All this had been for Lady Beldonald an agitation so great that access to her apartment was denied for a time even to her sister-in-law.It was much more out of the question of course that she should unveil her face to a person of my special business with it; so that the question of the portrait was by common consent left to depend on that of the installation of a successor to her late companion.Such a successor, I gathered from Mrs.
Munden, widowed childless and lonely, as well as inapt for the minor offices, she had absolutely to have; a more or less humble alter ago to deal with the servants, keep the accounts, make the tea and watch the window-blinds.Nothing seemed more natural than that she should marry again, and obviously that might come; yet the predecessors of Miss Dadd had been contemporaneous with a first husband, so that others formed in her image might be contemporaneous with a second.I was much occupied in those months at any rate, and these questions and their ramifications losing themselves for a while to my view, I was only brought back to them by Mrs.
Munden's arrival one day with the news that we were all right again--her sister-in-law was once more "suited." A certain Mrs.Brash, an American relative whom she hadn't seen for years, but with whom she had continued to communicate, was to come out to her immediately; and this person, it appeared, could be quite trusted to meet the conditions.She was ugly--ugly enough, without abuse of it, and was unlimitedly good.The position offered her by Lady Beldonald was moreover exactly what she needed; widowed also, after many troubles and reverses, with her fortune of the smallest, and her various children either buried or placed about, she had never had time or means to visit England, and would really be grateful in her declining years for the new experience and the pleasant light work involved in her cousin's hospitality.They had been much together early in life and Lady Beldonald was immensely fond of her--would in fact have tried to get hold of her before hadn't Mrs.Brash been always in bondage to family duties, to the variety of her tribulations.I daresay I laughed at my friend's use of the term "position"--the position, one might call it, of a candlestick or a sign-post, and I daresay I must have asked if the special service the poor lady was to render had been made clear to her.Mrs.
Munden left me in any case with the rather droll image of her faring forth across the sea quite consciously and resignedly to perform it.
The point of the communication had however been that my sitter was again looking up and would doubtless, on the arrival and due initiation of Mrs.
Brash, be in form really to wait on me.The situation must further, to my knowledge, have developed happily, for I arranged with Mrs.Munden that our friend, now all ready to begin, but wanting first just to see the things Ihad most recently done, should come once more, as a final preliminary, to my studio.A good foreign friend of mine, a French painter, Paul Outreau, was at the moment in London, and I had proposed, as he was much interested in types, to get together for his amusement a small afternoon party.Every one came, my big room was full, there was music and a modest spread; and I've not forgotten the light of admiration in Outreau's expressive face as at the end of half an hour he came up to me in his enthusiasm."Bonte divine, mon cher--que cette vieille est donc belle!"I had tried to collect all the beauty I could, and also all the youth, so that for a moment I was at a loss.I had talked to many people and provided for the music, and there were figures in the crowd that were still lost to me."What old woman do you mean?""I don't know her name--she was over by the door a moment ago.I asked somebody and was told, I think, that she's American."I looked about and saw one of my guests attach a pair of fine eyes to Outreau very much as if she knew he must be talking of her."Oh Lady Beldonald! Yes, she's handsome; but the great point about her is that she has been 'put up' to keep, and that she wouldn't be flattered if she knew you spoke of her as old.A box of sardines is 'old' only after it has been opened, Lady Beldonald never has yet been--but I'm going to do it." Ijoked, but I was somewhat disappointed.It was a type that, with his unerring sense for the banal, I shouldn't have expected Outreau to pick out.
"You're going to paint her? But, my dear man, she is painted--and as neither you nor I can do it.Ou est-elle donc? He had lost her, and I saw I had made a mistake.She's the greatest of all the great Holbeins."I was relieved."Ah then not Lady Beldonald! But do I possess a Holbein of ANY price unawares?""There she is--there she is! Dear, dear, dear, what a head!" And I saw whom he meant--and what: a small old lady in a black dress and a black bonnet, both relieved with a little white, who had evidently just changed, her place to reach a corner from which more of the room and of the scene was presented to her.She appeared unnoticed and unknown, and Iimmediately recognised that some other guest must have brought her and, for want of opportunity, had as yet to call my attention to her.But two things, simultaneously with this and with each other, struck me with force;one of them the truth of Outreau's description of her, the other the fact that the person bringing her could only have been Lady Beldonald.She WASa Holbein--of the first water; yet she was also Mrs.Brash, the imported "foil," the indispensable accent," the successor to the dreary Miss Dadd!
