When he got into the street he looked about him for a cab, but was obliged to walk some distance before encountering one. In this little interval he saw no reason to modify the determination he had formed in descending the steep staircase of the Hôtel de la Garonne; indeed the desire prompting it only quickened his pace. He had an hour to spare and would also go to see Madame Carré. If Miriam and her companion had proceeded to the Rue de Constantinople on foot he would probably reach the house as soon as they. It was all quite logical: he was eager to see Miriam—that was natural enough; and he had admitted to Mrs. Rooth that he was keen on the subject of Mrs. Lovick's theatrical brother, in whom such effective aid might perhaps reside. To catch Miriam really revealing herself to the old actress after the jump she believed herself to have taken—since that was her errand—would be a very happy stroke, the thought of which made her benefactor impatient. He presently found his cab and, as he bounded in, bade the coachman drive fast. He learned from Madame Carré's portress that her illustriouslocatairewas at home and that a lady and a gentleman had gone up some time before.
In the little antechamber, after his admission, he heard a high voice come from the salon and, stopping a moment to listen, noted that Miriam was alreadylaunched in a recitation. He was able to make out the words, all the more that before he could prevent the movement the maid-servant who had led him in had already opened the door of the room—one of the leaves of it, there being, as in most French doors, two of these—before which, within, a heavy curtain was suspended. Miriam was in the act of rolling out some speech from the English poetic drama—
"For I am sick and capable of fears,Oppressed with wrongs and therefore full of fears."
"For I am sick and capable of fears,Oppressed with wrongs and therefore full of fears."
He recognised one of the great tirades of Shakespeare's Constance and saw she had just begun the magnificent scene at the beginning of the third act ofKing John, in which the passionate, injured mother and widow sweeps in wild organ-tones the entire scale of her irony and wrath. The curtain concealed him and he lurked three minutes after he had motioned to thefemme de chambreto retire on tiptoe. The trio in the salon, absorbed in the performance, had apparently not heard his entrance or the opening of the door, which was covered by the girl's splendid declamation. Peter listened intently, arrested by the spirit with which she attacked her formidable verses. He had needed to hear her set afloat but a dozen of them to measure the long stride she had taken in his absence; they assured him she had leaped into possession of her means. He remained where he was till she arrived at
"Then speak again; not all thy former tale,But this one word, whether thy tale be true."
"Then speak again; not all thy former tale,But this one word, whether thy tale be true."
This apostrophe, briefly responded to in another voice, gave him time quickly to raise the curtain and show himself, passing into the room with a "Go on, go on!" and a gesture earnestly deprecating a stop.
Miriam, in the full swing of her part, paused but for an instant and let herself ring out again, while Peter sank into the nearest chair and she fixed him with her illumined eyes, that is, with those of the raving Constance. Madame Carré, buried in a chair, kissed her hand to him, and a young man who, near the girl, stood giving the cue, stared at him over the top of a little book. "Admirable, magnificent, go on," Sherringham repeated—"go on to the end of the scene, do it all!" Miriam's colour rose, yet he as quickly felt that she had no personal emotion in seeing him again; the cold passion of art had perched on her banner and she listened to herself with an ear as vigilant as if she had been a Paganini drawing a fiddle-bow. This effect deepened as she went on, rising and rising to the great occasion, moving with extraordinary ease and in the largest, clearest style at the dizzy height of her idea. That she had an idea was visible enough, and that the whole thing was very different from all Sherringham had hitherto heard her attempt. It belonged quite to another class of effort; she was now the finished statue lifted from the ground to its pedestal. It was as if the sun of her talent had risen above the hills and she knew she was moving and would always move in its guiding light. This conviction was the one artless thing that glimmered like a young joy through the tragic mask of Constance, and Sherringham's heart beat faster as he caught it in her face. It only showed her as more intelligent, and yet there had been a time when he thought her stupid! Masterful the whole spirit in which she carried the scene, making him cry to himself from point to point, "How she feels it, sees it and really 'renders' it!"
He looked now and again at Madame Carré and saw she had in her lap an open book, apparently a French prose version, brought by her visitors, ofthe play; but she never either glanced at him or at the volume: she only sat screwing into the girl her hard, bright eyes, polished by experience like fine old brasses. The young man uttering the lines of the other speakers was attentive in another degree; he followed Miriam, in his own copy, to keep sure of the cue; but he was elated and expressive, was evidently even surprised; he coloured and smiled, and when he extended his hand to assist Constance to rise, after the performer, acting out her text, had seated herself grandly on "the huge firm earth," he bowed over her as obsequiously as if she had been his veritable sovereign. He was a good-looking young man, tall, well-proportioned, straight-featured and fair, of whom manifestly the first thing to be said on any occasion was that he had remarkably the stamp of a gentleman. He earned this appearance, which proved inveterate and importunate, to a point that was almost a denial of its spirit: so prompt the question of whether it could be in good taste to wear any character, even that particular one, so much on one's sleeve. It was literally on his sleeve that this young man partly wore his own; for it resided considerably in his garments, and in especial in a certain close-fitting dark blue frock-coat, a miracle of a fit, which moulded his juvenility just enough and not too much, and constituted, as Sherringham was destined to perceive later, his perpetual uniform or badge. It was not till afterwards that Peter began to feel exasperated by Basil Dashwood's "type"—the young stranger was of course Basil Dashwood—and even by his blue frock-coat, the recurrent, unvarying, imperturbable good form of his aspect. This unprofessional air ended by striking the observer as the very profession he had adopted, and was indeed, so far as had as yet been indicated, his mimetic capital, his main qualification for the stage.
The ample and powerful manner in which Miriam handled her scene produced its full impression, the art with which she surmounted its difficulties, the liberality with which she met its great demand upon the voice, and the variety of expression that she threw into a torrent of objurgation. It was a real composition, studded with passages that called a suppressed tribute to the lips and seeming to show that a talent capable of such an exhibition was capable of anything.
"But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast,And with the half-blown rose."
"But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast,And with the half-blown rose."
As the girl turned to her imagined child with this exquisite apostrophe—she addressed Mr. Dashwood as if he were playing Arthur, and he lowered his book, dropped his head and his eyes and looked handsome and ingenuous—she opened at a stroke to Sherringham's vision a prospect that they would yet see her express tenderness better even than anything else. Her voice was enchanting in these lines, and the beauty of her performance was that though she uttered the full fury of the part she missed none of its poetry.
"Where did she get hold of that—where did she get hold of that?" Peter wondered while his whole sense vibrated. "She hadn't got hold of it when I went away." And the assurance flowed over him again that she had found the key to her box of treasures. In the summer, during their weeks of frequent meeting, she had only fumbled with the lock. One October day, while he was away, the key had slipped in, had fitted, or her finger at last had touched the right spring and the capricious casket had flown open.
It was during the present solemnity that, excited by the way she came out and with a hundred stirred ideas about her wheeling through his mind, he was for the first time and most vividly visited by a perception that ended by becoming frequent with him—that of the perfect presence of mind, unconfused, unhurried by emotion, that any artistic performance requires and that all, whatever the instrument, require in exactly the same degree: the application, in other words, clear and calculated, crystal-firm as it were, of the idea conceived in the glow of experience, of suffering, of joy. He was afterwards often to talk of this with Miriam, who, however, was never to be able to present him with a neat theory of the subject. She had no knowledge that it was publicly discussed; she only ranged herself in practice on the side of those who hold that at the moment of production the artist can't too much have his wits about him. When Peter named to her the opinion of those maintaining that at such a crisis the office of attention ceases to be filled she stared with surprise and then broke out: "Ah the poor idiots!" She eventually became, in her judgements, in impatience and the expression of contempt, very free and absolutely irreverent.
"What a splendid scolding!" the new visitor exclaimed when, on the entrance of the Pope's legate, her companion closed the book on the scene. Peter pressed his lips to Madame Carré's finger-tips; the old actress got up and held out her arms to Miriam. The girl never took her eyes off Sherringham while she passed into that lady's embrace and remained there. They were full of their usual sombre fire, and it was always the case that they expressed too much anything they could express at all; but they were not defiant nor even triumphant now—they were only deeply explicative. They seemed to say,"That's the sort of thing I meant; that's what I had in mind when I asked you to try to do something for me." Madame Carré folded her pupil to her bosom, holding her there as the old marquise in acomédie de mœursmight in the last scene have held her god-daughter theingénue.
"Have you got me an engagement?"—the young woman then appealed eagerly to her friend. "Yes, he has done something splendid for me," she went on to Madame Carré, resting her hand caressingly on one of the actress's while the old woman discoursed with Mr. Dashwood, who was telling her in very pretty French that he was tremendously excited about Miss Rooth. Madame Carré looked at him as if she wondered how he appeared when he was calm and how, as a dramatic artist, he expressed that condition.
"Yes, yes, something splendid, for a beginning," Peter answered radiantly, recklessly; feeling now only that he would say anything and do anything to please her. He spent on the spot, in imagination, his last penny.
"It's such a pity you couldn't follow it; you'd have liked it so much better," Mr. Dashwood observed to their hostess.
"Couldn't follow it? Do you take me forune sotte?" the celebrated artist cried. "I suspect I followed itde plus près que vous, monsieur!"
"Ah you see the language is so awfully fine," Basil Dashwood replied, looking at his shoes.
"The language? Why she rails like a fish-wife. Is that what you call language? Ours is another business."
"If you understood, if you understood, you'd see all the greatness of it," Miriam declared. And then in another tone: "Such delicious expressions!"
"On dit que c'est très-fort. But who can tell if you really say it?" Madame Carré demanded.
"Ah,par exemple, I can!" Sherringham answered.
"Oh you—you're a Frenchman."
"Couldn't he make it out if he weren't?" asked Basil Dashwood.
The old woman shrugged her shoulders. "He wouldn't know."
"That's flattering to me."
"Oh you—don't you pretend to complain," Madame Carré said. "I preferourimprecations—those of Camille," she went on. "They have the beautydes plus belles choses."
"I can say them too," Miriam broke in.
"Insolente!" smiled Madame Carré. "Camille doesn't squat down on the floor in the middle of them.
"For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.To me and to the state of my great griefLet kings assemble,"
"For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.To me and to the state of my great griefLet kings assemble,"
Miriam quickly declaimed. "Ah if you don't feel the way she makes a throne of it!"
"It's really tremendously fine,chère madame," Sherringham said. "There's nothing like it."
"Vous êtes insupportables," the old woman answered. "Stay with us. I'll teach you Phèdre."
"Ah Phædra, Phædra!" Basil Dashwood vaguely ejaculated, looking more gentlemanly than ever.
"You've learned all I've taught you, but where the devil have you learned what I haven't?" Madame Carré went on.
"I've worked—I have; you'd call it work—all through the bright, late summer, all through the hot, dull, empty days. I've battered down the door—I did hear it crash one day. But I'm not so very good yet. I'm only in the right direction."
"Malicieuse!" growled Madame Carré.
"Oh I can beat that," the girl went on.
"Did you wake up one morning and find you had grown a pair of wings?" Peter asked. "Because that's what the difference amounts to—you really soar. Moreover, you're an angel," he added, charmed with her unexpectedness, the good nature of her forbearance to reproach him for not having written to her. And it seemed to him privately that shewasangelic when in answer to this she said ever so blandly:
"You know you readKing Johnwith me before you went away. I thought over immensely what you said. I didn't understand it much at the time—I was so stupid. But it all came to me later."
"I wish you could see yourself," Peter returned.
"My dear fellow, I do. What sort of a dunce do you take me for? I didn't miss a vibration of my voice, a fold of my robe."
"Well, I didn't see you troubling about it," Peter handsomely insisted.
"No one ever will. Do you think I'd ever show it?"
"Ars celare artem," Basil Dashwood jocosely dropped.
"You must first have the art to hide," said Sherringham, wondering a little why Miriam didn't introduce her young friend to him. She was, however, both then and later perfectly neglectful of such cares, never thinking, never minding how other people got on together. When she found they didn't get on she jeered at them: that was the nearest she came to arranging for them. Our young man noted in her from the moment she felt her strength an immense increase of this good-humoured inattention to detail—all detail save that of her work, to which she was ready to sacrifice holocausts of feelings when the feelings were other people's. This conferred on her a large profanity, an absence of ceremony as to hersocial relations, which was both amusing because it suggested that she would take what she gave, and formidable because it was inconvenient and you mightn't care to give what she would take.
"If you haven't any art it's not quite the same as if you didn't hide it, is it?" Basil Dashwood ingeniously threw out.
"That's right—say one of your clever things!" Miriam sweetly responded.
"You're always acting," he declared in English and with a simple-minded laugh, while Sherringham remained struck with his expressing just what he himself had felt weeks before.
"And when you've shown them your fish-wife, to your publicde là-bas, what will you do next?" asked Madame Carré.
"I'll do Juliet—I'll do Cleopatra."
"Rather a big bill, isn't it?" Mr. Dashwood volunteered to Sherringham in a friendly but discriminating manner.
"Constance and Juliet—take care you don't mix them," said Sherringham.
"I want to be various. You once told me I had a hundred characters," Miriam returned.
"Ah,vous en êtes là?" cried the old actress. "You may have a hundred characters, but you've only three plays. I'm told that's all there are in English."
Miriam, admirably indifferent to this charge, appealed to Peter. "What arrangements have you made? What do the people want?"
"The people at the theatre?"
"I'm afraid they don't wantKing John, and I don't believe they hunger forAntony and Cleopatra," Basil Dashwood suggested. "Ships and sieges and armies and pyramids, you know: we mustn't be too heavy."
"Oh I hate scenery!" the girl sighed.
"Elle est superbe," said Madame Carré. "You must put those pieces on the stage: how will you do it?"
"Oh we know how to get up a play in London, Madame Carré"—Mr. Dashwood was all geniality. "They put money on it, you know."
"On it? But what do they putinit? Who'll interpret them? Who'll manage a style like that—the style of which the rhapsodies she has just repeated are a specimen? Whom have you got that one has ever heard of?"
"Oh you'll hear of a good deal when once she gets started," Dashwood cheerfully contended.
Madame Carré looked at him a moment; then, "I feel that you'll become very bad," she said to Miriam. "I'm glad I shan't see it."
"People will do things for me—I'll make them," the girl declared. "I'll stir them up so that they'll have ideas."
"What people, pray?"
"Ah terrible woman!" Peter theatrically groaned.
"We translate your pieces—there will be plenty of parts," Basil Dashwood said.
"Why then go out of the door to come in at the window?—especially if you smash it! An English arrangement of a French piece is a pretty woman with her back turned."
"Do you really want to keep her?" Sherringham asked of Madame Carré—quite as if thinking for a moment that this after all might be possible.
She bent her strange eyes on him. "No, you're all too queer together. We couldn't be bothered with you and you're not worth it."
"I'm glad it's 'together' that we're queer then—we can console each other."
"If you only would; but you don't seem to! Inshort I don't understand you—I give you up. But it doesn't matter," said the old woman wearily, "for the theatre's dead and even you,ma toute-belle, won't bring it to life. Everything's going from bad to worse, and I don't care what becomes of you. You wouldn't understand us here and they won't understand you there, and everything's impossible, and no one's a whit the wiser, and it's not of the least consequence. Only when you raise your arms lift them just a little higher," Madame Carré added.
"My mother will be happierchez nous" said Miriam, throwing her arms straight up and giving them a noble tragic movement.
"You won't be in the least in the right path till your mother's in despair."
"Well, perhaps we can bring that about even in London," Sherringham patiently laughed.
"Dear Mrs. Rooth—she's great fun," Mr. Dashwood as imperturbably dropped.
Miriam transferred the dark weight of her gaze to him as if she were practising. "Youwon't upset her, at any rate." Then she stood with her beautiful and fatal mask before her hostess. "I want to do the modern too. I want to dole drame, with intense realistic effects."
"And do you want to look like the portico of the Madeleine when it's draped for a funeral?" her instructress mocked. "Never, never. I don't believe you're various: that's not the way I see you. You're pure tragedy, withde grands éclats de voixin the great style, or you're nothing."
"Be beautiful—be only that," Peter urged with high interest. "Be only what you can be so well—something that one may turn to for a glimpse of perfection, to lift one out of all the vulgarities of the day."
Thus apostrophised the girl broke out with one ofthe speeches of Racine's Phædra, hushing her companions on the instant. "You'll be the English Rachel," said Basil Dashwood when she stopped.
"Acting in French!" Madame Carré amended. "I don't believe in an English Rachel."
"I shall have to work it out, what I shall be," Miriam concluded with a rich pensive effect.
"You're in wonderfully good form to-day," Sherringham said to her; his appreciation revealing a personal subjection he was unable to conceal from his companions, much as he wished it.
"I really mean to do everything."
"Very well; after all Garrick did."
"Then I shall be the Garrick of my sex."
"There's a very clever author doing something for me; I should like you to see it," said Basil Dashwood, addressing himself equally to Miriam and to her diplomatic friend.
"Ah if you've very clever authors——!" And Madame Carré spun the sound to the finest satiric thread.
"I shall be very happy to see it," Peter returned.
This response was so benevolent that Basil Dashwood presently began: "May I ask you at what theatre you've made arrangements?"
Sherringham looked at him a moment. "Come and see me at the embassy and I'll tell you." Then he added: "I know your sister, Mrs. Lovick."
"So I supposed: that's why I took the liberty of asking such a question."
"It's no liberty, but Mr. Sherringham doesn't appear to be able to tell you," said Miriam.
"Well, you know, it's a very curious world, all those theatrical people over there," Peter conceded.
"Ah don't say anything against them when I'm one of them," Basil Dashwood laughed.
"I might plead the absence of information," Peterreturned, "as Miss Rooth has neglected to make us acquainted."
Miriam vaguely smiled. "I know you both so little." But she presented them with a great stately air to each other, and the two men shook hands while Madame Carré observed them.
"Tiens! you gentlemen meet here for the first time? You do right to become friends—that's the best thing. Live together in peace and mutual confidence.C'est de beaucoup le plus sage."
"Certainly, for yoke-fellows," said Sherringham.
He began the next moment to repeat to his new acquaintance some of the things he had been told in London; but their hostess stopped him off, waving the talk away with charming overdone stage horror and the young hands of the heroines of Marivaux. "Ah wait till you go—for that! Do you suppose I care for news of your mountebanks' booths?"
As many people know, there are not, in the famous Théâtre Français, more than a dozen good seats accessible to ladies.[*] The stalls are forbidden them, the boxes are a quarter of a mile from the stage and the balcony is a delusion save for a few chairs at either end of its vast horseshoe. But there are two excellentbaignoires d'avant-scène, which indeed are by no means always to be had. It was, however, into one of them that, immediately after his return to Paris, Sherringham ushered Mrs. Rooth and her daughter, with the further escort of Basil Dashwood. He had chosen the evening of the reappearance of the celebrated Mademoiselle Voisin—she had been enjoying acongéof three months—an actress whom Miriam had seen several times before and for whose method she professed a high though somewhat critical esteem. It was only for the return of this charming performer that Peter had been waiting to respond to Miriam's most ardent wish—that of spending an hour in thefoyer des artistesof the great theatre. She was the person whom he knew best in the house of Molière; he could count on her to do them the honours some night when she was in the "bill," and to make the occasion sociable. Miriam had been impatient for it—she was so convinced that her eyes would be opened in the holy of holies; but wishing as particularlyas he did to participate in her impression he had made her promise she wouldn't taste of this experience without him—not let Madame Carré, for instance, take her in his absence. There were questions the girl wished to put to Mademoiselle Voisin—questions which, having admired her from the balcony, she felt she was exactly the person to answer. She was more "in it" now, after all, than Madame Carré, in spite of her slenderer talent: she was younger, fresher, more modern and—Miriam found the word—less academic. She was in fine less "vieux jeu." Peter perfectly foresaw the day when his young friend would make indulgent allowances for poor Madame Carré, patronising her as an old woman of good intentions.
[*: 1890]
The play to-night was six months old, a large, serious, successful comedy by the most distinguished of authors, with a thesis, a chorus embodied in one character, ascène à faireand a part full of opportunities for Mademoiselle Voisin. There were things to be said about this artist, strictures to be dropped as to the general quality of her art, and Miriam leaned back now, making her comments as if they cost her less, but the actress had knowledge and distinction and pathos, and our young lady repeated several times: "How quiet she is, how wonderfully quiet! Scarcely anything moves but her face and her voice.Le geste rare, but really expressive when it comes. I like that economy; it's the only way to make the gesture significant."
"I don't admire the way she holds her arms," Basil Dash wood said: "like ademoiselle de magasintrying on a jacket."
"Well, she holds them at any rate. I daresay it's more than you do with yours."
"Oh yes, she holds them; there's no mistake about that. 'I hold them, I hope,hein?' she seems to say to all the house." The young English professionallaughed good-humouredly, and Sherringham was struck with the pleasant familiarity he had established with their brave companion. He was knowing and ready and he said in the firstentr'acte—they were waiting for the second to go behind—amusing perceptive things. "They teach them to be ladylike and Voisin's always trying to show that. 'See how I walk, see how I sit, see how quiet I am and how I havele geste rare. Now can you say I ain't a lady?' She does it all as if she had a class."
"Well, to-night I'm her class," said Miriam.
"Oh I don't mean of actresses, but offemmes du monde. She shows them how to act in society."
"You had better take a few lessons," Miriam retorted.
"Ah you should see Voisin in society," Peter interposed.
"Does she go into it?" Mrs. Rooth demanded with interest.
Her friend hesitated. "She receives a great many people."
"Why shouldn't they when they're nice?" Mrs. Rooth frankly wanted to know.
"When the people are nice?" Miriam asked.
"Now don't tell me she's not what one would wish," said Mrs. Rooth to Sherringham.
"It depends on what that is," he darkly smiled.
"What I should wish if she were my daughter," the old woman rejoined blandly.
"Ah wish your daughter to act as well as that and you'll do the handsome thing for her!"
"Well, sheseemsto feel what she says," Mrs. Rooth piously risked.
"She has some stiff things to say. I mean about her past," Basil Dashwood remarked. "The past—the dreadful past—on the stage!"
"Wait till the end, to see how she comes out. We must all be merciful!" sighed Mrs. Rooth.
"We've seen it before; you know what happens," Miriam observed to her mother.
"I've seen so many I get them mixed."
"Yes, they're all in queer predicaments. Poor old mother—what we show you!" laughed the girl.
"Ah it will be whatyoushow me—something noble and wise!"
"I want to do this; it's a magnificent part," said Miriam.
"You couldn't put it on in London—they wouldn't swallow it," Basil Dashwood declared.
"Aren't there things they do there to get over the difficulties?" the girl inquired.
"You can't get over whatshe did!"—her companion had a rueful grimace.
"Yes, we must pay, we must expiate!" Mrs. Rooth moaned as the curtain rose again.
When the second act was over our friends passed out of theirbaignoireinto those corridors of tribulation where the bristlingouvreuse, like a pawnbroker driving a roaring trade, mounts guard upon piles of heterogeneous clothing, and, gaining the top of the fine staircase which forms the state entrance and connects the statued vestibule of the basement with the grand tier of boxes, opened an ambiguous door composed of little mirrors and found themselves in the society of the initiated. The janitors were courteous folk who greeted Sherringham as an acquaintance, and he had no difficulty in marshalling his little troop toward the foyer. They traversed a low, curving lobby, hung with pictures and furnished with velvet-covered benches where several unrecognised persons of both sexes looked at them without hostility, and arrived at an opening, on the right, from which, by a short flight of steps, there was adescent to one of the wings of the stage. Here Miriam paused, in silent excitement, like a young warrior arrested by a glimpse of the battle-field. Her vision was carried off through a lane of light to the point of vantage from which the actor held the house; but there was a hushed guard over the place and curiosity could only glance and pass.
Then she came with her companions to a sort of parlour with a polished floor, not large and rather vacant, where her attention flew delightedly to a coat-tree, in a corner, from which three or four dresses were suspended—dresses she immediately perceived to be costumes in that night's play—accompanied by a saucer of something and a much-worn powder-puff casually left on a sofa. This was a familiar note in the general impression of high decorum which had begun at the threshold—a sense of majesty in the place. Miriam rushed at the powder-puff—there was no one in the room—snatched it up and gazed at it with droll veneration, then stood rapt a moment before the charming petticoats ("That's Dunoyer's first underskirt," she said to her mother) while Sherringham explained that in this apartment an actress traditionally changed her gown when the transaction was simple enough to save the long ascent to herloge. He felt himself a cicerone showing a church to a party of provincials; and indeed there was a grave hospitality in the air, mingled with something academic and important, the tone of an institution, a temple, which made them all, out of respect and delicacy, hold their breath a little and tread the shining floors with discretion.
These precautions increased—Mrs. Rooth crept about like a friendly but undomesticated cat—after they entered the foyer itself, a square, spacious saloon covered with pictures and relics and draped in official green velvet, where thegenius lociholds a receptionevery night in the year. The effect was freshly charming to Peter; he was fond of the place, always saw it again with pleasure, enjoyed its honourable look and the way, among the portraits and scrolls, the records of a splendid history, the green velvet and the waxed floors, thegenius lociseemed to be "at home" in the quiet lamplight. At the end of the room, in an ample chimney, blazed a fire of logs. Miriam said nothing; they looked about, noting that most of the portraits and pictures were "old-fashioned," and Basil Dashwood expressed disappointment at the absence of all the people they wanted most to see. Three or four gentlemen in evening dress circulated slowly, looking, like themselves, at the pictures, and another gentleman stood before a lady, with whom he was in conversation, seated against the wall. The foyer resembled in these conditions a ball-room, cleared for the dance, before the guests or the music had arrived.
"Oh it's enough to seethis; it makes my heart beat," said Miriam. "It's full of the vanished past, it makes me cry. I feel them here, all, the great artists I shall never see. Think of Rachel—look at her grand portrait there!—and how she stood on these very boards and trailed over them the robes of Hermione and Phèdre." The girl broke out theatrically, as on the spot was right, not a bit afraid of her voice as soon as it rolled through the room; appealing to her companions as they stood under the chandelier and making the other persons present, who had already given her some attention, turn round to stare at so unusual a specimen of the English miss. She laughed, musically, when she noticed this, and her mother, scandalised, begged her to lower her tone. "It's all right. I produce an effect," said Miriam: "it shan't be said that I too haven't had my little success in the maison de Molière."And Sherringham repeated that it was all right—the place was familiar with mirth and passion, there was often wonderful talk there, and it was only the setting that was still and solemn. It happened that this evening—there was no knowing in advance—the scene was not characteristically brilliant; but to confirm his assertion, at the moment he spoke, Mademoiselle Dunoyer, who was also in the play, came into the room attended by a pair of gentlemen.
She was the celebrated, the perpetual, the necessaryingénue, who with all her talent couldn't have represented a woman of her actual age. She had the gliding, hopping movement of a small bird, the same air of having nothing to do with time, and the clear, sure, piercing note, a miracle of exact vocalisation. She chaffed her companions, she chaffed the room; she might have been a very clever little girl trying to personate a more innocent big one. She scattered her amiability about—showing Miriam how the children of Molière took their ease—and it quickly placed her in the friendliest communication with Peter Sherringham, who already enjoyed her acquaintance and who now extended it to his companions, and in particular to the young ladysur le point d'entrer au théâtre.
"You deserve a happier lot," said the actress, looking up at Miriam brightly, as if to a great height, and taking her in; upon which Sherringham left them together a little and led Mrs. Rooth and young Dashwood to consider further some of the pictures.
"Most delightful, most curious," the old woman murmured about everything; while Basil Dashwood exclaimed in the presence of most of the portraits: "But their ugliness—their ugliness: did you ever see such a collection of hideous people? And those who were supposed to be good-looking—the beauties of the past—they're worse than the others. Ah youmay say what you will,nous sommes mieux que ça!" Sherringham suspected him of irritation, of not liking the theatre of the great rival nation to be thrust down his throat. They returned to Miriam and Mademoiselle Dunoyer, and Peter asked the actress a question about one of the portraits to which there was no name attached. She replied, like a child who had only played about the room, that she wastoute honteusenot to be able to tell him the original: she had forgotten, she had never asked—"Vous allez me trouver bien légère!" She appealed to the other persons present, who formed a gallery for her, and laughed in delightful ripples at their suggestions, which she covered with ridicule. She bestirred herself; she declared she would ascertain, she shouldn't be happy till she did, and swam out of the room, with the prettiest paddles, to obtain the information, leaving behind her a perfume of delicate kindness and gaiety. She seemed above all things obliging, and Peter pronounced her almost as natural off the stage as on. She didn't come back.
Whether he had prearranged it is more than I can say, but Mademoiselle Voisin delayed so long to show herself that Mrs. Rooth, who wished to see the rest of the play, though she had sat it out on another occasion, expressed a returning relish for her corner of thebaignoireand gave her conductor the best pretext he could have desired for asking Basil Dashwood to be so good as to escort her back. When the young actor, of whose personal preference Peter was quite aware, had led Mrs. Rooth away with an absence of moroseness which showed that his striking resemblance to a gentleman was not kept for the footlights, the two others sat on a divan in the part of the room furthest from the entrance, so that it gave them a degree of privacy, and Miriam watched the coming and going of their fellow-visitors and the indefinite people, attached to the theatre, hanging about, while her companion gave a name to some of the figures, Parisian celebrities.
"Fancy poor Dashwood cooped up there with mamma!" the girl exclaimed whimsically.
"You're awfully cruel to him; but that's of course," said Sherringham.
"It seems to me I'm as kind as you; you sent him off."
"That was for your mother; she was tired."
"Oh gammon! And why, if Iwerecruel, should it be of course?"
"Because you must destroy and torment and wear out—that's your nature. But you can't help your type, can you?"
"My type?" she echoed.
"It's bad, perverse, dangerous. It's essentially insolent."
"And pray what's yours when you talk like that? Would you say such things if you didn't know the depths of my good nature?"
"Your good nature all comes back to that," said Sherringham. "It's an abyss of ruin—for others. You've no respect. I'm speaking of the artistic character—in the direction and in the plentitude in which you have it. It's unscrupulous, nervous, capricious, wanton."
"I don't know about respect. One can be good," Miriam mused and reasoned.
"It doesn't matter so long as one's powerful," he returned. "We can't have everything, and surely we ought to understand that we must pay for things. A splendid organisation for a special end, like yours, is so rare and rich and fine that we oughtn't to grudge it its conditions."
"What do you call its conditions?" Miriam asked as she turned and looked at him.
"Oh the need to take its ease, to take up space, to make itself at home in the world, to square its elbows and knock, others about. That's large and free; it's the good nature you speak of. You must forage and ravage and leave a track behind you; you must live upon the country you traverse. And you give such delight that, after all, you're welcome—you're infinitely welcome!"
"I don't know what you mean. I only care for the idea," the girl said.
"That's exactly what I pretend—and we must all help you to it. You use us, you push us about, you break us up. We're your tables and chair, the simple furniture of your life."
"Whom do you mean by 'we'?"
Peter gave an ironic laugh. "Oh don't be afraid—there will be plenty of others!"
She made no return to this, but after a moment broke out again. "Poor Dashwood immured with mamma—he's like a lame chair that one has put into the corner."
"Don't break him up before he has served. I really believe something will come out of him," her companion went on. "However, you'll break me up first," he added, "and him probably never at all."
"And why shall I honour you so much more?"
"Because I'm a better article and you'll feel that."
"You've the superiority of modesty—I see."
"I'm better than a young mountebank—I've vanity enough to say that."
She turned on him with a flush in her cheek and a splendid dramatic face. "How you hate us! Yes, at bottom, below your little cold taste, youhateus!" she repeated.
He coloured too, met her eyes, looked into them a minute, seemed to accept the imputation and then said quickly: "Give it up: come away with me."
"Come away with you?"
"Leave this place. Give it up."
"You brought me here, you insisted it should be only you, and now you must stay," she declared with a head-shake and a high manner. "You should know what you want, dear Mr. Sherringham."
"I do—I know now. Come away before you see her."
"Before——?" she seemed to wonder.
"She's success, this wonderful Voisin, she's triumph, she's full accomplishment: the hard, brilliant realisation of what I want to avert for you." Miriam looked at him in silence, the cold light still in her face, and he repeated: "Give it up—give it up."
Her eyes softened after a little; she smiled and then said: "Yes, you're better than poor Dashwood."
"Give it up and we'll live for ourselves, in ourselves, in something that can have a sanctity."
"All the same you do hate us," the girl went on.
"I don't want to be conceited, but I mean that I'm sufficiently fine and complicated to tempt you. I'm an expensive modern watch with a wonderful escapement—therefore you'll smash me if you can."
"Never—never!" she said as she got up. "You tell me the hour too well." She quitted her companion and stood looking at Gérôme's fine portrait of the pale Rachel invested with the antique attributes of tragedy. The rise of the curtain had drawn away most of the company. Peter, from his bench, watched his friend a little, turning his eyes from her to the vivid image of the dead actress and thinking how little she suffered by the juxtaposition. Presently he came over and joined her again and she resumed: "I wonder if that's what your cousin had in his mind."
"My cousin——?"
"What was his name? Mr. Dormer; that first day at Madame Carré's. He offered to paint my portrait."
"I remember. I put him up to it."
"Was he thinking of this?"
"I doubt if he has ever seen it. I daresay I was."
"Well, when we go to London he must do it," said Miriam.
"Oh there's no hurry," Peter was moved to reply.
"Don't you want my picture?" asked the girl with one of her successful touches.
"I'm not sure I want it fromhim. I don't know quite what he'd make of you."
"He looked so clever—I liked him. I saw him again at your party."
"He's a jolly good fellow; but what's one to say," Peter put to her, "of a painter who goes for his inspiration to the House of Commons?"
"To the House of Commons?" she echoed.
"He has lately got himself elected."
"Dear me, what a pity! I wanted to sit for him. But perhaps he won't have me—as I'm not a member of Parliament."
"It's my sister, rather, who has got him in."
"Your sister who was at your house that day? What has she to do with it?" Miriam asked.
"Why she's his cousin just as I am. And in addition," Sherringham went on, "she's to be married to him."
"Married—really?" She had a pause, but she continued. "So he paintsher, I suppose?"
"Not much, probably. His talent in that line isn't what she esteems in him most."
"It isn't great, then?"
"I haven't the least idea."
"And in the political line?" the girl persisted.
"I scarcely can tell. He's very clever."
"He does paint decently, then?"
"I daresay."
Miriam looked once more at Gérôme's picture. "Fancy his going into the House of Commons! And your sister put him there?"
"She worked, she canvassed."
"Ah you're a queer family!" she sighed, turning round at the sound of a step.
"We're lost—here's Mademoiselle Voisin," said Sherringham.
This celebrity presented herself smiling and addressing Miriam. "I acted foryouto-night—I did my best."
"What a pleasure to speak to you, to thank you!" the girl murmured admiringly. She was startled and dazzled.
"I couldn't come to you before, but now I've got a rest—for half an hour," the actress went on. Gracious and passive, as if a little spent, she let Sherringham, without looking at him, take her hand and raise it to his lips. "I'm sorry I make you lose the others—they're so good in this act," she added.
"We've seen them before and there's nothing so good as you," Miriam promptly returned.
"I like my part," said Mademoiselle Voisin gently, smiling still at our young lady with clear, charming eyes. "One's always better in that case."
"She's so bad sometimes, you know!" Peter jested to Miriam; leading the actress thus to glance at him, kindly and vaguely, in a short silence which you couldn't call on her part embarrassment, but which was still less affectation.
"And it's so interesting to be here—so interesting!" Miriam protested.
"Ah you like our old house? Yes, we're very proud of it." And Mademoiselle Voisin smiled again at Sherringham all good-humouredly, but as if to say: "Well, here I am, and what do you want of me? Don't ask me to invent it myself, but if you'll tell me I'll do it." Miriam admired the note of discreet interrogation in her voice—the slight suggestion of surprise at their "old house" being liked. This performer was an astonishment from her seeming still more perfect on a nearer view—which wasnot, the girl had an idea, what performers usually did. This was very encouraging to her—it widened the programme of a young lady about to embrace the scenic career. To have so much to show before the footlights and yet to have so much left when you came off—that was really wonderful. Mademoiselle Voisin's eyes, as one looked into them, were still more agreeable than the distant spectator would have supposed; and there was in her appearance an extreme finish which instantly suggested to Miriam that she herself, in comparison, was big and rough and coarse.
"You're lovely to-night—you're particularly lovely," Sherringham said very frankly, translating Miriam's own impression and at the same time giving her an illustration of the way that, in Paris at least, gentlemen expressed themselves to the stars of the drama. She thought she knew her companion very well and had been witness of the degree to which, in such general conditions, his familiarity could increase; but his address to the slim, distinguished, harmonious woman before them had a different quality, the note of a special usage. If Miriam had had an apprehension that such directness might be taken as excessive it was removed by the manner in which Mademoiselle Voisin returned:
"Oh one's always well enough when one's made up; one's always exactly the same." That served as an example of the good taste with which a star of the drama could receive homage that was wanting in originality. Miriam determined on the spot that this should be the wayshewould ever receive it. The grace of her new acquaintance was the greater as the becoming bloom to which she alluded as artificial was the result of a science so consummate that it had none of the grossness of a mask. The perception of all this was exciting to our young aspirant, andher excitement relieved itself in the inquiry, which struck her as rude as soon as she had uttered it:
"You acted for 'me'? How did you know? What am I to you?"
"Monsieur Sherringham has told me about you. He says we're nothing beside you—that you're to be the great star of the future. I'm proud that you've seen me."
"That of course is what I tell every one," Peter acknowledged a trifle awkwardly to Miriam.
"I can believe it when I see you.Je vous ai bien observée," the actress continued in her sweet conciliatory tone.
Miriam looked from one of her interlocutors to the other as if there were joy for her in this report of Sherringham's remarks—joy accompanied and partly mitigated, however, by a quicker vision of what might have passed between a secretary of embassy and a creature so exquisite as Mademoiselle Voisin. "Ah you're wonderful people—a most interesting impression!" she yearningly sighed.
"I was looking for you; he had prepared me. We're such old friends!" said the actress in a tone courteously exempt from intention: upon which Sherringham, again taking her hand, raised it to his lips with a tenderness which her whole appearance seemed to bespeak for her, a sort of practical consideration and carefulness of touch, as if she were an object precious and frail, an instrument for producing rare sounds, to be handled, like a legendary violin, with a recognition of its value.
"Your dressing-room is so pretty—show her your dressing-room," he went on.
"Willingly, if she'll come up.Vous savez que c'est une montée."
"It's a shame to inflict it onyou," Miriam objected.
"Comment donc?If it will interest you in the least!" They exchanged civilities, almost caresses, trying which could have the nicest manner to the other. It was the actress's manner that struck Miriam most; it denoted such a training, so much taste, expressed such a ripe conception of urbanity.
"No wonder she acts well when she has that tact—feels, perceives, is so remarkable,mon Dieu, mon Dieu!"the girl said to herself as they followed their conductress into another corridor and up a wide, plain staircase. The staircase was spacious and long and this part of the establishment sombre and still, with the gravity of a college or a convent. They reached another passage lined with little doors, on each of which the name of a comedian was painted, and here the aspect became still more monastic, like that of a row of solitary cells. Mademoiselle Voisin led the way to her own door all obligingly and as if wishing to be hospitable; she dropped little subdued, friendly attempts at explanation on the way. At her threshold the monasticism stopped—Miriam found herself in a wonderfully upholstered nook, a nest of lamplight and delicate cretonne. Save for its pair of long glasses it might have been a tiny boudoir, with a water-colour drawing of value in each of its panels of stretched stuff, with its crackling fire and its charming order. It was intensely bright and extremely hot, singularly pretty and exempt from litter. Nothing lay about, but a small draped doorway led into an inner sanctuary. To Miriam it seemed royal; it immediately made the art of the comedian the most distinguished thing in the world. It was just such a place as theyshouldhave for their intervals if they were expected to be great artists. It was a result of the same evolution as Mademoiselle Voisin herself—not that our young lady found this particular term at hand to express her idea. But her mind was floodedwith an impression of style, of refinement, of the long continuity of a tradition. The actress said,"Voilà, c'est tout!"as if it were little enough and there were even something clumsy in her having brought them so far for nothing, and in their all sitting there waiting and looking at each other till it was time for her to change her dress. But to Miriam it was occupation enough to note what she did and said: these things and her whole person and carriage struck our young woman as exquisite in their adaptation to the particular occasion. She had had an idea that foreign actresses were rather of thecabotinorder, but her hostess suggested to her much more a princess than acabotine. She would do things as she liked and do them straight off: Miriam couldn't fancy her in the gropings and humiliations of rehearsal. Everything in her had been sifted and formed, her tone was perfect, her amiability complete, and she might have been the charming young wife of a secretary of state receiving a pair of strangers of distinction. The girl observed all her movements. And then, as Sherringham had said, she was particularly lovely. But she suddenly told this gentleman that she must put himà la porte—she wanted to change her dress. He retired and returned to the foyer, where Miriam was to rejoin him after remaining the few minutes more with Mademoiselle Voisin and coming down with her. He waited for his companion, walking up and down and making up his mind; and when she presently came in he said to her:
"Please don't go back for the rest of the play. Stay here." They now had the foyer virtually to themselves.
"I want to stay here. I like it better," She moved back to the chimney-piece, from above which the cold portrait of Rachel looked down, and as he accompanied her he went on:
"I meant what I said just now."
"What you said to Voisin?"
"No, no; to you. Give it up and live withme."
"Give it up?" She turned her stage face on him.
"Give it up and I'll marry you to-morrow."
"This is a happy time to ask it!" she said with superior amusement. "And this is a good place!"
"Very good indeed, and that's why I speak: it's a place to make one choose—it puts it all before one."
"To makeyouchoose, you mean. I'm much obliged, but that's not my choice," laughed Miriam.
"You shall be anything you like except this."
"Except what I most want to be? Iammuch obliged."
"Don't you care for me? Haven't you any gratitude?" Sherringham insisted.
"Gratitude for kindly removing the blest cup from my lips? I want to be whatsheis—I want it more than ever."
"Ah what she is—!" He took it impatiently.
"Do you mean I can't? Well see if I can't. Tell me more about her—tell me everything."
"Haven't you seen for yourself and, knowing things as you do, can't you judge?"
"She's strange, she's mysterious," Miriam allowed, looking at the fire. "She showed us nothing—nothing of her real self."
"So much the better, all things considered."
"Are there all sorts of other things in her life? That's what I believe," the girl went on, raising her eyes to him.
"I can't tell you what there is in the life of such a woman."
"Imagine—when she's so perfect!" she exclaimed thoughtfully. "Ah she kept me off—she kept me off! Her charming manner is in itself a kind ofcontempt. It's an abyss—it's the wall of China. She has a hard polish, an inimitable surface, like some wonderful porcelain that costs more than you'd think."
"Do you want to become like that?" Sherringham asked.
"If I could I should be enchanted. One can always try."
"You must act better than she," he went on.
"Better? I thought you wanted me to give it up."
"Ah I don't know what I want," he cried, "and you torment me and turn me inside out! What I want is you yourself."
"Oh don't worry," said Miriam—now all kindly. Then she added that Mademoiselle Voisin had invited her to "call"; to which Sherringham replied with a certain dryness that she would probably not find that necessary. This made the girl stare and she asked: "Do you mean it won't do on account of mamma's prejudices?"
"Say this time on account of mine."
"Do you mean because she has lovers?"
"Her lovers are none of our business."
"None of mine, I see. So you've been one of them?"
"No such luck!"
"What a pity!" she richly wailed. "I should have liked to see that. One must see everything—to be able to do everything." And as he pressed for what in particular she had wished to see she replied: "The way a woman like that receives one of the old ones."
Peter gave a groan at this, which was at the same time partly a laugh, and, turning away to drop on a bench, ejaculated: "You'll do—you'll do!"
He sat there some minutes with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. His friend remainedlooking at the portrait of Rachel, after which she put to him: "Doesn't such a woman as that receive—receive every one?"
"Every one who goes to see her, no doubt."
"And who goes?"
"Lots of men—clever men, eminent men."
"Ah what a charming life! Then doesn't she go out?"
"Not what we Philistines mean by that—not into society, never. She never enters a lady's drawing-room."
"How strange, when one's as distinguished as that; except that she must escape a lot of stupidities andcorvées. Then where does she learn such manners?"
"She teaches manners,à ses heures: she doesn't need to learn them."
"Oh she has given me ideas! But in London actresses go into society," Miriam continued.
"Oh into ours, such as it is. In Londonnous mêlons les genres."
"And shan't I go—I mean if I want?"
"You'll have every facility to bore yourself. Don't doubt it."
"And doesn't she feel excluded?" Miriam asked.
"Excluded from what? She has the fullest life."
"The fullest?"
"An intense artistic life. The cleverest men in Paris talk over her work with her; the principal authors of plays discuss with her subjects and characters and questions of treatment. She lives in the world of art."
"Ah the world of art—how I envy her! And you offer me Dashwood!"
Sherringham rose in his emotion. "I 'offer' you—?"
Miriam burst out laughing. "You look so droll!You offer me yourself, then, instead of all these things."
"My dear child, I also am a very clever man," he said, trying to sink his consciousness of having for a moment stood gaping.
"You are—you are; I delight in you. No ladies at all—nofemmes comme il faut?"she began again.
"Ah what dotheymatter? Your business is the artistic life!" he broke out with inconsequence, irritated, moreover, at hearing her sound that trivial note again.
"You're a dear—your charming good sense comes back to you! What do you want of me, then?"
"I want you for myself—not for others; and now, in time, before anything's done."
"Why, then, did you bring me here? Everything's done—I feel it to-night."
"I know the way you should look at it—if you do look at it at all," Sherringham conceded.
"That's so easy! I thought you liked the stage so," Miriam artfully added.
"Don't you want me to be a great swell?"
"And don't you wantmeto be?"
"Youwillbe—you'll share my glory."
"So will you share mine."
"The husband of an actress? Yes, I see myself that!" Peter cried with a frank ring of disgust.
"It's a silly position, no doubt. But if you're too good for it why talk about it? Don't you think I'm important?" she demanded. Her companion met her eyes and she suddenly said in a different tone: "Ah why should we quarrel when you've been so kind, so generous? Can't we always be friends—the truest friends?"
Her voice sank to the sweetest cadence and her eyes were grateful and good as they rested on him. She sometimes said things with such perfection thatthey seemed dishonest, but in this case he was stirred to an expressive response. Just as he was making it, however, he was moved to utter other words: "Take care, here's Dashwood!" Mrs. Rooth's tried attendant was in the doorway. He had come back to say that they really must relieve him.