The Real Thing

CHAPTER I.

When the porter's wife (she used to answer the house-bell), announced
"A gentleman--with a lady, sir," I had, as I often had in those days,
for the wish was father to the thought, an immediate vision of
sitters. Sitters my visitors in this case proved to be; but not in
the sense I should have preferred. However, there was nothing at
first to indicate that they might not have come for a portrait. The
gentleman, a man of fifty, very high and very straight, with a
moustache slightly grizzled and a dark grey walking-coat admirably
fitted, both of which I noted professionally--I don't mean as a
barber or yet as a tailor--would have struck me as a celebrity if
celebrities often were striking. It was a truth of which I had for
some time been conscious that a figure with a good deal of frontage
was, as one might say, almost never a public institution. A glance
at the lady helped to remind me of this paradoxical law: she also
looked too distinguished to be a "personality." Moreover one would
scarcely come across two variations together.

Neither of the pair spoke immediately--they only prolonged the
preliminary gaze which suggested that each wished to give the other a
chance. They were visibly shy; they stood there letting me take them
in--which, as I afterwards perceived, was the most practical thing
they could have done. In this way their embarrassment served their
cause. I had seen people painfully reluctant to mention that they
desired anything so gross as to be represented on canvas; but the
scruples of my new friends appeared almost insurmountable. Yet the
gentleman might have said "I should like a portrait of my wife," and
the lady might have said "I should like a portrait of my husband."
Perhaps they were not husband and wife--this naturally would make the
matter more delicate. Perhaps they wished to be done together--in
which case they ought to have brought a third person to break the
news.

"We come from Mr. Rivet," the lady said at last, with a dim smile
which had the effect of a moist sponge passed over a "sunk" piece of
painting, as well as of a vague allusion to vanished beauty. She was
as tall and straight, in her degree, as her companion, and with ten
years less to carry. She looked as sad as a woman could look whose
face was not charged with expression; that is her tinted oval mask
showed friction as an exposed surface shows it. The hand of time had
played over her freely, but only to simplify. She was slim and
stiff, and so well-dressed, in dark blue cloth, with lappets and
pockets and buttons, that it was clear she employed the same tailor
as her husband. The couple had an indefinable air of prosperous