Woman and Artist Part 13

"What a reception!" said de Lussac. "All London is rubbing shoulders here, in order to have a look at the man who has invented the famous sh.e.l.l."

"And his wife," added Lorimer.

"And his wife," repeated de Lussac. "I never saw her looking so lovely.

Raphael might have drawn the oval of her face, Murillo her eyes, t.i.tian her hair, Rubens her shoulders."

"And a modern English painter the sadness of her brow," said Lorimer.

"Doesn't she look bored, poor woman?"

"That puts the finishing touch, and helps to make her superb--ideal. A calm, cold, sad face is the one _mieux portee_ in England. It is almost _de rigueur_. Nothing is such bad form as to appear to enjoy life. She is quite _a la mode_."

"_A la mort_," said Lorimer. "My dear fellow, I'll tell you what it is, such parties as this give me shivers down the back. Your countrywoman, Madame Vigee-Lebrun, was right when she said, 'The English amuse themselves as the French bore themselves.'"

"Then why do you come here, old fellow?"

"Oh, I! Why, I come as a doctor. I am deeply interested in a special case. I am studying and following carefully the progress of a malady. I am here diagnosing."

"And your patient is" ...

"Our worthy host," said Lorimer.

"How do you find him to-day?"

"The disease is taking its course; he will get over it; but the cure will take time."

Lorimer fixed his eyegla.s.s in his eye, and surveyed the crowd.

"Ah," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, letting his gla.s.s drop again, "how I preferred the good little Bohemian Sunday suppers, the pretty little house in St.

John's Wood! The servants were dismissed, and everybody helped everybody else. There was a house where gaiety reigned supreme, _en autocrate_!

And what music we used to have! What glorious talks, what delicious discussions on every topic under the sun! Artists, writers, journalists, out-vied one another in brilliancy. Politics were put aside, and the Bourse and all that makes modern life insufferable. We were never more than twelve of us, so that the conversation could always be general, and, for that matter, the house did not contain a room large enough to hold comfortably more than a dozen people. How all the guests harmonised together! Those were parties. Here they are funereal functions. In a small room conversation is easy, people can talk easily. In a large room one is swamped, and feels like a solution of oneself."

"I see," said de Lussac, "that in spite of all your successes, you have remained a philosopher."

"More than ever. But look round you. Look at all these faces. These people touch a spring to make themselves smile. Oh, if that is your fashion of enjoying yourself, thanks, I prefer something else. Every time I come among this set, I am taken with furious longings every quarter of an hour to rush into the street and shout, to a.s.sure myself that I am alive. Poor old Grantham! It was his dream to see his wife shine in society. Poor devil! and such a good fellow, not to speak of his great future as a painter. However, there is our hostess coming towards us. Look at her! How happy she looks, this queen with her new crown--a capital model for 'Mary Stuart going to the Scaffold.'"

De Lussac, recognising some people he knew, moved off to join their group. Lorimer went towards Dora, who smiled with relief at seeing him in the crowd. Everyone seemed to have arrived now, and there was no need for her to remain at her post; but, in case of possible fresh comers, she stayed near the entrance of the room. She looked pale, her face was drawn with fatigue, and her eyes looked unnaturally large.

"Oh, what good it does one to see an old friend's familiar face in a crowd like this," she said to Lorimer, drawing him back towards the doorway of the large drawing-room. "My dear Gerald, I don't believe I know by sight the half of my guests."

The idea struck her as so funny that she began to laugh heartily.

"Do you know half?" exclaimed Lorimer; "that is very good really. As for the crowd, don't complain of that. An English hostess is a failure if people do not stifle in her drawing-room; and if half a dozen women faint, then the party is a social success that covers its giver with glory. The society papers talk of her.--You seem tired."

"Yes," said Dora, "tired--at the end of my strength and my courage."

"Let me take you to the buffet."

They went down together. Lorimer got her a biscuit, an ice, and a gla.s.s of champagne, and this light refreshment reanimated her.

On their way back to the drawing-room Lorimer took up the thread of the conversation again.

"Come now, my dear Dora," said he, "your lot is very enviable after all, you know. You are young, beautiful, rich, adored--one of the queens of society. What more do you ask?"

"I ask nothing more," replied Dora; "I ask a great deal less. A queen in society! I had rather be queen at home, as I used to be. We were left in peace in those times. Now all the idlers pry into our life. And why?

Oh, it is too silly! Because Philip refused to sell Sir Benjamin Pond a picture which he was painting for me. Yes, that is what is occupying them to-night. They all go to have a look at the portrait, one after another, and then they laugh. Can you conceive such a thing? There exists, or rather there existed, a painter who loved his wife, and did not mind showing it! Is it not droll? So vulgar, you know! It appears that it creates high fun at the clubs. Ah, you may talk about women's tongues, but to retail rubbish and circulate scandal, you must get a dozen men together in a club smoking-room. They are beyond compet.i.tion, my dear Gerald. I would give all my guests for a couple of intimate friends, for a couple of devoted relatives. Ah, you may say what you like, blood is thicker than afternoon tea."

"You were too happy," said Lorimer, who had been amused at Dora's tirade; "now you must share your happiness a little."

"Yes, and my husband with everybody. Where is my share? How I should like to leave this room and go and sit in a quiet corner for a good talk, such as we used to have in the good old times in the other house."

"Why move? Stay where you are, and instead of thinking yourself on show, try and imagine that all this crowd is here for your amus.e.m.e.nt. I know all your guests personally or by sight. I am your 'Who's who' for to-night. Make use of me. I will show and explain the magic lantern."

"So you shall," said Dora, amused by the suggestion. "Now, then, who is that horrible creature painted and dyed, with eyes half out of her head and an eternal sickly smile on her face?"

"Lady Agatha Ashby, an old grump of the fashionable world. No one knows her age. Some say it is seventy-two, others put it at a hundred and seventy-two. She is enamelled, and the mouth, as you see it, is fixed in that way with a smile that lasts three hours. They say she used to be pretty and rather witty. Makes it her duty to know everybody worth knowing. Will probably leave memoirs behind her--a diary at anyrate."

"And those?" said Dora, indicating two couples pa.s.sing near her.

"The Earl of Gampton. Behind him the Countess, a young American woman, who brought him three million dollars, with which he has been able to get his coat-of-arms out of p.a.w.n. Our British aristocracy gets regilded in Chicago and New York."

"How can a woman love or respect a man who allows himself to be purchased for a t.i.tle of n.o.bility?"

"And," said Lorimer, "how can a man love or respect a woman who buys him, and degrades him in his own eyes?"

"You are right," responded Dora. "I cannot see any possible element of happiness in such marriages. She is ugly," she added, after taking a second look at the Countess.

"Beauty fades," said Lorimer, in excuse for Lord Gampton.

"Yes, but ugliness remains," replied Dora.

"And the dollars, too, happily--it is a compensation--a fine indemnity."

"Not always; fortunes have been known to fade too."

"Ah," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lorimer, as there pa.s.sed by him a middle-aged man, fairly good-looking, but wearing a forbidding, sulky expression, "there is Sir George Hardy. He has not inflicted his wife on you."

"No, thank Heaven!--if what people say is true."

"True enough. People don't ask Lady Hardy, but Sir George is a philosopher; he does not resent being asked out alone; and he has the good sense never to try and introduce one to his wife. There are two kinds of women--those you marry, and those you don't introduce to your friends. Sir George has them both in one."

"What a dead-weight such a woman must be! To be proud of one's wife, to be proud of one's husband--that is one of the great keys to happiness in married life. Oh, Gerald, do look at that imposing-looking matron; who is she?"

"The Dowager-Countess of Chausey, pretty well known for her serious flirtations in 1850."

"How can a woman of her age go about so outrageously uncovered? So long as English women do not show their feet, they think they are all right.

Her dress is perfectly indecent."

"Not the dress, but its contents," said Lorimer. "The Countess might, it is true, draw a veil across the past and leave something to the imagination of the beholder. But the fun of the thing is, that the dowager is one of the vice-presidents of the society recently founded for the suppression of the nude in our museums and picture galleries. O the British matron!"