Part 43 (1/2)
”_Elle est superbe_,” said Madame Carre. ”You must put those pieces on the stage: how will you do it?”
”Oh we know how to get up a play in London, Madame Carre”--Mr. Dashwood was all geniality. ”They put money on it, you know.”
”On it? But what do they put _in_ it? Who'll interpret them? Who'll manage a style like that--the style of which the rhapsodies she has just repeated are a specimen? Whom have you got that one has ever heard of?”
”Oh you'll hear of a good deal when once she gets started,” Dashwood cheerfully contended.
Madame Carre looked at him a moment; then, ”I feel that you'll become very bad,” she said to Miriam. ”I'm glad I shan't see it.”
”People will do things for me--I'll make them,” the girl declared. ”I'll stir them up so that they'll have ideas.”
”What people, pray?”
”Ah terrible woman!” Peter theatrically groaned.
”We translate your pieces--there will be plenty of parts,” Basil Dashwood said.
”Why then go out of the door to come in at the window?--especially if you smash it! An English arrangement of a French piece is a pretty woman with her back turned.”
”Do you really want to keep her?” Sherringham asked of Madame Carre--quite as if thinking for a moment that this after all might be possible.
She bent her strange eyes on him. ”No, you're all too queer together. We couldn't be bothered with you and you're not worth it.”
”I'm glad it's 'together' that we're queer then--we can console each other.”
”If you only would; but you don't seem to! In short I don't understand you--I give you up. But it doesn't matter,” said the old woman wearily, ”for the theatre's dead and even you, _ma toute-belle_, won't bring it to life. Everything's going from bad to worse, and I don't care what becomes of you. You wouldn't understand us here and they won't understand you there, and everything's impossible, and no one's a whit the wiser, and it's not of the least consequence. Only when you raise your arms lift them just a little higher,” Madame Carre added.
”My mother will be happier _chez nous_” said Miriam, throwing her arms straight up and giving them a n.o.ble tragic movement.
”You won't be in the least in the right path till your mother's in despair.”
”Well, perhaps we can bring that about even in London,” Sherringham patiently laughed.
”Dear Mrs. Rooth--she's great fun,” Mr. Dashwood as imperturbably dropped.
Miriam transferred the dark weight of her gaze to him as if she were practising. ”_You_ won't upset her, at any rate.” Then she stood with her beautiful and fatal mask before her hostess. ”I want to do the modern too. I want to do _le drame_, with intense realistic effects.”
”And do you want to look like the portico of the Madeleine when it's draped for a funeral?” her instructress mocked. ”Never, never. I don't believe you're various: that's not the way I see you. You're pure tragedy, with _de grands eclats de voix_ in the great style, or you're nothing.”
”Be beautiful--be only that,” Peter urged with high interest. ”Be only what you can be so well--something that one may turn to for a glimpse of perfection, to lift one out of all the vulgarities of the day.”
Thus apostrophised the girl broke out with one of the speeches of Racine's Phaedra, hus.h.i.+ng her companions on the instant. ”You'll be the English Rachel,” said Basil Dashwood when she stopped.
”Acting in French!” Madame Carre amended. ”I don't believe in an English Rachel.”
”I shall have to work it out, what I shall be,” Miriam concluded with a rich pensive effect.
”You're in wonderfully good form to-day,” Sherringham said to her; his appreciation revealing a personal subjection he was unable to conceal from his companions, much as he wished it.