The Osbornes

by E. F. Benson

The two portraits were already hung, for Mr. Osborne had seen at once where they should go, above the new mahogany sideboard which was like that in the hall, and was, in fact, as Mrs. Osborne said, “its fellow.” The windows took up the long side opposite to them, and on the other two were some half dozen portraits, which Alfred had in vain tried to buy before now, but had found to his chagrin that they were inalienable. There was a Reynolds there, a Gainsborough, a couple of Romneys, and all had about them that indefinable air of race and breeding which the old English masters, lucky perhaps in their sitters, or at any rate in their own quality of vision, render so superbly. Till this evening the third wall had been empty; now Mr. and Mrs. Osborne, she in all her jewels, he with the telephone and ledger, shone there.

Alfred glanced round the room, but his eye came back to these two portraits. Sabincourt, that superb modern artist, had done the sitters justice, justice so rough that it might be taken for revenge. Mrs. Osborne sat full face, her white hair gathered beneath the all-round tiara of diamonds that she felt to be so heavy. Close round her neck was the Land’s End necklace, but a rope of pearls reached to her waist and was fastened there by an immense ruby. Her large pillowy arms were bare to the shoulder; in one hand she held the Perigaud fan, but it was so grasped that the rings on the hand that held it as well as the bracelets were in evidence. The other lay negligently, knuckles upwards, on the carved arms of her chair. Her face wore an expression of fatuous content, and it was extremely like her, cruelly like her. And Edward had fared as well (or as badly) at the eminent hands of the artist. A vulgar kindly face peered into his ledger, and as his wife said, you could almost hear the telephone bell ring.

Alfred seemed fascinated by the sight of the portraits, or rather by the sight of them in contrast with the others. He turned on the electric light which was attached to their frames, and drawing a chair from a table, sat down to observe them. Then he suddenly broke into a spasm of noiseless laughter, and slapped his thin thigh with his withered little hand.

After a while he rose.

“But I’ll get Sabincourt to paint one of Claude,” he said to himself, “and then ask any of these dealer-fools if it’s a West or an Osborne, bless his handsome face.”

Dinner that night was an extremely lengthy affair, but “informal-like, quite a family party,” as Mrs. Osborne explained to several of her guests, as she informed them whom they were to take in or be taken in by. May Thurston was furnished with the most complete explanation.

“I thought we’d all be comfortable and not stuck up, Lady Th—— Lady May, now that we’ve left London behind us,” she said, “and though I’m well aware, my dear, that Sir Thomas ought to take you in, by reason of your rank, since Mr. O. takes in Lady Austell, and the Earl me, I thought you’d not be ill-pleased if I passed you off with your young man, same as I’ve treated Lady Dora in sending her in with Claude. And so all you young people will be together, and a merry time you’ll have, I’ll be bound. Ah, there is Sir Thomas; I must explain to him.”

Sir Thomas cared little for precedence, but much for his dinner and more for his wine. He was considered quite a courtier in manner at Sheffield, and bowed to Mrs. Osborne on the conclusion of her explanation.

“When Mr. Osborne has the ordering of the wines, and Mrs. Osborne the commanding of the victuals,” he said handsomely, “he would be a man what’s hard to please if he wasn’t very well content. And to take in Mrs. Percy is an opportunity, I may say, of studying refinement and culture that doesn’t often——” Here Mrs. Percy herself entered the room, close to where they were standing, and he broke off, conscious of some slight relief, for he was one of those people who can very easily get into a long sentence, but find it hard to rescue themselves from being strangled by it when once there. “But speak of an angel,” he added, “and there comes a fluttering of wings.”

Thereafter the “gathering of the clans,” as Mr. Osborne usually expressed the assembly of guests for dinner, came thick, but before they were gathered a deafening gong announced that dinner was gathered too. Austell, with his weak pale face, came last but one, and finally his mother made her slow and impressive entry. She looked like an elderly dethroned princess, come back after exile to the native country where she no longer ruled, and stretched out both hands to Mrs. Osborne, whom she had not seen since her arrival.