Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  The old man would have gone on talking for any length of time, for pre-Raphaelitism was his favourite antipathy; and the black-bearded gentleman standing behind his chair was an enthusiastic member of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.

  Mr. Kerstall senior seemed so thoroughly in possession of all his faculties while he held forth upon modern art, that Laura began to hope his memory could scarcely be so much impaired as his son had represented it to be.

  “When you painted portraits in England, Mr. Kerstall,” she said, “before you went to Italy, you painted a likeness of my father, Henry Dunbar, who was then a young man. Do you remember that circumstance?”

  Laura asked this question very hopefully; but to her surprise, Mr. Kerstall took no notice whatever of her inquiry, but went rambling on about the degeneracy of modern art.

  “I am told there is a young man called Millais, sir, and another young man called Holman Hunt, sir, — positive boys, sir; actually very little more than boys, sir; and I’m given to understand, sir, that when these young men’s works are exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, sir, people crowd round them, and go raving mad about them; while a gentlemanly portrait of a county member, with a Corinthian pillar and a crimson curtain, gets no more attention than if it was a bishop’s half-length of black canvas. I am told so, sir, and I am obliged to believe it, sir.”

  Poor Laura listened very impatiently to all this talk about painters and their pictures. But Mr. Kerstall the younger perceived her anxiety, and came to her relief.

  “Lady Jocelyn would very much like to see the pictures you have scattered about in this room, my dear father,” he said, “if you have no objection to our turning them over?”

  The old man chuckled and nodded.

  “You’ll find ’em gentlemanly,” he said; “you’ll find ’em all more or less gentlemanly.”

  “You’re sure you don’t remember painting the portrait of a Mr. Dunbar?” Mr. Kerstall the younger said, bending over his father’s chair as he spoke. “Try again, father — try to remember — Henry Dunbar, the son of Percival Dunbar, the great banker.”

  Mr. Kerstall senior, who never left off smiling, nodded and chuckled, and scratched his head, and seemed to plunge into a depth of profound thought.

  Laura began to hope again.

  “I remember painting Sir Jasper Rivington, who was Lord Mayor in the year — bless my heart how the dates do slip out of my mind, to be sure! — I remember painting him, in his robes too; yes, sir — by gad, sir, his official robes. He’d liked me to have painted him looking out of the window of his state-coach, sir, bowing to the populace on Ludgate Hill, with the dome of St. Paul’s in the background; but I told him the notion wasn’t practicable, sir; I told him it couldn’t be done, sir; I — —”

  Laura looked despairingly at Mr. Kerstall the younger.

  “May we see the pictures?” she asked. “I am sure that I shall recognize my father’s portrait, if by any chance it should be amongst them.”

  “We will set to work at once, then,” the artist said, briskly. “We’re going to look at your pictures, father.”

  Unframed canvases, and unfinished sketches on millboard, were lying about the room in every direction, piled against the wall, heaped on side-tables, and stowed out of the way upon shelves, and everywhere the dust lay thick upon them.

  “It was quite a chamber of horrors,” Mr. Kerstall the younger said, gaily: for it was here that he banished his own failures; his sketches for his pictures that were to be painted upon some future occasion; carelessly-drawn groups that he meant some day to improve upon; finished pictures that he had been unable to sell; and all the other useless litter of an artist’s studio.

  There were a great many dingy performances of Mr. Kerstall senior; very classical, and extremely uninteresting; studies from the life, grey and chalky and muscular, with here and there a knotty-looking foot or a lumpy arm, in the most unpleasant phases of foreshortening. There were a good many portraits, gentlemanly to the last degree; but poor Laura looked in vain for the face she wanted to see — the hard cold face, as she fancied it must have been in youth.

  There were portraits of elderly ladies with stately head-gear, and simpering young ladies with innocent short-waisted bodices and flowers held gracefully, in their white-muslin draperies; there were portraits of stern clerical grandees, and parliamentary non-celebrities, with popular bills rolled up in their hands, ready to be laid upon the speaker’s table, and with a tight look about the lips, that seemed to say the member was prepared to carry his motion, or perish on the floor of the House.

  There were only a few portraits of young men of military aspect, looking fiercely over regulation stocks, and with forked lightning and little pyramids of cannon-balls in the background.

  Laura sighed heavily at last, for amongst all these portraits there was not one which in the least possible degree recalled the hard handsome face with which she was familiar.

  “I’m afraid my father’s picture has been lost or destroyed,” she said, mournfully.

  But Mr. Kerstall would not allow this.

  I have said that it was Laura’s peculiar privilege to bewitch everybody with whom she came in contact, and to transform them, for the nonce, into her willing slaves, eager to go through fire and water in the service of this beautiful creature, whose eyes and hair were like blue skies and golden sunshine, and carried light and summer wherever they went.

  The black-bearded artist in the paint-smeared holland blouse was in no manner proof against Lady Jocelyn’s fascinations.

  He had well-nigh suffocated himself with dust half-a-dozen times already in her service, and was ready to inhale as much more dust if she desired him so to do.

  “We won’t give it up just yet, Lady Jocelyn,” he said, cheerfully; “there’s a couple of shelves still to examine. Suppose we try shelf number one, and see if we can find Mr. Henry Dunbar up there.”

  Mr. Kerstall junior mounted upon a chair, and brought down another heap of canvases, dirtier than any previous collection. He brought these to a table by the side of his father’s easel, and one by one he wiped them clean with a large ragged silk handkerchief, and then placed them on the easel.

  The easel stood in the full light of the broad window. The day was bright and clear, and there was no lack of light, therefore, upon the portraits.

  Mr. Kerstall senior began to be quite interested in his son’s proceedings, and contemplated the younger man’s operations with a perpetual chuckling and nodding of the head, that were expressive of unmitigated satisfaction.

  “Yes, they’re gentlemanly,” the old man mumbled; “nobody can deny that they’re gentlemanly. They may make a cabal against me in Trafalgar Square, and decline to hang ‘em: but they can’t say my pictures are ungentlemanly. No, no. Take a basin of water and a sponge, Fred, and wash the dust off. It pleases me to see ’em again — yes, by gad, sir, it pleases me to see ’em again!”

  Mr. Frederick Kerstall obeyed his father, and the pictures brightened wonderfully under the influence of a damp sponge. It was rather a slow operation; but Laura was bent upon seeing every picture, and Philip Jocelyn waited patiently enough until the inspection should be concluded.

  The old man brightened up as much as his paintings, and began presently to call out the names of the subjects.

  “The member for Slopton-on-the-Tees,” he said, as his son placed a portrait on the easel; “that was a presentation picture, but the subscriptions were never paid up, and the committee left the portrait upon my hands. I don’t remember the name of the member, because my memory isn’t quite so good as it used to be; but the borough was Slopton-on-the-Tees — Slopton — yes, yes, I remember that.”

  The younger Kerstall took away the member for Slopton, and put another picture on the easel. But this was like the rest; the pictured face bore no trace of resemblance to that face for which Laura was looking.

  “I remember him too,” the old man cried, with a triumphant chuckle. “He was an offic
er in the East-India Company’s service. I remember him; a dashing young fellow he was too. He had the picture painted for his mother: paid me a third of the money at the first sitting; never paid me a sixpence afterwards; and went off to India, promising to send me a bill of exchange for the balance by the next mail; but I never heard any more of him.”

  Mr. Kerstall removed the Indian officer, and substituted another portrait.

  Sir Philip, who was sitting near the window, looking on rather listlessly, cried —

  “What a handsome face!”

  It was a handsome face — a bright young face, which smiled haughty defiance at the world — a splendid face, with perhaps a shade of insolence in the curve of the upper lip, sharply denned under a thick auburn moustache, with pointed ends that curled fiercely upwards. It was such a face as might have belonged to the favourite of a powerful king; the face of the Cinq Mars, on the very summit of his giddy eminence, with a hundred pairs of boots in his dressing-room, and quiet Cardinal Richelieu watching silently for the day of his doom. English Buckingham may have worn the same insolent smile upon his lips, the same bright triumph in his glance, when he walked up to the throne of Louis the Just, with the pearls and diamonds dropping from his garments as he went along, and with forbidden love beaming on him out of Austrian Anne’s blue eyes. It was such a face as could only belong to some high favourite of fortune, defiant of all mankind in the consciousness of his own supreme advantages.

  But Laura Jocelyn shook her head as she looked at the picture.

  “I begin to despair of finding my father’s portrait,” she said; “I have seen nothing at all like it yet.”

  The old man lifted up his bony hand, and pointed to the picture on the easel.

  “That’s the best thing I ever did,” he said, “the very best thing I ever did. It was exhibited in the Academy six-and-thirty years ago — yes, by gad, sir, six-and-thirty years ago! and the papers mentioned it very favourably, sir; but the man who commissioned it, sent it back to me for alteration. The expression of the face didn’t please him; but he paid me two hundred guineas for the picture, so I had no reason to complain; and if I’d remained in England, the connection might have been advantageous to me; for they were rich city people, sir — enormously wealthy — something in the banking-line, and the name, the name — let me see — let me see!”

  The old man tapped his forehead thoughtfully.

  “I remember,” he added presently: “it was a great name in the City — it was a well-known name — Dun — Dunbar — Dunbar.”

  “Why, father, that was the very name I was asking you about, half an hour ago!”

  “I don’t remember your asking me any such thing,” the old man answered, rather snappishly; “but I do know that the picture on that easel is the portrait of Mr. Dunbar’s only son.”

  Mr. Kerstall the younger looked at Laura Jocelyn, full; expecting to see her face beaming with satisfaction; but, to his own surprise, she looked more disappointed than ever.

  “Your poor father’s memory deceives him,” she said, in a low voice; “that is not my father’s portrait.”

  “No,” said Philip Jocelyn, “that was never the likeness of Henry Dunbar.”

  Mr. Frederick Kerstall shrugged his shoulders.

  “I told you as much,” he murmured, confidentially. “I told you my poor father’s memory was gone. Would you like to see the rest of the pictures?”

  “Oh, yes, if you do not mind all this trouble.”

  Mr. Kerstall brought down another heap of unframed canvases from shelf number two. Some of these were fancy heads, and some sketches for grand historical pictures. There were only about four portraits, and not one of them bore the faintest likeness to the face that Laura wanted to see.

  The old man chuckled as his son exhibited the pictures, and every now and then volunteered some scrap of information about these various works of art, to which his son listened patiently and respectfully.

  So at last the inspection was ended. The baronet and his wife thanked the artist very warmly for his politeness, and Philip gave him a commission for a replica of the picture which Laura had admired in the Luxembourg. Mr. Frederick Kerstall conducted his guests down the dingy staircase, and saw them to the hired carriage that was waiting under the archway.

  And this was all that came of Laura Jocelyn’s search for her father’s portrait.

  CHAPTER XXXVII.

  MARGARET’S LETTER.

  Life seemed very blank to Clement Austin when he returned to London a day or two after Margaret Wilmot’s departure from the Reindeer. He told his mother that he and his betrothed had parted; but he would tell no more.

  “I have been cruelly disappointed, mother, and the subject is very bitter to me,” he said; and Mrs. Austin had not the courage to ask any further questions.

  “I suppose I must be satisfied, Clement,” she said. “It seems to me as if we had been living lately in an atmosphere of enigmas. But I can afford to be contented, Clement, so long as I have you with me.”

  Clement went back to London. His life seemed to have altogether slipped away from him, and he felt like an old man who has lost all the bright chances of existence; the hope of domestic happiness and a pleasant home; the opportunity of a useful career and an honoured name; and who has nothing more to do but to wait patiently till the slow current of his empty life drops into the sea of death.

  “I feel so old, mother,” he said, sometimes; “I feel so old.”

  To a man who has been accustomed to be busy there is no affliction so intolerable as idleness.

  Clement Austin felt this, and yet he had no heart to begin life again, though tempting offers came to him from great commercial houses, whose chiefs were eager to secure the well-known cashier of Messrs. Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby’s establishment.

  Poor Clement could not go into the world yet. His disappointment had been too bitter, and he had no heart to go out amongst hard men of business, and begin life again. He wasted hour after hour, and day after day, in gloomy thoughts about the past. What a dupe he had been! what a shallow, miserable fool! for he had believed as firmly in Margaret Wilmot’s truth, as he had believed in the blue sky above his head.

  One day a new idea flashed into Clement Austin’s mind; an idea which placed Margaret Wilmot’s character even in a worse light than that in which she had revealed herself in her own confession.

  There could be only one reason for the sudden change in her sentiments about Henry Dunbar: the millionaire had bribed her to silence! This girl, who seemed the very incarnation of purity and candour, had her price, perhaps, as well as other people, and Henry Dunbar had bought the silence of his victim’s daughter.

  “It was the knowledge of this business that made her shrink away from me that night when she told me that she was a contaminated creature, unfit to be the associate of an honest man Oh, Margaret, Margaret! poverty must indeed be a bitter school if it has prepared you for such degradation as this!”

  The longer Clement thought of the subject, the more certainly he arrived at the conclusion that Margaret Wilmot had been, either bribed or frightened into silence by Henry Dunbar. It might be that the banker had terrified this unhappy girl by some awful threat that had preyed upon her mind, and driven her from the man who loved her, whom she loved perhaps, in spite of those heartless words which she had spoken in the bitter hour of their parting.

  Clement could not thoroughly believe in the baseness of the woman he had trusted. Again and again he went over the same ground, trying to find some lurking circumstance, no matter how unlikely in its nature, which should explain and justify Margaret’s conduct.

  Sometimes in his dreams he saw the familiar face looking at him with pensive, half-reproachful glances; and then a dark figure that was strange to him came between him and that gentle shadow, and thrust the vision away with a ruthless hand. At last, by dint of going over the ground again and again, always pleading Margaret’s cause against the stern witness of cruel facts, Cle
ment came to look upon the girl’s innocence as a settled thing.

  There was falsehood and treachery in the business, but Margaret Wilmot was neither false nor treacherous. There was a mystery, and Henry Dunbar was at the bottom of it.

  “It seems as if the spirit of the murdered man troubled our lives, and cried to us for vengeance,” Clement thought. “There will be no peace for us until the secret of the deed done in the grove near Winchester has been brought to light.”

  This thought, working night and day in Clement Austin’s brain, gave rise to a fixed resolve. Before he went back to the quiet routine of life, he set himself a task to accomplish, and that task was the solution of the Winchester mystery.

  On the very day after this resolution took a definite form, Clement received a letter from Margaret Wilmot. The sight of the well-known writing gave him a shock of mingled surprise and hope, and his fingers were faintly tremulous as they tore open the envelope. The letter was carefully worded, and very brief.