The Beldonald Holbein | Page 5

Help whom?"
"Why every one. You and me for instance. To do what? Why to think
Nina beautiful. She has them for that purpose; they serve as foils, as
accents serve on syllables, as terms of comparison. They make her
'stand out.' It's an effect of contrast that must be familiar to you artists;
it's what a woman does when she puts a band of black velvet under a
pearl ornament that may, require, as she thinks, a little showing off."
I wondered. "Do you mean she always has them black?"
"Dear no; I've seen them blue, green, yellow. They may be what they
like, so long as they're always one other thing."
"Hideous?"
Mrs. Munden made a mouth for it. "Hideous is too much to say; she
doesn't really require them as bad as that. But consistently, cheerfully,
loyally plain. It's really a most happy relation. She loves them for it."
"And for what do they love HER?"
"Why just for the amiability that they produce in her. Then also for
their 'home.' It's a career for them."
"I see. But if that's the case," I asked, "why are they so difficult to
find?"
"Oh they must be safe; it's all in that: her being able to depend on them

to keep to the terms of the bargain and never have moments of
rising--as even the ugliest woman will now and then (say when she's in
love)--superior to themselves."
I turned it over. "Then if they can't inspire passions the poor things
mayn't even at least feel them?"
"She distinctly deprecates it. That's why such a man as you may be
after all a complication."
I continued to brood. "You're very sure Miss Dadd's ailment isn't an
affection that, being smothered, has struck in?" My joke, however,
wasn't well timed, for I afterwards learned that the unfortunate lady's
state had been, even while I spoke, such as to forbid all hope. The worst
symptoms had appeared; she was destined not to recover; and a week
later I heard from Mrs. Munden that she would in fact "gurgle" no
more.

CHAPTER II

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