CHAPTER IX.
TWO PORTRAITS.
"Look on this picture, and on that."
SHAKSPEARE.
It was no small gratification to Mrs. Meredith Vyner, as, leaning on the arm of her ponderous husband, she glided into Mrs. Langley Turner's rooms that evening, to distinguish amongst the first group that met her eye, Marmaduke Ashley, resting against the doorway of the second salon, talking to Cecil Chamberlayne and Julius St. John. He was, indeed, a figure not to escape even an indifferent eye. There was lion-like grace about him; a certain indefinable something in his attitudes and movements, which, in their oriental laisser aller, were in sharp contrast to the stiffness and artificiality of even the least awkward of our northern dandies. When our young men are careless, they have a slouching, sprawling manner, which is more offensive to the eye than stiffness. It is only the children of warmer climates who can afford to let their limbs fall naturally, and be graceful. Marmaduke, whose prodigious chest and back betokened the strength of a bull, seemed to have united with it the agility of a deer, and was the very model of manly grace.
He was well dressed, without overdress; but he had committed one error in taste, which might, perhaps, be set down to coxcombry, in wearing a white waistcoat, somewhat larger than the fashion permitted. His chest was so expansive, and he was so tall, that this vast expanse of staring white, while it fixed all eyes upon him, made them remark how much too large the chest was for symmetry. It was trop voyant, to adopt the jargon of the French dandies. The effect was further increased by his wearing a white cravat, which at that time had only just began to replace the black, introduced by that puffy potentate, so wittily characterized by Douglas Jerrold as the "most finished gent. in Europe."
How many women sighed for him on that evening, I cannot tell; but certain it is, that a shadow of regret fell on Mary's heart as she remarked the beauty of her former lover, and silently compared him with her heavy, snuffy husband. Nor did he gaze on her unmoved. She was a striking figure, and would have been so even in an assembly of beauties. Perhaps the most striking part about her was her neck and bosom, with the whiteness and firmness of marble,—with its coldness too; beautiful it was, and yet repulsive; hard, cold, immodest, unvoluptuous; no blood seemed to beat in its delicate, blue veins—no heart seemed to move its rise and fall; this, the most womanly beauty of a woman, was in her unwomanly; it arrested the eye, without charming it. There was something about her whole appearance which was singularly fantastic: her golden hair, drooping in ringlets to her waist, and her dazzling skin and tiny figure gave her the appearance of a little fairy; nor did her deformity destroy this impression. She was so pretty, or rather so piquante, and unlike other women, that her crooked shoulder only gave a piquancy the more by the sort of compassionate feeling it raised. "What a pity such a sweet creature should be deformed!" was the universal exclamation; and this very exclamation made people think more of the charms which redeemed that deformity.
In truth, the great deformity was not in the back—it never is—but in the eyes and mouth. Theoretically, we may all declaim against faults of proportion and of outline, but, practically, it is the eyes and mouth that carry the day: according as they look and they smile, do we feel that people are beautiful or ugly; because in them lies the expression of the heart and soul. This I take to be the secret of those astounding differences in taste upon a subject of which there is a distinct standard—beauty. True, there is a standard of form and colour. We are all agreed upon the face that would make the handsomest picture; but the best part of beauty is that which the painter can never express, because he is condemned to one expression; and the beauty of the loving heart and noble soul is visible in the changing lustre of a thousand smiles and glances. Now, although we might all agree that a certain face has exquisite purity of outline, and gratifies the æsthetical sense of proportion, yet we should feel and say that some less perfect face has charmed us more. Why?—because we are indifferent to perfection? No: but because in some less harmoniously proportioned face, we have read a more loveable soul—a soul with which we can better enter into communion. Thus it is that men get distractedly enamoured of women, whose beauty is more than problematical, because without having had many opportunities of knowing their characters, but mostly from what the faces express, they read there the signs of unalterable goodness and lovingness, of high nobility of soul, or, perhaps, only of some voluptuous and passionate tendencies; and all these are qualities more fascinating than purity of outline. In support of my argument, let me mention the fact, that the women most celebrated as beauties have seldom, if ever, been picture-beauties. It is impossible from any picture of Mary Queen of Scots, for example, to imagine wherein lay the enchantment of her beauty.
Therefore, my ill-favoured reader, take courage; if your mind is honest, and your heart loving, you will have true beauty—yes, the positive effect of beauty on all those who can read the signs of honesty and loveliness.
These signs were not legible in the eyes and mouth of Mrs. Meredith Vyner; and there, as I said, lay her real deformity, though people did not call it so. Those light, grey eyes, so destitute of voluptuousness, but so full of light—so cunning, so cruel, so uncomfortable to look upon; and that small mouth, with its thin, irritable, selfish lips, which a perpetual smile endeavoured to make amiable, created a far more repulsive impression, when first you saw her, than any hump could have created: and yet she fancied that her hump was her only deformity.
She was, as I said, repulsive at first sight; but most people got over that impression after a while, as they generally do when familiarity has blunted their perceptions. It was not necessary to be a great physiognomist to see at once the nature of the soul her eyes expressed; and yet, when people heard her amiable sentiments, and noticed the meekness of her manner, they yielded to the popular sophism of its being "unjust to judge from first impressions," and they believed in her professions rather than in her expressions—that is, in her calculated utterances rather than her instinctive and unconquerable emotions.