Munden, widowed childless and lonely, as well as inapt for the minor +offices, she had absolutely to have; a more or less humble _alter ago_ to +deal with the servants, keep the accounts, make the tea and watch the +window-blinds. Nothing seemed more natural than that she should marry +again, and obviously that might come; yet the predecessors of Miss Dadd +had been contemporaneous with a first husband, so that others formed in +her image might be contemporaneous with a second. I was much occupied in +those months at any rate, and these questions and their ramifications +losing themselves for a while to my view, I was only brought back to them +by Mrs. Munden's arrival one day with the news that we were all right +again--her sister-in-law was once more "suited." A certain Mrs. Brash, +an American relative whom she hadn't seen for years, but with whom she +had continued to communicate, was to come out to her immediately; and +this person, it appeared, could be quite trusted to meet the conditions. +She was ugly--ugly enough, without abuse of it, and was unlimitedly good. +The position offered her by Lady Beldonald was moreover exactly what she +needed; widowed also, after many troubles and reverses, with her fortune +of the smallest, and her various children either buried or placed about, +she had never had time or means to visit England, and would really be +grateful in her declining years for the new experience and the pleasant +light work involved in her cousin's hospitality. They had been much +together early in life and Lady Beldonald was immensely fond of her--would +in fact have tried to get hold of her before hadn't Mrs. Brash been +always in bondage to family duties, to the variety of her tribulations. I +daresay I laughed at my friend's use of the term "position"--the +position, one might call it, of a candlestick or a sign-post, and I +daresay I must have asked if the special service the poor lady was to +render had been made clear to her. Mrs. Munden left me in any case with +the rather droll image of her faring forth across the sea quite +consciously and resignedly to perform it. + +The point of the communication had however been that my sitter was again +looking up and would doubtless, on the arrival and due initiation of Mrs. +Brash, be in form really to wait on me. The situation must further, to +my knowledge, have developed happily, for I arranged with Mrs. Munden +that our friend, now all ready to begin, but wanting first just to see +the things I had most recently done, should come once more, as a final +preliminary, to my studio. A good foreign friend of mine, a French +painter, Paul Outreau, was at the moment in London, and I had proposed, +as he was much interested in types, to get together for his amusement a +small afternoon party. Every one came, my big room was full, there was +music and a modest spread; and I've not forgotten the light of admiration +in Outreau's expressive face as at the end of half an hour he came up to +me in his enthusiasm. "_Bonte divine, mon cher--que cette vieille est +donc belle_!" + +I had tried to collect all the beauty I could, and also all the youth, so +that for a moment I was at a loss. I had talked to many people and +provided for the music, and there were figures in the crowd that were +still lost to me. "What old woman do you mean?" + +"I don't know her name--she was over by the door a moment ago. I asked +somebody and was told, I think, that she's American." + +I looked about and saw one of my guests attach a pair of fine eyes to +Outreau very much as if she knew he must be talking of her. "Oh Lady +Beldonald! Yes, she's handsome; but the great point about her is that +she has been 'put up' to keep, and that she wouldn't be flattered if she +knew you spoke of her as old. A box of sardines is 'old' only after it +has been opened, Lady Beldonald never has yet been--but I'm going to do +it." I joked, but I was somewhat disappointed. It was a type that, with +his unerring sense for the _banal_, I shouldn't have expected Outreau to +pick out. + +"You're going to paint her? But, my dear man, she is painted--and as +neither you nor I can do it. _Ou est-elle donc_? He had lost her, and I +saw I had made a mistake. She's the greatest of all the great Holbeins." + +I was relieved. "Ah then not Lady Beldonald! But do I possess a Holbein +of _any_ price unawares?" + +"There she is--there she is! Dear, dear, dear, what a head!" And I saw +whom he meant--and what: a small old lady in a black dress and a black +bonnet, both relieved with a little white, who had evidently just +changed, her place to reach a corner from which more of the room and of +the scene was presented to her. She appeared unnoticed and unknown, and +I immediately recognised that some other guest must have brought her and, +for want of opportunity, had as yet to call my attention to her. But two +things, simultaneously with this and with each other, struck me with +force; one of them the truth of Outreau's description of her, the other +the fact that the person bringing her could only have been Lady +Beldonald. She _was_ a Holbein--of the first water; yet she was also +Mrs. Brash, the imported "foil," the indispensable "accent," the +successor to the dreary Miss Dadd! By the time I had put these things +together--Outreau's "American" having helped me--I was in just such full +possession of her face as I had found myself, on the other first +occasion, of that of her patroness. Only with so different a +consequence. I couldn't look at her enough, and I stared and stared till +I became aware she might have fancied me challenging her as a person +unpresented. "All the same," Outreau went on, equally held, "_c'est une +tete a faire_. If I were only staying long enough for a crack at her! +But I tell you what"--and he seized my arm--"bring her over!" + +"Over?" + +"To Paris. She'd have a _succes fou_." + +"Ah thanks, my dear fellow," I was now quite in a position to say; "she's +the handsomest thing in London, and"--for what I might do with her was +already before me with intensity--"I propose to keep her to myself." It +was before me with intensity, in the light of Mrs. Brash's distant +perfection of a little white old face, in which every wrinkle was the +touch of a master; but something else, I suddenly felt, was not less so, +for Lady Beldonald, in the other quarter, and though she couldn't have +made out the subject of our notice, continued to fix us, and her eyes had +the challenge of those of the woman of consequence who has missed +something. A moment later I was close to her, apologising first for not +having been more on the spot at her arrival, but saying in the next +breath uncontrollably: "Why my dear lady, it's a Holbein!" + +"A Holbein? What?" + +"Why the wonderful sharp old face so extraordinarily, consummately +drawn--in the frame of black velvet. That of Mrs. Brash, I mean--isn't +it her name?--your companion." + +This was the beginning of a most odd matter--the essence of my anecdote; +and I think the very first note of the oddity must have sounded for me in +the tone in which her ladyship spoke after giving me a silent look. It +seemed to come to me out of a distance immeasurably removed from Holbein. +"Mrs. Brash isn't my 'companion' in the sense you appear to mean. She's +my rather near relation and a very dear old friend. I love her--and you +must know her." + +"Know her? Rather! Why to see her is to want on the spot to 'go' for +her. She also must sit for me," + +"_She_? Louisa Brash?" If Lady Beldonald had the theory that her beauty +directly showed it when things weren't well with her, this impression, +which the fixed sweetness of her serenity had hitherto struck me by no +means as justifying, gave me now my first glimpse of its grounds. It was +as if I had never before seen her face invaded by anything I should have +called an expression. This expression moreover was of the faintest--was +like the effect produced on a surface by an agitation both deep within +and as yet much confused. "Have you told her so?" she then quickly +asked, as if to soften the sound of her surprise. + +"Dear no, I've but just noticed her--Outreau, a moment ago put me on her. +But we're both so taken, and he also wants--" + +"To _paint_ her?" Lady Beldonald uncontrollably murmured. + +"Don't be afraid we shall fight for her," I returned with a laugh for +this tone. Mrs. Brash was still where I could see her without appearing +to stare, and she mightn't have seen I was looking at her, though her +protectress, I'm afraid, could scarce have failed of that certainty. "We +must each take our turn, and at any rate she's a wonderful thing, so that +if you'll let her go to Paris Outreau promises her there--" + +"_There_?" my companion gasped. + +"A career bigger still than among us, as he considers we haven't half +their eye. He guarantees her _a succes fou_." + +She couldn't get over it. "Louisa Brash? In Paris?" + +"They do see," I went on, "more than we and they live extraordinarily, +don't you know, in that. But she'll do something here too." + +"And what will she do?" + +If frankly now I couldn't help giving Mrs. Brash a longer look, so after +it I could as little resist sounding my converser. "You'll see. Only +give her time." + +She said nothing during the moment in which she met my eyes; but then: +"Time, it seems to me, is exactly what you and your friend want. If you +haven't talked with her--" + +"We haven't seen her? Oh we see bang off--with a click like a steel +spring. It's our trade, it's our life, and we should be donkeys if we +made mistakes. That's the way I saw you yourself, my lady, if I may say +so; that's the way, with a long pin straight through your body, I've got +you. And just so I've got _her_!" + +All this, for reasons, had brought my guest to her feet; but her eyes had +while we talked never once followed the direction of mine. "You call her +a Holbein?" + +"Outreau did, and I of course immediately recognised it. Don't you? She +brings the old boy to life! It's just as I should call you a Titian. You +bring _him_ to life." + +She couldn't be said to relax, because she couldn't be said to have +hardened; but something at any rate on this took place in her--something +indeed quite disconnected from what I would have called her. "Don't you +understand that she has always been supposed--?" It had the ring of +impatience; nevertheless it stopped short on a scruple. + +I knew what it was, however, well enough to say it for her if she +preferred. "To be nothing whatever to look at? To be unfortunately +plain--or even if you like repulsively ugly? Oh yes, I understand it +perfectly, just as I understand--I have to as a part of my trade--many +other forms of stupidity. It's nothing new to one that ninety-nine +people out of a hundred have no eyes, no sense, no taste. There are +whole communities impenetrably sealed. I don't say your friend's a +person to make the men turn round in Regent Street. But it adds to the +joy of the few who do see that they have it so much to themselves. Where +in the world can she have lived? You must tell me all about that--or +rather, if she'll be so good, _she_ must." + +"You mean then to speak to her--?" + +I wondered as she pulled up again. "Of her beauty?" + +"Her beauty!" cried Lady Beldonald so loud that two or three persons +looked round. + +"Ah with every precaution of respect!" I declared in a much lower tone. +But her back was by this time turned to me, and in the movement, as it +were, one of the strangest little dramas I've ever known was well +launched. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +It was a drama of small smothered intensely private things, and I knew of +but one other person in the secret; yet that person and I found it +exquisitely susceptible of notation, followed it with an interest the +mutual communication of which did much for our enjoyment, and were +present with emotion at its touching catastrophe. The small case--for so +small a case--had made a great stride even before my little party +separated, and in fact within the next ten minutes. + +In that space of time two things had happened one of which was that I +made the acquaintance of Mrs. Brash; and the other that Mrs. Munden +reached me, cleaving the crowd, with one of her usual pieces of news. +What she had to impart was that, on her having just before asked Nina if +the conditions of our sitting had been arranged with me, Nina had +replied, with something like perversity, that she didn't propose to +arrange them, that the whole affair was "off" again and that she +preferred not to be further beset for the present. The question for Mrs. +Munden was naturally what had happened and whether I understood. Oh I +understood perfectly, and what I at first most understood was that even +when I had brought in the name of Mrs. Brash intelligence wasn't yet in +Mrs. Munden. She was quite as surprised as Lady Beldonald had been on +hearing of the esteem in which I held Mrs. Brash's appearance. She was +stupefied at learning that I had just in my ardour proposed to its +proprietress to sit to me. Only she came round promptly--which Lady +Beldonald really never did. Mrs. Munden was in fact wonderful; for when +I had given her quickly "Why she's a Holbein, you know, absolutely," she +took it up, after a first fine vacancy, with an immediate abysmal "Oh +_is_ she?" that, as a piece of social gymnastics, did her the greatest +honour; and she was in fact the first in London to spread the tidings. +For a face--about it was magnificent. But she was also the first, I must +add, to see what would really happen--though this she put before me only +a week or two later. "It will kill her, my dear--that's what it will +do!" + +She meant neither more nor less than that it would kill Lady Beldonald if +I were to paint Mrs. Brash; for at this lurid light had we arrived in so +short a space of time. It was for me to decide whether my aesthetic need +of giving life to my idea was such as to justify me in destroying it in a +woman after all in most eyes so beautiful. The situation was indeed +sufficiently queer; for it remained to be seen what I should positively +gain by giving up Mrs. Brash. I appeared to have in any case lost Lady +Beldonald, now too "upset"--it was always Mrs. Munden's word about her +and, as I inferred, her own about herself--to meet me again on our +previous footing. The only thing, I of course soon saw, was to temporise +to drop the whole question for the present and yet so far as possible +keep each of the pair in view. I may as well say at once that this plan +and this process gave their principal interest to the next several +months. Mrs. Brash had turned up, if I remember, early in the new year, +and her little wonderful career was in our particular circle one of the +features of the following season. It was at all events for myself the +most attaching; it's not my fault if I am so put together as often to +find more life in situations obscure and subject to interpretation than +in the gross rattle of the foreground. And there were all sorts of +things, things touching, amusing, mystifying--and above all such an +instance as I had never yet met--in this funny little fortune of the +useful American cousin. Mrs. Munden was promptly at one with me as to +the rarity and, to a near and human view, the beauty and interest of the +position. We had neither of us ever before seen that degree and that +special sort of personal success come to a woman for the first time so +late in life. I found it an example of poetic, of absolutely retributive +justice; so that my desire grew great to work it, as we say, on those +lines. I had seen it all from the original moment at my studio; the poor +lady had never known an hour's appreciation--which moreover, in perfect +good faith, she had never missed. The very first thing I did after +inducing so unintentionally the resentful retreat of her protectress had +been to go straight over to her and say almost without preliminaries that +I should hold myself immeasurably obliged for a few patient sittings. +What I thus came face to face with was, on the instant, her whole +unenlightened past and the full, if foreshortened, revelation of what +among us all was now unfailingly in store for her. To turn the handle +and start that tune came to me on the spot as a temptation. Here was a +poor lady who had waited for the approach of old age to find out what she +was worth. Here was a benighted being to whom it was to be disclosed in +her fifty-seventh year--I was to make that out--that she had something +that might pass for a face. She looked much more than her age, and was +fairly frightened--as if I had been trying on her some possibly heartless +London trick--when she had taken in my appeal. That showed me in what an +air she had lived and--as I should have been tempted to put it had I +spoken out--among what children of darkness. Later on I did them more +justice; saw more that her wonderful points must have been points largely +the fruit of time, and even that possibly she might never in all her life +have looked so well as at this particular moment. It might have been +that if her hour had struck I just happened to be present at the +striking. What had occurred, all the same, was at the worst a notable +comedy. + +The famous "irony of fate" takes many forms, but I had never yet seen it +take quite this one. She had been "had over" on an understanding, and +she wasn't playing fair. She had broken the law of her ugliness and had +turned beautiful on the hands of her employer. More interesting even +perhaps than a view of the conscious triumph that this might prepare for +her, and of which, had I doubted of my own judgement, I could still take +Outreau's fine start as the full guarantee--more interesting was the +question of the process by which such a history could get itself enacted. +The curious thing was that all the while the reasons of her having passed +for plain--the reasons for Lady Beldonald's fond calculation, which they +quite justified--were written large in her face, so large that it was +easy to understand them as the only ones she herself had ever read. What +was it then that actually made the old stale sentence mean something so +different?--into what new combinations, what extraordinary language, +unknown but understood at a glance, had time and life translated it? The +only thing to be said was that time and life were artists who beat us +all, working with recipes and secrets we could never find out. I really +ought to have, like a lecturer or a showman, a chart or a blackboard to +present properly the relation, in the wonderful old tender battered +blanched face, between the original elements and the exquisite final +"style." I could do it with chalks, but I can scarcely do it with words. +However, the thing was, for any artist who respected himself, to _feel_ +it--which I abundantly did; and then not to conceal from _her_ I felt +it--which I neglected as little. But she was really, to do her complete +justice, the last to understand; and I'm not sure that, to the end--for +there was an end--she quite made it all out or knew where she was. When +you've been brought up for fifty years on black it must be hard to adjust +your organism at a day's notice to gold-colour. Her whole nature had +been pitched in the key of her supposed plainness. She had known how to +be ugly--it was the only thing she had learnt save, if possible, how not +to mind it. Being beautiful took in any case a new set of muscles. It +was on the prior conviction, literally, that she had developed her +admirable dress, instinctively felicitous, always either black or white +and a matter of rather severe squareness and studied line. She was +magnificently neat; everything she showed had a way of looking both old +and fresh; and there was on every occasion the same picture in her draped +head--draped in low-falling black--and the fine white plaits (of a +painter's white, somehow) disposed on her chest. What had happened was +that these arrangements, determined by certain considerations, lent +themselves in effect much better to certain others. Adopted in mere shy +silence they had really only deepened her accent. It was singular, +moreover, that, so constituted, there was nothing in her aspect of the +ascetic or the nun. She was a good hard sixteenth-century figure, not +withered with innocence, bleached rather by life in the open. She was in +short just what we had made of her, a Holbein for a great Museum; and our +position, Mrs. Munden's and mine, rapidly became that of persons having +such a treasure to dispose of. The world--I speak of course mainly of +the art-world--flocked to see it. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +"But has she any idea herself, poor thing?" was the way I had put it to +Mrs. Munden on our next meeting after the incident at my studio; with the +effect, however, only of leaving my friend at first to take me as +alluding to Mrs. Brash's possible prevision of the chatter she might +create. I had my own sense of that--this provision had been nil; the +question was of her consciousness of the office for which Lady Beldonald +had counted on her and for which we were so promptly proceeding to spoil +her altogether. + +"Oh I think she arrived with a goodish notion," Mrs. Munden had replied +when I had explained; "for she's clever too, you know, as well as good- +looking, and I don't see how, if she ever really _knew_ Nina, she could +have supposed for a moment that she wasn't wanted for whatever she might +have left to give up. Hasn't she moreover always been made to feel that +she's ugly enough for anything?" It was even at this point already +wonderful how my friend had mastered the case and what lights, alike for +its past and its future, she was prepared to throw on it. "If she has +seen herself as ugly enough for anything she has seen herself--and that +was the only way--as ugly enough for Nina; and she has had her own manner +of showing that she understands without making Nina commit herself to +anything vulgar. Women are never without ways for doing such things--both +for communicating and receiving knowledge--that I can't explain to you, +and that you wouldn't understand if I could, since you must be a woman +even to do that. I daresay they've expressed it all to each other simply +in the language of kisses. But doesn't it at any rate make something +rather beautiful of the relation between them as affected by our +discovery--?" + +I had a laugh for her plural possessive. "The point is of course that if +there was a conscious bargain, and our action on Mrs. Brash is to deprive +her of the sense of keeping her side of it, various things may happen +that won't be good either for her or for ourselves. She may +conscientiously throw up the position." + +"Yes," my companion mused--"for she is conscientious. Or Nina, without +waiting for that, may cast her forth." + +I faced it all. "Then we should have to keep her." + +"As a regular model?" Mrs. Munden was ready for anything. "Oh that would +be lovely!" + +But I further worked it out. "The difficulty is that she's not a model, +hang it--that she's too good for one, that she's the very thing herself. +When Outreau and I have each had our go, that will be all; there'll be +nothing left for any one else. Therefore it behoves us quite to +understand that our attitude's a responsibility. If we can't do for her +positively more than Nina does--" + +"We must let her alone?" My companion continued to muse. "I see!" + +"Yet don't," I returned, "see too much. We _can_ do more." + +"Than Nina?" She was again on the spot. "It wouldn't after all be +difficult. We only want the directly opposite thing--and which is the +only one the poor dear can give. Unless indeed," she suggested, "we +simply retract--we back out." + +I turned it over. "It's too late for that. Whether Mrs. Brash's peace +is gone I can't say. But Nina's is." + +"Yes, and there's no way to bring it back that won't sacrifice her +friend. We can't turn round and say Mrs. Brash is ugly, can we? But +fancy Nina's not having _seen_!" Mrs. Munden exclaimed. + +"She doesn't see now," I answered. "She can't, I'm certain, make out +what we mean. The woman, for _her_ still, is just what she always was. +But she has nevertheless had her stroke, and her blindness, while she +wavers and gropes in the dark, only adds to her discomfort. Her blow was +to see the attention of the world deviate." + +"All the same I don't think, you know," my interlocutress said, "that +Nina will have made her a scene or that, whatever we do, she'll ever make +her one. That isn't the way it will happen, for she's exactly as +conscientious as Mrs. Brash." + +"Then what is the way?" I asked. + +"It will just happen in silence." + +"And what will 'it,' as you call it, be?" + +"Isn't that what we want really to see?" + +"Well," I replied after a turn or two about, "whether we want it or not +it's exactly what we _shall_ see; which is a reason the more for +fancying, between the pair there--in the quiet exquisite house, and full +of superiorities and suppressions as they both are--the extraordinary +situation. If I said just now that it's too late to do anything but +assent it's because I've taken the full measure of what happened at my +studio. It took but a few moments--but she tasted of the tree." + +My companion wondered. "Nina?" + +"Mrs. Brash." And to have to put it so ministered, while I took yet +another turn, to a sort of agitation. Our attitude was a responsibility. + +But I had suggested something else to my friend, who appeared for a +moment detached. "Should you say she'll hate her worse if she _doesn't_ +see?" + +"Lady Beldonald? Doesn't see what we see, you mean, than if she does? Ah +I give _that_ up!" I laughed. "But what I can tell you is why I hold +that, as I said just now, we can do most. We can do this: we can give to +a harmless and sensitive creature hitherto practically disinherited--and +give with an unexpectedness that will immensely add to its price--the +pure joy of a deep draught of the very pride of life, of an acclaimed +personal triumph in our superior sophisticated world." + +Mrs. Munden had a glow of response for my sudden eloquence. Oh it will +be beautiful! + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +Well, that's what, on the whole and in spite of everything, it really +was. It has dropped into my memory a rich little gallery of pictures, a +regular panorama of those occasions that were to minister to the view +from which I had so for a moment extracted a lyric inspiration. I see +Mrs. Brash on each of these occasions practically enthroned and +surrounded and more or less mobbed; see the hurrying and the nudging and +the pressing and the staring; see the people "making up" and introduced, +and catch the word when they have had their turn; hear it above all, the +great one--"Ah yes, the famous Holbein!"--passed about with that +perfection of promptitude that makes the motions of the London mind so +happy a mixture of those of the parrot and the sheep. Nothing would be +easier of course than to tell the whole little tale with an eye only for +that silly side of it. Great was the silliness, but great also as to this +case of poor Mrs. Brash, I will say for it, the good nature. Of course, +furthermore, it took in particular "our set," with its positive child- +terror of the _banal_, to be either so foolish or so wise; though indeed +I've never quite known where our set begins and ends, and have had to +content myself on this score with the indication once given me by a lady +next whom I was placed at dinner: "Oh it's bounded on the north by Ibsen +and on the south by Sargent!" Mrs. Brash never sat to me; she absolutely +declined; and when she declared that it was quite enough for her that I +had with that fine precipitation invited her, I quite took this as she +meant it; before we had gone very far our understanding, hers and mine, +was complete. Her attitude was as happy as her success was prodigious. +The sacrifice of the portrait was a sacrifice to the true inwardness of +Lady Beldonald, and did much, for the time, I divined, toward muffling +their domestic tension. All it was thus in her power to say--and I heard +of a few cases of her having said it--was that she was sure I would have +painted her beautifully if she hadn't prevented me. She couldn't even +tell the truth, which was that I certainly would have done so if Lady +Beldonald hadn't; and she never could mention the subject at all before +that personage. I can only describe the affair, naturally, from the +outside, and heaven forbid indeed that I should try too closely to, +reconstruct the possible strange intercourse of these good friends at +home. + +My anecdote, however, would lose half the point it may have to show were +I to omit all mention of the consummate turn her ladyship appeared +gradually to have found herself able to give her deportment. She had +made it impossible I should myself bring up our old, our original +question, but there was real distinction in her manner of now accepting +certain other possibilities. Let me do her that justice; her effort at +magnanimity must have been immense. There couldn't fail of course to be +ways in which poor Mrs. Brash paid for it. How much she had to pay we +were in fact soon enough to see; and it's my intimate conviction that, as +a climax, her life at last was the price. But while she lived at +least--and it was with an intensity, for those wondrous weeks, of which +she had never dreamed--Lady Beldonald herself faced the music. This is +what I mean by the possibilities, by the sharp actualities indeed, that +she accepted. She took our friend out, she showed her at home, never +attempted to hide or to betray her, played her no trick whatever so long +as the ordeal lasted. She drank deep, on her side too, of the cup--the +cup that for her own lips could only be bitterness. There was, I think, +scarce a special success of her companion's at which she wasn't +personally present. Mrs. Munden's theory of the silence in which all +this would be muffled for them was none the less, and in abundance, +confirmed by our observations. The whole thing was to be the death of +one or the other of them, but they never spoke of it at tea. I remember +even that Nina went so far as to say to me once, looking me full in the +eyes, quite sublimely, "I've made out what you mean--she _is_ a picture." +The beauty of this moreover was that, as I'm persuaded, she hadn't really +made it out at all--the words were the mere hypocrisy of her reflective +endeavour for virtue. She couldn't possibly have made it out; her friend +was as much as ever "dreadfully plain" to her; she must have wondered to +the last what on earth possessed us. Wouldn't it in fact have been after +all just this failure of vision, this supreme stupidity in short, that +kept the catastrophe so long at bay? There was a certain sense of +greatness for her in seeing so many of us so absurdly mistaken; and I +recall that on various occasions, and in particular when she uttered the +words just quoted, this high serenity, as a sign of the relief of her +soreness, if not of the effort of her conscience, did something quite +visible to my eyes, and also quite unprecedented, for the beauty of her +face. She got a real lift from it--such a momentary discernible +sublimity that I recollect coming out on the spot with a queer crude +amused "Do you know I believe I could paint you _now_?" + +She was a fool not to have closed with me then and there; for what has +happened since has altered everything--what was to happen a little later +was so much more than I could swallow. This was the disappearance of the +famous Holbein from one day to the other--producing a consternation among +us all as great as if the Venus of Milo had suddenly vanished from the +Louvre. "She has simply shipped her straight back"--the explanation was +given in that form by Mrs. Munden, who added that any cord pulled tight +enough would end at last by snapping. At the snap, in any case, we +mightily jumped, for the masterpiece we had for three or four months been +living with had made us feel its presence as a luminous lesson and a +daily need. We recognised more than ever that it had been, for high +finish, the gem of our collection--we found what a blank it left on the +wall. Lady Beldonald might fill up the blank, but we couldn't. That she +did soon fill it up--and, heaven help us, _how_ was put before me after +an interval of no great length, but during which I hadn't seen her. I +dined on the Christmas of last year at Mrs. Munden's, and Nina, with a +"scratch lot," as our hostess said, was there, so that, the preliminary +wait being longish, she could approach me very sweetly. "I'll come to +you tomorrow if you like," she said; and the effect of it, after a first +stare at her, was to make me look all round. I took in, by these two +motions, two things; one of which was that, though now again so satisfied +herself of her high state, she could give me nothing comparable to what I +should have got had she taken me up at the moment of my meeting her on +her distinguished concession; the other that she was "suited" afresh and +that Mrs. Brash's successor was fully installed. Mrs. Brash's successor, +was at the other side of the room, and I became conscious that Mrs. +Munden was waiting to see my eyes seek her. I guessed the meaning of the +wait; what was one, this time, to say? Oh first and foremost assuredly +that it was immensely droll, for this time at least there was no mistake. +The lady I looked upon, and as to whom my friend, again quite at sea, +appealed to me for a formula, was as little a Holbein, or a specimen of +any other school, as she was, like Lady Beldonald herself, a Titian. The +formula was easy to give, for the amusement was that her prettiness--yes, +literally, prodigiously, her prettiness--was distinct. Lady Beldonald +had been magnificent--had been almost intelligent. Miss What's-her-name +continues pretty, continues even young, and doesn't matter a straw! She +matters so ideally little that Lady Beldonald is practically safer, I +judge, than she has ever been. There hasn't been a symptom of chatter +about this person, and I believe her protectress is much surprised that +we're not more struck. + +It was at any rate strictly impossible to me to make an appointment for +the day as to which I have just recorded Nina's proposal; and the turn of +events since then has not quickened my eagerness. Mrs. Munden remained +in correspondence with Mrs. Brash--to the extent, that is, of three +letters, each of which she showed me. They so told to our imagination +her terrible little story that we were quite prepared--or thought we +were--for her going out like a snuffed candle. She resisted, on her +return to her original conditions, less than a year; the taste of the +tree, as I had called it, had been fatal to her; what she had contentedly +enough lived without before for half a century she couldn't now live +without for a day. I know nothing of her original conditions--some minor +American city--save that for her to have gone back to them was clearly to +have stepped out of her frame. We performed, Mrs. Munden and I, a small +funeral service for her by talking it all over and making it all out. It +wasn't--the minor American city--a market for Holbeins, and what had +occurred was that the poor old picture, banished from its museum and +refreshed by the rise of no new movement to hang it, was capable of the +miracle of a silent revolution; of itself turning, in its dire dishonour, +its face to the wall. So it stood, without the intervention of the ghost +of a critic, till they happened to pull it round again and find it mere +dead paint. Well, it had had, if that's anything, its season of fame, +its name on a thousand tongues and printed in capitals in the catalogue. +We hadn't been at fault. I haven't, all the same, the least note of +her--not a scratch. And I did her so in intention! Mrs. Munden +continues to remind me, however, that this is not the sort of rendering +with which, on the other side, after all, Lady Beldonald proposes to +content herself. She has come back to the question of her own portrait. +Let me settle it then at last. Since she _will_ have the real +thing--well, hang it, she shall! + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BELDONALD HOLBEIN*** + + +******* This file should be named 2366.txt or 2366.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/3/6/2366 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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