Transcribed from the 1922 Macmillan and Co. edition ,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk. Proofing by Andy and his wife.
Mrs. Munden had not yet been to my studio on so good a pretext aswhen she first intimated that it would be quite open to me—shouldI only care, as she called it, to throw the handkerchief—to painther beautiful sister-in-law. I needn’t go here more thanis essential into the question of Mrs. Munden, who would really, bythe way, be a story in herself. She has a manner of her own ofputting things, and some of those she has put to me—! Herimplication was that Lady Beldonald hadn’t only seen and admiredcertain examples of my work, but had literally been prepossessed infavour of the painter’s “personality.” Had Ibeen struck with this sketch I might easily have imagined her ladyshipwas throwing me the handkerchief. “She hasn’t done,”my visitor said, “what she ought.”
“Do you mean she has done what she oughtn’t?”
“Nothing horrid—ah dear no.” And somethingin Mrs. Munden’s tone, with the way she appeared to muse a moment,even suggested to me that what she “oughtn’t” wasperhaps what Lady Beldonald had too much neglected. “Shehasn’t got on.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Well, to begin with, she’s American.”
“But I thought that was the way of ways to get on.”
“It’s one of them. But it’s one of the waysof being awfully out of it too. There are so many!”
“So many Americans?” I asked.
“Yes, plenty of them,” Mrs. Munden sighed. “So many ways, I mean, of being one.”
“But if your sister-in-law’s way is to be beautiful—?”
“Oh there are different ways of that too.”
“And she hasn’t taken the right way?”
“Well,” my friend returned as if it were rather difficultto express, “she hasn’t done with it—”
“I see,” I laughed; “what she oughtn’t!”
Mrs. Munden in a manner corrected me, but it was difficultto express. “My brother at all events was certainly selfish. Till he died she was almost never in London; they wintered, year afteryear, for what he supposed to be his health—which it didn’thelp, since he was so much too soon to meet his end—in the southof France and in the dullest holes he could pick out, and when theycame back to England he always kept her in the country. I mustsay for her that she always behaved beautifully. Since his deathshe has been more in London, but on a stupidly unsuccessful footing. I don’t think she quite understands. She hasn’t whatI should call a life. It may be of course that she doesn’twant one. That’s just what I can’t exactly find out. I can’t make out how much she knows.”
“I can easily make out,” I returned with hilarity, “howmuch you do!”
“Well, you’re very horrid. Perhaps she’stoo old.”
“Too old for what?” I persisted.
“For anything. Of course she’s no longer even alittle young; only preserved—oh but preserved, like bottled fruit,in syrup! I want to help her if only because she gets on my nerves,and I really think the way of it would be just the right thing of yoursat the Academy and on the line.”
“But suppose,” I threw out, “she should give onmy nerves?”
“Oh she will. But isn’t that all in the day’swork, and don’t great beauties always—?”
“You don’t,” I interrupted; but I at anyrate saw Lady Beldonald later on—the day came when her kinswomanbrought her, and then I saw how her life must have its centre in herown idea of her appearance. Nothing else about her mattered—oneknew her all when one knew that. She’s indeed in one particular,I think, sole of her kind—a person whom vanity has had the oddeffect of keeping positively safe and sound. This passion is supposedsurely, for th