Читать книгу Patriotic Lady - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 17

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Mr. Greville was highly pleased that his mistress should be painted by so admirable and fashionable an artist, and disdained any jealousy of George Romney's open infatuation for the Emma who was partly his own creation. Her lover often accompanied her to Cavendish Square, and helped to swathe the gauze round her face, to dispose the ribbons round her waist, to tilt the broad-brimmed hat over her face; often he advised this pose or that, until Emma, under his guidance and that of the painter, could herself take a pose to admiration, simulating by the position of her limbs, the turn of her head, characters she never understood, emotions she was never to experience. When Mr. Greville was occupied with his affairs or wished for the company of his social equals, Mrs. Cadogan played the duenna and accompanied her daughter, who had suddenly become so important and so precious, from Paddington to Cavendish Square; it was all very decorous, the neat civil servant liked his Thais to have the outward gloss of an English gentlewoman; there was no touch of Sal Brazen or Moll Tawdry about Emma now.

Yet, for all that, the gossips had their say; the painter was obviously in love, the profession of the model was to be pleased with those whom she pleased—by this alone she lived, and the mother who was the servant in the establishment where her daughter was the kept woman could not be supposed to be a very vigilant guardian of female fidelity or honour.

Romney, too, passed for a morose queer fellow, with a forsaken wife, whom no one had seen, who led a secretive life, who was not a gentleman nor bound by any social conventions, and who, well out of all ordinary restrictions or obligations, might do as he pleased.

Nor need Mr. Greville, who was a gentleman and had his own code, trouble himself if Emma's old giddy wildness flared up in the presence of this new admirer, a man of her own class, of something of her own experience, yet rich and famous. Think what you will, this is what the town thought, and with no peculiar cynicism—that when Emma went from Mr. Greville's house to that of George Romney, she went from one lover to another.

Why should she be more faithful to Mr. Greville than to any of her former lovers, and why should George Romney resist the charms that had never been resisted before? There might be reasons but they were not on the surface and the question was one of little matter; what was important was that a beauty had been created and endowed with as much immortality as ever falls to the lot of mortals.