The Better Sort (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903)/The Special Type/Chapter 5
V
All for me, however, as it proved, had not ended yet. Brivet, as I have mentioned, duly reappeared to sit for me, and Mrs. Cavenham, on his arrival, as consistently went abroad. He confirmed to me that lady's news of how he had "fetched," as he called it, his wife—let me know, as decently owing to me after what had passed, on the subject, between us, that the forces set in motion had logically operated; but he made no other allusion to his late accomplice—for I now took for granted the close of the connection—than was conveyed in this intimation. He spoke—and the effect was almost droll—as if he had had, since our previous meeting, a busy and responsible year and wound up an affair (as he was accustomed to wind up affairs) involving a mass of detail; he even dropped into occasional reminiscence of what he had seen and enjoyed and disliked during a recent period of rather far-reaching adventure; but he stopped just as short as Mrs. Cavenham had done—and indeed, much shorter than she—of introducing Mrs. Dundene by name into our talk. And what was singular in this, I soon saw, was—apart from a general discretion—that he abstained not at all because his mind was troubled, but just because, on the contrary, it was so much at ease. It was perhaps even more singular still, meanwhile, that, though I had scarce been able to bear Mrs. Cavenham's manner in this particular, I found I could put up perfectly with that of her friend. She had annoyed me, but he didn't—I give the inconsistency for what it is worth. The obvious state of his conscience had always been a strong point in him and one that exactly irritated some people as much as it charmed others; so that if, in general, it was positively, and in fact quite aggressively approving, this monitor, it had never held its head so high as at the juncture of which I speak. I took all this in with eagerness, for I saw how it would play into my work. Seeking as I always do, instinctively, to represent sitters in the light of the thing, whatever it may be, that facially, least wittingly or responsibly, gives the pitch of their aspect, I felt immediately that I should have the clue for making a capital thing of Brivet were I to succeed in showing him in just this freshness of his cheer. His cheer was that of his being able to say to himself that he had got all he wanted precisely as he wanted: without having harmed a fly. He had arrived so neatly where most men arrive besmirched, and what he seemed to cry out as he stood before my canvas—wishing everyone well all round—was: "See how clever and pleasant and practicable, how jolly and lucky and rich I've been!" I determined, at all events, that I would make some such characteristic words as these cross, at any cost, the footlights, as it were, of my frame.
Well, I can't but feel to this hour that I really hit my nail—that the man is fairly painted in the light and that the work remains as yet my high-water mark. He himself was delighted with it—and all the more, I think, that before it was finished he received from America the news of his liberation. He had not defended the suit—as to which judgment, therefore, had been expeditiously rendered; and he was accordingly free as air and with the added sweetness of every augmented appearance that his wife was herself blindly preparing to seek chastisement at the hands of destiny. There being at last no obstacle to his open association with Mrs. Cavenham, he called her directly back to London to admire my achievement, over which, from the very first glance, she as amiably let herself go. It was the very view of him she had desired to possess; it was the dear man in his intimate essence for those who knew him; and for any one who should ever be deprived of him it would be the next best thing to the sound of his voice. We of course by no means lingered, however, on the contingency of privation, which was promptly swept away in the rush of Mrs. Cavenham's vision of how straight also, above and beyond, I had, as she called it, attacked. I couldn't quite myself, I fear, tell how straight, but Mrs. Cavenham perfectly could, and did, for everybody: she had at her fingers ends all the reasons why the thing would be a treasure even for those who had never seen "Frank."
I had finished the picture, but was, according to my practice, keeping it near me a little, for afterthoughts, when I received from Mrs. Dundene the first visit she had paid me for many a month. "I've come," she immediately said, "to ask you a favour"; and she turned her eyes, for a minute, as if contentedly full of her thought, round the large workroom she already knew so well and in which her beauty had really rendered more services than could ever be repaid. There were studies of her yet on the walls; there were others thrust away in corners; others still had gone forth from where she stood and carried to far-away places the reach of her lingering look. I had greatly, almost inconveniently missed her, and I don't know why it was that she struck me now as more beautiful than ever. She had always, for that matter, had a way of seeming; each time a little different and a little better. Dressed very simply in black materials, feathers and lace, that gave the impression of being light and fine, she had indeed the air of a special type, but quite as some great lady might have had it. She looked like a princess in Court mourning. Oh, she had been a case for the petitioner—was everything the other side wanted! "Mr. Brivet," she went on to say, "has kindly offered me a present. I'm to ask of him what ever in the world I most desire."
I knew in an instant, on this, what was coming, but I was at first wholly taken up with the simplicity of her allusion to her late connection. Had I supposed that, like Brivet, she wouldn't allude to it at all? or had I stupidly assumed that if she did it would be with ribaldry and rancour? I hardly know; I only know that I suddenly found myself charmed to receive from her thus the key of my own freedom. There was something I wanted to say to her, and she had thus given me leave. But for the moment I only repeated as with amused interest: "Whatever in the world———?"
"Whatever in all the world."
"But that's immense, and in what way can poor I help?"
"By painting him for me. I want a portrait of him."
I looked at her a moment in silence. She was lovely. "That's what—'in all the world'—you've chosen?"
"Yes—thinking it over: full-length. I want it for remembrance, and I want it as you will do it. It's the only thing I do want."
"Nothing else?"
"Oh, it's enough." I turned about—she was wonderful. I had whisked out of sight for a month the picture I had produced for Mrs. Cavenham, and it was now completely covered with a large piece of stuff. I stood there a little, thinking of it, and she went on as if she feared I might be unwilling. "Can't you do it?"
It showed me that she had not heard from him of my having painted him, and this, further, was an indication that, his purpose effected, he had ceased to see her. "I suppose you know," I presently said, "what you've done for him?"
"Oh yes; it was what I wanted."
"It was what he wanted!" I laughed.
"Well, I want what he wants."
"Even to his marrying Mrs. Cavenham?"
She hesitated. "As well her as anyone, from the moment he couldn't marry me."
"It was beautiful of you to be so sure of that," I returned.
"How could I be anything else but sure? He doesn't so much as know me!" said Alice Dundene.
"No," I declared, "I verily believe he doesn't. There's your picture," I added, unveiling my work.
She was amazed and delighted. "I may have that?"
"So far as I'm concerned—absolutely."
"Then he had himself the beautiful thought of sitting for me?"
I faltered but an instant. "Yes."
Her pleasure in what I had done was a joy to me. "Why, it's of a truth———! It's perfection."
"I think it is."
"It's the whole story. It's life."
"That's what I tried for," I said; and I added to myself: "Why the deuce do we?"
"It will be him for me," she meanwhile went on. "I shall live with it, keep it all to myself, and—do you know what it will do?—it will seem to make up."
"To make up?"
"I never saw him alone," said Mrs. Dundene.
I am still keeping the thing to send to her, punctually, on the day he's married; but I had of course, on my understanding with her, a tremendous bout with Mrs. Cavenham, who protested with indignation against my "base treachery" and made to Brivet an appeal for redress which, enlightened, face to face with the magnificent humility of his other friend's selection, he couldn't, for shame, entertain. All he was able to do was to suggest to me that I might for one or other of the ladies, at my choice, do him again; but I had no difficulty in replying that my best was my best and that what was done was done. He assented with the awkwardness of a man in dispute between women, and Mrs. Cavenham remained furious. "Can't 'they'—of all possible things, think!—take something else?"
"Oh, they want him!"
"Him?" It was monstrous.
"To live with," I explained—"to make up."
"To make up for what?"
"Why, you know, they never saw him alone."