Part 77 (1/2)
”Mamma's confessions have to be tremendous to correspond with her crimes,” said Miriam. ”She asked Miss Dormer to come and see us, suggested even that you might bring her some Sunday. I don't like the way mamma does such things--too much humility, too many _simagrees_, after all; but I also said what I could to be nice to her. Your sister _is_ charming--awfully pretty and modest. If you were to press me I should tell you frankly that it seems to me rather a social muddle, this rubbing shoulders of 'nice girls' and _filles de theatre_: I shouldn't think it would do your poor young things much good. However, it's their own affair, and no doubt there's no more need of their thinking we're worse than we are than of their thinking we're better. The people they live with don't seem to know the difference--I sometimes make my reflexions about the public one works for.”
”Ah if you go in for the public's knowing differences you're far too particular,” Nick laughed. ”_D'ou tombez-vous_? as you affected French people say. If you've anything at stake on that you had simply better not play.”
”Dear Mr. Dormer, don't encourage her to be so dreadful; for it _is_ dreadful, the way she talks,” Mrs. Rooth broke in. ”One would think we weren't respectable--one would think I had never known what I've known and been what I've been.”
”What one would think, beloved mother, is that you're a still greater humbug than you are. It's you, on the contrary, who go down on your knees, who pour forth apologies about our being vagabonds.”
”Vagabonds--listen to her!--after the education I've given her and our magnificent prospects!” wailed Mrs. Rooth, sinking with clasped hands upon the nearest ottoman.
”Not after our prospects, if prospects they be: a good deal before them.
Yes, you've taught me tongues and I'm greatly obliged to you--they no doubt give variety as well as incoherency to my conversation; and that of people in our line is for the most part notoriously monotonous and shoppy. The gift of tongues is in general the sign of your true adventurer. Dear mamma, I've no low standard--that's the last thing,”
Miriam went on. ”My weakness is my exalted conception of respectability.
Ah _parlez-moi de ca_ and of the way I understand it! If I were to go in for being respectable you'd see something fine. I'm awfully conservative and I know what respectability is, even when I meet people of society on the accidental middle ground of either glowering or smirking. I know also what it isn't--it isn't the sweet union of well-bred little girls ('carefully-nurtured,' don't they call them?) and painted she-mummers. I should carry it much further than any of these people: I should never look at the likes of us! Every hour I live I see that the wisdom of the ages was in the experience of dear old Madame Carre--was in a hundred things she told me. She's founded on a rock. After that,” Miriam went on to her host, ”I can a.s.sure you that if you were so good as to bring Miss Dormer to see us we should be angelically careful of her and surround her with every attention and precaution.”
”The likes of us--the likes of us!” Mrs. Rooth repeated plaintively and with a resentment as vain as a failure to sneeze. ”I don't know what you're talking about and I decline to be turned upside down, I've my ideas as well as you, and I repudiate the charge of false humility. I've been through too many troubles to be proud, and a pleasant, polite manner was the rule of my life even in the days when, G.o.d knows, I had everything. I've never changed and if with G.o.d's help I had a civil tongue then, I've a civil tongue now. It's more than you always have, my poor, perverse, pa.s.sionate child. Once a lady always a lady--all the footlights in the world, turn them up as high as you will, make no difference there. And I think people know it, people who know anything--if I may use such an expression--and it's because they know it that I'm not afraid to address them in a pleasant way. So I must say--and I call Mr. Dormer to witness, for if he could reason with you a bit about it he might render several people a service--your conduct to Mr. Sherringham simply breaks my heart,” Mrs. Rooth concluded, taking a jump of several steps in the fine modern avenue of her argument.
Nick was appealed to, but he hung back, drawing with a free hand, and while he forbore Miriam took it up. ”Mother's good--mother's very good; but it's only little by little that you discover how good she is.” This seemed to leave him at ease to ask their companion, with the preliminary intimation that what she had just said was very striking, what she meant by her daughter's conduct to old Peter. Before Mrs. Rooth could answer this question, however, Miriam broke across with one of her own. ”Do you mind telling me if you made your sister go off with Mr.
Sherringham because you knew it was about time for me to turn up? Poor Mr. Dormer, I get you into trouble, don't I?” she added quite with tenderness.
”Into trouble?” echoed Nick, looking at her head but not at her eyes.
”Well, we won't talk about that!” she returned with a rich laugh.
He now hastened to say that he had nothing to do with his sister's leaving the studio--she had only come, as it happened, for a moment. She had walked away with Peter Sherringham because they were cousins and old friends: he was to leave England immediately, for a long time, and he had offered her his company going home. Mrs. Rooth shook her head very knowingly over the ”long time” Mr. Sherringham would be absent--she plainly had her ideas about that; and she conscientiously related that in the course of the short conversation they had all had at the door of the house her daughter had reminded Miss Dormer of something that had pa.s.sed between them in Paris on the question of the charming young lady's modelling her head.
”I did it to make the idea of our meeting less absurd--to put it on the footing of our both being artists. I don't ask you if she has talent,”
said Miriam.
”Then I needn't tell you,” laughed Nick.
”I'm sure she has talent and a very refined inspiration. I see something in that corner, covered with a mysterious veil,” Mrs. Rooth insinuated; which led Miriam to go on immediately:
”Has she been trying her hand at Mr. Sherringham?”
”When should she try her hand, poor dear young lady? He's always sitting with us,” said Mrs. Rooth.
”Dear mamma, you exaggerate. He has his moments--when he seems to say his prayers to me; but we've had some success in cutting them down. _Il s'est bien detache ces jours-ci_, and I'm very happy for him. Of course it's an impertinent allusion for me to make; but I should be so delighted if I could think of him as a little in love with Miss Dormer,”
the girl pursued, addressing Nick.
”He is, I think, just a little--just a tiny bit,” her artist allowed, working away; while Mrs. Rooth e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed to her daughter simultaneously:
”How can you ask such fantastic questions when you know he's dying for _you_?”
”Oh dying!--he's dying very hard!” cried Miriam. ”Mr. Sherringham's a man of whom I can't speak with too much esteem and affection and who may be destined to perish by some horrid fever (which G.o.d forbid!) in the unpleasant country he's going to. But he won't have caught his fever from your humble servant.”
”You may kill him even while you remain in perfect health yourself,”
said Nick; ”and since we're talking of the matter I don't see the harm of my confessing that he strikes me as far gone--oh as very bad indeed.”