"What does any one do with spectacles? I look at it. I see."
"You're full of contradictions and inconsistencies," Nick however
objected. "You described yourself to me half an hour ago as an apostle
of beauty."
"Where's the inconsistency? I do it in the broad light of day, whatever
I do: that's virtually what I meant. If I look at the spectacle of the
world I look in preference at what's charming in it. Sometimes I've to
go far to find it--very likely; but that's just what I do. I go far--as
far as my means permit me. Last year I heard of such a delightful little
spot; a place where a wild fig-tree grows in the south wall, the outer
side, of an old Spanish city. I was told it was a deliciously brown
corner--the sun making it warm in winter. As soon as I could I went
there."
"And what did you do?"
"I lay on the first green grass--I liked it."
"If that sort of thing's all you accomplish you're not encouraging."
"I accomplish my happiness--it seems to me that's something. I have
feelings, I have sensations: let me tell you that's not so common. It's
rare to have them, and if you chance to have them it's rare not to be
ashamed of them. I go after them--when I judge they won't hurt any one."
"You're lucky to have money for your travelling expenses," said Nick.
"No doubt, no doubt; but I do it very cheap. I take my stand on my
nature, on my fortunate character. I'm not ashamed of it, I don't think
it's so horrible, my character. But we've so befogged and befouled the
whole question of liberty, of spontaneity, of good humour and
inclination and enjoyment, that there's nothing that makes people stare
so as to see one natural."
"You're always thinking too much of 'people.'"
"They say I think too little," Gabriel smiled.
"Well, I've agreed to stand for Harsh," said Nick with a roundabout
transition.
"It's you then who are lucky to have money."
"I haven't," Nick explained. "My expenses are to be paid."
"Then you too must think of 'people.'"
Nick made no answer to this, but after a moment said: "I wish very much
you had more to show for it."
"To show for what?"
"Your little system--the aesthetic life."
Nash hesitated, tolerantly, gaily, as he often did, with an air of being
embarrassed to choose between several answers, any one of which would be
so right. "Oh having something to show's such a poor business. It's a
kind of confession of failure."
"Yes, you're more affected than anything else," said Nick impatiently.
"No, my dear boy, I'm more good-natured: don't I prove it? I'm rather
disappointed to find you not more accessible to esoteric doctrine. But
there is, I confess, another plane of intelligence, honourable, and very
honourable, in its way, from which it may legitimately appear important
to have something to show. If you must confine yourself to that plane I
won't refuse you my sympathy. After all that's what I have to show! But
the degree of my sympathy must of course depend on the nature of the
demonstration you wish to make."
"You know it very well--you've guessed it," Nick returned, looking
before him in a conscious, modest way which would have been called
sheepish had he been a few years younger.
"Ah you've broken the scent with telling me you're going back to the
House of Commons," said Nash.
"No wonder you don't make it out! My situation's certainly absurd
enough. What I really hanker for is to be a painter; and of portraits,
on the whole, I think. That's the abject, crude, ridiculous fact. In
this out-of-the-way corner, at the dead of night, in lowered tones, I
venture to disclose it to you. Isn't that the aesthetic life?"
"Do you know how to paint?" asked Nash.
"Not in the least. No element of burlesque is therefore wanting to my
position."
"That makes no difference. I'm so glad."
"So glad I don't know how?"
"So glad of it all. Yes, that only makes it better. You're a delightful
case, and I like delightful cases. We must see it through. I rejoice I
met you again."
"Do you think I can do anything?" Nick inquired.
"Paint good pictures? How can I tell without seeing some of your work?
Doesn't it come back to me that at Oxford you used to sketch very
prettily? But that's the last thing that matters."
"What does matter then?" Nick asked with his eyes on his companion.
"To be on the right side--on the side of the 'fine.'"
"There'll be precious little of the 'fine' if I produce nothing but
daubs."
"Ah you cling to the old false measure of success! I must cure you of
that. There'll be the beauty of having been disinterested and
independent; of having taken the world in the free, brave, personal
way."
"I shall nevertheless paint decently if I can," Nick presently said.
"I'm almost sorry! It will make your case less clear, your example less
grand."
"My example will be grand enough, with the fight I shall have to make."
"The fight? With whom?"
"With myself first of all. I'm awfully against it."
"Ah but you'll have me on the other side," Nash smiled.
"Well, you'll have more than a handful to meet--everything, every one
that belongs to me, that touches me near or far; my family, my blood, my
heredity, my traditions, my promises, my circumstances, my prejudices;
my little past--such as it is; my great future--such as it has been
supposed it may be."
"I see, I see. It's splendid!" Nash exclaimed. "And Mrs. Dallow into the
bargain," he added.
"Yes, Mrs. Dallow if you like."
"Are you in love with her?"
"Not in the least."
"Well, she is with you--so I understood."
"Don't say that," said Nick Dormer with sudden sternness.
"Ah you are, you are!" his companion pronounced, judging apparently from
this accent.
"I don't know _what_ I am--heaven help me!" Nick broke out, tossing his
hat down on his little tin table with vehemence. "I'm a freak of nature
and a sport of the mocking gods. Why should they go out of their way to
worry me? Why should they do everything so inconsequent, so improbable,
so preposterous? It's the vulgarest practical joke. There has never been
anything of the sort among us; we're all Philistines to the core, with
about as much esthetic sense as that hat. It's excellent soil--I don't
complain of it--but not a soil to grow that flower. From where the devil
then has the seed been dropped? I look back from generation to
generation; I scour our annals without finding the least little
sketching grandmother, any sign of a building or versifying or
collecting or even tulip-raising ancestor. They were all as blind as
bats, and none the less happy for that. I'm a wanton variation, an
unaccountable monster. My dear father, rest his soul, went through life
without a suspicion that there's anything in it that can't be boiled
into blue-books, and became in that conviction a very distinguished
person. He brought me up in the same simplicity and in the hope of the
same eminence. It would have been better if I had remained so. I think
it's partly your fault that I haven't," Nick went on. "At Oxford you
were very bad company for me--my evil genius: you opened my eyes, you
communicated the poison. Since then, little by little, it has been
working within me; vaguely, covertly, insensibly at first, but during
the last year or two with violence, pertinacity, cruelty. I've resorted
to every antidote in life; but it's no use--I'm stricken. _C'est Venus
toute entiere a sa proie attachee_--putting Venus for 'art.' It tears me
to pieces as I may say."
"I see, I follow you," said Nash, who had listened to this recital with
radiant interest and curiosity. "And that's why you are going to stand."
"Precisely--it's an antidote. And at present you're another."
"Another?"
"That's why I jumped at you. A bigger dose of you may disagree with me
to that extent that I shall either die or get better."
"I shall control the dilution," said Nash. "Poor fellow--if you're
elected!" he added.
"Poor fellow either way. You don't know the atmosphere in which I live,
the horror, the scandal my apostasy would provoke, the injury and
suffering it would inflict. I believe it would really kill my mother.
She thinks my father's watching me from the skies."
"Jolly to make him jump!" Nash suggested.
"He'd jump indeed--come straight down on top of me. And then the
grotesqueness of it--to _begin_ all of a sudden at my age."
"It's perfect indeed, it's too lovely a case," Nash raved.
"Think how it sounds--a paragraph in the London papers: 'Mr. Nicholas
Dormer, M. P. for Harsh and son of the late Right Honourable and so
forth and so forth, is about to give up his seat and withdraw from
public life in order to devote himself to the practice of
portrait-painting--and with the more commendable perseverance by reason
of all the dreadful time he has lost. Orders, in view of this,
respectfully solicited.'"
"The nineteenth century's a sweeter time than I thought," said Nash.
"It's the portrait then that haunts your dreams?"
"I wish you could see. You must of course come immediately to my place
in London."
"Perfidious wretch, you're capable of having talent--which of course
will spoil everything!" Gabriel wailed.
"No, I'm too old and was too early perverted. It's too late to go
through the mill."
"You make _me_ young! Don't miss your election at your peril. Think of
the edification."
"The edification--?"
"Of your throwing it all up the next moment."
"That would be pleasant for Mr. Carteret," Nick brooded.
"Mr. Carteret--?"
"A dear old family friend who'll wish to pay my agent's bill."
"Serve him right for such depraved tastes."
"You do me good," said Nick as he rose and turned away.
"Don't call me useless then."
"Ah but not in the way you mean. It's only if I don't get in that I
shall perhaps console myself with the brush," Nick returned with
humorous, edifying elegance while they retraced their steps.
"For the sake of all the muses then don't stand. For you _will_ get in."
"Very likely. At any rate I've promised."
"You've promised Mrs. Dallow?"
"It's her place--she'll _put_ me in," Nick said.
"Baleful woman! But I'll pull you out!" cried Gabriel Nash.
X
For several days Peter Sherringham had business in hand which left him
neither time nor freedom of mind to occupy himself actively with the
ladies of the Hotel de la Garonne. There were moments when they brushed
across his memory, but their passage was rapid and not lighted with
complacent attention; for he shrank from bringing to the proof the
question of whether Miriam would be an interest or only a bore. She had
left him after their second meeting with a quickened sympathy, but in
the course of a few hours that flame had burned dim. Like most other men
he was a mixture of impulse and reflexion, but was peculiar in this,
that thinking things over almost always made him think less
conveniently. He found illusions necessary, so that in order to keep an
adequate number going he often forbade himself any excess of that
exercise. Mrs. Rooth and her daughter were there and could certainly be
trusted to make themselves felt. He was conscious of their anxiety and
their calculations as of a frequent oppression, and knew that whatever
results might ensue he should have to do the costly thing for them. An
idea of tenacity, of worrying feminine duration, associated itself with
their presence; he would have assented with a silent nod to the
proposition--enunciated by Gabriel Nash--that he was saddled with them.
Remedies hovered before him, but these figured also at the same time as
complications; ranging vaguely from the expenditure of money to the
discovery that he was in love. This latter accident would be
particularly tedious; he had a full perception of the arts by which the
girl's mother might succeed in making it so. It wouldn't be a
compensation for trouble, but a trouble which in itself would require
compensations. Would that balm spring from the spectacle of the young
lady's genius? The genius would have to be very great to justify a
rising young diplomatist in making a fool of himself.
With the excuse of pressing work he put off Miss Rooth from day to day,
and from day to day he expected to hear her knock at his door. It would
be time enough when they ran him to earth again; and he was unable to
see how after all he could serve them even then. He had proposed
impetuously a course of the theatres; but that would be a considerable
personal effort now that the summer was about to begin--a free bid for
bad air, stale pieces, and tired actors. When, however, more than a week
had elapsed without a reminder of his neglected promise it came over him
that he must himself in honour give a sign. There was a delicacy in such
unexpected and such difficult discretion--he was touched by being let
alone. The flurry of work at the embassy was over and he had time to ask
himself what in especial he should do. He wanted something definite to
suggest before communicating with the Hotel de la Garonne.
As a consequence of this speculation he went back to Madame Carre to ask
her to reconsider her stern judgement and give the young English
lady--to oblige him--a dozen lessons of the sort she knew so well how to
give. He was aware that this request scarcely stood on its feet; for in
the first place Madame Carre never reconsidered when once she had got
her impression, and in the second never wasted herself on subjects whom
nature had not formed to do her honour. He knew his asking her to strain
a point to please him would give her a false idea--save that for that
matter she had it already--of his relations, actual or prospective, with
the girl; but he decided he needn't care for this, since Miriam herself
probably wouldn't care. What he had mainly in mind was to say to the old
actress that she had been mistaken--the _jeune Anglaise_ wasn't such a
_grue_. This would take some courage, but it would also add to the
amusement of his visit.
He found her at home, but as soon as he had expressed his conviction she
began: "Oh, your _jeune Anglaise_, I know a great deal more about her
than you! She has been back to see me twice; she doesn't go the longest
way round. She charges me like a grenadier and asks me to give
her--guess a little what!--private recitations all to herself. If she
doesn't succeed it won't be for want of knowing how to thump at doors.
The other day when I came in she was waiting for me; she had been there
two hours. My private recitations--have you an idea what people pay for
them?"
"Between artists, you know, there are easier conditions," Sherringham
laughed.
"How do I know if she's an artist? She won't open her mouth to me; what
she wants is to make me say things to _her_. She does make me--I don't
know how--and she sits there gaping at me with her big eyes. They look
like open pockets!"
"I daresay she'll profit by it," said Sherringham.
"I daresay _you_ will! Her face is stupid while she watches me, and when
she has tired me out she simply walks away. However, as she comes
back--!"
Madame Carre paused a moment, listened and then cried: "Didn't I tell
you?"
Sherringham heard a parley of voices in the little antechamber, and the
next moment the door was pushed open and Miriam Rooth bounded into the
room. She was flushed and breathless, without a smile, very direct.
"Will you hear me to-day? I know four things," she immediately broke
out. Then seeing Sherringham she added in the same brisk, earnest tone,
as if the matter were of the highest importance: "Oh how d'ye do? I'm
very glad you're here." She said nothing else to him than this, appealed
to him in no way, made no allusion to his having neglected her, but
addressed herself to Madame Carre as if he had not been there; making no
excuses and using no flattery; taking rather a tone of equal
authority--all as if the famous artist had an obvious duty toward her.
This was another variation Peter thought; it differed from each of the
attitudes in which he had previously seen her. It came over him suddenly
that so far from there being any question of her having the histrionic
nature she simply had it in such perfection that she was always acting;
that her existence was a series of parts assumed for the moment, each
changed for the next, before the perpetual mirror of some curiosity or
admiration or wonder--some spectatorship that she perceived or imagined
in the people about her. Interested as he had ever been in the
profession of which she was potentially an ornament, this idea startled
him by its novelty and even lent, on the spot, a formidable, a really
appalling character to Miriam Rooth. It struck him abruptly that a woman
whose only being was to "make believe," to make believe she had any and
every being you might like and that would serve a purpose and produce a
certain effect, and whose identity resided in the continuity of her
personations, so that she had no moral privacy, as he phrased it to
himself, but lived in a high wind of exhibition, of figuration--such a
woman was a kind of monster in whom of necessity there would be nothing
to "be fond" of, because there would be nothing to take hold of. He felt
for a moment how simple he had been not to have achieved before this
analysis of the actress. The girl's very face made it vivid to him
now--the discovery that she positively had no countenance of her own,
but only the countenance of the occasion, a sequence, a variety--capable
possibly of becoming immense--of representative movements. She was
always trying them, practising them, for her amusement or profit,
jumping from one to the other and extending her range; and this would
doubtless be her occupation more and more as she acquired ease and
confidence. The expression that came nearest belonging to her, as it
were, was the one that came nearest being a blank--an air of inanity
when she forgot herself in some act of sincere attention. Then her eye
was heavy and her mouth betrayed a commonness; though it was perhaps
just at such a moment that the fine line of her head told most. She had
looked slightly _bete_ even when Sherringham, on their first meeting at
Madame Carre's, said to Nick Dormer that she was the image of the Tragic
Muse.
Now, at any rate, he seemed to see that she might do what she liked with
her face. It was an elastic substance, an element of gutta-percha, like
the flexibility of the gymnast, the lady at the music-hall who is shot
from the mouth of a cannon. He winced a little at this coarser view of
the actress; he had somehow always looked more poetically at that
priestess of art. Yet what was she, the priestess, when one came to
think of it, but a female gymnast, a mountebank at higher wages? She
didn't literally hang by her heels from a trapeze and hold a fat man in
her teeth, but she made the same use of her tongue, of her eyes, of the
imitative trick, that her muscular sister made of leg and jaw. It was an
odd circumstance that Miss Rooth's face seemed to him to-day a finer
instrument than old Madame Carre's. It was doubtless that the girl's was
fresh and strong and had a future in it, while poor Madame Carre's was
worn and weary and had only a past.
The old woman said something, half in jest, half in real resentment,
about the brutality of youth while Miriam went to a mirror and quickly
took off her hat, patting and arranging her hair as a preliminary to
making herself heard. Sherringham saw with surprise and amusement that
the keen Frenchwoman, who had in her long life exhausted every
adroitness, was in a manner helpless and coerced, obliging all in spite
of herself. Her young friend had taken but a few days and a couple of
visits to become a successful force; she had imposed herself, and Madame
Carre, while she laughed--yet looked terrible too, with such high
artifices of eye and gesture--was reduced to the last line of defence;
that of pronouncing her coarse and clumsy, saying she might knock her
down, but that this proved nothing. She spoke jestingly enough not to
offend, but her manner betrayed the irritation of an intelligent woman
who at an advanced age found herself for the first time failing to
understand. What she didn't understand was the kind of social product
thus presented to her by Gabriel Nash; and this suggested to Sherringham
that the _jeune Anglaise_ was perhaps indeed rare, a new type, as Madame
Carre must have seen innumerable varieties. He saw the girl was
perfectly prepared to be abused and that her indifference to what might
be thought of her discretion was a proof of life, health, and spirit,
the insolence of conscious resources.
When she had given herself a touch at the glass she turned round, with a
rapid "_Ecoutez maintenant_!" and stood leaning a moment--slightly
lowered and inclined backward, her hands behind her and supporting
her--on the _console_ before the mirror. She waited an instant, turning
her eyes from one of her companions to the other as to take possession
of them--an eminently conscious, intentional proceeding, which made
Sherringham ask himself what had become of her former terror and if that
and her tears had all been a comedy: after which, abruptly straightening
herself, she began to repeat a short French poem, an ingenious thing of
the day, that she had induced Madame Carre to say over to her. She had
learned it, practised it, rehearsed it to her mother, and had now been
childishly eager to show what she could do with it. What she mainly did
was to reproduce with a crude fidelity, but in extraordinary detail, the
intonations, the personal quavers and cadences of her model.
"How bad you make me seem to myself and if I were you how much better I
should say it!" was Madame Carre's first criticism.
Miriam allowed her, however, little time to develop it, for she broke
out, at the shortest intervals, with the several other specimens of
verse to which the old actress had handed her the key. They were all
fine lyrics, of tender or ironic intention, by contemporary poets, but
depending for effect on taste and art, a mastery of the rare shade and
the right touch, in the interpreter. Miriam had gobbled them up, and she
gave them forth in the same way as the first, with close, rude,
audacious mimicry. There was a moment for Sherringham when it might have
been feared their hostess would see in the performance a designed
burlesque of her manner, her airs and graces, her celebrated simpers and
grimaces, so extravagant did it all cause these refinements to appear.
When it was over the old woman said, "Should you like now to hear how
_you_ do?" and, without waiting for an answer, phrased and trilled the
last of the pieces, from beginning to end, exactly as her visitor had
done, making this imitation of an imitation the drollest thing
conceivable. If she had suffered from the sound of the girl's echo it
was a perfect revenge. Miriam had dropped on a sofa, exhausted, and she
stared at first, flushed and wild; then she frankly gave way to
pleasure, to interest and large laughter. She said afterwards, to defend
herself, that the verses in question, and indeed all those she had
recited, were of the most difficult sort: you had to do them; they
didn't do themselves--they were things in which the _gros moyens_ were
of no avail.
"Ah my poor child, your means are all _gros moyens_; you appear to have
no others," Madame Carre replied. "You do what you can, but there are
people like that; it's the way they're made. They can never come nearer
to fine truth, to the just indication; shades don't exist for them, they
don't see certain differences. It was to show you a difference that I
repeated that thing as you repeat it, as you represent my doing it. If
you're struck with the little the two ways have in common so much the
better. But you seem to me terribly to _alourdir_ everything you touch."
Peter read into this judgement a deep irritation--Miriam clearly set the
teeth of her instructress on edge. She acted on her nerves, was made up
of roughnesses and thicknesses unknown hitherto to her fine,
free-playing finger-tips. This exasperation, however, was a degree of
flattery; it was neither indifference nor simple contempt; it
acknowledged a mystifying reality in the _jeune Anglaise_ and even a
shade of importance. The latter remarked, serenely enough, that the
things she wanted most to do were just those that were not for the
_gros moyens_, the vulgar obvious dodges, the starts and shouts that any
one could think of and that the _gros public_ liked. She wanted to do
what was most difficult, and to plunge into it from the first; and she
explained as if it were a discovery of her own that there were two kinds
of scenes and speeches: those which acted themselves, of which the
treatment was plain, the only way, so that you had just to take it; and
those open to interpretation, with which you had to fight every step,
rendering, arranging, doing the thing according to your idea. Some of
the most effective passages and the most celebrated and admired, like
the frenzy of Juliet with her potion, were of the former sort; but it
was the others she liked best.
Madame Carre received this revelation good-naturedly enough, considering
its want of freshness, and only laughed at the young lady for looking so
nobly patronising while she gave it. Her laughter appeared partly
addressed to the good faith with which Miriam described herself as
preponderantly interested in the subtler problems of her art.
Sherringham was charmed with the girl's pluck--if it was pluck and not
mere density; the stout patience with which she submitted, for a
purpose, to the old woman's rough usage. He wanted to take her away, to
give her a friendly caution, to advise her not to become a bore, not to
expose herself. But she held up her beautiful head as to show how little
she cared at present for any exposure, and that (it was half
coarseness--Madame Carre was so far right--and half fortitude) she had
no intention of coming away so long as; there was anything to be picked
up. She sat and still she sat, challenging her hostess with every sort
of question--some reasonable, some ingenious, some strangely futile and
some highly indiscreet; but all with the effect that, contrary to
Peter's expectation, their distinguished friend warmed to the work of
answering and explaining, became interested, was content to keep her and
to talk. Yes, she took her ease; she relieved herself, with the rare
cynicism of the artist--all the crudity, the irony and intensity of a
discussion of esoteric things--of personal mysteries, of methods and
secrets. It was the oddest hour our young man had ever spent, even in
the course of investigations which had often led him into the _cuisine_,
the distillery or back shop, of the admired profession. He got up
several times to come away; then he remained, partly in order not to
leave Miriam alone with her terrible initiatress, partly because he was
both amused and edified, and partly because Madame Carre held him by the
appeal of her sharp, confidential, old eyes, addressing her talk to
himself, with Miriam but a pretext and subject, a vile illustration. She
undressed this young lady, as it were, from head to foot, turned her
inside out, weighed and measured and sounded her: it was all, for
Sherringham, a new revelation of the point to which, in her profession
and nation, an intelligence of the business, a ferocious analysis, had
been carried and a special vocabulary developed. What struck him above
all was the way she knew her grounds and reasons, so that everything was
sharp and clear in her mind and lay under her hand. If she had rare
perceptions she had traced them to their source; she could give an
account of what she did; she knew perfectly why, could explain it,
defend it, amplify it, fight for it: all of which was an intellectual
joy to her, allowing her a chance to abound and insist and discriminate.
There was a kind of cruelty or at least of hardness in it all, to poor
Peter's shy English sense, that sense which can never really reconcile
itself to any question of method and form, and has extraneous sentiments
to "square," to pacify with compromises and superficialities, the
general plea for innocence in everything and often the flagrant proof of
it. In theory there was nothing he valued more than just such a logical
passion as Madame Carre's, but it was apt in fact, when he found himself
at close quarters with it, to appear an ado about nothing.
If the old woman was hard it was not that many of her present
conclusions about the _jeune Anglaise_ were not indulgent, but that she
had a vision of the great manner, of right and wrong, of the just and
the false, so high and religious that the individual was nothing before
it--a prompt and easy sacrifice. It made our friend uncomfortable, as he
had been made uncomfortable by certain _feuilletons_, reviews of the
theatres in the Paris newspapers, which he was committed to thinking
important but of which, when they were very good, he was rather ashamed.
When they were very good, that is when they were very thorough, they
were very personal, as was inevitable in dealing with the most personal
of the arts: they went into details; they put the dots on the _i_'s;
they discussed impartially the qualities of appearance, the physical
gifts of the poor aspirant, finding them in some cases reprehensibly
inadequate Peter could never rid himself of a dislike to these
pronouncements; in the case of the actresses especially they struck him
as brutal and offensive--unmanly as launched by an ensconced,
moustachioed critic over a cigar. At the same time he was aware of the
dilemma (he hated it; it made him blush still more) in which his
objection lodged him. If one was right in caring for the actor's art one
ought to have been interested in every honest judgement of it, which,
given the peculiar conditions, would be useful in proportion as it
should be free. If the criticism that recognised frankly these
conditions seemed an inferior or an unholy thing, then what was to be
said for the art itself? What an implication, if the criticism was
tolerable only so long as it was worthless--so long as it remained vague
and timid! This was a knot Peter had never straightened out: he
contented himself with feeling that there was no reason a theatrical
critic shouldn't be a gentleman, at the same time that he often dubbed
it an odious trade, which no gentleman could possibly follow. The best
of the fraternity, so conspicuous in Paris, were those who didn't follow
it--those who, while pretending to write about the stage, wrote about
everything else.
It was as if Madame Carre, in pursuance of her inflamed sense that the
art was everything and the individual nothing save as he happened to
serve it, had said: "Well, if she _will_ have it she shall; she shall
know what she's in for, what I went through, battered and broken in as
we all have been--all who are worthy, who have had the honour. She shall
know the real point of view." It was as if she were still beset with
Mrs. Rooth's twaddle and muddle, her hypocrisy, her idiotic
scruples--something she felt all need to belabour, to trample on. Miriam
took it all as a bath, a baptism, with shuddering joy and gleeful
splashes; staring, wondering, sometimes blushing and failing to follow,
but not shrinking nor wounded; laughing, when convicted, at her own
expense and feeling evidently that this at last was the high cold air of
art, an initiation, a discipline that nothing could undo. Sherringham
said he would see her home--he wanted to talk to her and she must walk
away with him. "And it's understood then she may come back," he added to
Madame Carre. "It's _my_ affair of course. You'll take an interest in
her for a month or two; she'll sit at your feet."
The old actress had an admirable shrug. "Oh I'll knock her about--she
seems stout enough!"