The Lonely Lady of Dulwich

by Maurice Baring

  Zita had only one friend, Flora Sutton, the wife of a stockbroker, a friend of Robert’s, who often came over for the races, or just for pleasure. Robert had let Wallington for five years, and in August he took a shooting-lodge in the north of Scotland and invited three men friends beside Wilfred Sutton and his wife.

  To the outward world Zita appeared to be neither happy nor unhappy; she had for the moment lost the radiance she had had as a girl – it had been drenched and saturated in tears – but this was not surprising, after her sojourn in the trying climate of South America. People said the elements of beauty were still there undiminished, though temporarily eclipsed. She and her husband had arrived in Paris at the end of one summer; a year passed and then another, when they again went to Scotland and entertained the same guests, and things might have gone on for ever had it not been for the advent of a new Second Secretary at the British Embassy. His name was Cyril Legge. He was forty-two years old: he had been already to Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Rome and Constantinople. He had a literary vein and was slightly Bohemian, but he was thought to be a good man of affairs, in spite of that, and a successful diplomat. He was popular; foreigners liked him. When he was thirty and en poste at Rome he had met Amelia Foster, Robert Harmer’s first cousin, and married her; they had two children. They were poor, but Amelia was clever and practical, and Cyril was a good manager, too; they were devoted to each other and got no end of fun out of life.

  Cyril arrived at Paris late in July to take up his duties. It was his first morning at the Chancery, and he was sitting in the little room which was his by right, he being head of the Chancery, when the Chancery servant brought him a card bearing on it the name of Robert Harmer. The name conveyed nothing to Legge, but the Chancery servant explained that the visitor said he was a cousin of Madame’s.

  “I suppose I must see him,” Legge said, with a sigh. “Show him in.”

  In walked a tall and large middle-aged man with an open-air complexion and shrewd eyes. Legge greeted him as if he had been awaiting his arrival with impatience.

  “I am Amelia’s first cousin,” said the visitor. “I only heard yesterday that you had arrived.”

  “Of course,” said Legge, who had no idea which cousin he might be, and knew nothing about him. “Amelia hasn’t arrived yet. I’m alone. We’ve taken a flat, a little apartment, but we can’t get into it until the end of the month, so Amelia has taken the opportunity to stay with her mother. The Ambassador is very kindly putting me up till she comes. She won’t be here for another month.”

  There was a pause.

  Harmer evidently had some subject on his mind which he found some difficulty in broaching.

  “I think you know Sutton,” he said, “he’s on the Stock Exchange. He’s been staying here; he came over for the Grand Prix.”

  Cyril recollected a prosperous, cultivated and rather sleek young man whom he had sometimes seen at the St James’s Club.

  “Well, he knows all about pictures and furniture and all that… and he was saying that Zita…that my wife ought to be painted. The question is, who is to do it? It would have to be done here, you see, because I spend any holidays I get shooting in Scotland. He advised me to consult you, and when he mentioned your name, knowing, of course, you were Amelia’s husband, I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course I’d do anything to help,” said Legge. “Sutton would know far more about it than I do. I haven’t been here long, and it’s ten years since I was here en poste. That was before the war.”

  “If we were in England,” said Harmer, “it would be easy to get a fellow who’s in the Academy; but who could do it here?”

  Harmer talked as if they were on a desert island.

  “I think there are still plenty of painters,” said Legge, inwardly amused. “What did Sutton think?”

  “He told me of a fellow called Bertrand.”

  “Ah,” said Legge.

  He knew Bertrand’s work; he wondered what Mrs Harmer was like, and whether she was to have a voice in the matter; so far it did not seem as if she were.

  “You’ve never met my wife,” said Harmer, “but I think you know her sister, Lady St Alwyn.”

  “Oh yes, we met at Rome; she was very kind to us.”

  Legge now understood who Mrs Harmer was. He was at once interested.

  “I believe Bertrand is thought to be one of the coming men,” he said. “He hasn’t quite arrived yet, but I think he will, and that has the advantage of making him less expensive,” he said, with a twinkle.

  “It’s not so much the money I mind,” said Harmer, “but I want, you know, the kind of picture one can hang on one’s walls at home without having to explain to everyone who and what it is.”

  “I think his pictures are thought like,” said Legge.

  “Is he in Paris now?”

  “We can easily find out.”

  Legge soon discovered where he lived. Harmer still looked helpless. Legge thought he saw the difficulty.

  “I know a friend of Bertrand’s,” he said, “would you like me to get him to get Bertrand to make an appointment with us, and we could go together to his studio? We should see some of his work there, and if you liked it you could arrange for sittings.”

  Harmer said that would suit him exactly. Legge supposed that Mrs Harmer would accompany them, or, at any rate, be consulted.

  “Then I will let you know what he says,” was all he said.

  “Thanks most awfully,” said Harmer. “As soon as Amelia arrives you must let me know, and come and have a meal in my house. I want her to know – my wife.”

  Harmer went away. Legge arranged the meeting with Bertrand through an old French friend of his, a connoisseur of pictures and a friend of artists, and a few days later he was able to write to Harmer telling him of the date and hour of an afternoon appointment suggested by Bertrand.

  Harmer wrote that he would call for Legge in his carriage half an hour before the time mentioned. Legge was curiousto see, when the time for the appointment came, whether Harmer would bring his wife with him or not. He arrived at the appointed time by himself. They drove to the studio, which was on the other side of the river.

  Bertrand received them. He at once made a favourable impression on Harmer; firstly, because he was dressed neither in a blouse nor in black velvet, but just like anyone else; his hair was of the ordinary length. Secondly, he spoke English. He had lived in England at various periods of his life. Thirdly, he was utterly unaffected.

  On an easel there was the portrait of an English lady, the wife of a well-known statesman. She was painted in an evening gown of pale yellow satin. Legge recognised the original of the picture at once.

  “Mrs H.,” he said, “I think it’s wonderfully good.”

  Bertrand did the honours of his studio and offered Harmer a glass of Madeira and some cakes. Harmer sipped the Madeira, which he hated doing between meals. He said he thought the studio must be convenient, that he knew nothing about art himself, but that he liked a portrait to be like: that of Mrs H. was a speaking likeness. Bertrand showed them a few landscapes he had done, and apologized for showing landscapes to an Englishman, as “the English are the masters of us all,” he said, “in landscape.”

  Harmer was surprised at finding that Bertrand was so young – he was not more than thirty-five – and he had an idea that all successful painters were at least fifty years old. They talked about England: Cambridge, where Bertrand had lived for a term; the Norfolk Broads, Scotland, the Yorkshire Moors, English gardens, and the Thames, and then suddenly Harmer looked at his watch and said he must he going, and as they went to the door he mumbled to Bertrand:

  “I wonder, Monsieur Bertrand, whether you would paint me a portrait of my wife?”

  Bertrand said he would be charmed. “But perhaps,” he said, “Madame Harmer would not care for my style of painting.”

  “Oh yes, she would,” said Harmer.

  “When could she come and sit?”

  “She c
an come any time, and you must make the picture any size you like.”

  A date was fixed. Nothing was said about the price. That matter had already been dealt with through the good offices of Legge and his friend, the connoisseur, and Harmer was perfectly satisfied with the sum that had been mentioned.

  But Legge wondered more than ever what Mrs Harmer’s attitude was, and would be, and he wrote that night a long letter to his wife, whom he justly considered the most sensible person in the world. He wrote describing Harmer’s visit in detail.

  CHAPTER III

  When Harmer told Zita that he had arranged for her to sit to Bertrand for her portrait, she was less surprised than she might have been, because Wilfred Sutton had reported to his wife what Harmer had told him, and Flora Sutton had told Zita. She had seen a picture by Bertrand at an exhibition, and had liked it; but she told Flora Sutton she was quite indifferent who should paint her, and was only pleased with anything that satisfied Robert. Robert took his wife to the studio on his way to his office, and left her there. He would send his carriage to fetch her.

  Bertrand was astounded when he saw her; Legge had told him that she was supposed to be good-looking, and that she was one of three beautiful sisters; but he expected something large, British, a full-blown Romney, or else a haggard Pre-Raphaelite – too tall and too thin. But Zita was neither.

  She was beautiful, in spite of looking listless and pale atthe moment. Yes, she was beautiful, more than beautiful, he thought, and he wondered why she was so particularly beautiful; and he wondered for the millionth time at the mystery of mortal beauty. What was it? That is to say, what was it when you could not define it, when you could enumerate no special outstanding attributes? When you could point to speaking eyes and chiselled features, majesty, perfect proportions, exquisite finish, it was simple enough. If Bertrand had seen Zita’s sisters, he would have had no difficulty in defining their quality and pointing out their assets and what was lacking. But here there were none of these things in a high enough degree to account for the whole effect. There were no obvious assets: soft eyes, yes; a well-cut face, a good line, a charming expression…and yet you looked, he did, an artist, that is to say…spellbound. He could not take his eyes off her. There was nothing marvellous, no obvious perfection, and yet there was something in the whole of her appearance, something that emanated from her texture, line, movement and expression like a phrase of music, or the light on a cloud, or the unexpected sight of a branch of blossom, or the sudden scent of a hyacinth, something in the substance beyond the accidents of flesh and bone, shape and colour; and that substance was celestial.

  ‘She is beautiful. Yes,’ thought Bertrand, ‘but what is her impalpable quality, that is, as it were, outside beauty and beyond it?’

  He asked her how she would like to be painted.

  “Just as you like,” she said. “Paint me just as I am. Only I suppose I had better take off my hat?”

  “Why?” said Bertrand.

  “It will be out of fashion next year,” she said.

  She was wearing a small straw bonnet tied under her chin with a black ribbon.

  “It is a great mistake,” said Bertrand, “to be afraid of the fashion when one is painting a portrait, or to try and neutralize it. Nothing dates so quickly and so sharply as fancy dress, and when people have their portraits painted and try to make the clothes of the day look of no date, but as much as possible like fancy dress, the picture dates quicker than one which accepts the fashion and doesn’t mind; the hair always betrays the date, even when the model is dressed as Cleopatra or Mary Stuart.”

  “I expect you know best,” said Zita. “Paint me just as you like, but without my bonnet.”

  “Just as you are,” Bertrand said, laughing, “but with the bonnet, a profile. It will be perfect. I promise you in ten years’ time your coiffure will have become far more old-fashioned than your hat.”

  “Very well,” said Zita, with a sigh, “with the bonnet.”

  And so the sittings began. And with the sittings began a new life for Zita. Bertrand did not talk much while he worked, but he talked unlike anyone she had met hitherto. He was a slow worker, and Zita did not make him feel inclined to work faster. They talked on general topics, and the more often Bertrand saw Zita the less he felt he knew her: she was so young, and yet she seemed so old for her age; so inexperienced and yet (so he felt) disillusioned, with possibilities of gaiety all locked up in a box.

  And then she seemed so utterly aloof; to know nobody, either here in Paris or in England; and she talked of her mother and of her sisters as if they belonged to another world.

  Bertrand was married and he told his wife about this strange Englishwoman who was so unlike any of the Englishwomen he had ever seen or heard of. One evening Bertrand and his wife received a visit from his wife’s brother, Jean de Bosis, who stayed to dinner. Jean de Bosis was only twenty-seven years old. He had literary ambitions and had written some verse; some of it had been printed in reviews, but as yet he had not published a book. Jean asked Bertrand whether he was busy.

  “I am doing a portrait of an English lady.”

  “What is an Englishwoman doing in Paris at this time of year?” asked Jean.

  “She is living here: her husband is in a bank. They stay here all the summer and take their holiday in autumn or winter, not to miss some kind of sport – I forget which.”

  “I see,” said Jean, “she is sportive.”

  “Not at all. It is her husband, who is much older than she is.”

  “Then she is young and pretty?”

  “Young, yes; pretty is not the word. She is…she is interesting to paint…and difficult – very difficult.”

  “Is she one of those Englishwomen who are as tall as poles and flat as boards?”

  “No, she is not like that. She looks to me like a flower that is pining for want of sunlight.”

  “What flower?” asked Jean.

  “A branch of lilac,” he said, “but on a day when there isno sun. If there were only sunlight, one feels she would be dazzling. That is by the way. I don’t know what she will suggest to you, but to me she is like something dazzling that for the moment is undergoing a soft eclipse.”

  “Perhaps she is like the Sleeping Beauty in the wood?”

  “Perhaps; I don’t think so. I think she is wide-awake, so wide-awake that she can never get to sleep; but if you would like to see her, all you have to do is to come to my studio tomorrow between ten and twelve – she will be there.”

  “And the husband?”

  “An Englishman…clean and sensible – likes racing.”

  “He loves his wife?”

  “He would be capable of being jealous – he wouldn’t be easy.”

  “Does he come with her?”

  “He brings her always, but he never stays.”

  The next morning – it was a hot morning in July – Jean de Bosis went to Bertrand’s studio. He found Bertrand hard at work painting Mrs Harmer. She was dressed in muslin and wearing her little straw bonnet.

  “Talk as much as you like,” Bertrand said, after he had introduced them, “but forgive me if I am rude and absentminded. I am in the middle of something difficult.”

  Jean sat down. Zita seemed to be interested in him at once; his features were a little rough: his eyes, dark and grey and trustful, and full of understanding and gentleness. They were talking of people going away, of the heat, the crowd.

  “Personally, I like Paris in July, one feels so much freer,” he said.

  “I used to feel like that in London in August, when it was supposed to be empty. It was just as full really, only the five or six people you didn’t want to see were away, and that made all the difference.”

  “That’s just it,” said Jean. “You miss London, madame?”

  “Oh, no. I lived in London very little after I was grown up – only a month. My husband lived in the country, and my mother lives abroad.”

  “The English country is so lovely,” said
Jean.

  “You know it?”

  “Only from Bertrand’s descriptions and from books.”

  “You speak English?”

  “Not at all, and I only read English books in translation. But I have read Shakespeare, Byron, Dickens and Ouida. You are a great reader, madame?”

  “I read novels, and I forget them.”

  “French novels?” asked Jean.

  “French, English, and even Russian novels translated – Tauchnitz, mostly. It passes the time.”

  “You must be homesick for England.”

  “Not at all,” Zita smiled. “I like Paris and I like French people; they are so civil, and then they notice that one exists.”

  “Did you escape notice in England?” Jean asked, with an accent of good-humoured irony. “That would, I think, be difficult to believe.”

  “But it is true, nevertheless.”

  “English people must be very absent-minded.”

  As he said this he looked at her with such undisguised admiration that she felt shy and blushed.

  “Do you read novels?” she said, to change the subject.

  “I have read all the novels everyone has read. One has to do that once, and then one need never do it again.”

  “Jean de Bosis is a poet,” said Bertrand. “He has published sonnets in the Revue Blanche.”

  “That is the sad truth,” said Jean.

  “Why sad?” asked Zita.

  “Because if they had been really good they would have been refused.”

  “They were accepted,” said Bertrand, “because they prove that he has something in him: whether he will write verse or not, is another affair. I am sure he will write something.”