CHAPTER XI.—REASSURANCE.
Throughout the meal that followed, I carefully observed Fairchild's bearing toward my niece; and great was my satisfaction to see in it only and exactly what under the circumstances could rightly have been expected. Frank, gay, interested, attentive, yet undeviatingly courteous, respectful, and even deferential, it was precisely the bearing due from a young gentleman of good breeding toward the lady at whose side he found himself, and whose acquaintance he had but lately made.
“So that,” I concluded, “of all conceivable theories adequate to account for his behaviour at first setting eyes upon her, Josephine's is the farthest-fetched and the least tenable.”
For the matter of that, as I had assured my sister, I was confident that her own mother, had she been alive, must have failed to identify her, so essentially was she altered both in expression of countenance and in apparent age, to say nothing of her totally transformed personality. That Fair-child did not do so I was certain. His manner exhibited neither surprise, mystification, curiosity, nor constraint. It would have required a far cunninger hypocrite than I took him to be, so effectually to have disguised such emotions, had he really felt them; and he could not have helped feeling them if, having known the dead woman, Louise Massarte, he had recognised her in the young and unsophisticated maiden, Miriam Benary. The right theory by which to explain his conduct at first meeting her, I purposed discovering, if I could, when he and I were alone.
He and Miriam had a deal of fun together making the salad, in which enterprise they collaborated—not, however, without much laughing difference as to the best method of procedure. He pretended that, instead of rubbing the bowl with garlic, one should introduce a chapon—or crust of bread discreetly tinctured with that herb—and “fatigue” it with the lettuce: whereas our niece vigorously maintained the contrary. And finally they drew lots to determine which policy should prevail, Miriam winning.
“I am defeated but not disheartened,” Fair-child declared. “If there is anything upon which I pride myself, Miss Benary, it is my erudition in the science, and my dexterity in the art, of gastronomy. You have taken it out of my power to display my skill in salad-making; but now, if you are a generous victor, you will give me an opportunity to distinguish myself in the confection of an omelet. It is an omelet of my own invention, a sort of cross between the ordinary omelette-au-vin of the French and the Italian zabaiano, I shall require the use of that chafing dish and spirit-lamp which I see yonder on the sideboard, the sherry decanter, and half a dozen eggs. I can promise your palates a delectable experience; and you, Miss Denary, by watching me, will acquire an invaluable talent.”
So, with much merriment, he proceeded with the manufacture of his omelet, Miriam observing and assisting. When it was complete, we unanimously voted it the most delicious thing in the way of an omelet that we had ever tasted. But Miriam sighed, and said, “It is all very simple except the most important point. The way is toss it up into the air, and make it turn over, and then catch it again as it descends—I am sure I shall never be able to do that.”
“Never? That is a long word. You must practise it with beans,” said Fairchild. “A pint of beans—dry beans—the kind Bostonians use for baking. Three hours daily practice for six months, and you will do it almost as easily as I do.”
After the fruit the ladies left us; and having filled our glasses and lighted our cigars, we sipped and smoked for a few minutes without speaking. Fairchild was the first to break the silence.
“I can do nothing,” he began, “but congratulate myself upon the happy chance—if chance it was, and not a kind Providence—that brought about our encounter this morning. For once in my life I was in luck.”
“It seems to me,” I replied, “that it is I who was in luck, and who have the best occasion for self-gratulation.”
“That would depend upon the dubious question of the value of life,” said he. “Has it ever struck you that this earth of ours is, after all, only a huge grave-yard, a colossal burying-ground; and that we living persons are simply waiting about—standing in a long queue, so to speak—till our turn comes to be interred? That seems to me a very pleasing fancy, and one which, considered as an hypothesis, clarifies many obscure things. Accepting it, we cease to wonder at the phenomenon of death, and regard it as the chief end, aim, object, and purpose of all human life—the consummation devoutly to be wished, which we are all attending with greater or less impatience. Anyhow, I am sceptical whether we confer a boon or inflict a bane upon the human being whom we bring into existence, or whose exit therefrom we prevent. It is indeed probable that, except for our casual meeting this morning, you would at the present hour have been numbered among the honoured dead. But, very likely—either enjoying the excitements of the happy hunting-ground or sleeping the deep sleep of annihilation—very likely, I say, you would have been better off than you are actually, or can ever hope to be in the flesh. About my good fortune, contrariwise, debate is inadmissible. Here I am in veritable clover-smoking a capital cigar after a capital dinner, in capital company, to the accompaniment of a capital glass of wine, and the richer by the acquisition of three new friends—for as friends, I trust, I may be allowed to reckon you and your ladies. Had we not happened to run across each other in the way we did, on the other hand, I should now have been seated alone by my bachelor's hearth, with no companions more congenial to me than my plaster casts, and no voice more jovial to cheer my solitude than the howling of the gale.”
“It is very flattering of you to put the matter as you do,” said I; “but being modish in no respect, I am least of all so in my metaphysics. Therefore I cannot share your pessimistic doubt of the value of life; and I assure you I should have hated bitterly to leave mine behind me in that ungodly snowbank. It is true, I am perilously close to the Scriptural limitation of man's age; and I ought perhaps to feel that I have had my fit and proper share of this world's vanities, and to be prepared for my inevitable journey to the next. But, I must confess, I am so little of a philosopher, I should dearly like to tarry here a few years longer; and hence, I maintain, my obligation to you is indisputably established.”
“Well, then, so far as I can see, we may say measure for measure; and consider ourselves quit.”
“Hardly. The balance is still tremendously in your favour.”
After that we again smoked for a while without speaking. Then again Fairchild broke the silence.
“I wonder whether you would take it amiss, Dr. Benary, if I should mention something which has been the object of my delighted admiration almost from the moment I entered your house?”
“Ah! What is that?” I queried.
“I fear you will condemn me as overbold if I answer you candidly; but I shall do so, and accept the consequences. The circumstance that I am an artist may be pleaded in my behalf, if I seem to transcend the bounds of the conventional.”
“You pique my curiosity. What is it that you allude to? I do not think you need be apprehensive of my wrath. My extended 'Life of Sir Joshua'? That is the fruit of ten years' hard labour. Or my Japanese woman by Theodore Wores? It's a wonderful piece of flesh-painting. It looks as though it would bleed if you pricked it” *
“Yes, it is in Worcs's best vein. But that is not what I have in mind. Neither is the 'Life of Sir Joshua.' which, by-the-bye, I have not seen.”
* The Editor of this work must disclaim all responsibility
Dr. Benary's opinions upon matters literary and aesthetic.
“Not seen it? Oh, well, I must show it to you directly we go upstairs. It's my particular pet and pride. But what, then? I do not know what else I have worthy of such admiration as you profess.”
“You have—if you will tolerate my saying so—you have a niece; and I allude to her extraordinary beauty.”
My pulse quickened. Here had he, of his own accord, broached that very topic upon which I was anxious to sound him.
“Ah, yes; Miriam,” I assented, a trifle nervously, and wondering what would come next. “Miriam. Yes, Miriam is a very pretty girl.”
“Pretty!” echoed he. “Pretty? Why, sir, she's—— why, in all my life I've not seen so beautiful a woman. And it isn't simply that she is so beautiful; it's her type. Her type—I believe I am conservative when I call it the least frequent, the rarest, in the whole range of womanhood. Forgive my fervour: I speak in my professional capacity—as an artist, as one to whom the beautiful is the subject-matter of his daily studies. It is a type of which you occasionally see a perfect specimen in antique marble, but in flesh and blood not oftener than once in a lifetime. To say nothing of her colouring, which a painter would go mad over, consider the sheer planes and lines of her countenance! That magnificent sweep of profile—brow, nose, lips, chin, and throat, described by one splendid flowing line! It's unutterable. It's Juno-esque. It's worth ten years of commonplaceness to have lived to see it in a veritable breathing woman.''
“Yes,” I admitted, “it's a fine profile—a noble face.”
“Her type is so rare,” he went on, “that, as I have said, Nature succeeds in producing a perfect specimen of it scarcely oftener than once in a generation. Of faulty specimens—comparable, from a sculptor's point of view, to flawed castings—she turns out many every year. You have been in Provence? In the Noonday of France? Arles, Tours, Avignon, teem with such failures—women who approach, approach, approach, but always fall short of, the perfection that your niece embodies.”
“Yes, I know the Méridionales, and I see the resemblance that you refer to. But, as you intimate, they are coarse and crude copies of Miriam. That expression of high spirituality, which is the dominant note in her face, is usually quite absent from theirs.”
“They compare to her as the pressed terracotta effigies of the Venus of Milo, which may be bought for a song in the streets, compare to the chiselled marble in the Louvre. In all my life I have never known but one woman who could properly be mentioned in the same breath with her. And even she was a good distance behind. Of her I happened to see just enough to perceive the divine potentiality of the type. Ever since, I have been watching for a faultless specimen. And to-day, when Miss Benary came into the room where you had left me, I declare for a moment my breath was taken away. I could scarcely believe my eyes. Such beauty seemed beyond reality; it was like a dream come true. In my admiration I forgot my manners: it was some seconds before I remembered to make my bow. The point of all which is that when our friendship is older, you, Dr. Benary, must permit me to model her portrait.”
Thus was my mind set at ease.
Presently we rejoined the ladies, and while Fairchild and Miriam chatted together in the bow window, I drew Josephine aside, and communicated to her the upshot of our post-prandial conversation. She breathed a mighty sigh, and professed herself to be enormously relieved.