Jane and the Wandering Eye (34 page)

Lord Harold had once told me that when Lawrence painted women, he contrived to convert them to pieces of confection; and as I surveyed the examples mounted on the walls, I understood what he had meant. They were, in the main, fashionable ladies displayed to decided advantage, of no very great interest to any but their originals. But when Lawrence undertook to paint a man—
here
was movement, expression, energy, power. The eyes glowed, the lips curled in misery or disdain; the features—freed from the burden of vanity—worked with thought and emotion. To one, in particular, my gaze was often turned; and this was a head of Mrs. Siddons’s brother, John Philip Kemble. Did he play at Hamlet? Or perhaps Macbeth? Some creature surely tormented beyond reason. The ghastly features were mere suggestions—broad strokes of the brush; the neck and chest were naked still in the charcoal of their underpainting; but the agony stamped on the half-finished head was palpable in the extreme. I was moved and horrified at once.
As an artist, Mr. Lawrence clearly thrilled to the passion of the theatre.

“Do you observe the sketch on the wall opposite?” Lord Harold said, breaking into my thoughts.

I followed the direction of his eyes.

“That is Mr. John Julius Angerstein, I believe—a highly influential merchant in Town. He has recently undertaken to reform Lloyd’s, the insurers, and is one of the most important collectors of Old Master paintings. In this he rivals the Prince of Wales, who has profited from the confusion in France to acquire the greatest paintings in Europe.”

“It is a noble head, indeed,” I observed, studying the sketch, “though hardly handsome. An honesty of expression—a forthright countenance—and the care of years of trial are stamped upon the features.”
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A crash from beyond the studio door, where poor Master Harnley laboured, suggested the overturning of an easel.

“I recollect your saying that Mr. Lawrence rarely painted a woman in the truest light—or at least, that his feminine portraits lack a certain vivid emotion he never denies his men,” I continued. “In viewing these, I comprehend your meaning. But I would direct your eye to the sketch of Mrs. Wolff. It is extraordinary, is it not?”

The portrait was as yet in charcoal on canvas, without a touch of paint; but the curve of her swan-like neck, and the aversion of her glance as she bent over a book, suggested an infinite silence and containment, as though she were a woman complete in herself.

“It is a classical pose,” Lord Harold observed. “Taken, I think, from Michelangelo. One of his Sibyls, perhaps. Lawrence has managed it superbly. You are acquainted with the lady?”
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“She is intimate with my sister Eliza. And also, I think, quite intimate with Mr. Lawrence. In fact, I should not be surprised to learn that it is to Mrs. Wolff, in Bladuds Buildings, that he is presently gone.”

“I see.” Lord Harold bent to leaf through a collection of drawings propped in a huddle against the wall, his lips pursed and his eyes narrowing at a few. Of a sudden, however, his gaze was arrested—and the stillness of his entire form, together with the slight tremble in his fingers, fixed my attention.

“My lord?”

He turned and handed me the portrait without a word. Maria Conyngham, if I did not greatly mistake—her beautiful face turned fully towards the viewer, and her long-limbed form arranged upon a divan. She wore a dressing-gown of filmiest gauze, and her hair was unloosed upon a pillow; the expression in her superb brown eyes was dreamy, wanton, half-expressed and half-realised. The face of a creature moved by passion, if not by love.

“It is an excellent likeness,” I observed hollowly. “Perhaps he intended her as Juliet. Mr. Lawrence delights, I understand, in portraying artists of the theatre in their greatest roles.”

“He has portrayed her as a courtesan,” said Lord Harold abruptly, and withdrew the portrait from my hands. “We might wonder when she sat for it. Or should I say—
reclined?”

“Lord Harold—”

But his attention was already fled. He had set the revealing image aside and withdrawn another, his brows knit in a scowl. “And who is this, I wonder?”

It was the head of a girl—done in charcoal, with eyes like burning coals. They had been fixed on Lawrence with an expression of some intensity, but whether of love or hate I could not tell. A stormy creature, in any event, with a tangle of short curls about her face, a prominent nose, a pursed mouth, and the suggestion of a hectic flush upon her cheeks.

But most extraordinary of all was the vicious scrawl of red paint—stark and mortal as blood—smeared across the surface. It partly obscured the girl’s features, and rendered the whole slightly lunatic.

“Begging your pardon, my lord, but I would wish you didn’t bother with those things,” said Master Harnley in an anxious voice. We turned as one, and observed him in the doorway of the makeshift studio. “They didn’t ought to be there, in truth, being intended for the rubbish.”

“Mr. Lawrence is disposing of these?” Lord Harold enquired in some astonishment.

Harnley nodded. “So he told me himself this morning.”

“Then I wonder if you might tell us something about this one.” I displayed the image so violently defaced with red. “It is a striking countenance, is it not?”

Harnley’s young face darkened visibly. “That’s the witch what keeps him up of nights,” he muttered, and taking a step backwards, he crossed himself. “Always crying and plaguing him in his dreams. Draws her over and over, he does, to rid himself of her evil charms—but it’s no use. I’ve destroyed a dozen or more like that, and still she comes by night.”

I glanced at Lord Harold, chilled and perplexed at once.

“How very singular,” he said indifferently. “And Mrs. Pope admits the lady to Mr. Lawrence’s presence?”

“Admits her? Lord, sir—she’s been dead these six or seven year! That’s the youngest Miss Siddons, what Mr. Lawrence intended to marry.”

The parlour door was thrust open hard upon the heels of this extraordinary remark, and our three heads turned as one—to perceive none other than the painter himself, preceded by Mrs. Pope and her beaming face. The landlady brought with her a tray of tea and warm cakes whose heady scent quite filled the room; and as she set her burden down upon the table, and bustled about with napkins and cutlery, the unfortunate Harnley advanced upon his master. With a deft and silent movement observed only by myself, Lord Harold turned the drawings to the wall—though not all, I believe, for one at least was secreted in his coat.

“Miss Austen!” Thomas Lawrence cried, with an agitated look. “And Lord Harold Trowbridge, indeed! This is a pleasure quite unlooked-for, I assure you! Harnley will have informed you, I suspect, that we are called away this very evening—upon urgent business.” He was almost prostrate with the effect of his haste; and I observed the marks of his late misfortune everywhere about his person. Mr. Lawrence’s head was bound round with a neat linen bandage, one eye was purple, and his expressive lips were bruised and swollen. When he moved, it was with a hesitancy that suggested a cracked rib or collarbone. “We cannot delay an hour.”

“So we understand, sir,” Lord Harold replied with a bow, “and we should not presume upon your time were it not a matter of some gravity that brings us thither.”

Mr. Lawrence was all impatience. “If it is about Lady Desdemona’s portrait, I assure you it shall be attended to the moment she is returned to London. For though I may attempt a drawing with tolerable success at some
remove from my studio, I cannot undertake a finished portrait anywhere but in Town.”

“I entirely comprehend. The matter on which we would consult is wholly unconcerned with my niece.”

Mr. Lawrence looked from Lord Harold to myself, and an expression of
ennui
overlaid his handsome countenance.

“Very well,” he replied, gesturing to the table, “I shall spare you a quarter-hour. Pour out the tea, Mrs. Pope, and then be so good as to leave us. I shall ring for you presently. Harnley, see to the stowing of my dunnage in the chaise, there’s a good fellow.”

The landlady bobbed her way to the door, in company with Master Harnley, and when they had gone, Mr. Lawrence settled himself at the table with a cup at his elbow. “How may I be of service?”

Lord Harold withdrew the eye portrait from his coat and placed it upon the table. “This, I believe, was done by your hand.”

An indrawn breath, and Mr. Lawrence turned white.

The painter reached out and dashed the stormy grey eye to the floor. “Where in God’s name did you find that thing?”

“You know it for your own?”

“Cursed be the day I painted it—yes,” he cried. “I have had neither peace nor happiness since Maria Siddons died; and if I had never met, nor believed myself to love her, I should be a better man today.”

“Maria
Siddons?” I enquired eagerly. Was this, then, the Maria Richard Portal had named in his final agony—the Siddons girl beloved of Hugh Conyngham?

A swift glance from Lawrence, while Lord Harold stooped to retrieve the pendant. “The same. She was the younger of the Siddons daughters; and I was so foolish as to engage to marry her.”

Lord Harold sought the ruined sketch of the spectral
lady, and held it up to the light. Even at the distance of several feet, I could perceive the likeness of the eyes.

“I must entreat you to tell me how you came by this thing,” Lawrence said again, with obvious trepidation. “I had thought it buried with her.”

Lord Harold turned. “It was found on the breast of a murdered man,” he replied, “who whispered
Maria
as he died. We may presume that whoever stabbed him, uttered the name with conviction as the blade went home. A killing of revenge, perhaps, but visited upon the wrong person. For it was
you
, Mr. Lawrence, the assassin intended to kill.”

“I?” The unfortunate painter looked all his bewilderment.

“You were dressed in the guise of a Harlequin at the Dowager Duchess’s rout, were you not?” I observed.

“I was,” Lawrence said, comprehension dawning, “and I shuddered when another, so similarly garbed, was murdered in that hideous fashion. I gather you were also present that unfortunate evening.”

“I was,” I replied; and saw again in memory Mr. Lawrence’s Red Harlequin, conversing with Madam Lefroy.

“Then I may tell you that I quitted the house before the constables arrived. But you cannot mean that Portal’s end was meant for me?” The horror of the truth overcame him, and he threw his head in his hands. “Then the attack upon my chair—the gang of ruffians—was occasioned by a far more malevolent purpose than I had supposed.”

“There can be no other satisfactory explanation.” Lord Harold set the eye portrait before Lawrence; but the painter started with revulsion, and thrust his chair from the table.

“This is madness!” he cried. “It cannot be otherwise. We are cruelly imposed upon—for I know this portrait to
have been held as sacred by one who should never have given it up.”

Lord Harold’s eyebrow rose, and he glanced at me. “Pray explain yourself, Mr. Lawrence.”

The painter stabbed a finger in accusation at the offending miniature. “You must know that Maria was for many years plagued with the consumption that ultimately proved her ruin. I painted this portrait of Maria for her mother, Mrs. Siddons, who feared the girl’s sudden end. The great lady’s talents being so much in demand, and her family generally in want of funds—as who is not?—Mrs. Siddons was frequently burdened with engagements abroad. It was a comfort to carry some token of her daughter about her person.”

Lord Harold retrieved the miniature and turned it delicately in his fingers. “And while painting Maria’s grey eye—you fell in love with the lady?”

Lawrence shrugged and averted his gaze. “I was, at the time, pledged to Maria’s sister—Miss Sally Siddons, the elder of the two. But you will understand, my lord, that Sally was a gentle creature, of unassuming aspect and mildest disposition—her temper was unmoved by storms of passion. Maria was … utterly different.”

“Her gaze alone is smouldering,” I observed.

“It is. Or was.” Lawrence swallowed convulsively, his eyes averted from the pendant. “Maria was jealous of her sister—jealous of what she believed was Sally’s stronger constitution and happier fortune—and she set about to ruin her life.”

It was fortunate the young lady was prevented from any reply, I thought, since Mr. Lawrence saw fit to so abuse her in death. I could not like or approve him; but he was clearly never without torment—and in this, I deeply pitied him.

“Under the most desperate infatuation, I broke off my engagement to Sally, and caused
there
the greatest pain a
lady may know,” he continued. “Within a very few months, however, I realised the folly of my impulse. I begged dear Sally to forgive me, and attempt to love me again; to Maria I explained the whole—but the result was most unsatisfactory. From disappointment or pique, Maria went into a decline from that day forward—and died not long thereafter.”

“How dreadful!” I whispered. “And was she very young?”

“But eighteen.” He was silent a moment, and touched the blazing pendant. “There was worse than mourning to come, however. For with her dying breath Maria exacted a promise of her sister, Sally—a sacred promise that must endure beyond the grave—never to unite her life with mine. And Sally agreed.”

“A formidable girl, indeed,” Lord Harold said drily, “like a figure from Greek tragedy.”

“I will confess I felt it to be so, when I learned the truth in a letter from my beloved. I was never to see Sally Siddons the more—and though I raved, and went nearly mad for a time; threatened suicide or murder or both—she stood firm in her resolution. Maria had exacted her promise, and to Maria at least Sally might be true.”

“She has never wavered?” I said, appalled.

“Never for an instant,” he retorted, with a bitter smile. “I threatened, I cajoled, I wounded her with silence and attentions to others, including even her childhood friend, Maria Conyngham—but never a word did I receive. And last year, in the full blush of summer, Sally followed her sister to the grave, a victim of the same infirmity. The physician who attended her believes that she contracted the disease while nursing the dying Maria.”
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