The Beldonald Holbein | Page 6

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 I had 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." I joked, 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 I immediately 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 WAS a Holbein--of the first water;
yet she was also Mrs. Brash, the imported "foil," the indispensable
accent," the successor to the dreary Miss Dadd! By the time I had put
these things together--Outreau's "American" having helped me--I was
in just such full possession of her face as I had found myself, on the
other first occasion, of that of her patroness. Only with so different a
consequence. I couldn't look at her enough, and I stared and stared till I
became aware she might have fancied me challenging her as a person
unpresented. "All the same," Outreau went on, equally held, "c'est une
tete a faire. If I were only staying long enough for a crack at her! But I
tell you what and he seized my arm--"bring her over!"

"Over?"
"To Paris. She'd have a succes fou."
"Ah thanks, my dear fellow," I was now quite in a position to say;
"she's the handsomest thing in London, and"--for what I might do with
her was already before me with intensity--"I propose to keep her to
myself." It was before me with intensity, in the light of Mrs. Brash's
distant perfection of a little white old face, in which every wrinkle was
the touch of a master; but something else, I suddenly felt, was not less
so, for Lady Beldonald, in the other quarter, and though she couldn't
have made out the subject of our notice, continued to