The Tragic Muse (London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1890)/Volume 2/Chapter 11
XI.
Nash brought her, the great modern personage as he had described her, the very next day, and it took Nick Dormer but a short time to appreciate his declaration that Miriam Rooth was splendid. She had made an impression upon him ten months before, but it had haunted him only for a day, immediately overlaid with other images. Yet after Nash had spoken of her a few moments he evoked her again; some of her attitudes, some of her tones began to hover before him. He was pleased in advance with the idea of painting her. When she stood there in fact however it seemed to him that he had remembered her wrong: the brilliant young lady who instantly filled his studio with a presence that it had never known was exempt from the curious clumsiness which had interfused his former admiration of her with a certain pity. Miriam Rooth was light and bright and straight to-day—straight without being stiff and bright without being garish. To Nick's perhaps inadequately sophisticated mind the model, the actress were figures with a vulgar setting; but it would have been impossible to show that taint less than his present extremely natural yet extremely distinguished visitor. She was more natural even than Gabriel Nash ("nature" was still Nick's formula for his old friend), and beside her he appeared almost commonplace.
Nash recognized her superiority with a frankness that was honourable to both of them, testifying in this manner to his sense that they were all three serious beings, worthy to deal with realities. She attracted crowds to her theatre, but to his appreciation of such a fact as that, important doubtless in its way, there were limits which he had already expressed. What he now felt bound in all integrity to express was his perception that she had, in general and quite apart from the question of the box-office, a remarkable, a very remarkable artistic nature. He confessed that she had surprised him there; knowing of her in other days mainly that she was hungry to adopt an overrated profession, he had not imputed to her the normal measure of intelligence. Now he saw—he had had some talks with her—that she was intelligent; so much so that he was sorry for the embarrassment it would be to her. Nick could imagine the discomfort of having that sort of commodity to dispose of in such conditions. "She's a distinguished woman—really a distinguished woman," Nash explained, kindly and lucidly, almost paternally; "and the head you can see for yourself."
Miriam, smiling, as she sat on an old Venetian chair, held aloft, with the noblest effect, that portion of her person to which this patronage was extended, and remarked to Nick that, strange as it might appear, she had got quite to like poor Mr. Nash: she could make him go about with her; it was a relief to her mother.
"When I take him she has perfect peace," the girl said; "then she can stay at home and see the interviewers. She delights in that and I hate it, so our friend here is a great comfort. Of course a femme de théatre is supposed to be able to go out alone, but there's a kind of appearance, an added chic, in having some one. People think he's my companion; I'm sure they fancy I pay him. I would pay him rather than give him up, for it doesn't matter that he's not a lady. He is one in tact and sympathy, as you see. And base as he thinks the sort of thing I do, he can't keep away from the theatre. When you're celebrated, people will look at you who before could never find out for themselves why they should."
"When you're celebrated you become handsomer; at least that's what has happened to you, though you were pretty too of old," Gabriel argued. "I go to the theatre to look at your head; it gives me the greatest pleasure. I take up anything of that sort as soon as I find it; one never knows how long it may last."
"Are you speaking of my appearance?" Miriam asked.
"Dear no, of my own pleasure, the first freshness," Nash went on. "Dormer at least, let me tell you in justice to him, hasn't waited till you were celebrated to want to see you again (he stands there open-eyed); for the simple reason that he hadn't the least idea of your renown. I had to announce it to him."
"Haven't you seen me act?" Miriam asked, without reproach, of her host.
"I'll go to-night," said Nick.
"You have your Parliament, haven't you? What do they call it—the demands of public life?" Miriam continued: to which Gabriel Nash rejoined that he had the demands of private as well, inasmuch as he was in love—he was on the point of being married. Miriam listened to this with participation; then she said: "Ah, then, do bring your—what do they call her in English? I'm always afraid of saying something improper—your future. I'll send you a box, under the circumstances; you'd like that better." She added that if he were to paint her he would have to see her often on the stage, wouldn't he? to profit by the optique de la scène (what did they call that in English?) studying her and fixing his impression. Before he had time to respond to this proposition she asked him if it disgusted him to hear her speak like that, as if she were always posing and thinking about herself, living only to be looked at, thrusting forward her person. She often got sick of doing so, already; but a la guerre comme à la guerre.
"That's the fine artistic nature, you see—a sort of divine disgust breaking out in her," Nash expounded.
"If you want to paint me at all, of course. I'm struck with the way I'm taking that for granted," Miriam continued. "When Mr. Nash spoke of it to me I jumped at the idea. I remembered our meeting in Paris and the kind things you said to me. But no doubt one oughtn't to jump at ideas when they represent serious sacrifices on the part of others."
"Doesn't she speak well!" Nash exclaimed to Nick. "Oh, she'll go far!"
"It's a great privilege to me to paint you; what title in the world have I to pretend to such a model?" Nick replied to Miriam. "The sacrifice is yours—a sacrifice of time and good-nature and credulity. You come in your beauty and your genius to this shabby place where I've nothing to show, not a guarantee to offer you; and I wonder what I've done to deserve such a gift of the gods."
"Doesn't he speak well?" Nash demanded, smiling, of Miriam.
She took no notice of him, but she repeated to Nick that she hadn't forgotten his friendly attitude in Paris; and when he answered that he surely had done very little she broke out, first resting her eyes on him a moment with a deep, reasonable smile and then springing up quickly: "Ah, well, if I must justify myself, I liked you!"
"Fancy my appearing to challenge you!" laughed Nick. "To see you again is to want tremendously to try something; but you must have an infinite patience, because I'm an awful duffer."
Miriam looked round the walls. "I see what you have done—bien des choses."
"She understands—she understands," Gabriel dropped. And he added to Miriam: "Imagine, when he might do something, his choosing a life of shams! At bottom he's like you—a wonderful artistic nature."
"I'll have patience," said the girl, smiling at Nick.
"Then, my children, I leave you—the peace of the Lord be with you." With these words Nash took his departure.
The others chose a position for Miriam's sitting, after she had placed herself in many different attitudes and different lights; but an hour had elapsed before Nick got to work—began, on a large canvas, to knock her in, as he called it. He was hindered a little even by a certain nervousness, the emotion of finding himself, out of a clear sky, confronted with such a sitter and launched in such a task. The situation was incongruous, just after he had formally renounced all manner of "art"—the renunciation taking effect not a bit the less from the whim that he had consciously treated himself to as a whim (the last he should ever indulge), the freak of relapsing for a fortnight into a fingering of old sketches, for the purpose, as he might have said, of burning them up, of clearing out his studio and terminating his lease. There were both embarrassment and inspiration in the strange chance of snatching back for an hour a relinquished joy: the jump with which he found he could still rise to such an occasion took away his breath a little, at the same time that the idea—the idea of what one might make of such material—touched him with an irresistible wand. On the spot, to his inner vision, Miriam became a magnificent result, drawing a hundred formative instincts out of their troubled sleep, defying him where he privately felt strongest and imposing herself triumphantly in her own strength. He had the good fortune to see her, as a subject, without striking matches, in a vivid light, and his quick attempt was as exciting as a sudden gallop—it was almost the sense of riding a runaway horse.
She was in her way so fine that he could only think how to "do" her: that hard calculation soon flattened out the consciousness, lively in him at first, that she was a beautiful woman who had sought him out in his retirement. At the end of their first sitting her having sought him out appeared the most natural thing in the world: he had a perfect right to entertain her there—explanations and complications were engulfed in the productive mood. The business of "knocking her in" held up a lamp to her beauty, showed him how much there was of it and that she was infinitely interesting. He didn't want to fall in love with her (that would be a sell! as he said to himself), and she promptly became much too interesting for that. Nick might have reflected, for simplification's sake, as his cousin Peter had done, but with more validity, that he was engaged with Miss Rooth in an undertaking that didn't in the least refer to themselves, that they were working together seriously and that work was a suspension of sensibility. But after her first sitting (she came, poor girl, but twice), the need of such exorcisms passed from his spirit: he had so thoroughly, practically taken her up. As to whether Miriam had the same bright, still sense of co-operation to a definite end, the sense of the distinctively technical nature of the answer to every question to which the occasion might give birth, that mystery would be cleared up only if it were open to us to regard this young lady through some other medium than the mind of her friends. We have chosen, as it happens, for some of the advantages it carries with it, the indirect vision; and it fails as yet to tell us (what Nick of course wondered about before he ceased to care, as indeed he intimated to his visitor) why a young person crowned with success should have taken it into her head that there was something for her in so blighted a spot. She should have gone to one of the regular people, the great people: they would have welcomed her with open arms. When Nick asked her if some of the R. A.'s hadn't expressed a desire to have a crack at her she said: "Oh, dear, no, only the tiresome photographers; and fancy them, in the future! If mamma could only do that for me!" And she added, with the charming fellowship for which she was conspicuous on this occasion: "You know I don't think any one yet has been quite so much struck with me as you."
"Not even Peter Sherringham?" asked Nick, laughing and stepping back to judge of the effect of a line.
"Oh, Mr. Sherringham's different. You're an artist."
"For heaven's sake, don't say that!" cried Nick. "And as regards your art I thought Peter knew more than any one."
"Ah, you're severe," said Miriam.
"Severe?"
"Because that's what he thinks. But he does know a lot—he has been a providence to me."
"And why hasn't he come here to see you act?"
Miriam hesitated a moment. "How do you know he hasn't come?"
"Because I take for granted he would have called on me if he had."
"Does he like you very much?" asked Miriam.
"I don't know. I like him."
"He's a gentleman—pour cela," said Miriam.
"Oh, yes, for that!" Nick went on absently, sketching hard.
"But he's afraid of me—afraid to see me."
"Doesn't he think you're good enough?"
"On the contrary—he believes I shall carry him away and he's in a terror of my doing it."
"He ought to like that," said Nick.
"That's what I mean when I say he's not an artist. However, he declares he does like it, only it appears it is not the right thing for him. Oh, the right thing—he's bent upon getting that. But it's not for me to blame him, for I am too. He's coming some night, however: he shall have a dose!"
"Poor Peter!" Nick exclaimed, with a compassion none the less real because it was mirthful: the girl's tone was so expressive of good-humoured, unscrupulous power.
"He's such a curious mixture," Miriam went on; "sometimes I lose patience with him. It isn't exactly trying to serve both God and Mammon, but it's muddling up the stage and the world. The world be hanged; the stage, or anything of that sort (I mean one's faith), comes first."
"Brava, brava, you do me good," Nick murmured, still hilarious and at his work. "But it's very kind of you, when I was in this absurd state of ignorance, to attribute to me the honour of having been more struck with you than any one else," he continued, after a moment.
"Yes, I confess I don't quite see—when the shops were full of my photographs."
"Oh, I'm so poor—I don't go into shops," returned Nick.
"Are you very poor?"
"I live on alms."
"And don't they pay you—the government, the ministry?"
"Dear young lady, for what? for shutting myself up with beautiful women?"
"Ah, you have others, then?" asked Miriam.
"They are not so kind as you, I confess."
"I'll buy it from you—what you're doing: I'll pay you well when it's done," said the girl. "I've got money now; I make it, you know—a good lot of it. It's too delightful, after scraping and starving. Try it and you'll see. Give up the base, bad world."
"But isn't it supposed to be the base, bad world that pays?"
"Precisely; make it pay, without mercy—squeeze it dry. That's what it's meant for—to pay for art. Ah, if it wasn't for that! I'll bring you a quantity of photographs, to-morrow—you must let me come back to-morrow: it's so amusing to have them, by the hundred, all for nothing, to give away. That's what takes mamma most: she can't get over it. That's luxury and glory; even at Castle Nugent they didn't do that. People used to sketch me, but not so much as mamma veut bien le dire; and in all my life I never had but one poor little carte-de-visite, when I was sixteen, in a plaid frock, with the banks of a river, at three francs the dozen."