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.