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Lady Dain said: 'Jee, if that portrait stays there much longer,
you'll just have to take me off to Pirehill one of these fine
mornings.'
Pirehill is the seat of the great local hospital; but it is also
the seat of the great local lunatic asylum; and when the
inhabitants of the Five Towns say merely 'Pirehill', they mean the
asylum.
'I do declare I can't fancy my food now-a-days,' said Lady Dain,
'and it's all that portrait!' She stared plaintively up at the
immense oil-painting which faced her as she sat at the breakfast-
table in her spacious and opulent dining-room.
Sir Jehoshaphat made no remark.
Despite Lady Dain's animadversions upon it, despite the undoubted
fact that it was generally disliked in the Five Towns, the
portrait had cost a thousand pounds (some said guineas), and
though not yet two years old it was probably worth at least
fifteen hundred in the picture market. For it was a Cressage; and
not only was it a Cressage--it was one of the finest Cressages in
existence.
It marked the summit of Sir Jehoshaphat's career. Sir
Jehoshaphat's career was, perhaps, the most successful and
brilliant in the entire social history of the Five Towns. This
famous man was the principal partner in Dain Brothers. His brother
was dead, but two of Sir Jee's sons were in the firm. Dain
Brothers were the largest manufacturers of cheap earthenware in
the district, catering chiefly for the American and Colonial
buyer. They had an extremely bad reputation for cutting prices.
They were hated by every other firm in the Five Towns, and, to
hear rival manufacturers talk, one would gather the impression
that Sir Jee had acquired a tremendous fortune by systematically
selling goods under cost. They were also hated by between eighteen
and nineteen hundred employees. But such hatred, however virulent,
had not marred the progress of Sir Jee's career.
He had meant to make a name and he had made it. The Five Towns
might laugh at his vulgar snobbishness. The Five Towns might sneer
at his calculated philanthropy. But he was, nevertheless, the
best-known man in the Five Towns, and it was precisely his
snobbishness and his philanthropy which had carried him to the
top. Moreover, he had been the first public man in the Five Towns
to gain a knighthood. The Five Towns could not deny that it was
very proud indeed of this knighthood. The means by which he had
won this distinction were neither here nor there--he had won it.
And was he not the father of his native borough? Had he not been
three times mayor of his native borough? Was not the whole
northern half of the county dotted and spangled by his
benefactions, his institutions, his endowments?
And it could not be denied that he sometimes tickled the Five
Towns as the Five Towns likes being tickled. There was, for
example, the notorious Sneyd incident. Sneyd Hall, belonging to
the Earl of Chell, lies a few miles south of the Five Towns, and
from it the pretty Countess of Chell exercises that condescending
meddlesomeness which so frequently exasperates the Five Towns. Sir
Jee had got his title by the aid of the Countess-'Interfering
Iris', as she is locally dubbed. Shortly afterwards he had
contrived to quarrel with the Countess; and the quarrel was
conducted by Sir Jee as a quarrel between equals, which delighted
the district. Sir Jee's final word in it had been to buy a sizable
tract of land near Sneyd village, just off the Sneyd estate, and
to erect thereon a mansion quite as imposing as Sneyd Hall, and
far more up to date, and to call the mansion Sneyd Castle. A
mighty stroke! Iris was furious; the Earl speechless with fury.
But they could do nothing. Naturally the Five Towns was tickled.
It was apropos of the house-warming of Sneyd Castle, also of the
completion of his third mayoralty, and of the inauguration of the
Dain Technical Institute, that the movement had been started
(primarily by a few toadies) for tendering to Sir Jee a popular
gift worthy to express the profound esteem in which he was
officially held in the Five Towns. It having been generally felt
that the gift should take the form of a portrait, a local
dilettante had suggested Cressage, and when the Five Towns had
inquired into Cressage and discovered that that genius from the
United States was celebrated throughout the civilized world, and
regarded as the equal of Velazquez (whoever Velazquez might be),
and that he had painted half the aristocracy, and that his income
was regal, the suggestion was accepted and Cressage was
approached.
Cressage haughtily consented to paint Sir Jee's portrait on his
usual conditions; namely, that the sitter should go to the little
village in Bedfordshire where Cressage had his principal studio,
and that the painting should be exhibited at the Royal Academy
before being shown anywhere else. (Cressage was an R.A., but no
one thought of putting R.A. after his name. He was so big, that
instead of the Royal Academy conferring distinction on him, he
conferred distinction on the Royal Academy.)
Sir Jee went to Bedfordshire and was rapidly painted, and he came
back gloomy. The presentation committee went to Bedfordshire later
to inspect the portrait, and they, too, came back gloomy.
Then the Academy Exhibition opened, and the portrait, showing Sir
Jee in his robe and chain and in a chair, was instantly hailed as
possibly the most glorious masterpiece of modern times. All the
critics were of one accord. The committee and Sir Jee were
reassured, but only partially, and Sir Jee rather less so than the
committee. For there was something in the enthusiastic criticism
which gravely disturbed him. An enlightened generation, thoroughly
familiar with the dazzling yearly succession of Cressage's
portraits, need not be told what this something was. One critic
wrote that Cressage displayed even more than his 'customary
astounding insight into character....' Another critic wrote that
Cressage's observation was, as usual, 'calmly and coldly hostile'.
Another referred to the 'typical provincial mayor, immortalized
for the diversion of future ages.'
Inhabitants of the Five Towns went to London to see the work for
which they had subscribed, and they saw a mean, little, old man,
with thin lips and a straggling grey beard, and shifty eyes, and
pushful snob written all over him; ridiculous in his gewgaws of
office. When you looked at the picture close to, it was a
meaningless mass of coloured smudges, but when you stood fifteen
feet away from it the portrait was absolutely lifelike, amazing,
miraculous. It was so wondrously lifelike that some of the
inhabitants of the Five Towns burst out laughing. Many people felt
sorry--not for Sir Jee--but for Lady Dain. Lady Dain was beloved
and genuinely respected. She was a simple, homely, sincere woman,
her one weakness being that she had never been able to see through
Sir Jee.
Of course, at the presentation ceremony the portrait had been
ecstatically referred to as a possession precious for ever, and
the recipient and his wife pretended to be overflowing with pure
joy in the ownership of it.
It had been hanging in the dining-room of Sneyd Castle about
sixteen months, when Lady Dain told her husband that it would
ultimately drive her into the lunatic asylum.
'Don't be silly, wife,' said Sir Jee. 'I wouldn't part with that
portrait for ten times what it cost.'
This was, to speak bluntly, a downright lie. Sir Jee secretly
hated the portrait more than anyone hated it. He would have been
almost ready to burn down Sneyd Castle in order to get rid of the
thing. But it happened that on the previous evening, in the
conversation with the magistrates' clerk, his receptive brain had
been visited by a less expensive scheme than burning down the
castle.
Lady Dain sighed.
'Are you going to town early?' she inquired.
'Yes,' he replied. 'I'm on the rota today.'
He was chairman of the borough Bench of magistrates. As he drove
into town he revolved his scheme and thought it wild and
dangerous, but still feasible.
Read next: PART VIII - THE BURGLARY: CHAPTER II
Read previous: PART VII - CHAPTER VERA'S SECOND CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE: CHAPTER IV
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