Part 18 (1/2)
”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, const.i.tuted 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 eyes 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 Carre, 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 Carre 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 emba.s.sy 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 Carre 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 Carre.
”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 Carre 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!”