I
Lady Dain said: 'Jee, if that portrait stays there much longer, you'll
just have to take me off to Pirehill one of these fine mornings.'
Pirehill is the seat of the great local hospital; but it is also the
seat of the great local lunatic asylum; and when the inhabitants of the
Five Towns say merely 'Pirehill', they mean the asylum.
'I do declare I can't fancy my food now-a-days,' said Lady Dain, 'and
it's all that portrait!' She stared plaintively up at the immense
oil-painting which faced her as she sat at the breakfast-table in her
spacious and opulent dining-room.
Sir Jehoshaphat made no remark.
Despite Lady Dain's animadversions upon it, despite the undoubted fact
that it was generally disliked in the Five Towns, the portrait had cost
a thousand pounds (some said guineas), and though not yet two years old
it was probably worth at least fifteen hundred in the picture market.
For it was a Cressage; and not only was it a Cressage--it was one of
the finest Cressages in existence.
It marked the summit of Sir Jehoshaphat's career. Sir Jehoshaphat's
career was, perhaps, the most successful and brilliant in the entire
social history of the Five Towns. This famous man was the principal
partner in Dain Brothers. His brother was dead, but two of Sir Jee's
sons were in the firm. Dain Brothers were the largest manufacturers of
cheap earthenware in the district, catering chiefly for the American
and Colonial buyer. They had an extremely bad reputation for cutting
prices. They were hated by every other firm in the Five Towns, and, to
hear rival manufacturers talk, one would gather the impression that Sir
Jee had acquired a tremendous fortune by systematically selling goods
under cost. They were also hated by between eighteen and nineteen
hundred employees. But such hatred, however virulent, had not marred
the progress of Sir Jee's career.
He had meant to make a name and he had made it. The Five Towns might
laugh at his vulgar snobbishness. The Five Towns might sneer at his
calculated philanthropy. But he was, nevertheless, the best-known man
in the Five Towns, and it was precisely his snobbishness and his
philanthropy which had carried him to the top. Moreover, he had been
the first public man in the Five Towns to gain a knighthood. The Five
Towns could not deny that it was very proud indeed of this knighthood.
The means by which he had won this distinction were neither here nor
there--he had won it. And was he not the father of his native borough?
Had he not been three times mayor of his native borough? Was not the
whole northern half of the county dotted and spangled by his
benefactions, his institutions, his endowments?
And it could not be denied that he sometimes tickled the Five Towns as
the Five Towns likes being tickled. There was, for example, the
notorious Sneyd incident. Sneyd Hall, belonging to the Earl of Chell,
lies a few miles south of the Five Towns, and from it the pretty
Countess of Chell exercises that condescending meddlesomeness which so
frequently exasperates the Five Towns. Sir Jee had got his title by the
aid of the Countess-'Interfering Iris', as she is locally dubbed.
Shortly afterwards he had contrived to quarrel with the Countess; and
the quarrel was conducted by Sir Jee as a quarrel between equals, which
delighted the district. Sir Jee's final word in it had been to buy a
sizable tract of land near Sneyd village, just off the Sneyd estate,
and to erect thereon a mansion quite as imposing as Sneyd Hall, and far
more up to date, and to call the mansion Sneyd Castle. A mighty stroke!
Iris was furious; the Earl speechless with fury. But they could do
nothing. Naturally the Five Towns was tickled.
It was apropos of the house-warming of Sneyd Castle, also of the
completion of his third mayoralty, and of the inauguration of the Dain
Technical Institute, that the movement had been started (primarily by a
few toadies) for tendering to Sir Jee a popular gift worthy to express
the profound esteem in which he was officially held in the Five Towns.
It having been generally felt that the gift should take the form of a
portrait, a local dilettante had suggested Cressage, and when the Five
Towns had inquired into Cressage and discovered that that genius from
the United States was celebrated throughout the civilized world, and
regarded as the equal of Velazquez (whoever Velazquez might be), and
that he had painted half the aristocracy, and that his income was
regal, the suggestion was accepted and Cressage was approached.
Cressage haughtily consented to paint Sir Jee's portrait on his usual
conditions; namely, that the sitter should go to the little village in
Bedfordshire where Cressage had his principal studio, and that the
painting should be exhibited at the Royal Academy before being shown
anywhere else. (Cressage was an R.A., but no one thought of putting
R.A. after his name. He was so big, that instead of the Royal Academy
conferring distinction on him, he conferred distinction on the Royal
Academy.)
Sir Jee went to Bedfordshire and was rapidly painted, and he came back
gloomy. The presentation committee went to Bedfordshire later to
inspect the portrait, and they, too, came back gloomy.
Then the Academy Exhibition opened, and the portrait, showing Sir Jee
in his robe and chain and in a chair, was instantly hailed as possibly
the most glorious masterpiece of modern times. All the critics were of
one accord. The committee and Sir Jee were reassured, but only
partially, and Sir Jee rather less so than the committee. For there was
something in the enthusiastic criticism which gravely disturbed him. An
enlightened generation, thoroughly familiar with the dazzling yearly
succession of Cressage's portraits, need not be told what this
something was. One critic wrote that Cressage displayed even more than
his 'customary astounding insight into character....' Another critic
wrote that Cressage's observation was, as usual, 'calmly and coldly
hostile'. Another referred to the 'typical provincial mayor,
immortalized for the diversion of future ages.'
Inhabitants of the Five Towns went to London to see the work for which
they had subscribed, and they saw a mean, little, old man, with thin
lips and a straggling grey beard, and shifty eyes, and pushful snob
written all over him; ridiculous in his gewgaws of office. When you
looked at the picture close to, it was a meaningless mass of coloured
smudges, but when you stood fifteen feet away from it the portrait was
absolutely lifelike, amazing, miraculous. It was so wondrously lifelike
that some of the inhabitants of the Five Towns burst out laughing. Many
people felt sorry--not for Sir Jee--but for Lady Dain. Lady Dain was
beloved and genuinely respected. She was a simple, homely, sincere
woman, her one weakness being that she had never been able to see
through Sir Jee.
Of course, at the presentation ceremony the portrait had been
ecstatically referred to as a possession precious for ever, and the
recipient and his wife pretended to be overflowing with pure joy in the
ownership of it.
It had been hanging in the dining-room of Sneyd Castle about sixteen
months, when Lady Dain told her husband that it would ultimately drive
her into the lunatic asylum.
'Don't be silly, wife,' said Sir Jee. 'I wouldn't part with that
portrait for ten times what it cost.'
This was, to speak bluntly, a downright lie. Sir Jee secretly hated the
portrait more than anyone hated it. He would have been almost ready to
burn down Sneyd Castle in order to get rid of the thing. But it
happened that on the previous evening, in the conversation with the
magistrates' clerk, his receptive brain had been visited by a less
expensive scheme than burning down the castle.
Lady Dain sighed.
'Are you going to town early?' she inquired.
'Yes,' he replied. 'I'm on the rota today.'
He was chairman of the borough Bench of magistrates. As he drove into
town he revolved his scheme and thought it wild and dangerous, but
still feasible.