The Better Sort (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903)/The Tone of Time/Chapter 2
II
The next day therefore I had the picture in charge, and on the following Mrs. Bridgenorth, whom I had notified, arrived. I had placed it, framed and on an easel, well in evidence, and I have never forgotten the look and the cry that, as she became aware of it, leaped into her face and from her lips. It was an extraordinary moment, all the more that it found me quite unprepared—so extraordinary that I scarce knew at first what had happened. By the time I really perceived, moreover, more things had happened than one, so that when I pulled myself together it was to face the situation as a whole. She had recognised on the instant the subject; that came first and was irrepressibly vivid in her. Her recognition had, for the length of a flash, lighted for her the possibility that the stroke had been directed. That came second, and she flushed with it as with a blow in the face. What came third—and it was what was really most wondrous—was the quick instinct of getting both her strange recognition and her blind suspicion well in hand. She couldn't control, however, poor woman, the strong colour in her face and the quick tears in her eyes. She could only glare at the canvas, gasping, grimacing, and try to gain time. Whether in surprise or in resentment she intensely reflected, feeling more than anything else how little she might prudently show; and I was conscious even at the moment that nothing of its kind could have been finer than her effort to swallow her shock in ten seconds.
How many seconds she took I didn't measure; enough, assuredly, for me also to profit. I gained more time than she, and the greatest oddity doubtless was my own private manœuvre—the quickest calculation that, acting from a mere confused instinct, I had ever made. If she had known the great gentleman represented there and yet had determined on the spot to carry herself as ignorant, all my loyalty to Mary Tredick came to the surface in a prompt counter-move. What gave me opportunity was the red in her cheek. "Why, you've known him!"
I saw her ask herself for an instant if she mightn't successfully make her startled state pass as the mere glow of pleasure—her natural greeting to her acquisition. She was pathetically, yet at the same time almost comically, divided. Her line was so to cover her tracks that every avowal of a past connection was a danger; but it also concerned her safety to learn, in the light of our astounding coincidence, how far she already stood exposed. She meanwhile begged the question. She smiled through her tears. "He's too magnificent!"
But I gave her, as I say, all too little time. "Who is he? Who was he?"
It must have been my look still more than my words that determined her. She wavered but an instant longer, panted, laughed, cried again, and then, dropping into the nearest seat, gave herself up so completely that I was almost ashamed. "Do you think I'd tell you his name?" The burden of the backward years—all the effaced and ignored—lived again, almost like an accent unlearned but freshly breaking out at a touch, in the very sound of the words. These perceptions she, however, the next thing showed me, were a game at which two could play. She had to look at me but an instant. "Why, you really don't know it!"
I judged best to be frank. "I don't know it."
"Then how does she?"
"How do you?" I laughed. "I'm a different matter."
She sat a minute turning things round, staring at the picture. "The likeness, the likeness!" It was almost too much.
"It's so true?"
"Beyond everything."
I considered. "But a resemblance to a known individual—that wasn't what you wanted."
She sprang up at this in eager protest. "Ah, no one else would see it."
I showed again, I fear, my amusement. "No one but you and she?"
"It's her doing him!" She was held by her wonder. "Doesn't she, on your honour, know?"
"That his is the very head you would have liked if you had dared? Not a bit. How should she? She knows nothing—on my honour."
Mrs. Bridgenorth continued to marvel. "She just painted him for the kind of face———?"
"That corresponds with my description of what you wished? Precisely."
"But how—after so long? From memory? As a friend?"
"As a reminiscence—yes. Visual memory, you see, in our uncanny race, is wonderful. As the ideal thing, simply, for your purpose. You are then suited?" I, after an instant added.
She had again been gazing, and at this turned her eyes on me; but I saw she couldn't speak, couldn't do more at least than sound, unutterably, "Suited!" so that I was positively not surprised when suddenly—just as Mary had done, the power to produce this effect seeming a property of the model—she burst into tears. I feel no harsher in relating it, however I may appear, than I did at the moment, but it is a fact that while she just wept I literally had a fresh inspiration on behalf of Miss Tredick's interests. I knew exactly, moreover, before my companion had recovered herself, what she would next ask me; and I consciously brought this appeal on in order to have it over. I explained that I had not the least idea of the identity of our artist's sitter, to which she had given me no clue. I had nothing but my impression that she had known him—known him well; and, from whatever material she had worked, the fact of his having also been known to Mrs. Bridgenorth was a coincidence pure and simple. It partook of the nature of prodigy, but such prodigies did occur. My visitor listened with avidity and credulity. She was so far reassured. Then I saw her question come. "Well, if she doesn't dream he was ever anything to me—or what he will be now—I'm going to ask you, as a very particular favour, never to tell her. She will want to know of course exactly how I've been struck. You'll naturally say that I'm delighted, but may I exact from you that you say nothing else?"
There was supplication in her face, but I had to think. "There are conditions I must put to you first, and one of them is also a question, only more frank than yours. Was this mysterious personage—frustrated by death—to have married you?"
She met it bravely. "Certainly, if he had lived."
I was only amused at an artlessness in her "certainly." "Very good. But why do you wish the coincidence———"
"Kept from her?" She knew exactly why. "Because if she suspects it she won't let me have the picture. Therefore," she added with decision, "you must let me pay for it on the spot."
"What do you mean by on the spot?"
"I'll send you a cheque as soon as I get home."
"Oh," I laughed, "let us understand. Why do you consider she won't let you have the picture?"
She made me wait a little for this, but when it came it was perfectly lucid. "Because she'll then see how much more I must want it."
"How much less—wouldn't it be rather, since the bargain was, as the more convenient thing, not for a likeness?"
"Oh," said Mrs. Bridgenorth with impatience, "the likeness will take care of itself. She'll put this and that together." Then she brought out her real apprehension. "She'll be jealous."
"Oh!" I laughed. But I was startled.
"She'll hate me!"
I wondered. "But I don't think she liked him."
"Don't think?" She stared at me, with her echo, over all that might be in it, then seemed to find little enough. "I say!"
It was almost comically the old Mrs. Bridgenorth. "But I gather from her that he was bad."
"Then what was she?"
I barely hesitated. "What were you?"
"That's my own business." And she turned again to the picture. "He was good enough for her to do that of him."
I took it in once more. "Artistically speaking, for the way it's done, it's one of the most curious things I've ever seen."
"It's a grand treat! " said poor Mrs. Bridgenorth more simply.
It was, it is really; which is exactly what made the case so interesting. "Yet I feel somehow that, as I say, it wasn't done with love."
It was wonderful how she understood. "It was done with rage."
"Then what have you to fear?"
She knew again perfectly. "What happened when he made me jealous. So much," she declared, "that if you'll give me your word for silence———"
"Well?"
"Why, I'll double the money."
"Oh," I replied, taking a turn about in the excitement of our concurrence, "that's exactly what—to do a still better stroke for her—it had just come to me to propose!"
"It's understood then, on your oath, as a gentleman?" She was so eager that practically this settled it, though I moved to and fro a little while she watched me in suspense. It vibrated all round us that she had gone out to the thing in a stifled flare, that a whole close relation had in the few minutes revived. We know it of the truly amiable person that he will strain a point for another that he wouldn't strain for himself. The stroke to put in for Mary was positively prescribed. The work represented really much more than had been covenanted, and if the purchaser chose so to value it this was her own affair. I decided. "If it's understood also on your word."
We were so at one that we shook hands on it. "And when may I send?"
"Well, I shall see her this evening. Say early tomorrow."
"Early to-morrow." And I went with her to her brougham, into which, I remember, as she took leave, she expressed regret that she mightn't then and there have introduced the canvas for removal. I consoled her with remarking that she couldn't have got it in—which was not quite true.
I saw Mary Tredick before dinner, and though I was not quite ideally sure of my present ground with her I instantly brought out my news. "She's so delighted that I felt I must in conscience do something still better for you. She's not to have it on the original terms. I've put up the price."
Mary wondered. "But to what?"
"Well, to four hundred. If you say so, I'll try even for five."
"Oh, she'll never give that."
"I beg your pardon."
"After the agreement?" She looked grave. "I don't like such leaps and bounds."
"But, my dear child, they're yours. You contracted for a decorative trifle, and you've produced a breathing masterpiece."
She thought. "Is that what she calls it?" Then, as having to think too, I hesitated, "What does she know?" she pursued.
"She knows she wants it."
"So much as that?"
At this I had to brace myself a little. "So much that she'll send me the cheque this afternoon, and that you'll have mine by the first post in the morning."
"Before she has even received the picture?"
"Oh, she'll send for it to-morrow." And as I was dining out and had still to dress, my time was up. Mary came with me to the door, where I repeated my assurance. "You shall receive my cheque by the first post." To which I added: "If it's little enough for a lady so much in need to pay for any husband, it isn't worth mentioning as the price of such a one as you've given her!"
I was in a hurry, but she held me. "Then you've felt your idea confirmed?"
"My idea?"
"That that's what I have given her?"
I suddenly fancied I had perhaps gone too far; but I had kept my cab and was already in it. "Well, put it," I called with excess of humour over the front, "that you've, at any rate, given him a wife!"
When on my return from dinner that night I let myself in, my first care, in my dusty studio, was to make light for another look at Mary's subject. I felt the impulse to bid him good night, but, to my astonishment, he was no longer there. His place was a void—he had already disappeared. I saw, however, after my first surprise, what had happened—saw it moreover, frankly, with some relief. As my servants were in bed I could ask no questions, but it was clear that Mrs. Bridgenorth, whose note, containing its cheque, lay on my table, had been after all unable to wait. The note, I found, mentioned nothing but the enclosure; but it had come by hand, and it was her silence that told the tale. Her messenger had been instructed to "act"; he had come with a vehicle, he had transferred to it canvas and frame. The prize was now therefore landed and the incident closed. I didn't altogether, the next morning, know why, but I had slept the better for the sense of these things, and as soon as my attendant came in I asked for details. It was on this that his answer surprised me. "No, sir, there was no man; she came herself. She had only a four-wheeler, but I helped her, and we got it in. It was a squeeze, sir, but she would take it."
I wondered. "She had a four-wheeler? and not her servant?"
"No, no, sir. She came, as you may say, single-handed."
"And not even in her brougham, which would have been larger."
My man, with his habit, weighed it. "But have she a brougham, sir?"
"Why, the one she was here in yesterday."
Then light broke. "Oh, that lady! It wasn't her, sir. It was Miss Tredick."
Light broke, but darkness a little followed it—a darkness that, after breakfast, guided my steps back to my friend. There, in its own first place, I met her creation; but I saw it would be a different thing meeting her. She immediately put down on a table, as if she had expected me, the cheque I had sent her over night. "Yes, I've brought it away. And I can't take the money."
I found myself in despair. "You want to keep him?"
"I don't understand what has happened."
"You just back out?"
"I don't understand," she repeated, "what has happened." But what I had already perceived was, on the contrary, that she very nearly, that she in fact quite remarkably, did understand. It was as if in my zeal I had given away my case, and I felt that my test was coming. She had been thinking all night with intensity, and Mrs. Bridgenorth's generosity, coupled with Mrs. Bridgenorth's promptitude, had kept her awake. Thence, for a woman nervous and critical, imaginations, visions, questions. "Why, in writing me last night, did you take for granted it was she who had swooped down? Why," asked Mary Tredick, "should she swoop?"
Well, if I could drive a bargain for Mary, I felt I could a fortiori lie for her. "Because it's her way. She does swoop. She's impatient and uncontrolled. And it's affectation for you to pretend," I said with diplomacy, "that you see no reason for her falling in love———"
"Falling in love?" She took me straight up.
"With that gentleman. Certainly. What woman wouldn't? What woman didn't? I really don't see, you know, your right to back out."
"I won't back out," she presently returned, "if you'll answer me a question. Does she know the man represented?" Then as I hung fire: "It has come to me that she must. It would account for so much. For the strange way I feel," she went on, "and for the extraordinary sum you've been able to extract from her."
It was a pity, and I flushed with it, besides wincing at the word she used. But Mrs. Bridgenorth and I, between us, had clearly made the figure too high. "You think that, if she had guessed, I would naturally work it to 'extract' more?"
She turned away from me on this and, looking blank in her trouble, moved vaguely about. Then she stopped. "I see him set up there. I hear her say it. What you said she would make him pass for."
I believe I foolishly tried—though only for an instant—to look as if I didn't remember what I had said. "Her husband?"
"He wasn't."
The next minute I had risked it. "Was he yours?"
I don't know what I had expected, but I found myself surprised at her mere pacific head-shake. "No."
"Then why mayn't he have been———?"
"Another woman's? Because he died, to my absolute knowledge, unmarried." She spoke as quietly. "He had known many women, and there was one in particular with whom he became—and too long remained—ruinously intimate. She tried to make him marry her, and he was very near it. Death, however, saved him. But she was the reason———"
"Yes? " I feared again from her a wave of pain, and I went on while she kept it back. "Did you know her?"
"She was one I wouldn't." Then she brought it out. "She was the reason he failed me." Her successful detachment somehow said all, reduced me to a flat, kind "Oh!" that marked my sense of her telling me, against my expectation, more than I knew what to do with. But it was just while I wondered how to turn her confidence that she repeated, in a changed voice, her challenge of a moment before. "Does she know the man represented?"
"I haven't the least idea." And having so acquitted myself I added, with what strikes me now as futility: "She certainly—yesterday—didn't name him."
"Only recognised him?"
"If she did she brilliantly concealed it."
"So that you got nothing from her?"
It was a question that offered me a certain advantage. "I thought you accused me of getting too much."
She gave me a long look, and I now saw everything in her face. "It's very nice—what you're doing for me, and you do it handsomely. It's beautiful—beautiful, and I thank you with all my heart. But I know."
"And what do you know?"
She went about now preparing her usual work. "What he must have been to her."
"You mean she was the person?"
"Well," she said, putting on her old spectacles, "she was one of them."
"And you accept so easily the astounding coincidence———?"
"Of my finding myself, after years, in so extraordinary a relation with her? What do you call easily? I've passed a night of torment."
"But what put it into your head———?"
"That I had so blindly and strangely given him back to her? You put it—yesterday."
"And how?"
"I can't tell you. You didn't in the least mean to—on the contrary. But you dropped the seed. The plant, after you had gone," she said with a business like pull at her easel, "the plant began to grow. I saw them there—in your studio—face to face."
"You were jealous?" I laughed.
She gave me through her glasses another look, and they seemed, from this moment, in their queerness, to have placed her quite on the other side of the gulf of time. She was firm there; she was settled; I couldn't get at her now. "I see she told you I would be." I doubtless kept down too little my start at it, and she immediately pursued. "You say I accept the coincidence, which is of course prodigious. But such things happen. Why shouldn't I accept it if you do?"
"Do I?" I smiled.
She began her work in silence, but she presently exclaimed: "I'm glad I didn't meet her!"
"I don't yet see why you wouldn't."
"Neither do I. It was an instinct."
"Your instincts"—I tried to be ironic—"are miraculous."
"They have to be, to meet such accidents. I must ask you kindly to tell her, when you return her gift, that now I have done the picture I find I must after all keep it for myself."
"Giving no reason?"
She painted away. "She'll know the reason."
Well, by this time I knew it too; I knew so many things that I fear my resistance was weak. If our wonderful client hadn't been his wife in fact, she was not to be helped to become his wife in fiction. I knew almost more than I can say, more at any rate than I could then betray. He had been bound in common mercy to stand by my friend, and he had basely forsaken her. This indeed brought up the obscure, into which I shyly gazed. "Why, even granting your theory, should you grudge her the portrait? It was painted in bitterness."
"Yes. Without that———!"
"It wouldn't have come? Precisely. Is it in bitterness, then, you'll keep it?"
She looked up from her canvas. "In what would you keep it?"
It made me jump. "Do you mean I may?" Then I had my idea. "I'd give you her price for it!"
Her smile through her glasses was beautiful. "And afterwards make it over to her? You shall have it when I die." With which she came away from her easel, and I saw that I was staying her work and should properly go. So I put out my hand to her. "It took—whatever you will!—to paint it," she said, "but I shall keep it in joy." I could answer nothing now—had to cease to pretend; the thing was in her hands. For a moment we stood there, and I had again the sense, melancholy and final, of her being, as it were, remotely glazed and fixed into what she had done. "He's taken from me, and for all those years he's kept. Then she herself, by a prodigy———!" She lost herself again in the wonder of it.
"Unwittingly gives him back?"
She fairly, for an instant over the marvel, closed her eyes. "Gives him back."
Then it was I saw how he would be kept! But it was the end of my vision. I could only write, ruefully enough, to Mrs. Bridgenorth, whom I never met again, but of whose death—preceding by a couple of years Mary Tredick's—I happened to hear. This is an old man's tale. I have inherited the picture, in the deep beauty of which, however, darkness still lurks. No one, strange to say, has ever recognised the model, but everyone asks his name. I don't even know it.