The Beldonald Holbein | Page 8

say your friend's a person to
make the men turn round in Regent Street. But it adds to the joy of the
few who do see that they have it so much to themselves. Where in the
world can she have lived? You must tell me all about that--or rather, if
she'll be so good, SHE must."
"You mean then to speak to her--?"
I wondered as she pulled up again. "Of her beauty?"
"Her beauty!" cried Lady Beldonald so loud that two or three persons
looked round.
"Ah with every precaution of respect I declared in a much lower tone.
But her back was by this time turned to me, and in the movement, as it
were, one of the strangest little dramas I've ever known was well
launched.

CHAPTER III

It was a drama of small smothered intensely private things, and I knew
of but one other person in the secret; yet that person and I found it
exquisitely susceptible of notation, followed it with an interest the
mutual communication of which did much for our enjoyment, and were
present with emotion at its touching catastrophe. The small case--for so
small a case--had made a great stride even before my little party
separated, and in fact within the next ten minutes.
In that space of time two things had happened one of which was that I
made the acquaintance of Mrs. Brash; and the other that Mrs. Munden
reached me, cleaving the crowd, with one of her usual pieces of news.
What she had to impart was that, on her having just before asked Nina

if the conditions of our sitting had been arranged with me, Nina had
replied, with something like perversity, that she didn't propose to
arrange them, that the whole affair was "off" again and that she
preferred not to be further beset for the present. The question for Mrs.
Munden was naturally what had happened and whether I understood.
Oh I understood perfectly, and what I at first most understood was that
even when I had brought in the name of Mrs. Brash intelligence wasn't
yet in Mrs. Munden. She was quite as surprised as Lady Beldonald had
been on hearing of the esteem in which I held Mrs. Brash's appearance.
She was stupefied at learning that I had just in my ardour proposed to
its proprietress to sit to me. Only she came round promptly-- which
Lady Beldonald really never did. Mrs. Munden was in fact wonderful;
for when I had given her quickly "Why she's a Holbein, you know,
absolutely," she took it up, after a first fine vacancy, with an immediate
abysmal "Oh IS she?" that, as a piece of social gymnastics, did her the
greatest honour; and she was in fact the first in London to spread the
tidings. For a face--about it was magnificent. But she was also the first,
I must add, to see what would really happen--though this she put before
me only a week or two later. It will kill her, my dear--that's what it will
do
She meant neither more nor less than that it would kill Lady Beldonald
if I were to paint Mrs. Brash; for at this lurid light had we arrived in so
short a space of time. It was for me to decide whether my aesthetic
need of giving life to my idea was such as to justify me in destroying it
in a woman after all in most eyes so beautiful. The situation was indeed
sufficiently queer; for it remained to be seen what I should positively
gain by giving up Mrs. Brash. I appeared to have 'in any case lost Lady
Beldonald, now too "upset"--it was always Mrs. Munden's word about
her and, as I inferred, her own about herself--to meet me again on our
previous footing. The only thing, I of course soon saw, was to
temporise to drop the whole question for the present and yet so far as
possible keep each of the pair in view. I may as well say at once that
this plan and this process gave their principal interest to the next
several months. Mrs. Brash had turned up, if I remember, early in the
new year, and her little wonderful career was in our particular circle
one of the features of the following season. It was at all events for
myself the most attaching; it's not my fault if I am so put together as

often to find more life in situations obscure and subject to interpretation
than in the gross rattle of the foreground. And there were all sorts of
things, things touching, amusing, mystifying--and above all such an
instance as I had never yet met- -in this funny little fortune of the useful
American cousin. Mrs. Munden was promptly