Part 26 (1/2)
”It's the compet.i.tion he dislikes,” Peter laughed.
”However, he's very good-natured; he lent mamma thirty pounds,” the girl added honestly. Our young man, at this information, was not able to repress a certain small twinge noted by his companion and of which she appeared to mistake the meaning. ”Of course he'll get it back,” she went on while he looked at her in silence a little. Fortune had not supplied him profusely with money, but his emotion was caused by no foresight of his probably having also to put his hand in his pocket for Mrs. Rooth.
It was simply the instinctive recoil of a fastidious nature from the idea of familiar intimacy with people who lived from hand to mouth, together with a sense that this intimacy would have to be defined if it was to go much further. He would wish to know what it was supposed to be, like Nash's histrionics. Miriam after a moment mistook his thought still more completely, and in doing so flashed a portent of the way it was in her to strike from time to time a note exasperatingly, almost consciously vulgar, which one would hate for the reason, along with others, that by that time one would be in love with her. ”Well then, he won't--if you don't believe it!” she easily laughed. He was saying to himself that the only possible form was that they should borrow only from him. ”You're a funny man. I make you blush,” she persisted.
”I must reply with the _tu quoque_, though I've not that effect on you.”
”I don't understand,” said the girl.
”You're an extraordinary young lady.”
”You mean I'm horrid. Well, I daresay I am. But I'm better when you know me.”
He made no direct rejoinder to this, but after a moment went on: ”Your mother must repay that money. I'll give it her.”
”You had better give it _him_!” cried Miriam. ”If once mamma has it--!”
She interrupted herself and with another and a softer tone, one of her professional transitions, remarked: ”I suppose you've never known any one that was poor.”
”I'm poor myself. That is, I'm very far from rich. But why receive favours--?” And here he in turn checked himself with the sense that he was indeed taking a great deal on his back if he pretended already--he had not seen the pair three times--to regulate their intercourse with the rest of the world. But the girl instantly carried out his thought and more than his thought.
”Favours from Mr. Nash? Oh he doesn't count!”
The way she dropped these words--they would have been admirable on the stage--made him reply with prompt ease: ”What I meant just now was that you're not to tell him, after all my swagger, that I consider that you and I are really required to save our theatre.”
”Oh if we can save it he shall know it!” She added that she must positively get home; her mother would be in a state: she had really scarce ever been out alone. He mightn't think it, but so it was. Her mother's ideas, those awfully proper ones, were not all talk. She _did_ keep her! Sherringham accepted this--he had an adequate and indeed an a.n.a.lytic vision of Mrs. Rooth's conservatism; but he observed at the same time that his companion made no motion to rise. He made none either; he only said:
”We're very frivolous, the way we chatter. What you want to do to get your foot in the stirrup is supremely difficult. There's everything to overcome. You've neither an engagement nor the prospect of an engagement.”
”Oh you'll get me one!” Her manner presented this as so certain that it wasn't worth dilating on; so instead of dilating she inquired abruptly a second time: ”Why do you think I'm so simple?”
”I don't then. Didn't I tell you just now that you were extraordinary?
That's the term, moreover, that you applied to yourself when you came to see me--when you said a girl had to be a kind of monster to wish to go on the stage. It remains the right term and your simplicity doesn't mitigate it. What's rare in you is that you have--as I suspect at least--no nature of your own.” Miriam listened to this as if preparing to argue with it or not, only as it should strike her as a sufficiently brave picture; but as yet, naturally, she failed to understand. ”You're always at concert pitch or on your horse; there are no intervals. It's the absence of intervals, of a _fond_ or background, that I don't comprehend. You're an embroidery without a canvas.”
”Yes--perhaps,” the girl replied, her head on one side as if she were looking at the pattern of this rarity. ”But I'm very honest.”
”You can't be everything, both a consummate actress and a flower of the field. You've got to choose.”
She looked at him a moment. ”I'm glad you think I'm so wonderful.”
”Your feigning may be honest in the sense that your only feeling is your feigned one,” Peter pursued. ”That's what I mean by the absence of a ground or of intervals. It's a kind of thing that's a labyrinth!”
”I know what I am,” she said sententiously.
But her companion continued, following his own train. ”Were you really so frightened the first day you went to Madame Carre's?”
She stared, then with a flush threw back her head. ”Do you think I was pretending?”
”I think you always are. However, your vanity--if you had any!--would be natural.”
”I've plenty of that. I'm not a bit ashamed to own it.”
”You'd be capable of trying to 'do' the human peac.o.c.k. But excuse the audacity and the crudity of my speculations--it only proves my interest.