A Great Success Part 6

"A _writer_?"

"Poetess!--and journalist!" said Uncle Charles, enjoying Doris's puzzled look. "She sent me her poems yesterday. As to journalism"--his eyes twinkled--"I say nothing--but this. Watch her _hats_! She has the reputation--in certain circles--of being the best-hatted woman in London. All this I get from the man who handed her on to me. As I said to him, it depends on what 'London' you mean."

"Married?"

"Oh dear no, though of course she calls herself 'Madame' like the rest of them--Madame Vavasour. I have reason, however, to believe that her real name is Flink--Elena Flink. And I should say--very much on the look-out for a husband; and meanwhile very much courted by boys--who go to what she calls her 'evenings.' It is odd, the taste that some youths have for these elderly Circes."

"Elderly?" said Doris, busy the while with her own preparations. "I was hoping for something young and beautiful!"

"Young?--no!--an unmistakable thirty-five. Beautiful? Well, wait till you see her ... H'm--that shoulder won't do!"--Doris had just placed a preliminary sketch of one of her "subjects" under his eyes--"and that bit of perspective in the corner wants a lot of seeing to. Look here!"

The old Academician, brought up in the spirit of Ingres--"le dessin, c'est la probite!--le dessin, c'est l'honneur!"--fell eagerly to work on the sketch, and Doris watched.

They were both absorbed, when there was a knock at the door. Doris turned hastily, expecting to see the model. Instead of which there entered, in response to Bentley's "Come in!" a girl of four or five and twenty, in a blue linen dress and a shady hat, who nodded a quiet "Good afternoon" to the artist, and proceeded at once with an air of business to a writing-table at the further end of the studio, covered with papers.

"Miss Wigram," said the artist, raising his voice, "let me introduce you to my niece, Mrs. Meadows."

The girl rose from her chair again and bowed. Then Doris saw that she had a charming tired face, beautiful eyes on which she had just placed spectacles, and soft brown hair framing her thin cheeks.

"A novelty since you were here," whispered Bentley in Doris's ear.

"She's an accountant--capital girl! Since these Liberal budgets came along, I can't keep my own accounts, or send in my own income-tax returns--dash them! So she does the whole business for me--pays everything--sees to everything--comes once a week. We shall all be run by the women soon!"

The studio had grown very quiet. Through some gla.s.s doors open to the garden came in little wandering winds which played with some loose papers on the floor, and blew Doris's hair about her eyes as she stooped over her easel, absorbed in her drawing. Apparently absorbed: her subliminal mind, at least, was far away, wandering on a craggy Scotch moor. A lady on a Scotch pony--she understood that Lady Dunstable often rode with the shooters--and a tall man walking beside her, carrying, not a gun, but a walking stick:--that was the vision in the crystal. Arthur was too bad a shot to be tolerated in the Dunstable circle; had indeed wisely announced from the beginning that he was not to be included among the guns. All the more time for conversation, the give and take of wits, the pleasures of the intellectual tilting-ground; the whole watered by good wine, seasoned with the best of cooking, and lapped in the general ease of a house where n.o.body ever thought of such a vulgar thing as money except to spend it.

Doris had in general a severe mind as to the rich and aristocratic cla.s.ses. Her own hard and thrifty life had disposed her to see them _en noir_. But the sudden rush of a certain section of them to crowd Arthur's lectures had been certainly mollifying. If it had not been for the Vampire, Doris was well aware that her standards might have given way.

As it was, Lady Dunstable's exacting ways, her swoop, straight and fierce, on the social morsel she desired, like that of an eagle on the sheepfold, had made her, in Doris's sore consciousness, the representative of thousands more; all greedy, able, domineering, inevitably getting what they wanted, and more than they deserved; against whom the starved and virtuous intellectuals of the professional cla.s.ses were bound to contend to the death. The story of that poor girl, that clergyman's daughter, for instance--could anything have been more insolent--more cruel? Doris burned to avenge her.

Suddenly--a great clatter and noise in the pa.s.sage leading from the small house behind to the studio and garden.

"Here she is!"

Uncle Charles sprang up, and reached the studio door just as a shower of knocks descended upon it from outside. He opened it, and on the threshold there stood two persons; a stout lady in white, surmounted by a huge black hat with a hea.r.s.e-like array of plumes; and, behind her, a tall and willowy youth, with--so far as could be seen through the c.h.i.n.ks of the hat--a large nose, fair hair, pale blue eyes, and a singular deficiency of chin. He carried in his arms a tiny black Spitz with a pink ribbon round its neck.

The lady looked, frowning, into the interior of the studio. She held in her hand a very large fan, with the handle of which she had been rapping the door; and the black feathers with which she was canopied seemed to be nodding in her eyes.

"Maestro, you are not alone!" she said in a deep, reproachful voice.

"My niece, Mrs. Meadows--Madame Vavasour," said Bentley, ushering in the new-comer.

Doris turned from her easel and bowed, only to receive a rather scowling response.

"And your friend?" As he spoke the artist looked blandly at the young man.

"I brought him to amuse me, Maestro. When I am dull my countenance changes, and you cannot do it justice. He will talk to me--I shall be animated--and you will profit."

"Ah, no doubt!" said Bentley, smiling. "And your friend's name?"

"Herbert Dunstable--Honourable Herbert Dunstable!--Signor Bentley," said Madame Vavasour, advancing with a stately step into the room, and waving peremptorily to the young man to follow.

Doris sat transfixed and staring. Bentley turned to look at his niece, and their eyes met--his full of suppressed mirth. The son!--the unsatisfactory son! Doris remembered that his name was Herbert. In the train of this third-rate sorceress!

Her thoughts ran excitedly to the distant moors, and that magnificent lady, with her circle of distinguished persons, holiday-making statesmen, peers, diplomats, writers, and the like. Here was a humbler scene! But Doris's fancy at once divined a score of links between it and the high comedy yonder.

Meanwhile, at the name of Dunstable, the girl accountant in the distance had also moved sharply, so as to look at the young man. But in the bustle of Madame Vavasour's entrance, and her pa.s.sage to the sitter's chair, the girl's gesture pa.s.sed unnoticed.

"I'm just worn out, Maestro!" said the model languidly, uplifting a pair of tragic eyes to the artist. "I sat up half the night writing. I had a subject which tormented me. But I have done something _splendid_!

Isn't it splendid, Herbert?"

"Ripping!" said the young man, grinning widely.

"Sit down!" said Madame, with a change of tone. And the youth sat down, on the very low chair to which she pointed him, doing his best to dispose of his long legs.

"Give me the dog!" she commanded. "You have no idea how to hold him--poor lamb!"

The dog was handed to her; she took off her enormous hat with many sighs of fatigue, and then, with the dog on her lap, asked how she was to sit.

Bentley explained that he wished to make a few preliminary sketches of her head and bust, and proceeded to pose her. She accepted his directions with a curious pettishness, as though they annoyed her; and presently complained loudly that the chair was uncomfortable, and the pose irksome. He handled her, however, with a good-humoured mixture of flattery and persuasion, and at last, stepping back, surveyed the result--well content.

There was no doubt whatever that she was a very handsome woman, and that her physical type--that of the more lethargic and heavily built Neapolitan--suggested very happily the mad and melancholy Queen. She had superb black hair, eyes profoundly dark, a low and beautiful brow, lips cla.s.sically fine, a powerful head and neck, and a complexion which, but for the treatment given it, would have been of a clear and beautiful olive. She wore a draggled dress of cream-coloured muslin, very transparent over the shoulders, somewhat scandalously wanting at the throat and breast, and very frayed and dirty round the skirt. Her feet, which were large and plump, were cased in extremely pointed shoes with large paste buckles; and as she crossed them on the stool provided for them she showed a considerable amount of rather clumsy ankle. The hands too were large, common, and ill-kept, and the wrists laden with bracelets. She was adorned indeed with a great deal of jewellery, including some startling earrings of a bright green stone. The hat, which she had carefully placed on a chair beside her, was truly a monstrosity!--but, as Doris guessed, an expensive monstrosity, such as the Rue de la Paix provides, at anything from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty francs, for those of its cosmopolitan customers whom it pillages and despises. How did the lady afford it? The rest of her dress suggested a struggle with small means, waged by one who was greedy for effect, obtained at a minimum of trouble. That she was rouged and powdered goes without saying.

And the young man? Doris perceived at once his likeness to his father--a feeble likeness. But he was evidently simple and good-natured, and to all appearance completely in the power of the enchantress. He fanned her a.s.siduously. He picked up all the various belongings--gloves, handkerchiefs, handbag--which she perpetually let fall. He ran after the dog whenever it escaped from the lady's lap and threatened mischief in the studio; and by way of amusing her--the purpose for which he had been imported--he kept up a stream of small cryptic gossip about various common acquaintances, most of whom seemed to belong to the music-hall profession, and to be either "stars" or the satellites of "stars."

Madame listened to him with avidity, and occasionally broke into a giggling laugh. She had, however, two manners, and two kinds of conversation, which she adopted with the young man and the Academician respectively. Her talk with the youth suggested the jealous ascendency of a coa.r.s.e-minded woman. She occasionally flattered him, but more generally she teased or "ragged" him. She seemed indeed to feel him securely in her grip; so that there was no need to pose for him, as--figuratively as well as physically--she posed for Bentley. To the artist she gave her opinions on pictures or books--on the novels of Mr.

Wells, or the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw--in the languid or drawling tone of accepted authority; dropping every now and then into a broad c.o.c.kney accent, which produced a startling effect, like that of unexpected garlic in cookery. Bentley's gravity was often severely tried, and Doris altered the position of her own easel so that he and she could not see each other. Meanwhile Madame took not the smallest notice of Mr.

Bentley's niece, and Doris made no advances to the young man, to whom her name was clearly quite unknown. Had Circe really got him in her toils? Doris judged him soft-headed and soft-hearted; no match at all for the lady. The thought of her walking the lawns or the drawing-rooms of Crosby Ledgers as the betrothed of the heir stirred in Arthur Meadows's wife a silent, and--be it confessed!--a malicious convulsion.

Such mothers, so self-centred, so set on their own triumphs, with their intellectual noses so very much in the clouds, deserved such sons! She promised herself to keep her own counsel, and watch the play.

The sitting lasted for two hours. When it was over, Uncle Charles, all smiles and satisfaction, went with his visitors to the front door.

He was away some little time, and returned, bubbling, to the studio.

"She's been cross-examining me about her poems! I had to confess I hadn't read a word of them. And now she's offered to recite next time she comes! Good Heavens--how can I get out of it? I believe, Doris, she's hooked that young idiot! She told me she was engaged to him. Do you know anything of his people?"

The girl accountant suddenly came forward. She looked flushed and distressed.

"I do!" she said, with energy. "Can't somebody stop that? It will break their hearts!"

Doris and Uncle Charles looked at her in amazement.

"Whose hearts?" said the painter.

"Lord and Lady Dunstable's."

"You know them?" exclaimed Doris.

"I used to know them--quite well," said the girl, quietly. "My father had one of Lord Dunstable's livings. He died last year. He didn't like Lady Dunstable. He quarrelled with her, because--because she once did a very rude thing to me. But this would be _too_ awful! And poor Lord Dunstable! Everybody likes him. Oh--it must be stopped!--it _must_!"