Henry Dunbar by M. E. Braddon
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M. E. Braddon >> Henry Dunbar
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The Warwickshire baronet knew a good many people in Paris, and he and
his bride received a very enthusiastic welcome from these old friends,
who pronounced that Miladi Jocelyn was _charmante_ and _la belle des
belles_; and that Sir Jocelyn was the most fortunate of men in having
discovered this gay, lighthearted girl amongst the prudish and
pragmatical _meess_ of the _brumeuse Angleterre_.
Laura made herself very much at home with her Parisian acquaintance; and
in the grand house in the Rue Lepelletier many a glass was turned full
upon the beautiful English bride with the _chevelure dor�_ and the
violet blue eyes.
One morning Laura told her husband, with a gay laugh, that she was going
to victimize him; but he was to promise to be patient and bear with her
for once in a way.
"What is it you want me to do, my darling?"
"I want you to give me a long day in the Luxembourg. I want to see all
the pictures--the modern pictures especially. I remember all the
Rubenses at the Louvre, for I saw them three years ago, when I was
staying in Paris with grandpapa. I like the modern pictures best,
Philip: and I want you to tell me all about the artists, and what I
ought to admire, and all that sort of thing."
Sir Philip never refused his wife anything; so he said, yes: and Laura
ran away to her dressing-room like a school-girl who has been pleading
for a holiday and has won her cause. She returned in a little more than
ten minutes, in the freshest toilette, all pale shimmering blue, like
the spring sky, with pearl-grey gloves and boots and parasol, and a
bonnet that seemed made of azure butterflies.
It was drawing towards the close of this delightful honeymoon tour, and
it was a bright sunshiny morning early in February; but February in
Paris is sometimes better than April in London.
Philip Jocelyn's work that morning was by no means light, for Laura was
fond of pictures, in a frivolous amateurish kind of way; and she ran
from one canvas to another, like a fickle-minded bee that is bewildered
by the myriad blossoms of a boundless parterre. But she fixed upon a
picture which she said she preferred to anything she had seen in the
gallery.
Philip Jocelyn was examining some pictures on the other side of the room
when his wife made this discovery. She hurried to him immediately, and
led him off to look at the picture. It was a peasant-girl's head, very
exquisitely painted by a modern artist, and the baronet approved his
wife's taste.
"How I wish you could get me a copy of that picture, Philip," Laura
said, entreatingly. "I should so like one to hang in my morning-room at
Jocelyn's Rock. I wonder who painted that lovely face?"
There was a young artist hard at work at his easel, copying a large
devotional subject that hung near the picture Laura admired. Sir Philip
asked this gentleman if he knew the name of the artist who had painted
the peasant-girl.
"Ah, but yes, monsieur!" the painter answered, with animated politeness;
"it is the work of one of my friends; a young Englishman, of a renown
almost universal in Paris."
"And his name, monsieur?"
"He calls himself Kerstall--Frederick Kerstall; he is the son of an old
monsieur, who calls himself also Kerstall, and who had much of celebrity
in England it is many years."
"Kerstall!" exclaimed Laura, suddenly; "Mr. Kerstall! why, it was a Mr.
Kerstall who painted papa's portrait; I have heard grandpapa say so
again and again; and he took it away to Italy with him, promising to
bring it back to London when he returned, after a year or two of study.
And, oh, Philip, I should so like to see this old Mr. Kerstall; because,
you know, he may have kept papa's portrait until this very day, and I
should so like to have a picture of my father as he was when he was
young, and before the troubles of a long life altered him," Laura said,
rather mournfully.
She turned to the French artist presently, and asked him where the elder
Mr. Kerstall lived, and if there was any possibility of seeing him.
The painter shrugged up his shoulders, and pursed up his mouth,
thoughtfully.
"But, madame," he said, "this Monsieur Kerstall's father is very old,
and he has ceased to paint it is a long time. They have said that he is
even a little imbecile, that he does not remember himself of the most
common events of his life. But there are some others who say that his
memory has not altogether failed, and that he is still enough harshly
critical towards the works of others."
The Frenchman might have run on much longer upon this subject, but Laura
was too impatient to be polite. She interrupted him by asking for Mr.
Kerstall's address.
The artist took out one of his own cards, and wrote the required address
in pencil.
"It is in the neighbourhood of Notre Dame, madame, in the Rue Cailoux,
over the office of a Parisian journal," he said, as he handed the card
to Laura. "I don't think you will have any difficulty in finding the
house."
Laura thanked the French artist and then took her husband's arm and
walked away with him.
"I don't care about looking at any more pictures to-day, Philip," she
said; "but, oh, I do wish you would take me to this Mr. Kerstall's
studio at once! You will be doing me such a favour, Philip, if you'll
say yes."
"When did I ever say no to anything you asked me, Laura? We'll go to Mr.
Kerstall immediately, if you like. But why are you so anxious to see
this old portrait of your father, my dear?"
"Because I want to see what he was before he went to India. I want to
see what he was when he was bright and young before the world had
hardened him. Ah, Philip, since we have known and loved each other, it
seems to me as if I had no thought or care for any one in all this wide
world except yourself. But before that time I was very unhappy about my
father. I had expected that he would be so fond of me. I had so built
upon his return to England, thinking that we should be nearer and dearer
to each other than any father and daughter ever were before. I had
thought all this, Philip; night after night I had dreamt the same
dream,--the bright happy dream in which my father came home to me, the
fond foolish dream in which I felt his strong arms folded round me, and
his true heart beating against my own. But when he did come at last, it
seemed to me as if this father was a man of stone; his white fixed face
repelled me; his cold hard voice turned my blood to ice. I was
frightened of him, Philip; I was frightened of my own father; and little
by little we grew to shun each other, till at last we met like
strangers, or something worse than strangers; for I have seen my father
look at me with an expression of absolute horror in his stern cruel
eyes. Can you wonder, then, that I want to see what he was in his youth?
I shall learn to love him, perhaps, if I can see the smiling image of
his lost youth."
Laura said all this in a very low voice as she walked with her husband
through the garden of the Luxembourg. She walked very fast; for she was
as eager as a child who is intent upon some scheme of pleasure.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
LOOKING FOR THE PORTRAIT.
The Rue Cailoux was a very quiet little street--a narrow, winding
street, with tall shabby-looking houses, and untidy-little greengrocers'
shops peeping out here and there.
The pavement suggested the idea that there had just been an outbreak of
the populace, and that the stones had been ruthlessly torn up to serve
in the construction of barricades, and only very carelessly put down
again. It was a street which seemed to have been built with a view to
achieving the largest amount of inconvenience out of a minimum of
materials; and looked at in this light the Rue Cailoux was a triumph: it
was a street in which Parisian drivers clacked their whips to a running
accompaniment of imprecations: it was a street in which you met dirty
porters carrying six feet of highly-baked bread, and shrill old women
with wonderful bandanas bound about their grisly heads: but above all,
it was a street in which you were so shaken and jostled, and bumped and
startled, by the ups and downs of the pavement, that you had very little
leisure to notice the distinctive features of the neighbourhood.
The house in which Mr. Kerstall, the English artist, lived was a
gloomy-looking building with a dingy archway, beneath which Sir Philip
Jocelyn and his wife alighted.
There was a door under this archway, and there was a yard beyond it,
with the door of another house opening upon it, and ranges of black
curtainless windows looking down upon it, and an air of dried herbs,
green-stuff, chickens in the moulting stage, and old women, generally
pervading it. The door which belonged to Mr. Kerstall's house, or rather
the house in which Mr. Kerstall lived in common with a colony of unknown
number and various avocations, was open, and Sir Philip and his wife
went into the hall.
There was no such thing as a porter or portress; but a stray old woman,
hovering under the archway, informed Philip Jocelyn that Mr. Kerstall
was to be found on the second story. So Laura and her husband ascended
the stairs, which were bare of any covering except dirt, and went on
mounting through comparative darkness, past the office of the Parisian
journal, till they came to a very dingy black door.
Philip knocked, and, after a considerable interval, the door was opened
by another old woman, tidier and cleaner than the old women who pervaded
the yard, but looking very like a near relation to those ladies.
Philip inquired in French for the senior Mr. Kerstall; and the old woman
told him, very much through her nose, that Mr. Kerstall father saw no
one; but that Mr. Kerstall son was at his service.
Philip Jocelyn said that in that case he would be glad to see Mr.
Kerstall junior; upon which the old woman ushered the baronet and his
wife into a saloon, distinguished by an air of faded splendour, and in
which the French clocks and ormolu candelabras were in the proportion of
two to one to the chairs and tables.
Sir Philip gave his card to the old woman, and she carried it into the
adjoining chamber, whence there issued a gush of tobacco-smoke, as the
door between the two rooms was opened and then shut again.
In less than three minutes by the minute-hand of the only one of the
ormolu clocks which made any pretence of going, the door was opened
again, and a burly-looking, middle-aged gentleman, with a very black
beard, and a dirty holland blouse all smeared with smudges of
oil-colour, appeared upon the threshold of the adjoining chamber,
surrounded by a cloud of tobacco-smoke--like a heathen deity, or a
good-tempered-looking African genie newly escaped from his bottle.
This was Mr. Kerstall junior. He introduced himself to Sir Philip, and
waited to hear what that gentleman required of him.
Philip Jocelyn explained his business, and told the painter how, more
than five-and-thirty years before, the portrait of Henry Dunbar, only
son of Percival Dunbar the great banker, had been painted by Mr. Michael
Kerstall, at that time a fashionable artist.
"Five-and-thirty years ago!" said the painter, pulling thoughtfully at
his beard; "five-and-thirty years ago! that's a very long time, my lord,
and I'm afraid it's not likely my father will remember the circumstance;
for I regret to say that he is slow to remember the events of a few days
past. His memory has been failing a long time. You wish to know the fate
of this portrait of Mr. Dunbar, I think you said?"
Laura answered this question, although it had been addressed to her
husband.
"Yes, we want to see the picture, if possible," she said; "Mr. Dunbar is
my father, and there is no other portrait of him in existence. I do so
want to see this one, and to obtain possession of it, if it is possible
for me to do so."
"And you are of opinion that my father took the picture to Italy with
him when he left England more than five-and-thirty years ago?"
"Yes; I've heard my grandfather say so. He lost sight of Mr. Kerstall,
and could never obtain any tidings of the picture. But I hope that, late
as it is, we may be more fortunate now. You do not think the picture has
been destroyed, do you?" Laura asked eagerly.
"Well," the artist answered, doubtfully, "I should be inclined to fear
that the portrait may have been painted out: and yet, by the bye, as the
picture belonged by right to Mr. Percival Dunbar, and not to my father,
that circumstance may have preserved it uninjured through all these
years. My father has a heap of unframed canvases, inches thick in dust,
and littering every corner of his room. Mr. Dunbar's portrait may be
amongst them.
"Oh, I should be so very much obliged if you would allow me to examine
those pictures," said Laura.
"You think you would recognize the portrait?"
"Yes, surely; I could not fail to do so. I know my father's face so well
as it is, that I must certainly have some knowledge of it as it was
five-and-thirty years ago, however much he may have altered in the
interval. Pray, Mr. Kerstall, oblige me by letting me see the pictures."
"I should be very churlish were I to refuse to do so," the painter
answered, good-naturedly. "I will just go and see if my father is able
to receive visitors. He has been a voluntary exile from England for the
last five-and-thirty years, so I fear he will have forgotten the name of
Dunbar; but he may by chance be able to give us some slight assistance."
Mr. Kerstall left his visitors for about ten minutes, and at the end of
that time he returned to say that his father was quite ready to receive
Sir Philip and Lady Jocelyn.
"I mentioned the name of Dunbar to him," the painter said; "but he
remembers nothing. He has been painting a little this morning, and is in
very high spirits about his work. It pleases him to handle the brushes,
though his hand is terribly shaky, and he can scarcely hold the
palette."
The artist led the way to a large room, comfortably but plainly
furnished, and heated to a pitch of suffocation by a stove. There was a
bed in a curtained alcove at the end of the apartment; an easel stood
near the large window; and the proprietor of the chamber sat in a
cushioned arm-chair close to the suffocating stove.
Michael Kerstall was an old man, who looked even older than he was. He
was a picturesque-looking old man, with long white hair dropping down
over his coat-collar, and a black-velvet skull-cap upon his head. He was
a cheerful old man, and life seemed very pleasant to him; for Frenchmen
have a habit of honouring their fathers and mothers, and Mr. Frederick
Kerstall was a naturalized citizen of the French republic.
The old man nodded and smiled and chuckled as Sir Philip and Laura were
presented to him, and pointed with a courtly grace to the chairs which
his son set for his guests.
"You want to see my pictures, sir? Ah, yes; to be sure, to be sure! The
modern school of painting, sir, is something marvellous to an old man,
sir; an old man who remembers Sir Thomas Lawrence--ay, sir, I had the
honour to know him intimately. No pre-Raphaelite theories in those days,
sir; no figures cut of coloured pasteboard and glued on to the canvas;
no green trees and vermilion draperies, and chocolate-coloured streaks
across an ultramarine background, sir; and I'm told the young people
call that a sky. No pointed chins, and angular knees and elbows, and
frizzy red hair--red, sir, and as frizzy as a blackamoor's--and I'm told
the young people call that female beauty. No, sir; nothing of that sort
in my day. There was a French painter in my day, sir, called David, and
there was an English painter in my day called Lawrence; and they painted
ladies and gentlemen, sir; and they instituted a gentlemanly school,
sir. And you put a crimson curtain behind your subject, and you put a
bran-new hat, or a roll of paper, in his right hand, and you thrust his
left hand in his waistcoat--the best black satin, sir, with strong light
in the texture--and you made your subject look like a gentleman. Yes,
sir, if he was a chimney-sweep when he went into your studio, he went
out of it a gentleman."
The old man would have gone on talking for any length of time, for
pre-Raphaelitism was his favourite antipathy; and the black-bearded
gentleman standing behind his chair was an enthusiastic member of the
pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.
Mr. Kerstall senior seemed so thoroughly in possession of all his
faculties while he held forth upon modern art, that Laura began to hope
his memory could scarcely be so much impaired as his son had represented
it to be.
"When you painted portraits in England, Mr. Kerstall," she said, "before
you went to Italy, you painted a likeness of my father, Henry Dunbar,
who was then a young man. Do you remember that circumstance?"
Laura asked this question very hopefully; but to her surprise, Mr.
Kerstall took no notice whatever of her inquiry, but went rambling on
about the degeneracy of modern art.
"I am told there is a young man called Millais, sir, and another young
man called Holman Hunt, sir,--positive boys, sir; actually very little
more than boys, sir; and I'm given to understand, sir, that when these
young men's works are exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, sir,
people crowd round them, and go raving mad about them; while a
gentlemanly portrait of a county member, with a Corinthian pillar and a
crimson curtain, gets no more attention than if it was a bishop's
half-length of black canvas. I am told so, sir, and I am obliged to
believe it, sir."
Poor Laura listened very impatiently to all this talk about painters and
their pictures. But Mr. Kerstall the younger perceived her anxiety, and
came to her relief.
"Lady Jocelyn would very much like to see the pictures you have
scattered about in this room, my dear father," he said, "if you have no
objection to our turning them over?"
The old man chuckled and nodded.
"You'll find 'em gentlemanly," he said; "you'll find 'em all more or
less gentlemanly."
"You're sure you don't remember painting the portrait of a Mr. Dunbar?"
Mr. Kerstall the younger said, bending over his father's chair as he
spoke. "Try again, father--try to remember--Henry Dunbar, the son of
Percival Dunbar, the great banker."
Mr. Kerstall senior, who never left off smiling, nodded and chuckled,
and scratched his head, and seemed to plunge into a depth of profound
thought.
Laura began to hope again.
"I remember painting Sir Jasper Rivington, who was Lord Mayor in the
year--bless my heart how the dates do slip out of my mind, to be
sure!--I remember painting _him_, in his robes too; yes, sir--by gad,
sir, his official robes. He'd liked me to have painted him looking out
of the window of his state-coach, sir, bowing to the populace on Ludgate
Hill, with the dome of St. Paul's in the background; but I told him the
notion wasn't practicable, sir; I told him it couldn't be done, sir;
I----"
Laura looked despairingly at Mr. Kerstall the younger.
"May we see the pictures?" she asked. "I am sure that I shall recognize
my father's portrait, if by any chance it should be amongst them."
"We will set to work at once, then," the artist said, briskly. "We're
going to look at your pictures, father."
Unframed canvases, and unfinished sketches on millboard, were lying
about the room in every direction, piled against the wall, heaped on
side-tables, and stowed out of the way upon shelves, and everywhere the
dust lay thick upon them.
"It was quite a chamber of horrors," Mr. Kerstall the younger said,
gaily: for it was here that he banished his own failures; his sketches
for his pictures that were to be painted upon some future occasion;
carelessly-drawn groups that he meant some day to improve upon; finished
pictures that he had been unable to sell; and all the other useless
litter of an artist's studio.
There were a great many dingy performances of Mr. Kerstall senior; very
classical, and extremely uninteresting; studies from the life, grey and
chalky and muscular, with here and there a knotty-looking foot or a
lumpy arm, in the most unpleasant phases of foreshortening. There were a
good many portraits, gentlemanly to the last degree; but poor Laura
looked in vain for the face she wanted to see--the hard cold face, as
she fancied it must have been in youth.
There were portraits of elderly ladies with stately head-gear, and
simpering young ladies with innocent short-waisted bodices and flowers
held gracefully, in their white-muslin draperies; there were portraits
of stern clerical grandees, and parliamentary non-celebrities, with
popular bills rolled up in their hands, ready to be laid upon the
speaker's table, and with a tight look about the lips, that seemed to
say the member was prepared to carry his motion, or perish on the floor
of the House.
There were only a few portraits of young men of military aspect, looking
fiercely over regulation stocks, and with forked lightning and little
pyramids of cannon-balls in the background.
Laura sighed heavily at last, for amongst all these portraits there was
not one which in the least possible degree recalled the hard handsome
face with which she was familiar.
"I'm afraid my father's picture has been lost or destroyed," she said,
mournfully.
But Mr. Kerstall would not allow this.
I have said that it was Laura's peculiar privilege to bewitch everybody
with whom she came in contact, and to transform them, for the nonce,
into her willing slaves, eager to go through fire and water in the
service of this beautiful creature, whose eyes and hair were like blue
skies and golden sunshine, and carried light and summer wherever they
went.
The black-bearded artist in the paint-smeared holland blouse was in no
manner proof against Lady Jocelyn's fascinations.
He had well-nigh suffocated himself with dust half-a-dozen times already
in her service, and was ready to inhale as much more dust if she desired
him so to do.
"We won't give it up just yet, Lady Jocelyn," he said, cheerfully;
"there's a couple of shelves still to examine. Suppose we try shelf
number one, and see if we can find Mr. Henry Dunbar up there."
Mr. Kerstall junior mounted upon a chair, and brought down another heap
of canvases, dirtier than any previous collection. He brought these to a
table by the side of his father's easel, and one by one he wiped them
clean with a large ragged silk handkerchief, and then placed them on the
easel.
The easel stood in the full light of the broad window. The day was
bright and clear, and there was no lack of light, therefore, upon the
portraits.
Mr. Kerstall senior began to be quite interested in his son's
proceedings, and contemplated the younger man's operations with a
perpetual chuckling and nodding of the head, that were expressive of
unmitigated satisfaction.
"Yes, they're gentlemanly," the old man mumbled; "nobody can deny that
they're gentlemanly. They may make a cabal against me in Trafalgar
Square, and decline to hang 'em: but they can't say my pictures are
ungentlemanly. No, no. Take a basin of water and a sponge, Fred, and
wash the dust off. It pleases me to see 'em again--yes, by gad, sir, it
pleases me to see 'em again!"
Mr. Frederick Kerstall obeyed his father, and the pictures brightened
wonderfully under the influence of a damp sponge. It was rather a slow
operation; but Laura was bent upon seeing every picture, and Philip
Jocelyn waited patiently enough until the inspection should be
concluded.
The old man brightened up as much as his paintings, and began presently
to call out the names of the subjects.
"The member for Slopton-on-the-Tees," he said, as his son placed a
portrait on the easel; "that was a presentation picture, but the
subscriptions were never paid up, and the committee left the portrait
upon my hands. I don't remember the name of the member, because my
memory isn't quite so good as it used to be; but the borough was
Slopton-on-the-Tees--Slopton--yes, yes, I remember that."
The younger Kerstall took away the member for Slopton, and put another
picture on the easel. But this was like the rest; the pictured face bore
no trace of resemblance to that face for which Laura was looking.
"I remember him too," the old man cried, with a triumphant chuckle. "He
was an officer in the East-India Company's service. I remember him; a
dashing young fellow he was too. He had the picture painted for his
mother: paid me a third of the money at the first sitting; never paid me
a sixpence afterwards; and went off to India, promising to send me a
bill of exchange for the balance by the next mail; but I never heard any
more of him."
Mr. Kerstall removed the Indian officer, and substituted another
portrait.
Sir Philip, who was sitting near the window, looking on rather
listlessly, cried--
"What a handsome face!"
It _was_ a handsome face--a bright young face, which smiled haughty
defiance at the world--a splendid face, with perhaps a shade of
insolence in the curve of the upper lip, sharply denned under a thick
auburn moustache, with pointed ends that curled fiercely upwards. It was
such a face as might have belonged to the favourite of a powerful king;
the face of the Cinq Mars, on the very summit of his giddy eminence,
with a hundred pairs of boots in his dressing-room, and quiet Cardinal
Richelieu watching silently for the day of his doom. English Buckingham
may have worn the same insolent smile upon his lips, the same bright
triumph in his glance, when he walked up to the throne of Louis the
Just, with the pearls and diamonds dropping from his garments as he went
along, and with forbidden love beaming on him out of Austrian Anne's
blue eyes. It was such a face as could only belong to some high
favourite of fortune, defiant of all mankind in the consciousness of his
own supreme advantages.
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