Part 68 (1/2)
”Your mother's quite right to be broken-hearted,” Miriam declared, ”and I can imagine exactly what she has been through. I should like to talk with her--I should like to see her.” Nick showed on this easy amus.e.m.e.nt, reminding her she had talked to him while she sat for her portrait in quite the opposite sense, most helpfully and inspiringly; and Nash explained that she was studying the part of a political d.u.c.h.ess and wished to take observations for it, to work herself into the character.
The girl might in fact have been a political d.u.c.h.ess as she sat, her head erect and her gloved hands folded, smiling with aristocratic dimness at Nick. She shook her head with stately sadness; she might have been trying some effect for Mary Stuart in Schiller's play. ”I've changed since that. I want you to be the grandest thing there is--the counsellor of kings.”
Peter wondered if it possibly weren't since she had met his sister in Nick's studio that she had changed, if perhaps she hadn't seen how it might give Julia the sense of being more effectually routed to know that the woman who had thrown the bomb was one who also tried to keep Nick in the straight path. This indeed would involve an a.s.sumption that Julia might know, whereas it was perfectly possible she mightn't and more than possible that if she should she wouldn't care. Miriam's essential fondness for trying different ways was always there as an adequate reason for any particular way; a truth which, however, sometimes only half-prevented the particular way from being vexatious to a particular observer.
”Yet after all who's more esthetic than you and who goes in more for the beautiful?” Nick asked. ”You're never so beautiful as when you pitch into it.”
”Oh, I'm an inferior creature, of an inferior s.e.x, and I've to earn my bread as I can. I'd give it all up in a moment, my odious trade--for an inducement.”
”And pray what do you mean by an inducement?” Nick demanded.
”My dear fellow, she means you--if you'll give her a permanent engagement to sit for you!” Gabriel volunteered. ”What singularly crude questions you ask!”
”I like the way she talks,” Mr. Dashwood derisively said, ”when I gave up the most brilliant prospects, of very much the same kind as Mr.
Dormer's, expressly to go on the stage.”
”You're an inferior creature too,” Miriam promptly p.r.o.nounced.
”Miss Rooth's very hard to satisfy,” Peter observed at this. ”A man of distinction, slightly bald, in evening dress, with orders, in the corner of her _loge_--she has such a personage ready made to her hand and she doesn't so much as look at him. Am _I_ not an inducement? Haven't I offered you a permanent engagement?”
”Your orders--where are your orders?” she returned with a sweet smile, getting up.
”I shall be a minister next year and an amba.s.sador before you know it.
Then I shall stick on everything that can be had.”
”And they call _us_ mountebanks!” cried the girl. ”I've been so glad to see you again--do you want another sitting?” she went on to Nick as if to take leave of him.
”As many as you'll give me--I shall be grateful for all,” he made answer. ”I should like to do you as you are at present. You're totally different from the woman I painted--you're wonderful.”
”The Comic Muse!” she laughed. ”Well, you must wait till our first nights are over--I'm _sur les dents_ till then. There's everything to do and I've to do it all. That fellow's good for nothing, for nothing but domestic life”--and she glanced at Basil Dashwood. ”He hasn't an idea--not one you'd willingly tell of him, though he's rather useful for the stables. We've got stables now--or we try to look as if we had: Dashwood's ideas are _de cette force_. In ten days I shall have more time.”
”The Comic Muse? Never, never,” Peter protested. ”You're not to go smirking through the age and down to posterity--I'd rather see you as Medusa crowned with serpents. That's what you look like when you look best.”
”That's consoling--when I've just bought a lovely new bonnet, all red roses and bows. I forgot to tell you just now that when you're an amba.s.sador you may propose anything you like,” Miriam went on. ”But forgive me if I make that condition. Seriously speaking, come to me glittering with orders and I shall probably succ.u.mb. I can't resist stars and garters. Only you must, as you say, have them all. I _don't_ like to hear Mr. Dormer talk the slang of the studio--like that phrase just now: it _is_ a fall to a lower state. However, when one's low one must crawl, and I'm crawling down to the Strand. Dashwood, see if mamma's ready. If she isn't I decline to wait; you must bring her in a hansom. I'll take Mr. Dormer in the brougham; I want to talk with Mr.
Dormer; he must drive with me to the theatre. His situation's full of interest.” Miriam led the way out of the room as she continued to chatter, and when she reached the house-door with the four men in her train the carriage had just drawn up at the garden-gate. It appeared that Mrs. Rooth was not ready, and the girl, in spite of a remonstrance from Nick, who had a sense of usurping the old lady's place, repeated her injunction that she should be brought on in a cab. Miriam's gentlemen hung about her at the gate, and she insisted on Nick's taking his seat in the brougham and taking it first. Before she entered she put her hand out to Peter and, looking up at him, held his own kindly. ”Dear old master, aren't you coming to-night? I miss you when you're not there.”
”Don't go--don't go--it's too much,” Nash freely declared.
”She is wonderful,” said Mr. Dashwood, all expert admiration; ”she _has_ gone into the rehearsals tooth and nail. But nothing takes it out of her.”
”Nothing puts it into you, my dear!” Miriam returned. Then she pursued to Peter: ”You're the faithful one--you're the one I count on.” He was not looking at her; his eyes travelled into the carriage, where they rested on Nick Dormer, established on the farther seat with his face turned toward the farther window. He was the one, faithful or no, counted on or no, whom a charming woman had preferred to carry off, and there was clear triumph for him in that fact. Yet it pleased, it somewhat relieved, his kinsman to see his pa.s.sivity as not a little foolish. Miriam noted something of this in Peter's eyes, for she exclaimed abruptly, ”Don't kill him--he doesn't care for me!” With which she pa.s.sed into the carriage and let it roll away.
Peter stood watching it till he heard Dashwood again beside him. ”You wouldn't believe what I make him do the whole thing for--a little rascal I know.”
”Good-bye; take good care of Mrs. Rooth,” said Gabriel Nash, waving a bland farewell to the young actor. He gave a smiling survey of the heavens and remarked to Sherringham that the rain had stopped. Was he walking, was he driving, should they be going in the same direction?
Peter cared little about his direction and had little account of it to give; he simply moved away in silence and with Gabriel at his side. This converser was partly an affliction to him; indeed the fact that he couldn't only make light of him added to the oppression. It was just to him nevertheless to note that he could hold his peace occasionally: he had for instance this afternoon taken little part in the talk at Balaklava Place. Peter greatly disliked to speak to him of Miriam, but he liked Nash himself to make free with her, and even liked him to say such things as might be a little viciously and unguardedly contradicted.
He was not, however, moved to gainsay something dropped by his companion, disconnectedly, at the end of a few minutes; a word to the effect that she was after all the best-natured soul alive. All the same, Nash added, it wouldn't do for her to take possession of a nice life like Nick's; and he repeated that for his part he would never allow it.