Part 10 (1/2)

Biddy was wistful still. ”Is it the famous Honorine Carre, the great celebrity?”

”Honorine in person: the incomparable, the perfect!” said Peter Sherringham. ”The first artist of our time, taking her altogether. She and I are old pals; she has been so good as to come and 'say'

things--which she does sometimes still _dans le monde_ as no one else _can_--- in my rooms.”

”Make her come then. We can go _there_!”

”One of these days!”

”And the young lady--Miriam, Maud, Gladys--make her come too.”

Sherringham looked at Nash and the latter was bland. ”Oh you'll have no difficulty. She'll jump at it!”

”Very good. I'll give a little artistic tea--with Julia too of course.

And you must come, Mr. Nash.” This gentleman promised with an inclination, and Peter continued: ”But if, as you say, you're not for helping the young lady, how came you to arrange this interview with the great model?”

”Precisely to stop her short. The great model will find her very bad.

Her judgements, as you probably know, are Rhadamanthine.”

”Unfortunate creature!” said Biddy. ”I think you're cruel.”

”Never mind--I'll look after them,” Sherringham laughed.

”And how can Madame Carre judge if the girl recites English?”

”She's so intelligent that she could judge if she recited Chinese,”

Peter declared.

”That's true, but the _jeune Anglaise_ recites also in French,” said Gabriel Nash.

”Then she isn't stupid.”

”And in Italian, and in several more tongues, for aught I know.”

Sherringham was visibly interested. ”Very good--we'll put her through them all.”

”She must be _most_ clever,” Biddy went on yearningly.

”She has spent her life on the Continent; she has wandered about with her mother; she has picked up things.”

”And is she a lady?” Biddy asked.

”Oh tremendous! The great ones of the earth on the mother's side. On the father's, on the other hand, I imagine, only a Jew stockbroker in the City.”

”Then they're rich--or ought to be,” Sherringham suggested.

”Ought to be--ah there's the bitterness! The stockbroker had too short a go--he was carried off in his flower. However, he left his wife a certain property, which she appears to have muddled away, not having the safeguard of being herself a Hebrew. This is what she has lived on till to-day--this and another resource. Her husband, as she has often told me, had the artistic temperament: that's common, as you know, among _ces messieurs_. He made the most of his little opportunities and collected various pictures, tapestries, enamels, porcelains, and similar gewgaws.

He parted with them also, I gather, at a profit; in short he carried on a neat little business as a _brocanteur_. It was nipped in the bud, but Mrs. Rooth was left with a certain number of these articles in her hands; indeed they must have formed her only capital. She was not a woman of business; she turned them, no doubt, to indifferent account; but she sold them piece by piece, and they kept her going while her daughter grew up. It was to this precarious traffic, conducted with extraordinary mystery and delicacy, that, five years ago, in Florence, I was indebted for my acquaintance with her. In those days I used to collect--heaven help me!--I used to pick up rubbish which I could ill afford. It was a little phase--we have our little phases, haven't we?”

Mr. Nash asked with childlike trust--”and I've come out on the other side. Mrs. Rooth had an old green pot and I heard of her old green pot.

To hear of it was to long for it, so that I went to see it under cover of night. I bought it and a couple of years ago I overturned and smashed it. It was the last of the little phase. It was not, however, as you've seen, the last of Mrs. Rooth. I met her afterwards in London, and I found her a year or two ago in Venice. She appears to be a great wanderer. She had other old pots, of other colours, red, yellow, black, or blue--she could produce them of any complexion you liked. I don't know whether she carried them about with her or whether she had little secret stores in the princ.i.p.al cities of Europe. To-day at any rate they seem all gone. On the other hand she has her daughter, who has grown up and who's a precious vase of another kind--less fragile I hope than the rest. May she not be overturned and smashed!”