by Henry James
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 attitude, 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 Carré 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 assisted 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 bête: 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 bête—appealed to Madame Carré 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 coarse.”
“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 Carré 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 noble,” 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 Carré drank her tea; then she replied: “Marry her, my son, and give her diamonds. Make her an ambassadress; 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 scène 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 dégager, but they’ll come. You must work.”
“I think she has ideas,” said Mrs. Rooth.
“She gets them from you,” Madame Carré 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 Carré 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 ça. 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 Carré.
“The voice, when it’s worth anything, comes from the heart; so I suppose that’s where to look for it,” Gabriel Nash suggested.
“Much you know; you haven’t got any!” Miriam retorted with the first scintillation of gaiety she had shown on this occasion.
“Any voice, my child?” Mr. Nash inquired.
“Any heart—or any manners!”
Peter Sherringham made the secret reflexion that he liked her better lugubrious, as the note of pertness was not totally absent from her mode of emitting these few words. He was irritated, moreover, for in the brief conference he had just had with the young lady’s introducer he had had to meet the rather difficult call of speaking of her hopefully. Mr. Nash had said with his bland smile, “And what impression does my young friend make?”—in respect to which Peter’s optimism felt engaged by an awkward logic. He answered that he recognised promise, though he did nothing of the sort;—at the same time that the poor girl, both with the exaggerated “points” of her person and the vanity of her attempt at expression, constituted a kind of challenge, struck him as a subject for inquiry, a problem, an explorable tract. She was too bad to jump at and yet too “taking”—perhaps after all only vulgarly—to overlook, especially when resting her tragic eye
s on him with the trust of her deep “Really?” This note affected him as addressed directly to his honour, giving him a chance to brave verisimilitude, to brave ridicule even a little, in order to show in a special case what he had always maintained in general, that the direction of a young person’s studies for the stage may be an interest of as high an order as any other artistic appeal.
“Mr. Nash has rendered us the great service of introducing us to Madame Carré, and I’m sure we’re immensely indebted to him,” Mrs. Rooth said to her daughter with an air affectionately corrective.
“But what good does that do us?” the girl asked, smiling at the actress and gently laying her finger-tips upon her hand. “Madame Carré listens to me with adorable patience, and then sends me about my business—ah in the prettiest way in the world.”
“Mademoiselle, you’re not so rough; the tone of that’s very juste. A la bonne heure; work—work!” the actress cried. “There was an inflexion there—or very nearly. Practise it till you’ve got it.”
“Come and practise it to me, if your mother will be so kind as to bring you,” said Peter Sherringham.
“Do you give lessons—do you understand?” Miriam asked.
“I’m an old play-goer and I’ve an unbounded belief in my own judgement.”
“‘Old,’ sir, is too much to say,” Mrs. Rooth remonstrated. “My daughter knows your high position, but she’s very direct. You’ll always find her so. Perhaps you’ll say there are less honourable faults. We’ll come to see you with pleasure. Oh I’ve been at the embassy when I was her age. Therefore why shouldn’t she go to-day? That was in Lord Davenant’s time.”
“A few people are coming to tea with me to-morrow. Perhaps you’ll come then at five o’clock.”
“It will remind me of the dear old times,” said Mrs. Rooth.
“Thank you; I’ll try and do better to-morrow,” Miriam professed very sweetly.
“You do better every minute!” Sherringham returned—and he looked at their hostess in support of this declaration.
“She’s finding her voice,” Madame Carré acknowledged.
“She’s finding a friend!” Mrs. Rooth threw in.
“And don’t forget, when you come to London, my hope that you’ll come and see me,” Nick Dormer said to the girl. “To try and paint you—that would do me good!”
“She’s finding even two,” said Madame Carré.
“It’s to make up for one I’ve lost!” And Miriam looked with very good stage-scorn at Gabriel Nash. “It’s he who thinks I’m bad.”
“You say that to make me drive you home; you know it will,” Nash returned.
“We’ll all take you home; why not?” Sherringham asked.
Madame Carré looked at the handsome girl, handsomer than ever at this moment, and at the three young men who had taken their hats and stood ready to accompany her. A deeper expression came for an instant into her hard, bright eyes. “Ah la jeunesse!” she sighed. “You’d always have that, my child, if you were the greatest goose on earth!”
VIII
At Peter Sherringham’s the next day Miriam had so evidently come with the expectation of “saying” something that it was impossible such a patron of the drama should forbear to invite her, little as the exhibition at Madame Carré’s could have contributed to render the invitation prompt. His curiosity had been more appeased than stimulated, but he felt none the less that he had “taken up” the dark-browed girl and her reminiscential mother and must face the immediate consequences of the act. This responsibility weighed upon him during the twenty-four hours that followed the ultimate dispersal of the little party at the door of the Hôtel de la Garonne.
On quitting Madame Carré the two ladies had definitely declined Mr. Nash’s offered cab and had taken their way homeward on foot and with the gentlemen in attendance. The streets of Paris at that hour were bright and episodical, and Sherringham trod them good-humouredly enough and not too fast, leaning a little to talk with Miriam as he went. Their pace was regulated by her mother’s, who advanced on the arm of Gabriel Nash (Nick Dormer was on her other side) in refined deprecation. Her sloping back was before them, exempt from retentive stillness in spite of her rigid principles, with the little drama of her lost and recovered shawl perpetually going on.
Sherringham said nothing to the girl about her performance or her powers; their talk was only of her manner of life with her mother—their travels, their pensions, their economies, their want of a home, the many cities she knew well, the foreign tongues and the wide view of the world she had acquired. He guessed easily enough the dolorous type of exile of the two ladies, wanderers in search of Continental cheapness, inured to queer contacts and compromises, “remarkably well connected” in England, but going out for their meals. The girl was but indirectly communicative; though seemingly less from any plan of secrecy than from the habit of associating with people whom she didn’t honour with her confidence. She was fragmentary and abrupt, as well as not in the least shy, subdued to dread of Madame Carré as she had been for the time. She gave Sherringham a reason for this fear, and he thought her reason innocently pretentious. “She admired a great artist more than anything in the world; and in the presence of art, of great art, her heart beat so fast.” Her manners were not perfect, and the friction of a varied experience had rather roughened than smoothed her. She said nothing that proved her intelligent, even though he guessed this to be the design of two or three of her remarks; but he parted from her with the suspicion that she was, according to the contemporary French phrase, a “nature.”
The Hôtel de la Garonne was in a small unrenovated street in which the cobble-stones of old Paris still flourished, lying between the Avenue de l’Opéra and the Place de la Bourse. Sherringham had occasionally traversed the high dimness, but had never noticed the tall, stale maison meublée, the aspect of which, that of a third-rate provincial inn, was an illustration of Mrs. Rooth’s shrunken standard. “We would ask you to come up, but it’s quite at the top and we haven’t a sitting-room,” the poor lady bravely explained. “We had to receive Mr. Nash at a café.”
Nick Dormer declared that he liked cafés, and Miriam, looking at his cousin, dropped with a flash of passion the demand: “Do you wonder I should want to do something—so that we can stop living like pigs?”
Peter recognised the next day that though it might be boring to listen to her it was better to make her recite than to let her do nothing, so effectually did the presence of his sister and that of Lady Agnes, and even of Grace and Biddy, appear, by a strange tacit opposition, to deprive hers, ornamental as it was, of a reason. He had only to see them all together to perceive that she couldn’t pass for having come to “meet” them—even her mother’s insinuating gentility failed to put the occasion on that footing—and that she must therefore be assumed to have been brought to show them something. She was not subdued, not colourless enough to sit there for nothing, or even for conversation—the sort of conversation that was likely to come off—so that it was inevitable to treat her position as connected with the principal place on the carpet, with silence and attention and the pulling together of chairs. Even when so established it struck him at first as precarious, in the light, or the darkness, of the inexpressive faces of the other ladies, seated in couples and rows on sofas—there were several in addition to Julia and the Dormers; mainly the wives, with their husbands, of Sherringham’s fellow-secretaries—scarcely one of whom he felt he might count upon for a modicum of gush when the girl should have finished.
Miss Rooth gave a representation of Juliet drinking the potion, according to the system, as her mother explained, of the famous Signor Ruggieri—a scene of high fierce sound, of many cries and contortions: she shook her hair (which proved magnificent) half-down before the performance was over. Then she declaimed several short poems by Victor Hugo, selected among many hundred by Mrs. Rooth, as the good lady was careful to make known. After this she jumped to the American lyre, regaling the company with specimens, b
oth familiar and fresh, of Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, and of two or three poetesses now revealed to Sherringham for the first time. She flowed so copiously, keeping the floor and rejoicing visibly in her luck, that her host was mainly occupied with wondering how he could make her leave off. He was surprised at the extent of her repertory, which, in view of the circumstance that she could never have received much encouragement—it must have come mainly from her mother, and he didn’t believe in Signor Ruggieri—denoted a very stiff ambition and a blundering energy. It was her mother who checked her at last, and he found himself suspecting that Gabriel Nash had intimated to the old woman that interference was necessary. For himself he was chiefly glad Madame Carré hadn’t come. It was present to him that she would have judged the exhibition, with its badness, its impudence, the absence of criticism, wholly indecent.