During the weeks that followed the Meadowses' first visit to Crosby
Ledgers, Doris's conscience was by no means asleep on the subject of
Lady Dunstable. She felt that her behaviour in that lady's house, and
the sudden growth in her own mind of a quite unmanageable dislike, were
not to be defended in one who prided herself on a general temper of
coolness and common sense, who despised the rancour and whims of other
women, hated scenes, and had always held jealousy to be the smallest and
most degrading of passions. Why not laugh at what was odious, show
oneself superior to personal slights, and enjoy what could be enjoyed?
And above all, why grudge Arthur a woman friend?
None of these arguments, however, availed at all to reconcile Doris to
the new intimacy growing under her eyes. The Dunstables came to town,
and invitations followed. Mr. and Mrs. Meadows were asked to a large
dinner-party, and Doris held her peace and went. She found herself at
the end of a long table with an inarticulate schoolboy of seventeen, a
ward of Lord Dunstable's, on her left, and with an elderly colonel on
her right, who, after a little cool examination of her through an
eyeglass, decided to devote himself to the _débutante_ on his other
side, a Lady Rosamond, who was ready to chatter hunting and horses to
him through the whole of dinner. The girl was not pretty, but she was
fresh and gay, and Doris, tired with "much serving," envied her spirits,
her evident assumption that the world only existed for her to
laugh and ride in, her childish unspoken claim to the best of
everything--clothes, food, amusements, lovers. Doris on her side made
valiant efforts with the schoolboy. She liked boys, and prided herself
on getting on with them. But this specimen had no conversation--at any
rate for the female sex--and apparently only an appetite. He ate
steadily through the dinner, and seemed rather to resent Doris's
attempts to distract him from the task. So that presently Doris found
herself reduced to long tracts of silence, when her fan was her only
companion, and the watching of other people her only amusement.
Lord and Lady Dunstable faced each other at the sides of the table,
which was purposely narrow, so that talk could pass across it. Lady
Dunstable sat between an Ambassador and a Cabinet Minister, but Meadows
was almost directly opposite to her, and it seemed to be her chief
business to make him the hero of the occasion. It was she who drew him
into political or literary discussion with the Cabinet Minister, so that
the neighbours of each stayed their own talk to listen; she who would
insist on his repeating "that story you told me at Crosby Ledgers;" who
attacked him abruptly--rudely even, as she had done in the country--so
that he might defend himself; and when he had slipped into all her traps
one after the other, would fall back in her chair with a little
satisfied smile. Doris, silent and forgotten, could not keep her eyes
for long from the two distant figures--from this new Arthur, and the
sallow-faced, dark-eyed witch who had waved her wand over him.
_Wasn't_ she glad to see her husband courted--valued as he
deserved--borne along the growing stream of fame? What matter, if she
could only watch him from the bank?--and if the impetuous stream were
carrying him away from her? No! She wasn't glad. Some cold and deadly
thing seemed to be twining about her heart. Were they leaving the dear,
poverty-stricken, debt-pestered life behind for ever, in which, after
all, they had been so happy: she, everything to Arthur, and he, so
dependent upon her? No doubt she had been driven to despair, often, by
his careless, shiftless ways; she had thirsted for success and money;
just money enough, at least, to get along with. And now success had
come, and money was coming. And here she was, longing for the old, hard,
struggling past--hating the advent of the new and glittering future. As
she sat at Lady Dunstable's table, she seemed to see the little room in
their Kensington house, with the big hole in the carpet, the piles of
papers and books, the reading-lamp that would smoke, her work-basket,
the house-books, Arthur pulling contentedly at his pipe, the
fire crackling between them, his shabby coat, her shabby
dress--Bliss!--compared to this splendid scene, with the great Vandycks
looking down on the dinner-table, the crowd of guests and servants, the
costly food, the dresses, and the diamonds--with, in the distance, _her_
Arthur, divided, as it seemed, from her by a growing chasm, never
remembering to throw her a look or a smile, drinking in a tide of
flattery he would once have been the first to scorn, captured,
exhibited, befooled by an unscrupulous, egotistical woman, who would
drop him like a squeezed orange when he had ceased to amuse her. And the
worst of it was that the woman was not a mere pretender! She had a fine,
hard brain,--"as good as Arthur's--nearly--and he knows it. It is that
which attracts him--and excites him. I can mend his socks; I can listen
while he reads; and he used to like it when I praised. Now, what I say
will never matter to him any more; that was just sentiment and nonsense;
now, he only wants to know what _she_ says;--that's business! He writes
with her in his mind--and when he has finished something he sends it off
to her, straight. I may see it when all the world may--but she has the
first-fruits!"
And in poor Doris's troubled mind the whole scene--save the two central
figures, Lady Dunstable and Arthur--seemed to melt away. She was not the
first wife, by a long way, into whose quiet breast Lady Dunstable had
dropped these seeds of discord. She knew it well by report; but it was
hateful, both to wifely feeling and natural vanity, that _she_ should
now be the victim of the moment, and should know no more than her
predecessors how to defend herself. "Why can't I be cool and
cutting--pay her back when she is rude, and contradict her when she's
absurd? She _is_ absurd often. But I think of the right things to say
just five minutes too late. I have no nerve--that's the point!--only
_l'esprit d'escalier_ to perfection. And she has been trained to this
sort of campaigning from her babyhood. No good growling! I shall never
hold my own!"
Then, into this despairing mood there dropped suddenly a fragment of her
neighbour, the Colonel's, conversation--"Mrs. So-and-so? Impossible
woman! Oh, one doesn't mind seeing her graze occasionally at the other
end of one's table--as the price of getting her husband, don't you
know?--but--"
Doris's sudden laugh at the Colonel's elbow startled that gentleman so
that he turned round to look at her. But she was absorbed in the menu,
which she had taken up, and he could only suppose that something in it
amused her.
A few days later arrived a letter for Meadows, which he handed to his
wife in silence. There had been no further discussion of Lady Dunstable
between them; only a general sense of friction, warnings of hidden fire
on Doris's side, and resentment on his, quite new in their relation to
each other. Meadows clearly thought that his wife was behaving very
badly. Lady Dunstable's efforts on his behalf had already done him
substantial service; she had introduced him to all kinds of people
likely to help him, intellectually and financially; and to help him was
to help Doris. Why would she be such a little fool? So unlike her,
too!--sensible, level-headed creature that she generally was. But he was
afraid of losing his own temper, if he argued with her. And indeed his
lazy easy-goingness loathed argument of this domestic sort, loathed
scenes, loathed doing anything disagreeable that could be put off.
But here was Lady Dunstable's letter:
Dear Mr. Arthur,--Will your wife forgive me if I ask you to come to
a tiny _men's_ dinner-party next Friday at 8.15--to meet the
President of the Duma, and another Russian, an intimate friend of
Tolstoy's? All males, but myself! So I hope Mrs. Meadows will let
you come.
Yours sincerely,
RACHEL DUNSTABLE.
"Of course, I won't go if you don't like it, Doris," said Meadows with
the smile of magnanimity.
"I thought you were angry with me--once--for even suggesting that you
might!" Doris's tone was light, but not pleasing to a husband's ears.
She was busy at the moment in packing up the American proofs of the
Disraeli lecture, which at last with infinite difficulty she had
persuaded Meadows to correct and return.
"Well--but of course--this is exceptional!" said Meadows, pacing up and
down irresolutely.
"Everything's exceptional--in that quarter," said Doris, in the same
tone. "Oh, go, of course!--it would be a thousand pities not to go."
Meadows at once took her at her word. That was the first of a series of
"male" dinners, to which, however, it seemed to Doris, if one might
judge from Arthur's accounts, that a good many female exceptions were
admitted, no doubt by way of proving the rule. And during July, Meadows
lunched in town--in the lofty regions of St. James's or Mayfair--with
other enthusiastic women admirers, most of them endowed with long purses
and long pedigrees, at least three or four times a week. Doris was
occasionally asked and sometimes went. But she was suffering all the
time from an initial discouragement and depression, which took away
self-reliance, and left her awkwardly conscious. She struggled, but in
vain. The world into which Arthur was being so suddenly swept was
strange to her, and in many ways antipathetic; but had she been happy
and in spirits she could have grappled with it, or rather she could have
lost herself in Arthur's success. Had she not always been his slave?
But she was not happy! In their obscure days she had been Arthur's best
friend, as well as his wife. And it was the old comradeship which was
failing her; encroached upon, filched from her, by other women; and
especially by this exacting, absorbing woman, whose craze for Arthur
Meadows's society was rapidly becoming an amusement and a scandal even
to those well acquainted with her previous records of the same sort.
* * * * *
The end of July arrived. The Dunstables left town. At a concert, for
which she had herself sent them tickets, Lady Dunstable met Doris and
her husband, the night before she departed.
"In ten days we shall expect you at Pitlochry," she said, smiling, to
Arthur Meadows, as she swept past them in the corridor. Then, pausing,
she held out a perfunctory hand to Doris.
"And we really can't persuade you to come too?"
The tone was careless and patronising. It brought the sudden red to
Doris's cheek. For one moment she was tempted to say--"Thank you--since
you are so kind--after all, why not?"--just that she might see the
change in those large, malicious eyes--might catch their owner unawares,
for once. But, as usual, nerve failed her. She merely said that her
drawing would keep her all August in town; and that London, empty, was
the best possible place for work. Lady Dunstable nodded and passed on.
The ten days flew. Meadows, kept to it by Doris, was very busy preparing
another lecture for publication in an English review. Doris, meanwhile,
got his clothes ready, and affected a uniformly cheerful and indifferent
demeanour. On Arthur's last evening at home, however, he came suddenly
into the sitting-room, where Doris was sewing on some final buttons, and
after fidgeting about a little, with occasional glances at his wife, he
said abruptly:
"I say, Doris, I won't go if you're going to take it like this."
She turned upon him.
"Like what?"
"Oh, don't pretend!" was the impatient reply. "You know very well that
you hate my going to Scotland!"
Doris, all on edge, and smarting under the too Jovian look and frown
with which he surveyed her from the hearthrug, declared that, as it was
not a case of her going to Scotland, but of his, she was entirely
indifferent. If he enjoyed it, he was quite right to go. _She_ was going
to enjoy her work in Uncle Charles's studio.
Meadows broke out into an angry attack on her folly and unkindness. But
the more he lost his temper, the more provokingly Doris kept hers. She
sat there, surrounded by his socks and shirts, a trim, determined little
figure--declining to admit that she was angry, or jealous, or offended,
or anything of the kind. Would he please come upstairs and give her his
last directions about his packing? She thought she had put everything
ready; but there were just a few things she was doubtful about.
And all the time she seemed to be watching another Doris--a creature
quite different from her real self. What had come over her? If anybody
had told her beforehand that she could ever let slip her power over her
own will like this, ever become possessed with this silent, obstinate
demon of wounded love and pride, never would she have believed them! She
moved under its grip like an automaton. She would not quarrel with
Arthur. But as no soft confession was possible, and no mending or
undoing of what had happened, to laugh her way through the difficult
hours was all that remained. So that whenever Meadows renewed the
attempt to "have it out," he was met by renewed evasion and "chaff" on
Doris's side, till he could only retreat with as much offended dignity
as she allowed him.
It was after midnight before she had finished his packing. Then, bidding
him a smiling good night, she fell asleep--apparently--as soon as her
head touched the pillow.
The next morning, early, she stood on the steps waving farewell to
Arthur, without a trace of ill-humour. And he, though vaguely
uncomfortable, had submitted at last to what he felt was her fixed
purpose of avoiding a scene. Moreover, the "eternal child" in him, which
made both his charm and his weakness, had already scattered his
compunctions of the preceding day, and was now aglow with the sheer joy
of holiday and change. He had worked very hard, he had had a great
success, and now he was going to live for three weeks in the lap of
luxury; intellectual luxury first and foremost--good talk, good company,
an abundance of books for rainy days; but with the addition of a supreme
_chef_, Lord Dunstable's champagne, and all the amenities of one of the
best moors in Scotland.
Doris went back into the house, and, Arthur being no longer in the
neighbourhood, allowed herself a few tears. She had never felt so lonely
in her life, nor so humiliated. "My moral character is gone," she said
to herself. "I have no moral character. I thought I was a sensible,
educated woman; and I am just an ''Arriet,' in a temper with her
''Arry.' Well--courage! Three weeks isn't long. Who can say that Arthur
mayn't come back disillusioned? Rachel Dunstable is a born tyrant. If,
instead of flattering him, she begins to bully him, strange things may
happen!"
The first week of solitude she spent in household drudgery. Bills had to
be paid, and there was now mercifully a little money to pay them with.
Though it was August, the house was to be "spring-cleaned," and Doris
had made a compact with her sulky maids that when it began she would do
no more than sleep and breakfast at home. She would spend her days in
the Campden Hill studio, and sup on a tray--anywhere. On these terms,
they grudgingly allowed her to occupy her own house.
The studio in which she worked was on the top of Campden Hill, and
opened into one of the pleasant gardens of that neighbourhood. Her
uncle, Charles Bentley, an elderly Academician, with an ugly, humorous
face, red hair, red eyebrows, a black skull-cap, and a general weakness
for the female sex, was very fond of his niece Doris, and inclined to
think her a neglected and underrated wife. He was too fond of his own
comfort, however, to let Meadows perceive this opinion of his; still
less did he dare express it to Doris. All he could do was to befriend
her and make her welcome at the studio, to advise her about her
illustrations, and correct her drawing when it needed it. He himself was
an old-fashioned artist, quite content to be "mid" or even "early"
Victorian. He still cultivated the art of historical painting, and was
still as anxious as any contemporary of Frith to tell a story. And as
his manner was no less behind the age than his material, his pictures
remained on his hands, while the "vicious horrors," as they seemed to
him, of the younger school held the field and captured the newspapers.
But as he had some private means, and no kith or kin but his niece, the
indifference of the public to his work caused him little disturbance.
He pleased his own taste, allowing himself a good-natured contempt for
the work which supplanted him, coupled with an ever-generous hand for
any post-Impressionist in difficulties.
On the August afternoon when Doris, escaping at last from her maids and
her accounts, made her way up to the studio, for some hours' work on the
last three or four illustrations wanted for a Christmas book, Uncle
Charles welcomed her with effusion.
"Where have you been, child, all this time? I thought you must have
flitted entirely."
Doris explained--while she set up her easel--that for the first time in
their lives she and Arthur had been seeing something of the great world,
and--mildly--"doing" the season. Arthur was now continuing the season in
Scotland, while she had stayed at home to work and rest. Throughout her
talk, she avoided mentioning the Dunstables.
"H'm!" said Uncle Charles, "so you've been junketing!"
Doris admitted it.
"Did you like it?"
Doris put on her candid look.
"I daresay I should have liked it, if I'd made a success of it. Of
course Arthur did."
"Too much trouble!" said the old painter, shaking his head. "I was in
the swim, as they call it, for a year or two. I might have stayed there,
I suppose, for I could always tell a story, and I wasn't afraid of the
big-wigs. But I couldn't stand it. Dress-clothes are the deuce! And
besides, talk now is not what it used to be. The clever men who can say
smart things are too clever to say them. Nobody wants 'em! So let's
'cultivate our garden,' my dear, and be thankful. I'm beginning a new
picture--and I've found a topping new model. What can a man want more?
Very nice of you to let Arthur go, and have his head. Where is
it?--some smart moor? He'll soon be tired of it."
Doris laughed, let the question as to the "smart moor" pass, and came
round to look at the new subject that Uncle Charles was laying in. He
explained it to her, well knowing that he spoke to unsympathetic ears,
for whatever Doris might draw for her publishers, she was a passionate
and humble follower of those modern experimentalists who have made the
Slade School famous. The subject was, it seemed, to be a visit paid to
Joanna the mad and widowed mother of Charles V., at Tordesillas, by the
envoys of Henry VII., who were thus allowed by Ferdinand, the Queen's
father, to convince themselves that the Queen's profound melancholia
formed an insuperable barrier to the marriage proposals of the English
King. The figure of the distracted Queen, crouching in white beside a
window from which she could see the tomb of her dead and adored
husband, the Archduke Philip, and some of the splendid figures of the
English embassy, were already sketched.
"I have been fit to hang myself over her!" said Bentley, pointing to the
Queen. "I tried model after model. At last I've got the very thing! She
comes to-day for the first time. You'll see her! Before she comes, I
must scrape out Joanna, so as to look at the thing quite fresh. But I
daresay I shall only make a few sketches of the lady to-day."
"Who is she, and where did you get her!"
Bentley laughed. "You won't like her, my dear! Never mind. Her
appearance is magnificent--whatever her mind and morals may be."
And he described how he had heard of the lady from an artist friend who
had originally seen her at a music-hall, and had persuaded her to come
and sit to him. The comic haste and relief with which he had now
transferred her to Bentley lost nothing in Bentley's telling. Of course
she had "a fiend of a temper." "Wish you joy of her! Oh, don't ask me
about her! You'll find out for yourself." "I can manage her," said Uncle
Charles tranquilly. "I've had so many of 'em."
"She is Spanish?"
"Not at all. She is Italian. That is to say, her mother was a
Neapolitan, the daughter of a jeweller in Hatton Garden, and her father
an English bank clerk. The Neapolitans have a lot of Spanish blood in
them--hence, no doubt, the physique."
"And she is a professional model!"
"Nothing of the sort!--though she will probably become one. She is a
writer--Heaven save the mark!--and I have to pay her vast sums to get
her. It is the greatest favour."
"A _writer_?"
"Poetess!--and journalist!" said Uncle Charles, enjoying Doris's
puzzled look. "She sent me her poems yesterday. As to journalism"--his
eyes twinkled--"I say nothing--but this. Watch her _hats_! She has the
reputation--in certain circles--of being the best-hatted woman in
London. All this I get from the man who handed her on to me. As I said
to him, it depends on what 'London' you mean."
"Married?"
"Oh dear no, though of course she calls herself 'Madame' like the rest
of them--Madame Vavasour. I have reason, however, to believe that her
real name is Flink--Elena Flink. And I should say--very much on the
look-out for a husband; and meanwhile very much courted by boys--who go
to what she calls her 'evenings.' It is odd, the taste that some youths
have for these elderly Circes."
"Elderly?" said Doris, busy the while with her own preparations. "I was
hoping for something young and beautiful!"
"Young?--no!--an unmistakable thirty-five. Beautiful? Well, wait till
you see her ... H'm--that shoulder won't do!"--Doris had just placed a
preliminary sketch of one of her "subjects" under his eyes--"and that
bit of perspective in the corner wants a lot of seeing to. Look here!"
The old Academician, brought up in the spirit of Ingres--"le dessin,
c'est la probité!--le dessin, c'est l'honneur!"--fell eagerly to work on
the sketch, and Doris watched.
They were both absorbed, when there was a knock at the door. Doris
turned hastily, expecting to see the model. Instead of which there
entered, in response to Bentley's "Come in!" a girl of four or five and
twenty, in a blue linen dress and a shady hat, who nodded a quiet "Good
afternoon" to the artist, and proceeded at once with an air of business
to a writing-table at the further end of the studio, covered with
papers.
"Miss Wigram," said the artist, raising his voice, "let me introduce you
to my niece, Mrs. Meadows."
The girl rose from her chair again and bowed. Then Doris saw that she
had a charming tired face, beautiful eyes on which she had just placed
spectacles, and soft brown hair framing her thin cheeks.
"A novelty since you were here," whispered Bentley in Doris's ear.
"She's an accountant--capital girl! Since these Liberal budgets came
along, I can't keep my own accounts, or send in my own income-tax
returns--dash them! So she does the whole business for me--pays
everything--sees to everything--comes once a week. We shall all be run
by the women soon!"
* * * * *
The studio had grown very quiet. Through some glass doors open to the
garden came in little wandering winds which played with some loose
papers on the floor, and blew Doris's hair about her eyes as she stooped
over her easel, absorbed in her drawing. Apparently absorbed: her
subliminal mind, at least, was far away, wandering on a craggy Scotch
moor. A lady on a Scotch pony--she understood that Lady Dunstable often
rode with the shooters--and a tall man walking beside her, carrying, not
a gun, but a walking stick:--that was the vision in the crystal. Arthur
was too bad a shot to be tolerated in the Dunstable circle; had indeed
wisely announced from the beginning that he was not to be included among
the guns. All the more time for conversation, the give and take of wits,
the pleasures of the intellectual tilting-ground; the whole watered by
good wine, seasoned with the best of cooking, and lapped in the general
ease of a house where nobody ever thought of such a vulgar thing as
money except to spend it.
Doris had in general a severe mind as to the rich and aristocratic
classes. Her own hard and thrifty life had disposed her to see them _en
noir_. But the sudden rush of a certain section of them to crowd
Arthur's lectures had been certainly mollifying. If it had not been for
the Vampire, Doris was well aware that her standards might have given
way.
As it was, Lady Dunstable's exacting ways, her swoop, straight and
fierce, on the social morsel she desired, like that of an eagle on the
sheepfold, had made her, in Doris's sore consciousness, the
representative of thousands more; all greedy, able, domineering,
inevitably getting what they wanted, and more than they deserved;
against whom the starved and virtuous intellectuals of the professional
classes were bound to contend to the death. The story of that poor girl,
that clergyman's daughter, for instance--could anything have been more
insolent--more cruel? Doris burned to avenge her.
Suddenly--a great clatter and noise in the passage leading from the
small house behind to the studio and garden.
"Here she is!"
Uncle Charles sprang up, and reached the studio door just as a shower of
knocks descended upon it from outside. He opened it, and on the
threshold there stood two persons; a stout lady in white, surmounted by
a huge black hat with a hearse-like array of plumes; and, behind her, a
tall and willowy youth, with--so far as could be seen through the chinks
of the hat--a large nose, fair hair, pale blue eyes, and a singular
deficiency of chin. He carried in his arms a tiny black Spitz with a
pink ribbon round its neck.
The lady looked, frowning, into the interior of the studio. She held in
her hand a very large fan, with the handle of which she had been rapping
the door; and the black feathers with which she was canopied seemed to
be nodding in her eyes.
"Maestro, you are not alone!" she said in a deep, reproachful voice.
"My niece, Mrs. Meadows--Madame Vavasour," said Bentley, ushering in the
new-comer.
Doris turned from her easel and bowed, only to receive a rather scowling
response.
"And your friend?" As he spoke the artist looked blandly at the young
man.
"I brought him to amuse me, Maestro. When I am dull my countenance
changes, and you cannot do it justice. He will talk to me--I shall be
animated--and you will profit."
"Ah, no doubt!" said Bentley, smiling. "And your friend's name?"
"Herbert Dunstable--Honourable Herbert Dunstable!--Signor Bentley," said
Madame Vavasour, advancing with a stately step into the room, and waving
peremptorily to the young man to follow.
Doris sat transfixed and staring. Bentley turned to look at his niece,
and their eyes met--his full of suppressed mirth. The son!--the
unsatisfactory son! Doris remembered that his name was Herbert. In the
train of this third-rate sorceress!
Her thoughts ran excitedly to the distant moors, and that magnificent
lady, with her circle of distinguished persons, holiday-making
statesmen, peers, diplomats, writers, and the like. Here was a humbler
scene! But Doris's fancy at once divined a score of links between it and
the high comedy yonder.
Meanwhile, at the name of Dunstable, the girl accountant in the distance
had also moved sharply, so as to look at the young man. But in the
bustle of Madame Vavasour's entrance, and her passage to the sitter's
chair, the girl's gesture passed unnoticed.
"I'm just worn out, Maestro!" said the model languidly, uplifting a
pair of tragic eyes to the artist. "I sat up half the night writing. I
had a subject which tormented me. But I have done something _splendid_!
Isn't it splendid, Herbert?"
"Ripping!" said the young man, grinning widely.
"Sit down!" said Madame, with a change of tone. And the youth sat down,
on the very low chair to which she pointed him, doing his best to
dispose of his long legs.
"Give me the dog!" she commanded. "You have no idea how to hold
him--poor lamb!"
The dog was handed to her; she took off her enormous hat with many sighs
of fatigue, and then, with the dog on her lap, asked how she was to sit.
Bentley explained that he wished to make a few preliminary sketches of
her head and bust, and proceeded to pose her. She accepted his
directions with a curious pettishness, as though they annoyed her; and
presently complained loudly that the chair was uncomfortable, and the
pose irksome. He handled her, however, with a good-humoured mixture of
flattery and persuasion, and at last, stepping back, surveyed the
result--well content.
There was no doubt whatever that she was a very handsome woman, and that
her physical type--that of the more lethargic and heavily built
Neapolitan--suggested very happily the mad and melancholy Queen. She had
superb black hair, eyes profoundly dark, a low and beautiful brow, lips
classically fine, a powerful head and neck, and a complexion which, but
for the treatment given it, would have been of a clear and beautiful
olive. She wore a draggled dress of cream-coloured muslin, very
transparent over the shoulders, somewhat scandalously wanting at the
throat and breast, and very frayed and dirty round the skirt. Her feet,
which were large and plump, were cased in extremely pointed shoes with
large paste buckles; and as she crossed them on the stool provided for
them she showed a considerable amount of rather clumsy ankle. The hands
too were large, common, and ill-kept, and the wrists laden with
bracelets. She was adorned indeed with a great deal of jewellery,
including some startling earrings of a bright green stone. The hat,
which she had carefully placed on a chair beside her, was truly a
monstrosity!--but, as Doris guessed, an expensive monstrosity, such as
the Rue de la Paix provides, at anything from a hundred and fifty to two
hundred and fifty francs, for those of its cosmopolitan customers whom
it pillages and despises. How did the lady afford it? The rest of her
dress suggested a struggle with small means, waged by one who was greedy
for effect, obtained at a minimum of trouble. That she was rouged and
powdered goes without saying.
And the young man? Doris perceived at once his likeness to his father--a
feeble likeness. But he was evidently simple and good-natured, and to
all appearance completely in the power of the enchantress. He fanned her
assiduously. He picked up all the various belongings--gloves,
handkerchiefs, handbag--which she perpetually let fall. He ran after the
dog whenever it escaped from the lady's lap and threatened mischief in
the studio; and by way of amusing her--the purpose for which he had been
imported--he kept up a stream of small cryptic gossip about various
common acquaintances, most of whom seemed to belong to the music-hall
profession, and to be either "stars" or the satellites of "stars."
Madame listened to him with avidity, and occasionally broke into a
giggling laugh. She had, however, two manners, and two kinds of
conversation, which she adopted with the young man and the Academician
respectively. Her talk with the youth suggested the jealous ascendency
of a coarse-minded woman. She occasionally flattered him, but more
generally she teased or "ragged" him. She seemed indeed to feel him
securely in her grip; so that there was no need to pose for him,
as--figuratively as well as physically--she posed for Bentley. To the
artist she gave her opinions on pictures or books--on the novels of Mr.
Wells, or the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw--in the languid or drawling tone
of accepted authority; dropping every now and then into a broad cockney
accent, which produced a startling effect, like that of unexpected
garlic in cookery. Bentley's gravity was often severely tried, and Doris
altered the position of her own easel so that he and she could not see
each other. Meanwhile Madame took not the smallest notice of Mr.
Bentley's niece, and Doris made no advances to the young man, to whom
her name was clearly quite unknown. Had Circe really got him in her
toils? Doris judged him soft-headed and soft-hearted; no match at all
for the lady. The thought of her walking the lawns or the drawing-rooms
of Crosby Ledgers as the betrothed of the heir stirred in Arthur
Meadows's wife a silent, and--be it confessed!--a malicious convulsion.
Such mothers, so self-centred, so set on their own triumphs, with their
intellectual noses so very much in the clouds, deserved such sons! She
promised herself to keep her own counsel, and watch the play.
The sitting lasted for two hours. When it was over, Uncle Charles, all
smiles and satisfaction, went with his visitors to the front door.
He was away some little time, and returned, bubbling, to the studio.
"She's been cross-examining me about her poems! I had to confess I
hadn't read a word of them. And now she's offered to recite next time
she comes! Good Heavens--how can I get out of it? I believe, Doris,
she's hooked that young idiot! She told me she was engaged to him. Do
you know anything of his people?"
The girl accountant suddenly came forward. She looked flushed and
distressed.
"I do!" she said, with energy. "Can't somebody stop that? It will break
their hearts!"
Doris and Uncle Charles looked at her in amazement.
"Whose hearts?" said the painter.
"Lord and Lady Dunstable's."
"You know them?" exclaimed Doris.
"I used to know them--quite well," said the girl, quietly. "My father
had one of Lord Dunstable's livings. He died last year. He didn't like
Lady Dunstable. He quarrelled with her, because--because she once did a
very rude thing to me. But this would be _too_ awful! And poor Lord
Dunstable! Everybody likes him. Oh--it must be stopped!--it _must_!"