“It bores you and you think it disagreeable,” she then said —“I mean a girl always talking about herself.” He protested she could never bore him and she added: “Oh I don’t want compliments — I want the hard, the precious truth. An actress has to talk about herself. What else can she talk about, poor vain thing?”
“She can talk sometimes about other actresses.”
“That comes to the same thing. You won’t be serious. I’m awfully serious.” There was something that caught his attention in the note of this — a longing half hopeless, half argumentative to be believed in. “If one really wants to do anything one must worry it out; of course everything doesn’t come the first day,” she kept on. “I can’t see everything at once; but I can see a little more — step by step — as I go; can’t I?”
“That’s the way — that’s the way,” he gently enough returned. “When you see the things to do the art of doing them will come — if you hammer away. The great point’s to see them.”
“Yes; and you don’t think me clever enough for that.”
“Why do you say so when I’ve asked you to come here on purpose?”
“You’ve asked me to come, but I’ve had no success.”
“On the contrary; every one thought you wonderful.”
“Oh but they don’t know!” said Miriam Rooth. “You’ve not said a word to me. I don’t mind your not having praised me; that would be too banal. But if I’m bad — and I know I’m dreadful — I wish you’d talk to me about it.”
“It’s delightful to talk to you,” Peter found himself saying.
“No, it isn’t, but it’s kind”; and she looked away from him.
Her voice had with this a quality which made him exclaim: “Every now and then you ‘say’ something —!”
She turned her eyes back to him and her face had a light. “I don’t want it to come by accident.” Then she added: “If there’s any good to be got from trying, from showing one’s self, how can it come unless one hears the simple truth, the truth that turns one inside out? It’s all for that — to know what one is, if one’s a stick!”
“You’ve great courage, you’ve rare qualities,” Sherringham risked. She had begun to touch him, to seem different: he was glad she had not gone.
But for a little she made no answer, putting down her empty cup and yearning over the table as for something more to eat. Suddenly she raised her head and broke out with vehemence: “I will, I will, I will!”
“You’ll do what you want, evidently.”
“I will succeed — I will be great. Of course I know too little, I’ve seen too little. But I’ve always liked it; I’ve never liked anything else. I used to learn things and do scenes and rant about the room when I was but five years old.” She went on, communicative, persuasive, familiar, egotistical (as was necessary), and slightly common, or perhaps only natural; with reminiscences, reasons, and anecdotes, an unexpected profusion, and with an air of comradeship, of freedom in any relation, which seemed to plead that she was capable at least of embracing that side of the profession she desired to adopt. He noted that if she had seen very little, as she said, she had also seen a great deal; but both her experience and her innocence had been accidental and irregular. She had seen very little acting — the theatre was always too expensive. If she could only go often — in Paris for instance every night for six months — to see the best, the worst, everything, she would make things out, would observe and learn what to do, what not to do: it would be a school of schools. But she couldn’t without selling the clothes off her back. It was vile and disgusting to be poor, and if ever she were to know the bliss of having a few francs in her pocket she would make up for it — that she could promise! She had never been acquainted with any one who could tell her anything — if it was good or bad or right or wrong — except Mrs. Delamere and poor Ruggieri. She supposed they had told her a great deal, but perhaps they hadn’t, and she was perfectly willing to give it up if it was bad. Evidently Madame Carré thought so; she thought it was horrid. Wasn’t it perfectly divine, the way the old woman had said those verses, those speeches of Célie? If she would only let her come and listen to her once in a while like that it was all she would ask. She had got lots of ideas just from that half-hour; she had practised them over, over, and over again, the moment she got home. He might ask her mother — he might ask the people next door. If Madame Carré didn’t think she could work, she might have heard, could she have listened at the door, something that would show her. But she didn’t think her even good enough to criticise — since that wasn’t criticism, telling her her head was good. Of course her head was good — she needn’t travel up to the quartiers excentriques to find that out. It was her mother, the way she talked, who gave the idea that she wanted to be elegant and moral and a femme du monde and all that sort of trash. Of course that put people off, when they were only thinking of the real right way. Didn’t she know, Miriam herself, that this was the one thing to think of? But any one would be kind to her mother who knew what a dear she was. “She doesn’t know when any thing’s right or wrong, but she’s a perfect saint,” said the girl, obscuring considerably her vindication. “She doesn’t mind when I say things over by the hour, dinning them into her ears while she sits there and reads. She’s a tremendous reader; she’s awfully up in literature. She taught me everything herself. I mean all that sort of thing. Of course I’m not so fond of reading; I go in for the book of life.” Sherringham wondered if her mother had not at any rate taught her that phrase — he thought it highly probable. “It would give on my nerves, the life I lead her,” Miriam continued; “but she’s really a delicious woman.”
The oddity of this epithet made Peter laugh, and altogether, in a few minutes, which is perhaps a sign that he abused his right to be a man of moods, the young lady had produced in him a revolution of curiosity, set his sympathy in motion. Her mixture, as it spread itself before him, was an appeal and a challenge: she was sensitive and dense, she was underbred and fine. Certainly she was very various, and that was rare; quite not at this moment the heavy-eyed, frightened creature who had pulled herself together with such an effort at Madame Carré‘s, nor the elated “phenomenon” who had just been declaiming, nor the rather affected and contradictious young person with whom he had walked home from the Rue de Constantinople. Was this succession of phases a sign she was really a case of the celebrated artistic temperament, the nature that made people provoking and interesting? That Sherringham himself was of this shifting complexion is perhaps proved by his odd capacity for being of two different minds very nearly at the same time. Miriam was pretty now, with felicities and graces, with charming, unusual eyes. Yes, there were things he could do for her; he had already forgotten the chill of Mr. Nash’s irony, of his prophecy. He was even scarce conscious how little in general he liked hints, insinuations, favours asked obliquely and plaintively: that was doubtless also because the girl was suddenly so taking and so fraternising. Perhaps indeed it was unjust to qualify as roundabout the manner in which Miss Rooth conveyed that it was open to him not only to pay for her lessons, but to meet the expense of her nightly attendance with her mother at instructive exhibitions of theatrical art. It was a large order, sending the pair to all the plays; but what Peter now found himself thinking of was not so much its largeness as the possible interest of going with them sometimes and pointing the moral — the technical one — of showing her the things he liked, the things he disapproved. She repeated her declaration that she recognised the fallacy of her mother’s view of heroines impossibly virtuous and of the importance of her looking out for such tremendously proper people. “One must let her talk, but of course it creates a prejudice,” she said with her eyes on Mr. and Mrs. Lovick, who had got up, terminating their communion with Mrs. Rooth. “It’s a great muddle, I know, but she can’t bear anything coarse or nasty — and quite right too. I shouldn’t either if I didn’t have to. But I don’t care a sou where I go if I can get to act, or who they are if they’ll help me. I want to act — that’s what I want to do; I don’t want to meddle in people’s affairs. I can look out for myself — I’m all right!” the girl exclaimed roundly,