"How do you know that--you who"re beyond criticism and perfect?" asked Sherringham: an inquiry to which the answer was forestalled by the girl"s rousing herself to make it public that she could recite the "Nights" of Alfred de Musset.
"Diable!" said the actress: "that"s more than I can! By all means give us a specimen."
The girl again placed herself in position and rolled out a fragment of one of the splendid conversations of Musset"s poet with his muse--rolled it loudly and proudly, tossed it and tumbled it about the room. Madame Carre watched her at first, but after a few moments she shut her eyes, though the best part of the business was to take in her young candidate"s beauty. Sherringham had supposed Miriam rather abashed by the flatness of her first performance, but he now saw how little she could have been aware of this: she was rather uplifted and emboldened.
She made a mush of the divine verses, which in spite of certain sonorities and cadences, an evident effort to imitate a celebrated actress, a comrade of Madame Carre, whom she had heard declaim them, she produced as if she had been dashing blindfold at some playfellow she was to "catch." When she had finished Madame Carre pa.s.sed no judgement, only dropping: "Perhaps you had better say something English." She suggested some little piece of verse--some fable if there were fables in English.
She appeared but scantily surprised to hear that there were not--it was a language of which one expected so little. Mrs. Rooth said: "She knows her Tennyson by heart. I think he"s much deeper than La Fontaine"; and after some deliberation and delay Miriam broke into "The Lotus-Eaters,"
from which she pa.s.sed directly, almost breathlessly, to "Edward Gray."
Sherringham had by this time heard her make four different attempts, and the only generalisation very present to him was that she uttered these dissimilar compositions in exactly the same tone--a solemn, droning, dragging measure suggestive of an exhortation from the pulpit and adopted evidently with the "affecting" intention and from a crude idea of "style." It was all funereal, yet was artlessly rough. Sherringham thought her English performance less futile than her French, but he could see that Madame Carre listened to it even with less pleasure. In the way the girl wailed forth some of her Tennysonian lines he detected a faint gleam as of something pearly in deep water. But the further she went the more violently she acted on the nerves of Mr. Gabriel Nash: that also he could discover from the way this gentleman ended by slipping discreetly to the window and leaning there with his head out and his back to the exhibition. He had the art of mute expression; his att.i.tude said as clearly as possible: "No, no, you can"t call me either ill-mannered or ill-natured. I"m the showman of the occasion, moreover, and I avert myself, leaving you to judge. If there"s a thing in life I hate it"s this idiotic new fashion of the drawing-room recitation and of the insufferable creatures who practise it, who prevent conversation, and whom, as they"re beneath it, you can"t punish by criticism.
Therefore what I"m doing"s only too magnanimous--bringing these benighted women here, paying with my person, stifling my just repugnance."
While Sherringham judged privately that the manner in which Miss Rooth had acquitted herself offered no element of interest, he yet remained aware that something surmounted and survived her failure, something that would perhaps be worth his curiosity. It was the element of outline and att.i.tude, the way she stood, the way she turned her eyes, her head, and moved her limbs. These things held the attention; they had a natural authority and, in spite of their suggesting too much the school-girl in the _tableau-vivant_, a "plastic" grandeur. Her face, moreover, grew as he watched it; something delicate dawned in it, a dim promise of variety and a touching plea for patience, as if it were conscious of being able to show in time more shades than the simple and striking gloom which had as yet mainly graced it. These rather rude physical felicities formed in short her only mark of a vocation. He almost hated to have to recognise them; he had seen them so often when they meant nothing at all that he had come at last to regard them as almost a guarantee of incompetence.
He knew Madame Carre valued them singly so little that she counted them out in measuring an histrionic nature; when deprived of the escort of other properties which helped and completed them she almost held them a positive hindrance to success--success of the only kind she esteemed.
Far oftener than himself she had sat in judgement on young women for whom hair and eyebrows and a disposition for the statuesque would have worked the miracle of sanctifying their stupidity if the miracle were workable. But that particular miracle never was. The qualities she rated highest were not the gifts but the conquests, the effects the actor had worked hard for, had dug out of the mine by unwearied study.
Sherringham remembered to have had in the early part of their acquaintance a friendly dispute with her on this subject, he having been moved at that time to defend doubtless to excess the cause of the gifts.
She had gone so far as to say that a serious comedian ought to be ashamed of them--ashamed of resting his case on them; and when Sherringham had cited the great Rachel as a player whose natural endowment was rich and who had owed her highest triumphs to it, she had declared that Rachel was the very instance that proved her point;--a talent a.s.sisted by one or two primary aids, a voice and a portentous brow, but essentially formed by work, unremitting and ferocious work. "I don"t care a straw for your handsome girls," she said; "but bring me one who"s ready to drudge the tenth part of the way Rachel drudged, and I"ll forgive her her beauty. Of course, _notez bien_, Rachel wasn"t a _grosse bete_: that"s a gift if you like!"
Mrs. Rooth, who was evidently very proud of the figure her daughter had made--her daughter who for all one could tell affected their hostess precisely as a _grosse bete_--appealed to Madame Carre rashly and serenely for a verdict; but fortunately this lady"s voluble _bonne_ came rattling in at the same moment with the tea-tray. The old actress busied herself in dispensing this refreshment, an hospitable attention to her English visitors, and under cover of the diversion thus obtained, while the others talked together, Sherringham put her the question: "Well, is there anything in my young friend?"
"Nothing I can see. She"s loud and coa.r.s.e."
"She"s very much afraid. You must allow for that."
"Afraid of me, immensely, but not a bit afraid of her authors--nor of you!" Madame Carre smiled.
"Aren"t you prejudiced by what that fellow Nash has told you?"
"Why prejudiced? He only told me she was very handsome."
"And don"t you think her so?"
"Admirable. But I"m not a photographer nor a dressmaker nor a coiffeur.
I can"t do anything with "back hair" nor with a mere big stare."
"The head"s very n.o.ble," said Peter Sherringham. "And the voice, when she spoke English, had some sweet tones."
"Ah your English--possibly! All I can say is that I listened to her conscientiously, and I didn"t perceive in what she did a single _nuance_, a single inflexion or intention. But not one, _mon cher_. I don"t think she"s intelligent."
"But don"t they often seem stupid at first?"
"Say always!"
"Then don"t some succeed--even when they"re handsome?"
"When they"re handsome they always succeed--in one way or another."
"You don"t understand us English," said Peter Sherringham.
Madame Carre drank her tea; then she replied: "Marry her, my son, and give her diamonds. Make her an amba.s.sadress; she"ll look very well."
"She interests you so little that you don"t care to do anything for her?"
"To do anything?"
"To give her a few lessons."
The old actress looked at him a moment; after which, rising from her place near the table on which the tea had been served, she said to Miriam Rooth: "My dear child, I give my voice for the _scene anglaise_.
You did the English things best."
"Did I do them well?" asked the girl.
"You"ve a great deal to learn; but you"ve rude force. The main things _sont encore a degager_, but they"ll come. You must work."
"I think she has ideas," said Mrs. Rooth.
"She gets them from you," Madame Carre replied.
"I must say that if it"s to be _our_ theatre I"m relieved. I do think ours safer," the good lady continued.
"Ours is dangerous, no doubt."
"You mean you"re more severe," said the girl.
"Your mother"s right," the actress smiled; "you have ideas."
"But what shall we do then--how shall we proceed?" Mrs. Rooth made this appeal, plaintively and vaguely, to the three gentlemen; but they had collected a few steps off and were so occupied in talk that it failed to reach them.
"Work--work--work!" exclaimed the actress.
"In English I can play Shakespeare. I want to play Shakespeare," Miriam made known.
"That"s fortunate, as in English you haven"t any one else to play."
"But he"s so great--and he"s so pure!" said Mrs. Rooth.
"That indeed seems the saving of you," Madame Carre returned.
"You think me actually pretty bad, don"t you?" the girl demanded with her serious face.
"_Mon Dieu, que vous dirai-je?_ Of course you"re rough; but so was I at your age. And if you find your voice it may carry you far. Besides, what does it matter what I think? How can I judge for your English public?"
"How shall I find my voice?" asked Miriam Rooth.
"By trying. _Il n"y a que ca_. Work like a horse, night and day.
Besides, Mr. Sherringham, as he says, will help you."
That gentleman, hearing his name, turned round and the girl appealed to him. "Will you help me really?"
"To find her voice," said Madame Carre.