The Real Thing | Page 3

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The Real Thing
by Henry James

CHAPTER I.

When the porter's wife (she used to answer the house-bell), announced
"A gentleman--with a lady, sir," I had, as I often had in those days, for
the wish was father to the thought, an immediate vision of sitters.
Sitters my visitors in this case proved to be; but not in the sense I
should have preferred. However, there was nothing at first to indicate
that they might not have come for a portrait. The gentleman, a man of
fifty, very high and very straight, with a moustache slightly grizzled
and a dark grey walking-coat admirably fitted, both of which I noted
professionally--I don't mean as a barber or yet as a tailor--would have
struck me as a celebrity if celebrities often were striking. It was a truth
of which I had for some time been conscious that a figure with a good
deal of frontage was, as one might say, almost never a public institution.
A glance at the lady helped to remind me of this paradoxical law: she
also looked too distinguished to be a "personality." Moreover one
would scarcely come across two variations together.
Neither of the pair spoke immediately--they only prolonged the
preliminary gaze which suggested that each wished to give the other a

chance. They were visibly shy; they stood there letting me take them
in--which, as I afterwards perceived, was the most practical thing they
could have done. In this way their embarrassment served their cause. I
had seen people painfully reluctant to mention that they desired
anything so gross as to be represented on canvas; but the scruples of
my new friends appeared almost insurmountable. Yet the gentleman
might have said "I should like a portrait of my wife," and the lady
might have said "I should like a portrait of my husband." Perhaps they
were not husband and wife--this naturally would make the matter more
delicate. Perhaps they wished to be done together--in which case they
ought to have brought a third person to break the news.
"We come from Mr. Rivet," the lady said at last, with a dim smile
which had the effect of a moist sponge passed over