I don’t know what is the matter with me tonight. I have positively been to bed, without going to sleep! After tossing and twisting and trying all sorts of positions, I am so angry with myself that I have got up again. Rather than do nothing, I have opened my ink-bottle, and I mean to go on with my journal. Now I think of it, it seems likely that the exhibition of works of art may have upset me.
I found a dreadfully large number of pictures, matched by a dreadfully large number of people to look at them. It is not possible for me to write about what I saw: there was too much of it. Besides, the show disappointed me. I would rather write about a disagreement (oh, dear, another dispute!) I had with Mrs. Staveley. The cause of it was a famous artist; not himself, but his works. He exhibited four pictures—what they call figure subjects. Mrs. Staveley had a pencil. At every one of the great man’s four pictures, she made a big mark of admiration on her catalogue. At the fourth one, she spoke to me: “Perfectly beautiful, Eunice, isn’t it?”
I said I didn’t know. She said: “You strange girl, what do you mean by that?”
It would have been rude not to have given the best answer I could find. I said: “I never saw the flesh of any person’s face like the flesh in the faces which that man paints. He reminds me of wax-work. Why does he paint the same waxy flesh in all four of his pictures? I don’t see the same colored flesh in all the faces about us.” Mrs. Staveley held up her hand, by way of stopping me. She said: “Don’t speak so loud, Eunice; you are only exposing your own ignorance.”
A voice behind us joined in. The voice said: “Excuse me, Mrs. Staveley, if I expose my ignorance. I entirely agree with the young lady.”
I felt grateful to the person who took my part, just when I was at a loss what to say for myself, and I looked round. The person was a young gentleman.
He wore a beautiful blue frock-coat, buttoned up. I like a frock-coat to be buttoned up. He had light-colored trousers and gray gloves and a pretty cane. I like light-colored trousers and gray gloves and a pretty cane. What color his eyes were is more than I can say; I only know they made me hot when they looked at me. Not that I mind being made hot; it is surely better than being made cold. He and Mrs. Staveley shook hands.
They seemed to be old friends. I wished I had been an old friend—not for any bad reason, I hope. I only wanted to shake hands, too. What Mrs. Staveley said to him escaped me, somehow. I think the picture escaped me also; I don’t remember noticing anything except the young gentleman, especially when he took off his hat to me. He looked at me twice before he went away. I got hot again. I said to Mrs. Staveley: “Who is he?”
She laughed at me. I said again: “Who is he?” She said: “He is young Mr. Dunboyne.” I said: “Does he live in London?” She laughed again. I said again: “Does he live in London?” She said: “He is here for a holiday; he lives with his father at Fairmount, in Ireland.”
Young Mr. Dunboyne—here for a holiday—lives with his father at Fairmount, in Ireland. I have said that to myself fifty times over. And here it is, saying itself for the fifty-first time in my Journal. I must indeed be a simpleton, as Helena says. I had better go to bed again.