I was so amused by them that, to get more of it, I did my best to take their point of view; and though it was an embarrassment to find myself appraising physically, as if they were animals on hire or useful blacks, a pair whom I should have expected to meet only in one of the relations in which criticism is tacit, I looked at Mrs. Monarch judicially enough to be able to exclaim, after a moment, with conviction: Oh yes, a lady in a book! She was singularly like a bad illustration.
Well stand up, if you like, said the Major; and he raised himself before me with a really grand air.
I could take his measure at a glancehe was six feet two and a perfect gentleman. It would have paid any club in process of formation and in want of a stamp to engage him at a salary to stand in the principal window. What struck me immediately was that in coming to me they had rather missed their vocation; they could surely have been turned to better account for advertising purposes. I couldnt of course see the thing in detail, but I could see them make someones fortuneI dont mean their own. There was something in them for a waistcoat-maker, an hotel-keeper or a soap-vendor. I could imagine We always use it pinned on their bosoms with the greatest effect; I had a vision of the promptitude with which they would launch a table dhôte.
Mrs. Monarch sat still, not from pride but from shyness, and presently her husband said to her: Get up my dear and show how smart you are. She obeyed, but she had no need to get up to show it. She walked to the end of the studio, and then she came back blushing, with her fluttered eyes on her husband. I was reminded of an incident I had accidentally had a glimpse of in Parisbeing with a friend there, a dramatist about to produce a playwhen an actress came to him to ask to be intrusted with a part. She went through her paces before him, walked up and down as Mrs. Monarch was doing. Mrs. Monarch did it quite as well, but I abstained from applauding. It was very odd to see such people apply for such poor pay. She looked as if she had ten thousand a year. Her husband had used the word that described her: she was, in the London current jargon, essentially and typically smart. Her figure was, in the same order of ideas, conspicuously and irreproachably good. For a woman of her age her waist was surprisingly small; her elbow moreover had the orthodox crook. She held her head at the conventional angle; but why did she come to me? She ought to have tried on jackets at a big shop. I feared my visitors were not only destitute, but artisticwhich would be a great complication. When she sat down again I thanked her, observing that what a draughtsman most valued in his model was the faculty of keeping quiet.
Oh, she can keep quiet, said Major Monarch. Then he added, jocosely: Ive always kept her quiet.
Im not a nasty fidget, am I? Mrs. Monarch appealed to her husband.
He addressed his answer to me. Perhaps it isnt out of place to mentionbecause we ought to be quite business-like, oughtnt we?that when I married her she was known as the Beautiful Statue.
Oh dear! said Mrs. Monarch, ruefully.
Of course I should want a certain amount of expression, I rejoined.
Of course! they both exclaimed.
And then I suppose you know that youll get awfully tired.
Oh, we never get tired! they eagerly cried.
Have you had any kind of practice?
They hesitatedthey looked at each other. Weve been photographed, immensely, said Mrs. Monarch.
She means the fellows have asked us, added the Major.
I seebecause youre so good-looking.
I dont know what they thought, but they were always after us.
We always got our photographs for nothing, smiled Mrs. Monarch.
We might have brought some, my dear, her husband remarked.
Im not sure we have any left. Weve given quantities away, she explained to me.
With our autographs and that sort of thing, said the Major.
Are they to be got in the shops? I inquired, as a harmless pleasantry.
Oh, yes; hersthey used to be.
Not now, said Mrs. Monarch, with her eyes on the floor.
II
I could fancy the sort of thing they put on the presentation-copies of their photographs, and I was sure they wrote a beautiful hand. It was odd how quickly I was sure of everything that concerned them. If they were now so poor as to have to earn shillings and pence, they never had had much of a margin. Their good looks had been their capital, and they had good-humouredly made the most of the career that this resource marked out for them. It was in their faces, the blankness, the deep intellectual repose of the twenty years of country-house visiting which had given them pleasant intonations. I could see the sunny drawing-rooms, sprinkled with periodicals she didnt read, in which Mrs. Monarch had continuously sat; I could see the wet shrubberies in which she had walked, equipped to admiration for either exercise. I could see the rich covers the Major had helped to shoot and the wonderful garments in which, late at night, he repaired to the smoking-room to talk about them. I could imagine their leggings and waterproofs, their knowing tweeds and rugs, their rolls of sticks and cases of tackle and neat umbrellas; and I could evoke the exact appearance of their servants and the compact variety of their luggage on the platforms of country stations.
They gave small tips, but they were liked; they didnt do anything themselves, but they were welcome. They looked so well everywhere; they gratified the general relish for stature, complexion and form. They knew it without fatuity or vulgarity, and they respected themselves in consequence. They were not superficial; they were thorough and kept themselves upit had been their line. People with such a taste for activity had to have some line. I could feel how, even in a dull house, they could have been counted upon for cheerfulness. At present something had happenedit didnt matter what, their little income had grown less, it had grown leastand they had to do something for pocket-money. Their friends liked them, but didnt like to support them. There was something about them that represented credittheir clothes, their manners, their type; but if credit is a large empty pocket in which an occasional chink reverberates, the chink at least must be audible. What they wanted of me was to help to make it so. Fortunately they had no childrenI soon divined that. They would also perhaps wish our relations to be kept secret: this was why it was for the figurethe reproduction of the face would betray them.
I liked themthey were so simple; and I had no objection to them if they would suit. But, somehow, with all their perfections I didnt easily believe in them. After all they were amateurs, and the ruling passion of my life was the detestation of the amateur. Combined with this was another perversityan innate preference for the represented subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then one was sure. Whether they were or not was a subordinate and almost always a profitless question. There were other considerations, the first of which was that I already had two or three people in use, notably a young person with big feet, in alpaca, from Kilburn, who for a couple of years had come to me regularly for my illustrations and with whom I was stillperhaps ignoblysatisfied. I frankly explained to my visitors how the case stood; but they had taken more precautions than I supposed. They had reasoned out their opportunity, for Claude Rivet had told them of the projected édition de luxe of one of the writers of our daythe rarest of the novelistswho, long neglected by the multitudinous vulgar and dearly prized by the attentive (need I mention Philip Vincent?) had had the happy fortune of seeing, late in life, the dawn and then the full light of a higher criticisman estimate in which, on the part of the public, there was something really of expiation. The edition in question, planned by a publisher of taste, was practically an act of high reparation; the wood-cuts with which it was to be enriched were the homage of English art to one of the most independent representatives of English letters. Major and Mrs. Monarch confessed to me that they had hoped I might be able to work them into my share of the enterprise. They knew I was to do the first of the books, Rutland Ramsay, but I had to make clear to them that my participation in the rest of the affairthis first book was to be a testwas to depend on the satisfaction I should give. If this should be limited my employers would drop me without a scruple. It was therefore a crisis for me, and naturally I was making special preparations, looking about for new people, if they should be necessary, and securing the best types. I admitted however that I should like to settle down to two or three good models who would do for everything.