CHAPTER VIII
“CAROLINE CREWKERNE’S GAINSBOROUGH”
FROM the moment that “Caroline Crewkerne’s Gainsborough” came upon the town there was no denying her success. She was a new sensation; and happy in her sponsors the diminished glories of Hill Street emerged from their eclipse. If old Lady Crewkerne derived a grim satisfaction from the absolute possession of the nine days’ wonder, Cheriton was one of the proudest and happiest men in London. He took to himself the whole merit of the discovery.
“I assure you,” he declared to a circle of the elect, “that blind old woman would never have seen the likeness. It was quite providential that I happened to look in and point it out.”
In matters of art Cheriton’s taste was really fastidious. And in addition to his other foibles no man was more susceptible to beauty. Every morning for a week he called at Hill Street, to view his discovery more adequately in the full light of day. It was in vain, however, that he tried to surprise her. She was kept very close.
For one thing the creature had positively no clothes in which to submit to the ordeal of the public gaze. Almost the first thing Caroline Crewkerne did was to send for her dressmaker, who was commanded to make Miss Perry “appear respectable,” and was given only three days in which to perform the operation.
“I assure your ladyship it is impossible in three days,” said the dressmaker.
“If that is your opinion,” said her ladyship, “I shall go elsewhere.”
As it was her ladyship’s custom to pay her bills quarterly, on the morning of the fourth day Miss Perry came down to breakfast in a blue-serge costume. It was rigid in outline and formal in cut. In fact, it had been chosen by Miss Burden, and had been wrought in the style affected by that model of reticent good taste.
It was in this attire, surmounted by a straw hat of the regulation type in lieu of the inverted vegetable basket, that Cheriton saw Miss Perry for the second time.
“What are you thinking of, Caroline?” said he tragically. “Where is your instinct? It is a gross act of vandalism to consign a genuine Gainsborough to the tender mercies of a woman’s tailor.”