"Oh the time flies!" sighed Nick with a spontaneity that made his companion again laugh out--a demonstration in which for a moment he himself rather ruefully joined.
"Does she like you to paint?" that personage asked with one of his candid intonations.
"So she says."
"Well, do something fine to show her."
"I"d rather show it to you," Nick confessed.
"My dear fellow, I see it from here--if you do your duty. Do you remember the Tragic Muse?" Nash added for explanation.
"The Tragic Muse?"
"That girl in Paris, whom we heard at the old actress"s and afterwards met at the charming entertainment given by your cousin--isn"t he?--the secretary of emba.s.sy."
"Oh Peter"s girl! Of course I remember her."
"Don"t call her Peter"s; call her rather mine," Nash said with easy rectification. "I invented her. I introduced her. I revealed her."
"I thought you on the contrary ridiculed and repudiated her."
"As a fine, handsome young woman surely not--I seem to myself to have been all the while rendering her services. I said I disliked tea-party ranters, and so I do; but if my estimate of her powers was below the mark she has more than punished me."
"What has she done?" Nick asked.
"She has become interesting, as I suppose you know."
"How should I know?"
"Well, you must see her, you must paint her," Nash returned. "She tells me something was said about it that day at Madame Carre"s."
"Oh I remember--said by Peter."
"Then it will please Mr. Sherringham--you"ll be glad to do that. I suppose you know all he has done for Miriam?" Gabriel pursued.
"Not a bit, I know nothing about Peter"s affairs," Nick said, "unless it be in general that he goes in for mountebanks and mimes and that it occurs to me I"ve heard one of my sisters mention--the rumour had come to her--that he has been backing Miss Rooth."
"Miss Rooth delights to talk of his kindness; she"s charming when she speaks of it. It"s to his good offices that she owes her appearance here."
"Here?" Nick"s interest rose. "Is she in London?"
"_D"ou tombez-vous_? I thought you people read the papers."
"What should I read, when I sit--sometimes--through the stuff they put into them?"
"Of course I see that--that your engagement at your own variety-show, with its interminable "turns," keeps you from going to the others. Learn then," said Gabriel Nash, "that you"ve a great compet.i.tor and that you"re distinctly not, much as you may suppose it, _the_ rising comedian. The Tragic Muse is the great modern personage. Haven"t you heard people speak of her, haven"t you been taken to see her?"
Nick bethought himself. "I daresay I"ve heard of her, but with a good many other things on my mind I had forgotten it."
"Certainly I can imagine what has been on your mind. She remembers you at any rate; she repays neglect with sympathy. She wants," said Nash, "to come and see you."
""See" me?" It was all for Nick now a wonder.
"To be seen by you--it comes to the same thing. She"s really worth seeing; you must let me bring her; you"ll find her very suggestive. That idea that you should paint her--she appears to consider it a sort of bargain."
"A bargain?" Our young man entered, as he believed, into the humour of the thing. "What will she give me?"
"A splendid model. She _is_ splendid."
"Oh then bring her," said Nick.
XXV
Nash brought her, the great modern personage, as he had described her, the very next day, and it took his friend no long time to test his a.s.surance that Miriam Rooth was now splendid. She had made an impression on him ten months before, but it had haunted him only a day, soon overlaid as it had been with other images. Yet after Nash had talked of her a while he recalled her better; some of her att.i.tudes, some of her looks and tones began to hover before him. He was charmed in advance with the notion of painting her. When she stood there in fact, however, it seemed to him he had remembered her wrong; the brave, free, rather grand creature who instantly filled his studio with such an unexampled presence had so shaken off her clumsiness, the rudeness and crudeness that had made him pity her, a whole provincial and "second-rate" side.
Miss Rooth was light and bright and direct to-day--direct without being stiff and bright without being garish. To Nick"s perhaps inadequately sophisticated mind the model, the actress were figures of a vulgar setting; but it would have been impossible to show that taint less than this extremely natural yet extremely distinguished aspirant to distinction. She was more natural even than Gabriel Nash--"nature" was still Nick"s formula for his amusing old friend--and beside her he appeared almost commonplace.
Nash recognised her superiority with a frankness honourable to both of them--testifying in this manner to his sense that they were all three serious beings, worthy to deal with fine realities. She attracted crowds to her theatre, but to his appreciation of such a fact as that, important doubtless in its way, there were the limits he had already expressed. What he now felt bound in all integrity to register 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 allowed that she had surprised him here; 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 capable almost of a violent play of mind; so much so that he was sorry for the embarra.s.sment it would be to her. Nick could imagine the discomfort of having anything in the nature of a mind to arrange for in such conditions. "She"s a woman of the best intentions, really of the best," Nash explained kindly and lucidly, almost paternally, "and the quite rare head you can see for yourself."
Miriam, smiling as she sat on an old Venetian chair, held aloft, with the n.o.blest effect, that quarter of her person to which this patronage was extended, remarking to her host 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 theatre_ is supposed to be able to go out alone, but there"s a kind of "smartness," an added _chic_, in having some one. People think he"s my "companion "; I"m sure they fancy I pay him. I"d pay him, if he"d take it--and perhaps he will yet!--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 could never before find out for themselves why they should."
"When you"re celebrated you grow handsomer; at least that"s what has happened to you, though you were pretty too of old," Gabriel placidly 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 attributing that uncertainty to my appearance?" Miriam beautifully asked.
"Dear no, to my own pleasure, the first precious bloom of it," 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 put, without reproach, to her host.
"I"ll go to-night," he handsomely declared.
"You have your terrible House, haven"t you? What do they call it--the demands of public life?" Miriam continued: in answer to which Gabriel explained that he had the demands of private life as well, inasmuch as he was in love--he was on the point of being married. She listened to this with partic.i.p.ation; 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 circ.u.mstances; you"ll 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 scene_--what did they call _that_ in English?--studying her and fixing his impression. But before he had time to meet 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 already often got sick of doing so, but _a la guerre comme a 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 at all" of course. I"m struck with the way I"m taking that for granted," the girl decently 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 demanded of Nick. "Oh she"ll go far!"
"It"s a great privilege to me to paint you: what t.i.tle 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 bright beauty and your genius, to this shabby place where I"ve nothing worth speaking of to show, not a guarantee to offer you; and I wonder what I"ve done to deserve such a gift of the G.o.ds."