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Page 2
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 thing."
"Hideous?"
Mrs. Munden made a mouth for it. "Hideous is too much to say; she
doesn't really require them as bad as that. But consistently,
cheerfully, loyally plain. It's really a most happy relation. She loves
them for it."
"And for what do they love _her_?"
"Why just for the amiability that they produce in her. Then also for
their 'home.' It's a career for them."
"I see. But if that's the case," I asked, "why are they so difficult to
find?"
"Oh they must be safe; it's all in that: her being able to depend on them
to keep to the terms of the bargain and never have moments of rising--as
even the ugliest woman will now and then (say when she's in
love)--superior to themselves."
I turned it over. "Then if they can't inspire passions the poor things
mayn't even at least feel them?"
"She distinctly deprecates it. That's why such a man as you may be after
all a complication."
I continued to brood. "You're very sure Miss Dadd's ailment isn't an
affection that, being smothered, has struck in?" My joke, however,
wasn't well timed, for I afterwards learned that the unfortunate lady's
state had been, even while I spoke, such as to forbid all hope. The
worst symptoms had appeared; she was destined not to recover; and a week
later I heard from Mrs. Munden that she would in fact "gurgle" no more.
CHAPTER II
All this had been for Lady Beldonald an agitation so great that access to
her apartment was denied for a time even to her sister-in-law. It was
much more out of the question of course that she should unveil her face
to a person of my special business with it; so that the question of the
portrait was by common consent left to depend on that of the installation
of a successor to her late companion. Such a successor, I gathered from
Mrs. Munden, widowed childless and lonely, as well as inapt for the minor
offices, she had absolutely to have; a more or less humble _alter ago_ to
deal with the servants, keep the accounts, make the tea and watch the
window-blinds. Nothing seemed more natural than that she should marry
again, and obviously that might come; yet the predecessors of Miss Dadd
had been contemporaneous with a first husband, so that others formed in
her image might be contemporaneous with a second. I was much occupied in
those months at any rate, and these questions and their ramifications
losing themselves for a while to my view, I was only brought back to them
by Mrs. Munden's arrival one day with the news that we were all right
again--her sister-in-law was once more "suited." A certain Mrs. Brash,
an American relative whom she hadn't seen for years, but with whom she
had continued to communicate, was to come out to her immediately; and
this person, it appeared, could be quite trusted to meet the conditions.
She was ugly--ugly enough, without abuse of it, and was unlimitedly good.
The position offered her by Lady Beldonald was moreover exactly what she
needed; widowed also, after many troubles and reverses, with her fortune
of the smallest, and her various children either buried or placed about,
she had never had time or means to visit England, and would really be
grateful in her declining years for the new experience and the pleasant
light work involved in her cousin's hospitality. They had been much
together early in life and Lady Beldonald was immensely fond of her--would
in fact have tried to get hold of her before hadn't Mrs. Brash been
always in bondage to family duties, to the variety of her tribulations. I
daresay I laughed at my friend's use of the term "position"--the
position, one might call it, of a candlestick or a sign-post, and I
daresay I must have asked if the special service the poor lady was to
render had been made clear to her. Mrs. Munden left me in any case with
the rather droll image of her faring forth across the sea quite
consciously and resignedly to perform it.
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