"English, French, Italian, German," said her mother.
Madame Carre gave Mrs. Rooth a look which expressed irritation at the
recurrence of this announcement. "Does she wish to act in all those
tongues? The phrase-book isn't the comedy!"
"It's only to show you how she has been educated."
"Ah, _chere madame_, there's no education that matters! I mean save the
right one. Your daughter must have a particular form of speech, like me,
like _ces messieurs_."
"You see if I can speak French," said the girl, smiling dimly at her
hostess. She appeared now almost to have collected herself.
"You speak it in perfection."
"And English just as well," said Miss Rooth.
"You oughtn't to be an actress--you ought to be a governess."
"Oh don't tell us that: it's to escape from that!" pleaded Mrs. Rooth.
"I'm very sure your daughter will escape from that," Peter Sherringham
was moved to interpose.
"Oh if _you_ could help her!" said the lady with a world of longing.
"She has certainly all the qualities that strike the eye," Peter
returned.
"You're _most_ kind, sir!" Mrs. Rooth declared, elegantly draping
herself.
"She knows Celimene; I've heard her do Celimene," Gabriel Nash said to
Madame Carre".
"And she knows Juliet, she knows Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra," added Mrs.
Rooth.
"_Voyons_, my dear child, do you wish to work for the French stage or
for the English?" the old actress demanded.
"Ours would have sore need of you, Miss Rooth," Sherringham gallantly
threw off.
"Could you speak to any one in London--could you introduce her?" her
mother eagerly asked.
"Dear madam, I must hear her first, and hear what Madame Carre says."
"She has a voice of rare beauty, and I understand voices," said Mrs.
Rooth.
"Ah then if she has intelligence she has every gift."
"She has a most poetic mind," the old lady went on.
"I should like to paint her portrait; she's made for that," Nick Dormer
ventured to observe to Mrs. Rooth; partly because struck with the girl's
suitability for sitting, partly to mitigate the crudity of inexpressive
spectatorship.
"So all the artists say. I've had three or four heads of her, if you
would like to see them: she has been done in several styles. If you were
to do her I'm sure it would make her celebrated."
"And me too," Nick easily laughed.
"It would indeed--a member of Parliament!" Nash declared.
"Ah, I have the honour----?" murmured Mrs. Rooth, looking gratified and
mystified.
Nick explained that she had no honour at all, and meanwhile Madame Carre
had been questioning the girl "_Chere madame_, I can do nothing with
your daughter: she knows too much!" she broke out. "It's a pity, because
I like to catch them wild."
"Oh she's wild enough, if that's all! And that's the very point, the
question of where to try," Mrs. Rooth went on. "Into what do I launch
her--upon what dangerous stormy sea? I've thought of it so anxiously."
"Try here--try the French public: they're so much the most serious,"
said Gabriel Nash.
"Ah no, try the English: there's such a rare opening!" Sherringham urged
in quick opposition.
"Oh it isn't the public, dear gentlemen. It's the private side, the
other people--it's the life, it's the moral atmosphere."
"_Je ne connais qu'une scene,--la notre_," Madame Carre declared. "I'm
assured by every one who knows that there's no other."
"Very correctly assured," said Mr. Nash. "The theatre in our countries
is puerile and barbarous."
"There's something to be done for it, and perhaps mademoiselle's the
person to do it," Sherringham contentiously suggested.
"Ah but, _en attendant_, what can it do for her?" Madame Carre asked.
"Well, anything I can help to bring about," said Peter Sherringham, more
and more struck with the girl's rich type. Miriam Rooth sat in silence
while this discussion went on, looking from one speaker to the other
with a strange dependent candour.
"Ah, if your part's marked out I congratulate you, mademoiselle!"--and
the old actress underlined the words as she had often underlined others
on the stage. She smiled with large permissiveness on the young
aspirant, who appeared not to understand her. Her tone penetrated,
however, to certain depths in the mother's nature, adding another stir
to agitated waters.
"I feel the responsibility of what she shall find in the life, the
standards, of the theatre," Mrs. Rooth explained. "Where is the purest
tone--where are the highest standards? That's what I ask," the good lady
continued with a misguided intensity which elicited a peal of
unceremonious but sociable laughter from Gabriel Nash.
"The purest tone--_qu'est-ce que c'est que ca_?" Madame Carre demanded
in the finest manner of modern comedy.
"We're very, _very_ respectable," Mrs. Rooth went on, but now smiling
and achieving lightness too.
"What I want is to place my daughter where the conduct--and the picture
of conduct in which she should take part--wouldn't be quite absolutely
dreadful. Now, _chere madame_, how about all that; how about _conduct_
in the French theatre--all the things she should see, the things she
should hear, the things she should learn?"
Her hostess took it, as Sherringham felt, _de tres-haut_. "I don't think
I know what you're talking about. They're the things she may see and
hear and learn everywhere; only they're better done, they're better
said, above all they're better taught. The only conduct that concerns
an, actress, it seems to me, is her own, and the only way for her to
behave herself is not to be a helpless stick. I know no other conduct."
"But there are characters, there are situations, which I don't think I
should like to see _her_ undertake."
"There are many, no doubt, which she would do well to leave alone!"
laughed the Frenchwoman.
"I shouldn't like to see her represent a very bad woman--a _really_ bad
one," Mrs. Rooth serenely pursued.
"Ah in England then, and in your theatre, every one's immaculately good?
Your plays must be even more ingenious than I supposed!"
"We haven't any plays," said Gabriel Nash.
"People will write them for Miss Rooth--it will be a new era,"
Sherringham threw in with wanton, or at least with combative, optimism.
"Will _you_, sir--will you do something? A sketch of one of our grand
English ideals?" the old lady asked engagingly.
"Oh I know what you do with our pieces--to show your superior virtue!"
Madame Carre cried before he had time to reply that he wrote nothing
but diplomatic memoranda. "Bad women? _Je n'ai joue que ca, madame_.
'Really' bad? I tried to make them real!"
"I can say 'L'Aventuriere,'" Miriam interrupted in a cold voice which
seemed to hint at a want of participation in the maternal solicitudes.
"Allow us the pleasure of hearing you then. Madame Carre will give you
the _replique_," said Peter Sherringham.
"Certainly, my child; I can say it without the book," Madame Carre
responded. "Put yourself there--move that chair a little away." She
patted her young visitor, encouraging her to rise, settling with her the
scene they should take, while the three men sprang up to arrange a place
for the performance. Miriam left her seat and looked vaguely about her;
then having taken off her hat and given it to her mother she stood on
the designated spot with her eyes to the ground. Abruptly, however,
instead of beginning the scene, Madame Carre turned to the elder lady
with an air which showed that a rejoinder to this visitor's remarks of a
moment before had been gathering force in her breast.
"You mix things up, _chere madame_, and I have it on my heart to tell
you so. I believe it's rather the case with you other English, and I've
never been able to learn that either your morality or your talent is the
gainer by it. To be too respectable to go where things are done best is
in my opinion to be very vicious indeed; and to do them badly in order
to preserve your virtue is to fall into a grossness more shocking than
any other. To do them well is virtue enough, and not to make a mess of
it the only respectability. That's hard enough to merit Paradise.
Everything else is base humbug! _Voila, chere madame_, the answer I have
for your scruples!"
"It's admirable--admirable; and I am glad my friend Dormer here has had
the great advantage of hearing you utter it!" Nash exclaimed with a free
designation of Nick.
That young man thought it in effect a speech denoting an intelligence of
the question, yet he rather resented the idea that Gabriel should assume
it would strike him as a revelation; and to show his familiarity with
the line of thought it indicated, as well as to play his part
appreciatively in the little circle, he observed to Mrs. Rooth, as if
they might take many things for granted: "In other words, your daughter
must find her safeguard in the artistic conscience." But he had no
sooner spoken than he was struck with the oddity of their discussing so
publicly, and under the poor girl's handsome nose, the conditions which
Miss Rooth might find the best for the preservation of her personal
integrity. However, the anomaly was light and unoppressive--the echoes
of a public discussion of delicate questions seemed to linger so
familiarly in the egotistical little room. Moreover, the heroine of the
occasion evidently was losing her embarrassment; she was the priestess
on the tripod, awaiting the afflatus and thinking only of that. Her
bared head, of which she had changed the position, holding it erect,
while her arms hung at her sides, was admirable; her eyes gazed straight
out of the window and at the houses on the opposite side of the Rue de
Constantinople.
Mrs. Rooth had listened to Madame Carre with startled, respectful
attention, but Nick, considering her, was very sure she hadn't at all
taken in the great artist's little lesson. Yet this didn't prevent her
from exclaiming in answer to himself: "Oh a fine artistic life--what
indeed is more beautiful?"
Peter Sherringham had said nothing; he was watching Miriam and her
attitude. She wore a black dress which fell in straight folds; her face,
under her level brows, was pale and regular--it had a strange, strong,
tragic beauty. "I don't know what's in her," he said to himself;
"nothing, it would seem, from her persistent vacancy. But such a face as
that, such a head, is a fortune!" Madame Carre brought her to book,
giving her the first line of the speech of Clorinde: "_Vous ne me fuyez
pas, mon enfant, aujourd'hui_." But still the girl hesitated, and for an
instant appeared to make a vain, convulsive effort. In this convulsion
she frowned portentously; her low forehead overhung her eyes; the eyes
themselves, in shadow, stared, splendid and cold, and her hands clinched
themselves at her sides. She looked austere and terrible and was during
this moment an incarnation the vividness of which drew from Sherringham
a stifled cry. "_Elle est bien belle--ah ca_," murmured the old
actress; and in the pause which still preceded the issue of sound from
the girl's lips Peter turned to his kinsman and said in a low tone: "You
must paint her just like that."
"Like that?"
"As the Tragic Muse."
She began to speak; a long, strong, colourless voice quavered in her
young throat. She delivered the lines of Clorinde in the admired
interview with Celie, the gem of the third act, with a rude monotony,
and then, gaining confidence, with an effort at modulation which was not
altogether successful and which evidently she felt not to be so. Madame
Carre sent back the ball without raising her hand, repeating the
speeches of Celie, which her memory possessed from their having so often
been addressed to her, and uttering the verses with soft, communicative
art. So they went on through the scene, which, when it was over, had not
precisely been a triumph for Miriam Rooth. Sherringham forbore to look
at Gabriel Nash, and Madame Carre said: "I think you've a voice, _ma
fille_, somewhere or other. We must try and put our hand on it." Then
she asked her what instruction she had had, and the girl, lifting her
eyebrows, looked at her mother while her mother prompted her.
"Mrs. Delamere in London; she was once an ornament of the English stage.
She gives lessons just to a very few; it's a great favour. Such a very
nice person! But above all, Signor Ruggieri--I think he taught us most."
Mrs. Rooth explained that this gentleman was an Italian tragedian, in
Rome, who instructed Miriam in the proper manner of pronouncing his
language and also in the art of declaiming and gesticulating.
"Gesticulating I'll warrant!" declared their hostess. "They mimic as for
the deaf, they emphasise as for the blind. Mrs. Delamere is doubtless an
epitome of all the virtues, but I never heard of her. You travel too
much," Madame Carre went on; "that's very amusing, but the way to study
is to stay at home, to shut yourself up and hammer at your scales." Mrs.
Rooth complained that they had no home to stay at; in reply to which the
old actress exclaimed: "Oh you English, you're _d'une legerete a faire
fremir._ If you haven't a home you must make, or at least for decency
pretend to, one. In our profession it's the first requisite."
"But where? That's what I ask!" said Mrs. Rooth.
"Why not here?" Sherringham threw out.
"Oh here!" And the good lady shook her head with a world of sad
significance.
"Come and live in London and then I shall be able to paint your
daughter," Nick Dormer interposed.
"Is that all it will take, my dear fellow?" asked Gabriel Nash.
"Ah, London's full of memories," Mrs. Rooth went on. "My father had a
great house there--we always came up. But all that's over."
"Study here and then go to London to appear," said Peter, feeling
frivolous even as he spoke.
"To appear in French?"
"No, in the language of Shakespeare."
"But we can't study that here."
"Mr. Sherringham means that he will give you lessons," Madame Carre
explained. "Let me not fail to say it--he's an excellent critic."
"How do you know that--you who're beyond criticism and perfect?" asked
Sherringham: an inquiry to which the answer was forestalled by the
girl's rousing herself to make it public that she could recite the
"Nights" of Alfred de Musset.
"Diable!" said the actress: "that's more than I can! By all means give
us a specimen."
The girl again placed herself in position and rolled out a fragment of
one of the splendid conversations of Musset's poet with his muse--rolled
it loudly and proudly, tossed it and tumbled it about the room. Madame
Carre watched her at first, but after a few moments she shut her eyes,
though the best part of the business was to take in her young
candidate's beauty. Sherringham had supposed Miriam rather abashed by
the flatness of her first performance, but he now saw how little she
could have been aware of this: she was rather uplifted and emboldened.
She made a mush of the divine verses, which in spite of certain
sonorities and cadences, an evident effort to imitate a celebrated
actress, a comrade of Madame Carre, whom she had heard declaim them, she
produced as if she had been dashing blindfold at some playfellow she was
to "catch." When she had finished Madame Carre passed no judgement, only
dropping: "Perhaps you had better say something English." She suggested
some little piece of verse--some fable if there were fables in English.
She appeared but scantily surprised to hear that there were not--it was
a language of which one expected so little. Mrs. Rooth said: "She knows
her Tennyson by heart. I think he's much deeper than La Fontaine"; and
after some deliberation and delay Miriam broke into "The Lotus-Eaters,"
from which she passed directly, almost breathlessly, to "Edward Gray."
Sherringham had by this time heard her make four different attempts, and
the only generalisation very present to him was that she uttered these
dissimilar compositions in exactly the same tone--a solemn, droning,
dragging measure suggestive of an exhortation from the pulpit and
adopted evidently with the "affecting" intention and from a crude idea
of "style." It was all funereal, yet was artlessly rough. Sherringham
thought her English performance less futile than her French, but he
could see that Madame Carre listened to it even with less pleasure. In
the way the girl wailed forth some of her Tennysonian lines he detected
a faint gleam as of something pearly in deep water. But the further she
went the more violently she acted on the nerves of Mr. Gabriel Nash:
that also he could discover from the way this gentleman ended by
slipping discreetly to the window and leaning there with his head out
and his back to the exhibition. He had the art of mute expression; his
attitude said as clearly as possible: "No, no, you can't call me either
ill-mannered or ill-natured. I'm the showman of the occasion, moreover,
and I avert myself, leaving you to judge. If there's a thing in life I
hate it's this idiotic new fashion of the drawing-room recitation and of
the insufferable creatures who practise it, who prevent conversation,
and whom, as they're beneath it, you can't punish by criticism.
Therefore what I'm doing's only too magnanimous--bringing these
benighted women here, paying with my person, stifling my just
repugnance."
While Sherringham judged privately that the manner in which Miss Rooth
had acquitted herself offered no element of interest, he yet remained
aware that something surmounted and survived her failure, something that
would perhaps be worth his curiosity. It was the element of outline and
attitude, the way she stood, the way she turned her eyes, her head, and
moved her limbs. These things held the attention; they had a natural
authority and, in spite of their suggesting too much the school-girl in
the _tableau-vivant_, a "plastic" grandeur. Her face, moreover, grew as
he watched it; something delicate dawned in it, a dim promise of variety
and a touching plea for patience, as if it were conscious of being able
to show in time more shades than the simple and striking gloom which had
as yet mainly graced it. These rather rude physical felicities formed in
short her only mark of a vocation. He almost hated to have to recognise
them; he had seen them so often when they meant nothing at all that he
had come at last to regard them as almost a guarantee of incompetence.
He knew Madame Carre valued them singly so little that she counted them
out in measuring an histrionic nature; when deprived of the escort of
other properties which helped and completed them she almost held them a
positive hindrance to success--success of the only kind she esteemed.
Far oftener than himself she had sat in judgement on young women for
whom hair and eyebrows and a disposition for the statuesque would have
worked the miracle of sanctifying their stupidity if the miracle were
workable. But that particular miracle never was. The qualities she rated
highest were not the gifts but the conquests, the effects the actor had
worked hard for, had dug out of the mine by unwearied study.
Sherringham remembered to have had in the early part of their
acquaintance a friendly dispute with her on this subject, he having been
moved at that time to defend doubtless to excess the cause of the gifts.
She had gone so far as to say that a serious comedian ought to be
ashamed of them--ashamed of resting his case on them; and when
Sherringham had cited the great Rachel as a player whose natural
endowment was rich and who had owed her highest triumphs to it, she had
declared that Rachel was the very instance that proved her point;--a
talent assisted by one or two primary aids, a voice and a portentous
brow, but essentially formed by work, unremitting and ferocious work. "I
don't care a straw for your handsome girls," she said; "but bring me one
who's ready to drudge the tenth part of the way Rachel drudged, and I'll
forgive her her beauty. Of course, _notez bien_, Rachel wasn't a _grosse
bete_: that's a gift if you like!"
Mrs. Rooth, who was evidently very proud of the figure her daughter had
made--her daughter who for all one could tell affected their hostess
precisely as a _grosse bete_--appealed to Madame Carre rashly and
serenely for a verdict; but fortunately this lady's voluble _bonne_ came
rattling in at the same moment with the tea-tray. The old actress busied
herself in dispensing this refreshment, an hospitable attention to her
English visitors, and under cover of the diversion thus obtained, while
the others talked together, Sherringham put her the question: "Well, is
there anything in my young friend?"
"Nothing I can see. She's loud and coarse."
"She's very much afraid. You must allow for that."
"Afraid of me, immensely, but not a bit afraid of her authors--nor of
you!" Madame Carre smiled.
"Aren't you prejudiced by what that fellow Nash has told you?"
"Why prejudiced? He only told me she was very handsome."
"And don't you think her so?"
"Admirable. But I'm not a photographer nor a dressmaker nor a coiffeur.
I can't do anything with 'back hair' nor with a mere big stare."
"The head's very noble," said Peter Sherringham. "And the voice, when
she spoke English, had some sweet tones."
"Ah your English--possibly! All I can say is that I listened to her
conscientiously, and I didn't perceive in what she did a single
_nuance_, a single inflexion or intention. But not one, _mon cher_. I
don't think she's intelligent."
"But don't they often seem stupid at first?"
"Say always!"
"Then don't some succeed--even when they're handsome?"
"When they're handsome they always succeed--in one way or another."
"You don't understand us English," said Peter Sherringham.
Madame Carre drank her tea; then she replied: "Marry her, my son, and
give her diamonds. Make her an ambassadress; she'll look very well."
"She interests you so little that you don't care to do anything for
her?"
"To do anything?"
"To give her a few lessons."
The old actress looked at him a moment; after which, rising from her
place near the table on which the tea had been served, she said to
Miriam Rooth: "My dear child, I give my voice for the _scene anglaise_.
You did the English things best."
"Did I do them well?" asked the girl.
"You've a great deal to learn; but you've rude force. The main things
_sont encore a degager_, but they'll come. You must work."
"I think she has ideas," said Mrs. Rooth.
"She gets them from you," Madame Carre replied.
"I must say that if it's to be _our_ theatre I'm relieved. I do think
ours safer," the good lady continued.
"Ours is dangerous, no doubt."
"You mean you're more severe," said the girl.
"Your mother's right," the actress smiled; "you have ideas."
"But what shall we do then--how shall we proceed?" Mrs. Rooth made this
appeal, plaintively and vaguely, to the three gentlemen; but they had
collected a few steps off and were so occupied in talk that it failed to
reach them.
"Work--work--work!" exclaimed the actress.
"In English I can play Shakespeare. I want to play Shakespeare," Miriam
made known.
"That's fortunate, as in English you haven't any one else to play."
"But he's so great--and he's so pure!" said Mrs. Rooth.
"That indeed seems the saving of you," Madame Carre returned.
"You think me actually pretty bad, don't you?" the girl demanded with
her serious face.
"_Mon Dieu, que vous dirai-je?_ Of course you're rough; but so was I at
your age. And if you find your voice it may carry you far. Besides, what
does it matter what I think? How can I judge for your English public?"
"How shall I find my voice?" asked Miriam Rooth.
"By trying. _Il n'y a que ca_. Work like a horse, night and day.
Besides, Mr. Sherringham, as he says, will help you."
That gentleman, hearing his name, turned round and the girl appealed to
him. "Will you help me really?"
"To find her voice," said Madame Carre.
"The voice, when it's worth anything, comes from the heart; so I suppose
that's where to look for it," Gabriel Nash suggested.
"Much you know; you haven't got any!" Miriam retorted with the first
scintillation of gaiety she had shown on this occasion.
"Any voice, my child?" Mr. Nash inquired.
"Any heart--or any manners!"
Peter Sherringham made the secret reflexion that he liked her better
lugubrious, as the note of pertness was not totally absent from her mode
of emitting these few words. He was irritated, moreover, for in the
brief conference he had just had with the young lady's introducer he had
had to meet the rather difficult call of speaking of her hopefully. Mr.
Nash had said with his bland smile, "And what impression does my young
friend make?"--in respect to which Peter's optimism felt engaged by an
awkward logic. He answered that he recognised promise, though he did
nothing of the sort;--at the same time that the poor girl, both with the
exaggerated "points" of her person and the vanity of her attempt at
expression, constituted a kind of challenge, struck him as a subject for
inquiry, a problem, an explorable tract. She was too bad to jump at and
yet too "taking"--perhaps after all only vulgarly--to overlook,
especially when resting her tragic eyes on him with the trust of her
deep "Really?" This note affected him as addressed directly to his
honour, giving him a chance to brave verisimilitude, to brave ridicule
even a little, in order to show in a special case what he had always
maintained in general, that the direction of a young person's studies
for the stage may be an interest of as high an order as any other
artistic appeal.
"Mr. Nash has rendered us the great service of introducing us to Madame
Carre, and I'm sure we're immensely indebted to him," Mrs. Rooth said to
her daughter with an air affectionately corrective.
"But what good does that do us?" the girl asked, smiling at the actress
and gently laying her finger-tips upon her hand. "Madame Carre listens
to me with adorable patience, and then sends me about my business--ah in
the prettiest way in the world."
"Mademoiselle, you're not so rough; the tone of that's very _juste. A la
bonne heure_; work--work!" the actress cried. "There was an inflexion
there--or very nearly. Practise it till you've got it."
"Come and practise it to _me_, if your mother will be so kind as to
bring you," said Peter Sherringham.
"Do you give lessons--do you understand?" Miriam asked.
"I'm an old play-goer and I've an unbounded belief in my own judgement."
"'Old,' sir, is too much to say," Mrs. Rooth remonstrated. "My daughter
knows your high position, but she's very direct. You'll always find her
so. Perhaps you'll say there are less honourable faults. We'll come to
see you with pleasure. Oh I've been at the embassy when I was her age.
Therefore why shouldn't she go to-day? That was in Lord Davenant's
time."
"A few people are coming to tea with me to-morrow. Perhaps you'll come
then at five o'clock."
"It will remind me of the dear old times," said Mrs. Rooth.
"Thank you; I'll try and do better to-morrow," Miriam professed very
sweetly.
"You do better every minute!" Sherringham returned--and he looked at
their hostess in support of this declaration.
"She's finding her voice," Madame Carre acknowledged.
"She's finding a friend!" Mrs. Rooth threw in.
"And don't forget, when you come to London, my hope that you'll come and
see _me_," Nick Dormer said to the girl. "To try and paint you--that
would do me good!"
"She's finding even two," said Madame Carre.
"It's to make up for one I've lost!" And Miriam looked with very good
stage-scorn at Gabriel Nash. "It's he who thinks I'm bad."
"You say that to make me drive you home; you know it will," Nash
returned.
"We'll all take you home; why not?" Sherringham asked.
Madame Carre looked at the handsome girl, handsomer than ever at this
moment, and at the three young men who had taken their hats and stood
ready to accompany her. A deeper expression came for an instant into her
hard, bright eyes. "_Ah la jeunesse_!" she sighed. "You'd always have
that, my child, if you were the greatest goose on earth!"