The Beldonald Holbein | Page 4

what I should call a life. It may be of course that she doesn't want
one. That's just what I can't exactly find out. I can't make out how much
she knows."
"I can easily make out," I returned with hilarity, "how much YOU do!"
"Well, you're very horrid. Perhaps she's too old."
"Too old for what?" I persisted.
"For anything. Of course she's no longer even a little young; only
preserved--oh but preserved, like bottled fruit, in syrup! I want to help
her if only because she gets on my nerves, and I really think the way of
it would be just the right thing of yours at the Academy and on the
line."
"But suppose," I threw out, "she should give on my nerves?"
"Oh she will. But isn't that all in the day's work, and don't great
beauties always--?"
"YOU don't," I interrupted; but I at any rate saw Lady Beldonald later
on-- the day came when her kinswoman brought her, and then I saw
how her life must have its centre in her own idea of her appearance.
Nothing else about her mattered--one knew her all when one knew that.
She's indeed in one particular, I think, sole of her kind--a person whom
vanity has had the odd effect of keeping positively safe and sound. This

passion is supposed surely, for the most part, to be a principle of
perversion and of injury, leading astray those who listen to it and
landing them sooner or later in this or that complication; but it has
landed her ladyship nowhere whatever- -it has kept her from the first
moment of full consciousness, one feels, exactly in the same place. It
has protected her from every danger, has made her absolutely proper
and prim. If she's "preserved," as Mrs. Munden originally described her
to me, it's her vanity that has beautifully done it--putting her years ago
in a plate-glass case and closing up the receptacle against every breath
of air. How shouldn't she be preserved when you might smash your
knuckles on this transparency before you could crack it? And she is--oh
amazingly! Preservation is scarce the word for the rare condition of her
surface. She looks NATURALLY new, as if she took out every night
her large lovely varnished eyes and put them in water. The thing was to
paint her, I perceived, in the glass case--a most tempting attaching feat;
render to the full the shining interposing plate and the general
show-window effect.
It was agreed, though it wasn't quite arranged, that she should sit to me.
If it wasn't quite arranged this was because, as I was made to
understand from an early stage, the conditions from our start must be
such as should exclude all elements of disturbance, such, in a word, as
she herself should judge absolutely favourable. And it seemed that
these conditions were easily imperilled. Suddenly, for instance, at a
moment when I was expecting her to meet an appointment--the
first--that I had proposed, I received a hurried visit from Mrs. Munden,
who came on her behalf to let me know that the season happened just
not to be propitious and that our friend couldn't be quite sure, to the
hour, when it would again become so. She felt nothing would make it
so but a total absence of worry.
"Oh a 'total absence,'" I said, "is a large order! We live in a worrying
world."
"Yes; and she feels exactly that--more than you'd think. It's in fact just
why she mustn't have, as she has now, a particular distress on at the
very moment. She wants of course to look her best, and such things tell
on her appearance."
I shook my head. "Nothing tells on her appearance. Nothing reaches it
in any way; nothing gets AT it. However, I can understand her anxiety.

But what's her particular distress?"
"Why the illness of Miss Dadd."
"And who in the world's Miss Dadd?"
"Her most intimate friend and constant companion--the lady who was
with us here that first day."
"Oh the little round black woman who gurgled with admiration?"
"None other. But she was taken ill last week, and it may very well be
that she'll gurgle no more. She was very bad yesterday and is no better
to-day, and Nina's much upset. If anything happens to Miss Dadd she'll
have to get another, and, though she has had two or three before, that
won't be so easy."
"Two or three Miss Dadds? is it possible? And still wanting another!" I
recalled the poor lady completely now. "No; I shouldn't indeed think it
would be easy to get another. But why is a succession of them
necessary to Lady Beldonald's existence?"
"Can't you guess?" Mrs. Munden looked deep, yet impatient. "They
help."
"Help what?