“So I have heard—but he is not quite bosom friend enough with me to have told me all the particulars. I know that his wife is dead.”
“Dead; oh, yes; she has been dead these two years I should say.”
“Not so long as that, I should think.”
“Well—perhaps not. But it’s ever so long ago—quite long enough for him to be married again. Did you know her?”
“I never saw her in my life.”
“I knew her—not well indeed; but I am intimate with her sister, Lady Amelia Gazebee, and I have met her there. None of that family have married what you may call well. And now, Mr. Eames, pray look at the menu and tell me what I am to eat. Arrange for me a little dinner of my own, out of the great bill of fare provided. I always expect some gentleman to do that for me. Mr. Crosbie, you know, only lived with his wife for one month.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“And a terrible month they had of it. I used to hear of it. He doesn’t look that sort of man, does he?”
“Well—no. I don’t think he does. But what sort of man do you mean?”
“Why, such a regular Bluebeard! Of course you know how he treated another girl before he married Lady Alexandrina. She died of it—with a broken heart; absolutely died; and there he is, indifferent as possible—and would treat me in the same way to-morrow if I would let him.”
Johnny Eames, finding it impossible to talk to Miss Demolines about Lily Dale, took up the card of the dinner and went to work in earnest, recommending his neighbour what to eat and what to pass by. “But you’ve skipped the pâté?” she said, with energy.
“Allow me to ask you to choose mine for me instead. You are much more fit to do it.” And she did choose his dinner for him.
They were sitting at a round table, and in order that the ladies and gentlemen should alternate themselves properly, Mr. Musselboro was opposite to the host. Next to him on his right was old Mrs. Van Siever, the widow of a Dutch merchant, who was very rich. She was a ghastly thing to look at, as well from the quantity as from the nature of the wiggeries which she wore. She had not only a false front, but long false curls, as to which it cannot be conceived that she would suppose that anyone would be ignorant as to their falseness. She was very thin, too, and very small, and putting aside her wiggeries, you would think her to be all eyes. She was a ghastly old woman to the sight, and not altogether pleasant in her mode of talking. She seemed to know Mr. Musselboro very well, for she called him by his name without any prefix. He had, indeed, begun life as a clerk in her husband’s office.
“Why doesn’t What’s-his-name have real silver forks?” she said to him. Now Mrs. What’s-his-name—Mrs. Dobbs Broughton we will call her—was sitting on the other side of Mr. Musselboro, between him and Mr. Crosbie; and, so placed, Mr. Musselboro found it rather hard to answer the question, more especially as he was probably aware that other questions would follow.
“What’s the use?” said Mr. Musselboro. “Everybody has these plated things now. What’s the use of a lot of capital lying dead?”
“Everybody doesn’t. I don’t. You know as well as I do, Musselboro, that the appearance of the thing goes for a great deal. Capital isn’t lying dead as long as people know that you’ve got it.”
Before answering this Mr. Musselboro was driven to reflect that Mrs. Dobbs Broughton would probably hear his reply. “You won’t find that there is any doubt on that head in the City as to Broughton,” he said.
“I shan’t ask in the City, and if I did, I should not believe what people told me. I think there are sillier folks in the City than anywhere else. What did he give for that picture upstairs which the young man painted?”
“What, Mrs. Dobbs Broughton’s portrait?”
“You don’t call that a portrait, do you? I mean the one with the three naked women?” Mr. Musselboro glanced round with one eye, and felt sure that Mrs. Dobbs Broughton had heard the question. But the old woman was determined to have an answer. “How much did he give for it, Musselboro?”
“Six hundred pounds, I believe,” said Mr. Musselboro, looking straight before him as he answered, and pretending to treat the subject with perfect indifference.
“Did he indeed, now? Six hundred pounds! And yet he hasn’t got silver spoons. How things are changed! Tell me, Musselboro, who was that young man who came in with the painter?”
Mr. Musselboro turned round and asked Mrs. Broughton. “A Mr. John Eames, Mrs. Van Siever,” said Mrs. Broughton, whispering across the front of Mr. Musselboro. “He is private secretary to Lord—Lord—Lord—I forget who. Some one of the Ministers, I know. And he had a great fortune left him the other day by Lord—Lord—Lord somebody else.”
“All among the lords, I see,” said Mrs. Van Siever. Then Mrs. Dobbs Broughton drew herself back, remembering some little attack which had been made on her by Mrs. Van Siever when she herself had had the real lord to dine with her.
There was a Miss Van Siever there also, sitting between Crosbie and Conway Dalrymple. Conway Dalrymple had been specially brought there to sit next to Miss Van Siever. “There’s no knowing how much she’ll have,” said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, in the warmth of her friendship. “But it’s all real. It is, indeed. The mother is awfully rich.”
“But she’s awful in another way, too,” said Dalrymple.
“Indeed she is, Conway.” Mrs. Dobbs Broughton had got into a way of calling her young friend by his Christian name. “All the world calls him Conway,” she had said to her husband once when her husband caught her doing so. “She is awful. Her husband made the business in the City, when things were very different from what they are now, and I can’t help having her. She has transactions of business with Dobbs. But there’s no mistake about the money.”
“She needn’t leave it to her daughter, I suppose?”
“But why shouldn’t she? She has nobody else. You might offer to paint her, you know. She’d make an excellent picture. So much character. You come and see her.”
Conway Dalrymple had expressed his willingness to meet Miss Van Siever, saying something, however, as to his present position being one which did not admit of any matrimonial speculation. Then Mrs. Dobbs Broughton had told him, with much seriousness, that he was altogether wrong, and that were he to forget himself, or commit himself, or misbehave himself, there must be an end to their pleasant intimacy. In answer to which, Mr. Dalrymple had said that his Grace was surely of all Graces the least gracious. And now he had come to meet Miss Van Siever, and was now seated next to her at table.
Miss Van Siever, who at this time had perhaps reached her twenty-fifth year, was certainly a handsome young woman. She was fair and large, bearing no likeness whatever to her mother. Her features were regular, and her full, clear eyes had a brilliance of their own, looking at you always steadfastly and boldly, though very seldom pleasantly. Her mouth would have been beautiful had it not been too strong for feminine beauty. Her teeth were perfect—too perfect—looking like miniature walls of carved ivory. She knew the fault of this perfection, and showed her teeth as little as she could. Her nose and chin were finely chiselled, and her head stood well upon her shoulders. But there was something hard about it all which repelled you. Dalrymple, when he saw her, recoiled from her, not outwardly, but inwardly. Yes, she was handsome, as may be a horse or a tiger; but there was about her nothing of feminine softness. He could not bring himself to think of taking Clara Van Siever as the model that was to sit before him for the rest of his life. He certainly could make a picture of her, as had been suggested by his friend, Mrs. Broughton, but it must be as Judith with the dissevered head, or as Jael using her hammer over the temple of Sisera. Yes—he thought she would do as Jael; and if Mrs. Van Siever would throw him a sugar-plum—for he would want the sugar-plum, seeing that any other result was out of the question—the thing might be done. Such was the idea of Mr. Conway Dalrymple respecting Miss Van Siever—before he led her down to dinner.
At first he found it hard to talk to her. She answe
red him, and not with monosyllables. But she answered him without sympathy, or apparent pleasure in talking. Now the young artist was in the habit of being flattered by ladies, and expected to have his small talk made very easy for him. He liked to give himself little airs, and was not generally disposed to labour very hard at the task of making himself agreeable.
“Were you ever painted yet?” he asked her after they had both been sitting silent for two or three minutes.
“Was I ever—painted? In what way?”
“I don’t mean rouged, or enamelled, or got up by Madame Rachel; but have you ever had your portrait taken?”
“I have been photographed—of course.”
“That’s why I asked you if you had been painted—so as to make some little distinction between the two. I am a painter by profession, and do portraits.”
“So Mrs. Broughton told me.”
“I am not asking for a job, you know.”
“I am quite sure of that.”
“But I should have thought you would have been sure to have sat to somebody.”
“I never did. I never thought of doing so. One does those things at the instigation of one’s intimate friends—fathers, mothers, uncles, and aunts, and the like.”
“Or husbands, perhaps—or lovers?”
“Well, yes; my intimate friend is my mother, and she would never dream of such a thing. She hates pictures.”
“Hates pictures!”
“And especially portraits. And I’m afraid, Mr. Dalrymple, she hates artists.”
“Good heavens; how cruel! I suppose there is some story attached to it. There has been some fatal likeness—some terrible picture—something in her early days?”
“Nothing of the kind, Mr. Dalrymple. It is merely the fact that her sympathies are with ugly things, rather than with pretty things. I think she loves the mahogany dinner-table better than anything else in the house; and she likes to have everything dark, and plain, and solid.”
“And good?”
“Good of its kind, certainly.”
“If everybody was like your mother, how would the artists live?”
“There would be none.”
“And the world, you think, would be none the poorer?”
“I did not speak for myself. I think the world would be very much the poorer. I am very fond of the ancient masters, though I do not suppose that I understand them.”
“They are easier understood than the modern, I can tell you. Perhaps you don’t care for modern pictures?”
“Not in comparison, certainly. If that is uncivil, you have brought it on yourself. But I do not in truth mean anything derogatory to the painters of the day. When their pictures are old, they—that is the good ones among them—will be nice also.”
“Pictures are like wine, and want age, you think?”
“Yes, and statues too, and buildings above all things. The colours of new paintings are so glaring, and the faces are so bright and self-conscious, that they look to me when I go to the exhibition like coloured prints in a child’s new picture-book. It is the same thing with buildings. One sees all the points, and nothing is left to the imagination.”
“I find I have come across a real critic.”
“I hope so; at any rate, I am not a sham one;” and Miss Van Siever as she said this looked very savage.
“I shouldn’t take you to be a sham in anything.”
“Ah, that would be saying a great deal for myself. Who can undertake to say that he is not a sham in anything?”
As she said this the ladies were getting up. So Miss Van Siever also got up, and left Mr. Conway Dalrymple to consider whether he could say or could think of himself that he was not a sham in anything. As regarded Miss Clara Van Siever, he began to think that he should not object to paint her portrait, even though there might be no sugar-plum. He would certainly do it as Jael; and he would, if he dared, insert dimly in the background some idea of the face of the mother, half-appearing, half-vanishing, as the spirit of the sacrifice. He was composing the picture, while Mr. Dobbs Broughton was arranging himself and his bottles.
“Musselboro,” he said, “I’ll come up between you and Crosbie. Mr. Eames, though I run away from you, the claret shall remain; or, rather, it shall flow backwards and forwards as rapidly as you will.”
“I’ll keep it moving,” said Johnny.
“Do; there’s a good fellow. It’s a nice glass of wine, isn’t it? Old Ramsby, who keeps as good a stock of the stuff as any wine-merchant in London, gave me a hint, three or four years ago, that he’d a lot of tidy Bordeaux. It’s ‘41, you know. He had ninety dozen, and I took it all.”
“What was the figure, Broughton?” said Crosbie, asking the question which he knew was expected.
“Well, I only gave one hundred and four for it then; it’s worth a hundred and twenty now. I wouldn’t sell a bottle of it for any money. Come, Dalrymple, pass it round; but fill your glass first.”
“Thank you, no; I don’t like it. I’ll drink sherry.”
“Don’t like it!” said Dobbs Broughton.
“It’s strange, isn’t it? But I don’t.”
“I thought you particularly told me to drink his claret?” said Johnny to his friend afterwards.
“So I did,” said Conway; “and wonderfully good wine it is. But I make it a rule never to eat or drink anything in a man’s house when he praises it himself and tells me the price of it.”
“And I make it a rule never to cut the nose off my own face,” said Johnny.
Before they went, Johnny Eames had been specially invited to call on Lady Demolines, and had said that he would do so. “We live in Porchester Gardens,” said Miss Demolines. “Upon my word, I believe that the farther London stretches in that direction, the farther mamma will go. She thinks the air so much better. I know it’s a long way.”
“Distance is nothing to me,” said Johnny; “I can always set off over night.”
Conway Dalrymple did not get invited to call on Mrs. Van Siever, but before he left the house he did say a word or two more to his friend Mrs. Broughton as to Clara Van Siever. “She is a fine young woman,” he said; “she is indeed.”
“You have found it out, have you?”
“Yes; I have found it out. I do not doubt that some day she’ll murder her husband or her mother, or startle the world by some newly-invented crime; but that only makes her the more interesting.”
“And when you add to that all the old woman’s money,” said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, “you think that she might do?”
“For a picture, certainly. I’m speaking of her simply as a model. Could we not manage it? Get her once here, without her mother knowing it, or Broughton, or anyone. I’ve got the subject—Jael and Sisera, you know. I should like to put Musselboro in as Sisera, with the nail half driven in.” Mrs. Dobbs Broughton declared that the scheme was a great deal too wicked for her participation, but at last she promised to think of it.
“You might as well come up and have a cigar,” Dalrymple said, as he and his friend left Mrs. Broughton’s house. Johnny said that he would go up and have a cigar or two. “And now tell me what you think of Mrs. Dobbs Broughton and her set,” said Conway.
“Well; I’ll tell you what I think of them. I think they stink of money, as the people say; but I’m not sure that they’ve got any all the same.”
“I suppose he makes a large income.”
“Very likely, and perhaps spends more than he makes. A good deal of it looked to me like make-believe. There’s no doubt about the claret, but the champagne was execrable. A man is a criminal to have such stuff handed round to his guests. And there isn’t the ring of real gold about the house.”
“I hate the ring of gold, as you call it,” said the artist.
“So do I—I hate it like poison; but if it is there, I like it to be true. There is a sort of persons going now—and one meets them out here and there every day of one’s life—who are downright Brummagem to the ear and to the touch and to the sig
ht, and we recognize them as such at the very first moment. My honoured lord and master, Sir Raffle, is one such. There is no mistaking him. Clap him down upon the counter, and he rings dull and untrue at once. Pardon me, my dear Conway, if I say the same of your excellent friend Mr. Dobbs Broughton.”
“I think you go a little too far, but I don’t deny it. What you mean is, that he’s not a gentleman.”
“I mean a great deal more than that. Bless you, when you come to talk of a gentleman, who is to define the word? How do I know whether or no I’m a gentleman myself? When I used to be in Burton Crescent, I was hardly a gentlemen then—sitting at the same table with Mrs. Roper and the Lupexes—do you remember them, and the lovely Amelia?”
“I suppose you were a gentleman, then, as well as now?”
“You, if you had been painting duchesses then, with a studio in Kensington Gardens, would not have said so, if you had happened to come across me. I can’t define a gentleman, even in my own mind—but I can define the sort of man with whom I think I can live pleasantly.”
“And poor Dobbs doesn’t come within the line?”
“N—o, not quite; a very nice fellow, I’m quite sure, and I’m very much obliged to you for taking me there.”
“I never will take you to any house again. And what did you think of his wife?”
“That’s a horse of another colour altogether. A pretty woman with such a figure as hers has got a right to be anything she pleases. I see you are a great favourite.”
“No, I’m not—not especially. I do like her. She wants to make up a match between me and that Miss Van Siever. Miss Van is to have gold by the ingot, and jewels by the bushel, and a hatful of bank shares, and a whole mine in Cornwall, for her fortune.”
“And is very handsome into the bargain.”
“Yes; she’s handsome.”
“So is her mother,” said Johnny. “If you take the daughter, I’ll take the mother, and see if I can’t do you out of a mine or two. Good-night, old fellow. I’m only joking about old Dobbs. I’ll go and dine there again to-morrow, if you like.”
CHAPTER XXV
The Chronicles of Barsetshire Page 305