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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was transcribed by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk; proofing by Andy and his wife. +The edition used was the 1922 Macmillan and Co. one. + + + + + +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 it 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 Project Gutenberg Etext of The Beldonald Holbein, by Henry James + |