The Last Chronicle of Barset (82 page)

‘I'm not speaking of myself now. I have learned to think so little of myself, as even to be indifferent to the feeling of the injury you are doing me. My life is a blank, and I almost think that nothing can hurt me further. I have not heart left enough to break; no, not enough to be broken. It is not of myself that I am thinking, when I ask you how you dare to address me in such language. Do you not know that it is an injury to another?'

‘To what other?' asked Conway Dalrymple, whose mind was becoming rather confused, and who was not quite sure whether the other one was Mr Dobbs Broughton, or somebody else.

‘To that poor girl who is coming here now, who is devoted to you, and to whom, I do not doubt, you have uttered words which ought to have made it impossible for you to speak to me as you spoke not a moment since.'

Things were becoming very grave and difficult. They would have been very grave, indeed, had not some god saved him by sending Miss Van Siever to his rescue at this moment. He was beginning to think what he would say in answer to the accusation now made, when his eager ear caught the sound of her step upon the stairs; and before the pause in the conversation which the circumstances admitted had given place to the necessity for further speech, Miss Van Siever had knocked at the door and had entered the room. He was rejoiced, and I think that Mrs Broughton did not regret the interference. It is always well that these little dangerous scenes should be brought to sudden ends. The last details of such romances, if drawn out to their natural conclusions, are apt to be uncomfortable, if not dull. She did not want him to go down on his knees, knowing that the getting up again is always awkward.

‘Clara, I began to think you were never coming,' said Mrs Broughton, with her sweetest smile.

‘I began to think so myself also,' said Clara. ‘And I believe this must be the last sitting, or, at any rate, the last but one.'

‘Is anything the matter at home?' said Mrs Broughton, clasping her hands together.

‘Nothing very much; mamma asked me a question or two this morning, and I said I was coming here. Had she asked me why, I should have told her.'

‘But what did she ask? What did she say?'

‘She does not always make herself very intelligible. She complains without telling you what she complains of. But she muttered something about artists which was not complimentary, and I suppose, therefore, that she has a suspicion. She stayed ever so late this morning, and we left the house together. She will ask some direct
question tonight, or before long, and then there will be an end of it.'

‘Let us make the best of our time then,' said Dalrymple; and the sitting was arranged; Miss Van Siever went down on her knees with her hammer in her hand, and the work began. Mrs Broughton had twisted a turban round Clara's head, as she always did on these occasions, and assisted to arrange the drapery. She used to tell herself as she did so, that she was like Isaac, piling the fagots for her own sacrifice. Only Isaac had piled them in ignorance, and she piled them conscious of the sacrificial flames. And Isaac had been saved; whereas it was impossible that the catching of any ram in any thicket could save her.
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But, nevertheless, she arranged the drapery with all her skill, piling the fagots ever so high for her own pyre. In the meantime Conway Dalrymple painted away, thinking more of his picture than he did of one woman or of the other.

After a while, when Mrs Broughton had piled the fagots as high as she could pile them, she got up from her seat and prepared to leave the room. Much of the piling consisted, of course, in her own absence during a portion of these sittings. ‘Conway,' she said, as she went, ‘if this is to be the last sitting, or the last but one, you should make the most of it.' Then she threw upon him a very peculiar glance over the head of the kneeling Jael, and withdrew. Jael, who in those moments would be thinking more of the fatigue of her position than of anything else, did not at all take home to herself the peculiar meaning of her friend's words. Conway Dalrymple understood them thoroughly, and thought that he might as well take the advice given to him. He had made up his mind to propose to Miss Van Siever, and why should he not do so now? He went on with his brush for a couple of minutes without saying a word, working as well as he could work, and then resolved that he would at once begin the other task. ‘Miss Van Siever,' he said, ‘I am afraid you are tired?'

‘Not more than usually tired. It is fatiguing to be slaying Sisera by the hour together. I do get to hate this block.' The block was the dummy by which the form of Sisera was supposed to be typified.

‘Another sitting will about finish it,' said he, ‘so that you need not positively distress yourself now. Will you rest yourself for a minute
or two?' He had already perceived that the attitude in which Clara was posed before him was not one in which an offer of marriage could be received and replied to with advantage.

‘Thank you, I am not tired yet,' said Clara, not changing the fixed glance of national wrath with which she regarded her wooden Sisera as she held her hammer on high.

‘But I am. There; we will rest for a moment.' Dalrymple was aware that Mrs Dobbs Broughton, though she was very assiduous in piling her fagots, never piled them for long together. If he did not make haste she would be back upon them before he could get his word spoken. When he put down his brush, and got up from his chair, and stretched out his arm as a man does when he ceases for a moment from his work, Clara of course got up also, and seated herself. She was used to her turban and her drapery, and therefore thought not of it at all; and he also was used to it, seeing her in it two or three times a week; but now that he intended to accomplish a special purpose, the turban and the drapery seemed to be in the way. ‘I do so hope you will like the picture,' he said, as he was thinking of this.

‘I don't think I shall. But you will understand that it is natural that a girl should not like herself in such a portraiture as that.'

‘I don't know why. I can understand that you specially should not like the picture; but I think that most women in London in your place would at any rate say that they did.'

‘Are you angry with me?'

‘What; for telling the truth? No, indeed.' He was standing opposite to his easel, looking at the canvas, shifting his head about so as to change the lights, and observing critically this blemish and that; and yet he was all the while thinking how he had best carry out his purpose. ‘It will have been a prosperous picture to me,' he said at last, ‘if it leads to the success of which I am ambitious.'

‘I am told that all you do is successful now – merely because you do it. That is the worst of success.'

‘What is the worst of success?'

‘That when won by merit it leads to further success, for the gaining of which no merit is necessary.'

‘I hope it may be so in my case. If it is not I shall have a very poor
chance. Clara, I think you must know that I am not talking about my pictures.'

‘I thought you were.'

‘Indeed I am not. As for success in my profession, far as I am from thinking I merit it, I feel tolerably certain that I shall obtain it.'

‘You have obtained it.'

‘I am in the way to do so. Perhaps one out of ten struggling artists is successful, and for him the profession is very charming. It is certainly a sad feeling that there is so much of chance in the distribution of the prizes. It is a lottery. But one cannot complain of that when one has drawn the prize.' Dalrymple was not a man without self-possession, nor was he readily abashed, but he found it easier to talk of his possession than to make his offer. The turban was his difficulty. He had told himself over and over again within the last five minutes, that he would have long since said what he had to say had it not been for the turban. He had been painting all his life from living models – from women dressed up in this or that costume, to suit the necessities of his picture – but he had never made love to any of them. They had been simply models to him, and now he found that there was a difficulty. ‘Of that prize,' he said, ‘I have made myself tolerably sure; but as to the other prize, I do not know. I wonder whether I am to have that.' Of course Miss Van Siever understood well what was the prize of which he was speaking; and as she was a young woman with a will and purpose of her own, no doubt she was already prepared with an answer. But it was necessary that the question should be put to her in properly distinct terms. Conway Dalrymple certainly had not put his question in properly distinct terms at present. She did not choose to make any answer to his last words; and therefore simply suggested that as time was pressing he had better go on with his work. ‘I am quite ready now,' said she.

‘Stop half a moment. How much more you are thinking of the picture than I am! I do not care twopence for the picture. I will slit the canvas from top to bottom without a groan – without a single inner groan – if you will let me.'

‘For heaven's sake do nothing of the kind! Why should you?'

‘Just to show you that it is not for the sake of the picture that I
come here. Clara –' Then the door was opened, and Isaac appeared, very weary, having been piling fagots with assiduity, till human nature could pile no more. Conway Dalrymple, who had made his way almost up to Clara's seat, turned round sharply towards his easel, in anger at having been disturbed. He should have been more grateful for all that his Isaac had done for him, and have recognised the fact that the fault had been with himself. Mrs Broughton had been twelve minutes out of the room. She had counted them to be fifteen – having no doubt made a mistake as to three – and had told herself that with such a one as Conway Dalrymple, with so much work ready done to his hand for him, fifteen minutes should have been amply sufficient. When we reflect what her own thoughts must have been during the interval – what it is to have to pile up such fagots as those, how she was, as it were, giving away a fresh morsel of her own heart during each minute that she allowed Clara and Conway Dalrymple to remain together, it cannot surprise us that her eyes should have become dizzy, and that she should not have counted the minutes with accurate correctness. Dalrymple turned to his picture angrily, but Miss Van Siever kept her seat and did not show the slightest emotion.

‘My friends,' said Mrs Broughton, ‘this will not do. This is not working; this is not sitting.'

‘Mr Dalrymple had been explaining to me the precarious nature of an artist's profession,' said Clara.

‘It is not precarious with him,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton, sententiously.

‘Not in a general way, perhaps; but to prove the truth of his words he was going to treat Jael worse than Jael treats Sisera.'

‘I was going to slit the picture from the top to the bottom.'

‘And why?' said Mrs Broughton, putting up her hands to heaven in tragic horror.

‘Just to show Miss Van Siever how little I care about it.'

‘And how little you care about her too,' said Mrs Broughton.

‘She might take that as she liked.' After this there was another genuine sitting, and the real work went on as though there had been no episode. Jael fixed her face, and held her hammer as though her mind and heart were solely bent on seeming to be slaying Sisera.
Dalrymple turned his eyes from the canvas to the model, and from the model to the canvas, working with his hand all the while, as though that last pathetic ‘Clara' had never been uttered; and Mrs Dobbs Broughton reclined on a sofa, looking at them and thinking of her own singularly romantic position, till her mind was filled with a poetic frenzy. In one moment she resolved that she would hate Clara as woman was never hated by woman; and then there were daggers, and poison-cups, and strangling cords in her eye. In the next she was as firmly determined that she would love Mrs Conway Dalrymple as woman never was loved by woman; and then she saw herself kneeling by a cradle, and tenderly nursing a baby, of which Conway was to be the father and Clara the mother. And so she went to sleep.

For some time Dalrymple did not observe this; but at last there was a little sound – even the ill-nature of Miss Demolines could hardly have called it a snore – and he became aware that for practical purposes he and Miss Van Siever were again alone together. ‘Clara,' he said, in a whisper. Mrs Broughton instantly aroused herself from her slumbers, and rubbed her eyes. ‘Dear, dear, dear,' she said, ‘I declare it's past one. I'm afraid I must turn you both out. One more sitting, I suppose, will finish it, Conway?'

‘Yes, one more,' said he. It was always understood that he and Clara should not leave the house together, and therefore he remained painting when she left the room. ‘And now, Conway,' said Mrs Broughton, ‘I suppose that all is over?'

‘I don't know what you mean by all being over.'

‘No – of course not. You look at it in another light, no doubt. Everything is beginning for you. But you must pardon me, for my heart is distracted – distracted – distracted!' Then she sat down upon the floor, and burst into tears. What was he to do? He thought that the woman should either give him up altogether, or not give him up. All this fuss about it was irrational! He would not have made love to Clara Van Siever in her room if she had not told him to do so!

‘Maria,' he said, in a very grave voice, ‘any sacrifice that is required on my part on your behalf I am ready to make.'

‘No, sir; the sacrifices shall all be made by me. It is the part of a woman to be ever sacrificial!' Poor Mrs Dobbs Broughton! ‘You shall
give up nothing. The world is at your feet, and you shall have everything – youth, beauty, wealth, station, love – love; and friendship also, if you will accept it from one so poor, so broken, so secluded as I shall be.' At each of the last words there had been a desperate sob; and as she was still crouching in the middle of the room, looking up into Dalrymple's face while he stood over her, the scene was one which had much in it that transcended the doings of everyday life, much that would be ever memorable, and much, I have no doubt, that was thoroughly enjoyed by the principal actor. As for Conway Dalrymple, he was so second-rate a personage in the whole thing, that it mattered little whether he enjoyed it or not. I don't think he did enjoy it. ‘And now, Conway,' she said, ‘I will give you some advice. And when in after-days you shall remember this interview, and reflect how that advice was given you – with what solemnity,' – here she clasped both her hands together – ‘I think that you will follow it. Clara Van Siever will now become your wife.'