The night Peter Sherringham walked away from Balaklava Place with
Gabriel Nash the talk of the two men directed itself, as was natural at
the time, to the question of Miriam's future fame and the pace, as Nash
called it, at which she would go. Critical spirits as they both were,
and one of them as dissimulative in passion as the other was paradoxical
in the absence of it, they yet took her career for granted as completely
as the simple-minded, a pair of hot spectators in the pit, might have
done, and exchanged observations on the assumption that the only
uncertain element would be the pace. This was a proof of general
subjugation. Peter wished not to show, yet wished to know, and in the
restlessness of his anxiety was ready even to risk exposure, great as
the sacrifice might be of the imperturbable, urbane scepticism most
appropriate to a secretary of embassy. He couldn't rid himself of the
sense that Nash had got up earlier than he, had had opportunities of
contact in days already distant, the days of Mrs. Rooth's hungry foreign
rambles. Something of authority and privilege stuck to him from this,
and it made Sherringham still more uncomfortable when he was most
conscious that, at the best, even the trained diplomatic mind would
never get a grasp of Miriam as a whole. She was constructed to revolve
like the terraqueous globe; some part or other of her was always out of
sight or in shadow.
Peter talked to conceal his feelings, and, like many a man practising
that indirectness, rather lost himself in the wood. They agreed that,
putting strange accidents aside, the girl would go further than any one
had gone in England within the memory of man; and that it was a pity, as
regards marking the comparison, that for so long no one had gone any
distance worth speaking of. They further agreed that it would naturally
seem absurd to any one who didn't know, their prophesying such big
things on such small evidence; and they agreed lastly that the absurdity
quite vanished as soon as the prophets knew as _they_ knew. Their
knowledge--they quite recognised this--was simply confidence raised to a
high point, the communication of their young friend's own confidence.
The conditions were enormously to make, but it was of the very essence
of Miriam's confidence that she would make them. The parts, the plays,
the theatres, the "support," the audiences, the critics, the money were
all to be found, but she cast a spell that prevented this from seeming a
serious hitch. One mightn't see from one day to the other what she would
do or how she would do it, but this wouldn't stay her steps--she would
none the less go on. She would have to construct her own road, as it
were, but at the worst there would only be delays in making it. These
delays would depend on the hardness of the stones she had to break.
As Peter had noted, you never knew where to "have" Gabriel Nash; a truth
exemplified in his unexpected delight at the prospect of Miriam's
drawing forth the modernness of the age. You might have thought he would
loathe that modernness; but he had a joyous, amused, amusing vision of
it--saw it as something huge and fantastically vulgar. Its vulgarity
would rise to the grand style, like that of a London railway station,
and the publicity achieved by their charming charge be as big as the
globe itself. All the machinery was ready, the platform laid; the
facilities, the wires and bells and trumpets, the roaring, deafening
newspaperism of the period--its most distinctive sign--were waiting for
her, their predestined mistress, to press her foot on the spring and set
them all in motion. Gabriel brushed in a large, bright picture of her
progress through the time and round the world, round it and round it
again, from continent to continent and clime to clime; with populations
and deputations, reporters and photographers, placards and interviews
and banquets, steamers, railways, dollars, diamonds, speeches and
artistic ruin all jumbled into her train. Regardless of expense the
spectacle would be and thrilling, though somewhat monotonous, the
drama--a drama more bustling than any she would put on the stage and a
spectacle that would beat everything for scenery. In the end her divine
voice would crack, screaming to foreign ears and antipodal barbarians,
and her clever manner would lose all quality, simplified to a few
unmistakable knock-down dodges. Then she would be at the fine climax of
life and glory, still young and insatiate, but already coarse, hard, and
raddled, with nothing left to do and nothing left to do it with, the
remaining years all before her and the _raison d'etre_ all behind. It
would be splendid, dreadful, grotesque.
"Oh, she'll have some good years--they'll be worth having," Peter
insisted as they went. "Besides, you see her too much as a humbug and
too little as a real producer. She has ideas--great ones; she loves the
thing for itself. That may keep a woman serious."
"Her greatest idea must always be to show herself, and fortunately she
has a great quantity of that treasure to show. I think of her absolutely
as a real producer, but as a producer whose production is her own
person. No 'person,' even as fine a one as hers, will stand that for
more than an hour, so that humbuggery has very soon to lend a hand.
However," Nash continued, "if she's a fine humbug it will do as well, it
will perfectly suit the time. We can all be saved by vulgarity; that's
the solvent of all difficulties and the blessing of this delightful age.
One doesn't die of it--save in soul and sense: one dies only of minding
it. Therefore let no man despair--a new hope has dawned."
"She'll do her work like any other worker, with the advantage over many
that her talent's rare," Peter obliquely answered. "Compared with the
life of many women that's security and sanity of the highest order. Then
she can't help her beauty. You can't vulgarise that."
"Oh, can't you?" Gabriel cried.
"It will abide with her till the day of her death. It isn't a mere
superficial freshness. She's very noble."
"Yes, that's the pity of it," said Nash. "She's a big more or less
directed force, and I quite admit that she'll do for a while a lot of
good. She'll have brightened up the world for a great many people--have
brought the ideal nearer to them and held it fast for an hour with its
feet on earth and its great wings trembling. That's always something,
for blest is he who has dropped even the smallest coin into the little
iron box that contains the precious savings of mankind. Miriam will
doubtless have dropped a big gold-piece. It will be found in the general
scramble on the day the race goes bankrupt. And then for herself she'll
have had a great go at life."
"Oh yes, she'll have got out of her hole--she won't have vegetated,"
Peter concurred. "That makes her touching to me--it adds to the many
good reasons for which one may want to help her. She's tackling a big
job, and tackling it by herself; throwing herself upon the world in good
faith and dealing with it as she can; meeting alone, in her youth, her
beauty, her generosity, all the embarrassments of notoriety and all the
difficulties of a profession of which, if one half's what's called
brilliant the other's frankly odious."
"She has great courage, but you speak of her as solitary with such a lot
of us all round her?" Nash candidly inquired.
"She's a great thing for you and me, but we're a small thing for her."
"Well, a good many small things, if they but stick together, may make up
a mass," Gabriel said. "There must always be the man, you see. He's the
indispensable element in such a life, and he'll be the last thing she'll
ever lack."
"What man are you talking about?" Peter asked with imperfect ease.
"The man of the hour, whoever he is. She'll inspire innumerable
devotions."
"Of course she will, and they'll be precisely a part of the insufferable
side of her life."
"Insufferable to whom?" Nash demanded. "Don't forget that the
insufferable side of her life will be just the side she'll thrive on.
You can't eat your cake and have it, and you can't make omelettes
without breaking eggs. You can't at once sit by the fire and parade
about the world, and you can't take all chances without having some
adventures. You can't be a great actress without the luxury of nerves.
Without a plentiful supply--or without the right ones--you'll only be
second fiddle. If you've all the tense strings you may take life for
your fiddlestick. Your nerves and your adventures, your eggs and your
cake, are part of the cost of the most expensive of professions. You
play with human passions, with exaltations and ecstasies and terrors,
and if you trade on the fury of the elements you must know how to ride
the storm."
Well, Peter thought it over. "Those are the fine old commonplaces about
the artistic temperament, but I usually find the artist a very meek,
decent, little person."
"You _never_ find the artist--you only find his work, and that's all you
need find. When the artist's a woman, and the woman's an actress,
meekness and decency will doubtless be there in the right proportions,"
Nash went on. "Miriam will represent them for you, if you give her her
cue, with the utmost charm."
"Of course she'll inspire devotions--_that's_ all right," said Peter
with a wild cheerfulness.
"And of course they'll inspire responses, and with that
consequence--don't you see?--they'll mitigate her solitude, they'll even
enliven it," Nash set forth.
"She'll probably box a good many ears: that'll be lively!" Peter
returned with some grimness.
"Oh magnificent!--it will be a merry life. Yet with its tragic passages,
its distracted or its pathetic hours," Gabriel insisted. "In short, a
little of everything."
They walked on without further speech till at last Peter resumed: "The
best thing for a woman in her situation is to marry some decent
care-taking man."
"Oh I daresay she'll do that too!" Nash laughed; a remark as a result of
which his companion lapsed afresh into silence. Gabriel left him a
little to enjoy this; after which he added: "There's somebody she'd
marry to-morrow."