MRS. DOBBS BROUGHTON PILES HER FAGOTS.
[Illustration]
The picture still progressed up in Mrs. Dobbs Broughton's room, and
the secret was still kept, or supposed to be kept. Miss Van Siever
was, at any rate, certain that her mother had heard nothing of it,
and Mrs. Broughton reported from day to day that her husband had not
as yet interfered. Nevertheless, there was in these days a great
gloom upon the Dobbs Broughton household, so much so that Conway
Dalrymple had more than once suggested to Mrs. Broughton that the
work should be discontinued. But the mistress of the house would not
consent to this. In answer to these offers, she was wont to declare
in somewhat mysterious language, that any misery coming upon herself
was matter of moment to nobody,--hardly even to herself, as she was
quite prepared to encounter moral and social death without delay, if
not an absolute physical demise; as to which latter alternative, she
seemed to think that even that might not be so far distant as some
people chose to believe. What was the cause of the gloom over the
house neither Conway Dalrymple nor Miss Van Siever understood, and
to speak the truth Mrs. Broughton did not quite understand the cause
herself. She knew well enough, no doubt, that her husband came home
always sullen, and sometimes tipsy, and that things were not going
well in the City. She had never understood much about the City, being
satisfied with an assurance that had come to her in early days from
her friends, that there was a mine of wealth in Hook Court, from
whence would always come for her use, house and furniture, a carriage
and horses, dresses and jewels, which latter, if not quite real,
should be manufactured of the best sham substitute known. Soon after
her brilliant marriage with Mr. Dobbs Broughton, she had discovered
that the carriage and horses, and the sham jewels, did not lift her
so completely into a terrestrial paradise as she had taught herself
to expect that they would do. Her brilliant drawing-room, with Dobbs
Broughton for a companion, was not an elysium. But though she had
found out early in her married life that something was still wanting
to her, she had by no means confessed to herself that the carriage
and horses and sham jewels were bad, and it can hardly be said that
she had repented. She had endeavoured to patch up matters with a
little romance, and then had fallen upon Conway Dalrymple,--meaning
no harm. Indeed, love with her, as it never could have meant much
good, was not likely to mean much harm. That somebody should pretend
to love her, to which pretence she might reply by a pretence of
friendship,--this was the little excitement which she craved, and by
which she had once flattered herself that something of an elysium
might yet be created for her. Mr. Dobbs Broughton had unreasonably
expressed a dislike to this innocent amusement,--very unreasonably,
knowing, as he ought to have known, that he himself did so very
little towards providing the necessary elysium by any qualities of
his own. For a few weeks this interference from her husband had
enhanced the amusement, giving an additional excitement to the game.
She felt herself to be a woman misunderstood and ill-used; and to
some women there is nothing so charming as a little mild ill-usage,
which does not interfere with their creature comforts, with their
clothes, or their carriage, or their sham jewels; but suffices to
afford them the indulgence of a grievance. Of late, however, Mr.
Dobbs Broughton had become a little too rough in his language, and
things had gone uncomfortably. She suspected that Conway Dalrymple
was not the only cause of all this. She had an idea that Mr.
Musselboro and Mrs. Van Siever had it in their power to make
themselves unpleasant, and that they were exercising this power. Of
his business in the City her husband never spoke to her, nor she to
him. Her own fortune had been very small, some couple of thousand
pounds or so, and she conceived that she had no pretext on which she
could, unasked, interrogate him about his money. She had no knowledge
that marriage of itself had given her the right to such interference;
and had such knowledge been hers she would have had no desire to
interfere. She hoped that the carriage and sham jewels would be
continued to her; but she did not know how to frame any question on
the subject. Touching the other difficulty,--the Conway Dalrymple
difficulty,--she had her ideas. The tenderness of her friendship had
been trodden upon and outraged by the rough foot of an overbearing
husband, and she was ill-used. She would obey. It was becoming to her
as a wife that she should submit. She would give up Conway Dalrymple,
and would induce him,--in spite of his violent attachment to
herself,--to take a wife. She herself would choose a wife for him.
She herself would, with suicidal hands, destroy the romance of her
own life, since an overbearing, brutal husband demanded that it
should be destroyed. She would sacrifice her own feelings, and do all
in her power to bring Conway Dalrymple and Clara Van Siever together.
If, after that, some poet did not immortalize her friendship in
Byronic verse, she certainly would not get her due. Perhaps Conway
Dalrymple would himself become a poet in order that this might be
done properly. For it must be understood that, though she expected
Conway Dalrymple to marry, she expected also that he should be
Byronically wretched after his marriage on account of his love for
herself.
But there was certainly something wrong over and beyond the Dalrymple
difficulty. The servants were not as civil as they used to be, and
her husband, when she suggested to him a little dinner-party, snubbed
her most unmercifully. The giving of dinner-parties had been his
glory, and she had made the suggestion simply with the view of
pleasing him. "If the world were going round the wrong way, a woman
would still want a party," he had said, sneering at her. "It was
of you I was thinking, Dobbs," she replied; "not of myself. I care
little for such gatherings." After that she retired to her own room
with a romantic tear in each eye, and told herself that, had chance
thrown Conway Dalrymple into her way before she had seen Dobbs
Broughton, she would have been the happiest woman in the world. She
sat for a while looking into vacancy, and thinking that it would be
very nice to break her heart. How should she set about it? Should
she take to her bed and grow thin? She would begin by eating no
dinner for ever so many days together. At lunch her husband was never
present, and therefore the broken heart could be displayed at dinner
without much positive suffering. In the meantime she would implore
Conway Dalrymple to get himself married with as little delay as
possible, and she would lay upon him her positive order to restrain
himself from any word of affection addressed to herself. She, at any
rate, would be pure, high-minded, and self-sacrificing,--although
romantic and poetic also, as was her nature.
The picture was progressing, and so also, as it had come about, was
the love-affair between the artist and his model. Conway Dalrymple
had begun to think that he might, after all, do worse than make Clara
Van Siever his wife. Clara Van Siever was handsome, and undoubtedly
clever, and Clara Van Siever's mother was certainly rich. And, in
addition to this, the young lady herself began to like the man into
whose society she was thrown. The affair seemed to flourish, and Mrs.
Dobbs Broughton should have been delighted. She told Clara, with a
very serious air, that she was delighted, bidding Clara, at the same
time, to be very cautious, as men were so fickle, and as Conway,
though the best fellow in the world, was not, perhaps, altogether
free from that common vice of men. Indeed, it might have been
surmised, from a word or two which Mrs. Broughton allowed to escape,
that she considered poor Conway to be more than ordinarily afflicted
in that way. Miss Van Siever at first only pouted, and said that
there was nothing in it. "There is something in it, my dear,
certainly," said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton; "and there can be no earthly
reason why there should not be a great deal in it." "There is nothing
in it," said Miss Van Siever, impetuously; "and if you will continue
to speak of Mr. Dalrymple in that way, I must give up the picture."
"As for that," said Mrs. Broughton, "I conceive that we are both of
us bound to the young man now, seeing that he has given so much time
to the work." "I am not bound to him at all," said Miss Van Siever.
Mrs. Broughton also told Conway Dalrymple that she was
delighted,--oh, so much delighted! He had obtained permission to come
in one morning before the time of sitting, so that he might work at
his canvas independently of his model. As was his custom, he made his
own way upstairs and commenced his work alone,--having been expressly
told by Mrs. Broughton that she would not come to him till she
brought Clara with her. But she did go up to the room in which the
artist was painting, without waiting for Miss Van Siever. Indeed, she
was at this time so anxious as to the future welfare of her two young
friends that she could not restrain herself from speaking either to
the one or to the other, whenever any opportunity for such speech
came round. To have left Conway Dalrymple at work upstairs without
going to him was impossible to her. So she went, and then took the
opportunity of expressing to her friend her ideas as to his past and
future conduct.
"Yes, it is very good; very good, indeed," she said, standing before
the easel, and looking at the half-completed work. "I do not know
that you ever did anything better."
"I never can tell myself till a picture is finished whether it is
going to be good or not," said Dalrymple, thinking really of his
picture and of nothing else.
"I am sure this will be good," she said, "and I suppose it is because
you have thrown so much heart into it. It is not mere industry that
will produce good work, nor yet skill, nor even genius: more than
this is required. The heart of the artist must be thrust with all its
gushing tides into the performance." By this time he knew all the
tones of her voice and their various meanings, and immediately became
aware that at the present moment she was intent upon something beyond
the picture. She was preparing for a little scene, and was going to
give him some advice. He understood it all, but as he was really
desirous of working at his canvas, and was rather averse to having a
scene at that moment, he made a little attempt to disconcert her. "It
is the heart that gives success," she said, while he was considering
how he might best put an extinguisher upon her romance for the
occasion.
"Not at all, Mrs. Broughton; success depends on elbow-grease."
"On what, Conway?"
"On elbow-grease,--hard work, that is,--and I must work hard now if
I mean to take advantage of to-day's sitting. The truth is, I don't
give enough hours of work to it." And he leaned upon his stick, and
daubed away briskly at the background, and then stood for a moment
looking at his canvas with his head a little on one side, as though
he could not withdraw his attention for a moment from the thing he
was doing.
"You mean to say, Conway, that you would rather that I should not
speak to you."
"Oh, no, Mrs. Broughton, I did not mean that at all."
"I won't interrupt you at your work. What I have to say is perhaps of
no great moment. Indeed, words between you and me never can have much
importance now. Can they, Conway?"
"I don't see that at all," said he, still working away with his
brush.
"Do you not? I do. They should never amount to more,--they can never
amount to more than the common, ordinary courtesies of life; what I
call the greetings and good-byings of conversation." She said this in
a low, melancholy tone of voice, not intending to be in any degree
jocose. "How seldom is it that conversation between ordinary friends
goes beyond that."
"Don't you think it does?" said Conway, stepping back and taking
another look at his picture. "I find myself talking to all manner of
people about all manner of things."
"You are different from me. I cannot talk to all manner of people."
"Politics, you know, and art, and a little scandal, and the wars,
with a dozen other things, make talking easy enough, I think. I grant
you this, that it is very often a great bore. Hardly a day passes
that I don't wish to cut out somebody's tongue."
"Do you wish to cut out my tongue, Conway?"
He began to perceive that she was determined to talk about herself,
and that there was no remedy. He dreaded it, not because he did not
like the woman, but from a conviction that she was going to make some
comparison between herself and Clara Van Siever. In his ordinary
humour he liked a little pretence at romance, and was rather good
at that sort of love-making which in truth means anything but love.
But just now he was really thinking of matrimony, and had on this
very morning acknowledged to himself that he had become sufficiently
attached to Clara Van Siever to justify him in asking her to be his
wife. In his present mood he was not anxious for one of those tilts
with blunted swords and half-severed lances in the lists of Cupid
of which Mrs. Dobbs Broughton was so fond. Nevertheless, if she
insisted that he should now descend into the arena and go through
the paraphernalia of a mock tournament, he must obey her. It is the
hardship of men that when called upon by women for romance, they are
bound to be romantic, whether the opportunity serves them or does
not. A man must produce romance, or at least submit to it, when duly
summoned, even though he should have a sore-throat or a headache. He
is a brute if he decline such an encounter,--and feels that, should
he so decline persistently, he will ever after be treated as a brute.
There are many Potiphar's wives who never dream of any mischief, and
Josephs who are very anxious to escape, though they are asked to
return only whisper for whisper. Mrs. Dobbs Broughton had asked him
whether he wished that her tongue should be cut out, and he had of
course replied that her words had always been a joy to him,--never
a trouble. It occurred to him as he made his little speech that it
would only have served her right if he had answered her quite in
another strain; but she was a woman, and was young and pretty, and
was entitled to flattery. "They have always been a joy to me," he
said, repeating his last words as he strove to continue his work.
"A deadly joy," she replied, not quite knowing what she herself
meant. "A deadly joy, Conway. I wish with all my heart that we had
never known each other."
"I do not. I will never wish away the happiness of my life, even
should it be followed by misery."
"You are a man, and if trouble comes upon you, you can bear it on
your own shoulders. A woman suffers more, just because another's
shoulders may have to bear the burden."
"When she has got a husband, you mean?"
"Yes,--when she has a husband."
"It's the same with a man when he has a wife." Hitherto the
conversation had had so much of milk-and-water in its composition,
that Dalrymple found himself able to keep it up and go on with his
background at the same time. If she could only be kept in the same
dim cloud of sentiment, if the hot rays of the sun of romance could
be kept from breaking through the mist till Miss Van Siever should
come, it might still be well. He had known her to wander about within
the clouds for an hour together, without being able to find her way
into the light. "It's all the same with a man when he has got a
wife," he said. "Of course one has to suffer for two, when one, so to
say, is two."
"And what happens when one has to suffer for three?" she asked.
"You mean when a woman has children?"
"I mean nothing of the kind, Conway; and you must know that I do not,
unless your feelings are indeed blunted. But worldly success has, I
suppose, blunted them."
"I rather fancy not," he said. "I think they are pretty nearly as
sharp as ever."
"I know mine are. Oh, how I wish I could rid myself of them! But it
cannot be done. Age will not blunt them,--I am sure of that," said
Mrs. Broughton. "I wish it would."
He had determined not to talk about herself if the subject could be
in any way avoided; but now he felt that he was driven up into a
corner;--now he was forced to speak to her of her own personality.
"You have no experience yet as to that. How can you say what age will
do?"
"Age does not go by years," said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton. "We all know
that. 'His hair was grey, but not with years.' Look here, Conway,"
and she moved back her tresses from off her temples to show him that
there were gray hairs behind. He did not see them; and had they been
very visible she might not perhaps have been so ready to exhibit
them. "No one can say that length of years has blanched them. I have
no secrets from you about my age. One should not be grey before one
has reached thirty."
"I did not see a changed hair."
"'Twas the fault of your eyes, then, for there are plenty of them.
And what is it has made them grey?"
"They say that hot rooms will do it."
"Hot rooms! No, Conway, it does not come from heated atmosphere. It
comes from a cold heart, a chilled heart, a frozen heart, a heart
that is all ice." She was getting out of the cloud into the heat now,
and he could only hope that Miss Van Siever would come soon. "The
world is beginning with you, Conway, and yet you are as old as I am.
It is ending with me, and yet I am as young as you are. But I do not
know why I talk of all this. It is simply folly,--utter folly. I
had not meant to speak of myself; but I did wish to say a few words
to you of your own future. I suppose I may still speak to you as a
friend?"
"I hope you will always do that."
"Nay,--I will make no such promise. That I will always have a
friend's feeling for you, a friend's interest in your welfare, a
friend's triumph in your success,--that I will promise. But friendly
words, Conway, are sometimes misunderstood."
"Never by me," said he.
"No, not by you,--certainly not by you. I did not mean that. I did
not expect that you should misinterpret them." Then she laughed
hysterically,--a little low, gurgling, hysterical laugh; and after
that she wiped her eyes, and then she smiled, and then she put her
hand very gently upon his shoulder. "Thank God, Conway, we are quite
safe there,--are we not?"
He had made a blunder, and it was necessary that he should correct
it. His watch was lying in the trough of his easel, and he looked at
it and wondered why Miss Van Siever was not there. He had tripped,
and he must make a little struggle and recover his step. "As I said
before, it shall never be misunderstood by me. I have never been vain
enough to suppose for a moment that there was any other feeling,--not
for a moment. You women can be so careful, while we men are always
off our guard! A man loves because he cannot help it; but a woman has
been careful, and answers him--with friendship. Perhaps I am wrong to
say that I never thought of winning anything more; but I never think
of winning more now." Why the mischief didn't Miss Van Siever come!
In another five minutes, despite himself, he would be on his knees,
making a mock declaration, and she would be pouring forth the vial of
her mock wrath, or giving him mock counsel as to the restraint of his
passion. He had gone through it all before, and was tired of it; but
for his life he did not know how to help himself.
"Conway," said she, gravely, "how dare you address me in such
language?"
"Of course it is very wrong; I know that."
"I'm not speaking of myself, now. I have learned to think so little
of myself, as even to be indifferent to the feeling of the injury you
are doing me. My life is a blank, and I almost think that nothing
can hurt me further. I have not heart left enough to break; no, not
enough to be broken. It is not of myself that I am thinking, when I
ask you how you dare to address me in such language. Do you not know
that it is an injury to another?"
"To what other?" asked Conway Dalrymple, whose mind was becoming
rather confused, and who was not quite sure whether the other one was
Mr. Dobbs Broughton, or somebody else.
"To that poor girl who is coming here now, who is devoted to you, and
to whom, I do not doubt, you have uttered words which ought to have
made it impossible for you to speak to me as you spoke not a moment
since."
Things were becoming very grave and difficult. They would have been
very grave, indeed, had not some god saved him by sending Miss Van
Siever to his rescue at this moment. He was beginning to think what
he would say in answer to the accusation now made, when his eager ear
caught the sound of her step upon the stairs; and before the pause
in the conversation which the circumstances admitted had given place
to the necessity for further speech, Miss Van Siever had knocked at
the door and had entered the room. He was rejoiced, and I think that
Mrs. Broughton did not regret the interference. It is always well
that these little dangerous scenes should be brought to sudden ends.
The last details of such romances, if drawn out to their natural
conclusions, are apt to be uncomfortable, if not dull. She did not
want him to go down on his knees, knowing that the getting up again
is always awkward.
"Clara, I began to think you were never coming," said Mrs. Broughton,
with her sweetest smile.
"I began to think so myself also," said Clara. "And I believe this
must be the last sitting, or, at any rate, the last but one."
"Is anything the matter at home?" said Mrs. Broughton, clasping her
hands together.
"Nothing very much; mamma asked me a question or two this morning,
and I said I was coming here. Had she asked me why, I should have
told her."
"But what did she ask? What did she say?"
"She does not always make herself very intelligible. She complains
without telling you what she complains of. But she muttered something
about artists which was not complimentary, and I suppose, therefore,
that she has a suspicion. She stayed ever so late this morning,
and we left the house together. She will ask some direct question
to-night, or before long, and then there will be an end of it."
"Let us make the best of our time then," said Dalrymple; and the
sitting was arranged; Miss Van Siever went down on her knees with her
hammer in her hand, and the work began. Mrs. Broughton had twisted a
turban round Clara's head, as she always did on these occasions, and
assisted to arrange the drapery. She used to tell herself as she did
so, that she was like Isaac, piling the fagots for her own sacrifice.
Only Isaac had piled them in ignorance, and she piled them conscious
of the sacrificial flames. And Isaac had been saved; whereas it was
impossible that the catching of any ram in any thicket could save
her. But, nevertheless, she arranged the drapery with all her skill,
piling the fagots ever so high for her own pyre. In the meantime
Conway Dalrymple painted away, thinking more of his picture than he
did of one woman or of the other.
[Illustration: Mrs. Dobbs Broughton piles her Fagots.]
After a while, when Mrs. Broughton had piled the fagots as high as
she could pile them, she got up from her seat and prepared to leave
the room. Much of the piling consisted, of course, in her own absence
during a portion of these sittings. "Conway," she said, as she went,
"if this is to be the last sitting, or the last but one, you should
make the most of it." Then she threw upon him a very peculiar glance
over the head of the kneeling Jael, and withdrew. Jael, who in those
moments would be thinking more of the fatigue of her position than
of anything else, did not at all take home to herself the peculiar
meaning of her friend's words. Conway Dalrymple understood them
thoroughly, and thought that he might as well take the advice given
to him. He had made up his mind to propose to Miss Van Siever, and
why should he not do so now? He went on with his brush for a couple
of minutes without saying a word, working as well as he could work,
and then resolved that he would at once begin the other task. "Miss
Van Siever," he said, "I'm afraid you are tired?"
"Not more than usually tired. It is fatiguing to be slaying Sisera by
the hour together. I do get to hate this block." The block was the
dummy by which the form of Sisera was supposed to be typified.
"Another sitting will about finish it," said he, "so that you need
not positively distress yourself now. Will you rest yourself for a
minute or two?" He had already perceived that the attitude in which
Clara was posed before him was not one in which an offer of marriage
could be received and replied to with advantage.
"Thank you, I am not tired yet," said Clara, not changing the fixed
glance of national wrath with which she regarded her wooden Sisera as
she held her hammer on high.
"But I am. There; we will rest for a moment." Dalrymple was aware
that Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, though she was very assiduous in piling
her fagots, never piled them for long together. If he did not make
haste she would be back upon them before he could get his word
spoken. When he put down his brush, and got up from his chair, and
stretched out his arm as a man does when he ceases for a moment from
his work, Clara of course got up also, and seated herself. She was
used to her turban and her drapery, and therefore thought not of it
at all; and he also was used to it, seeing her in it two or three
times a week; but now that he intended to accomplish a special
purpose, the turban and the drapery seemed to be in the way. "I do so
hope you will like the picture," he said, as he was thinking of this.
"I don't think I shall. But you will understand that it is natural
that a girl should not like herself in such a portraiture as that."
"I don't know why. I can understand that you specially should not
like the picture; but I think that most women in London in your place
would at any rate say that they did."
"Are you angry with me?"
"What; for telling the truth? No, indeed." He was standing opposite
to his easel, looking at the canvas, shifting his head about so as to
change the lights, and observing critically this blemish and that;
and yet he was all the while thinking how he had best carry out his
purpose. "It will have been a prosperous picture to me," he said at
last, "if it leads to the success of which I am ambitious."
"I am told that all you do is successful now,--merely because you do
it. That is the worst of success."
"What is the worst of success?"
"That when won by merit it leads to further success, for the gaining
of which no merit is necessary."
"I hope it may be so in my case. If it is not I shall have a very
poor chance. Clara, I think you must know that I am not talking about
my pictures."
"I thought you were."
"Indeed I am not. As for success in my profession, far as I am from
thinking I merit it, I feel tolerably certain that I shall obtain
it."
"You have obtained it."
"I am in the way to do so. Perhaps one out of ten struggling artists
is successful, and for him the profession is very charming. It is
certainly a sad feeling that there is so much of chance in the
distribution of the prizes. It is a lottery. But one cannot complain
of that when one has drawn the prize." Dalrymple was not a man
without self-possession, nor was he readily abashed, but he found it
easier to talk of his possession than to make his offer. The turban
was his difficulty. He had told himself over and over again within
the last five minutes, that he would have long since said what he
had to say had it not been for the turban. He had been painting all
his life from living models,--from women dressed up in this or that
costume, to suit the necessities of his picture,--but he had never
made love to any of them. They had been simply models to him, and now
he found that there was a difficulty. "Of that prize," he said, "I
have made myself tolerably sure; but as to the other prize, I do not
know. I wonder whether I am to have that." Of course Miss Van Siever
understood well what was the prize of which he was speaking; and as
she was a young woman with a will and purpose of her own, no doubt
she was already prepared with an answer. But it was necessary that
the question should be put to her in properly distinct terms. Conway
Dalrymple certainly had not put his question in properly distinct
terms at present. She did not choose to make any answer to his last
words; and therefore simply suggested that as time was pressing he
had better go on with his work. "I am quite ready now," said she.
"Stop half a moment. How much more you are thinking of the picture
than I am! I do not care twopence for the picture. I will slit the
canvas from top to bottom without a groan,--without a single inner
groan,--if you will let me."
"For heaven's sake do nothing of the kind! Why should you?"
"Just to show you that it is not for the sake of the picture that
I come here. Clara--" Then the door was opened, and Isaac appeared,
very weary, having been piling fagots with assiduity, till human
nature could pile no more. Conway Dalrymple, who had made his way
almost up to Clara's seat, turned round sharply towards his easel, in
anger at having been disturbed. He should have been more grateful for
all that his Isaac had done for him, and have recognized the fact
that the fault had been with himself. Mrs. Broughton had been twelve
minutes out of the room. She had counted them to be fifteen,--having
no doubt made a mistake as to three,--and had told herself that
with such a one as Conway Dalrymple, with so much of the work ready
done to his hand for him, fifteen minutes should have been amply
sufficient. When we reflect what her own thoughts must have been
during the interval,--what it is to have to pile up such fagots as
those, how she was, as it were, giving away a fresh morsel of her own
heart during each minute that she allowed Clara and Conway Dalrymple
to remain together, it cannot surprise us that her eyes should have
become dizzy, and that she should not have counted the minutes with
accurate correctness. Dalrymple turned to his picture angrily, but
Miss Van Siever kept her seat and did not show the slightest emotion.
"My friends," said Mrs. Broughton, "this will not do. This is not
working; this is not sitting."
"Mr. Dalrymple has been explaining to me the precarious nature of an
artist's profession," said Clara.
"It is not precarious with him," said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton,
sententiously.
"Not in a general way, perhaps; but to prove the truth of his words
he was going to treat Jael worse than Jael treats Sisera."
"I was going to slit the picture from the top to the bottom."
"And why?" said Mrs. Broughton, putting up her hands to heaven in
tragic horror.
"Just to show Miss Van Siever how little I care about it."
"And how little you care about her, too," said Mrs. Broughton.
"She might take that as she liked." After this there was another
genuine sitting, and the real work went on as though there had been
no episode. Jael fixed her face, and held her hammer as though her
mind and heart were solely bent on seeming to be slaying Sisera.
Dalrymple turned his eyes from the canvas to the model, and from the
model to the canvas, working with his hand all the while, as though
that last pathetic "Clara" had never been uttered; and Mrs. Dobbs
Broughton reclined on a sofa, looking at them and thinking of her own
singularly romantic position, till her mind was filled with a poetic
frenzy. In one moment she resolved that she would hate Clara as
woman was never hated by woman; and then there were daggers, and
poison-cups, and strangling cords in her eye. In the next she was as
firmly determined that she would love Mrs. Conway Dalrymple as woman
never was loved by woman; and then she saw herself kneeling by a
cradle, and tenderly nursing a baby, of which Conway was to be the
father and Clara the mother. And so she went to sleep.
For some time Dalrymple did not observe this; but at last there was
a little sound,--even the ill-nature of Miss Demolines could hardly
have called it a snore,--and he became aware that for practical
purposes he and Miss Van Siever were again alone together. "Clara,"
he said, in a whisper. Mrs. Broughton instantly aroused herself from
her slumbers, and rubbed her eyes. "Dear, dear, dear," she said, "I
declare it's past one. I'm afraid I must turn you both out. One more
sitting, I suppose, will finish it, Conway?"
"Yes, one more," said he. It was always understood that he and Clara
should not leave the house together, and therefore he remained
painting when she left the room. "And now, Conway," said Mrs.
Broughton, "I suppose that all is over?"
"I don't know what you mean by all being over."
"No,--of course not. You look at it in another light, no doubt.
Everything is beginning for you. But you must pardon me, for my heart
is distracted,--distracted,--distracted!" Then she sat down upon the
floor, and burst into tears. What was he to do? He thought that the
woman should either give him up altogether, or not give him up. All
this fuss about it was irrational! He would not have made love to
Clara Van Siever in her room if she had not told him to do so!
"Maria," he said, in a very grave voice, "any sacrifice that is
required on my part on your behalf I am ready to make."
"No, sir; the sacrifices shall all be made by me. It is the part of
a woman to be ever sacrificial!" Poor Mrs. Dobbs Broughton! "You
shall give up nothing. The world is at your feet, and you shall
have everything,--youth, beauty, wealth, station, love,--love; and
friendship also, if you will accept it from one so poor, so broken,
so secluded as I shall be." At each of the last words there had been
a desperate sob; and as she was still crouching in the middle of the
room, looking up into Dalrymple's face while he stood over her, the
scene was one which had much in it that transcended the doings of
everyday life, much that would be ever memorable, and much, I have
no doubt, that was thoroughly enjoyed by the principal actor. As for
Conway Dalrymple, he was so second-rate a personage in the whole
thing, that it mattered little whether he enjoyed it or not. I don't
think he did enjoy it. "And now, Conway," she said, "I will give
you some advice. And when in after-days you shall remember this
interview, and reflect how that advice was given you,--with what
solemnity,"--here she clasped both her hands together,--"I think that
you will follow it. Clara Van Siever will now become your wife."
"I do not know that at all," said Dalrymple.
"Clara Van Siever will now become your wife," repeated Mrs. Broughton
in a louder voice, impatient of opposition. "Love her. Cleave to her.
Make her flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. But rule her!
Yes, rule her! Let her be your second self, but not your first self.
Rule her. Love her. Cleave to her. Do not leave her alone, to feed on
her own thoughts as I have done,--as I have been forced to do. Now
go. No, Conway, not a word; I will not hear a word. You must go, or
I must." Then she rose quickly from her lowly attitude, and prepared
herself for a dart at the door. It was better by far that he should
go, and so he went.
An American when he has spent a pleasant day will tell you that he
has had "a good time." I think that Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, if she
had ever spoken the truth of that day's employment, would have
acknowledged that she had had "a good time." I think that she enjoyed
her morning's work. But as for Conway Dalrymple, I doubt whether he
did enjoy his morning's work. "A man may have too much of this sort
of thing, and then he becomes very sick of his cake." Such was the
nature of his thoughts as he returned to his own abode.