The Last Chronicle of Barset (40 page)

‘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 stedfastly 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.
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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 answered 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 – ever painted? In what way?'

‘I don't mean rouged, or enamelled, or got up by Madame Rachel;
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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 of 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 sugarplum. 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 his 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 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 Mr 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 should 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 the 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
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to the ear and to the touch and to the sight, and we recognise 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 gentleman 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 tomorrow, if you like it.'

*

‘I don't think you care two straws about her,' Conway Dalrymple said to his friend John Eames, two days after the dinner party at Mrs Dobbs Broughton's. The painter was at work in his studio, and the private secretary from the Income-tax Office, who was no doubt engaged on some special mission to the West End on the part of Sir Raffle Buffle, was sitting in a lounging-chair and smoking a cigar.

‘Because I don't go about with my stockings cross-gartered,
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and do that kind of business?'

‘Well, yes; because you don't do that kind of business, more or less.'

‘It isn't in my line, my dear fellow. I know what you mean, very well. I daresay, artistically speaking –'

‘Don't be an ass, Johnny.'

‘Well then, poetically, or romantically, if you like that better – I daresay that poetically or romantically I am deficient. I eat my dinner very well, and I don't suppose I ought to do that; and, if you'll believe me, I find myself laughing sometimes.'