The Beldonald Holbein | Page 4

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? 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