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 cam shillings and pence they could never have 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 that had given them pleasant intonations.I could see the sunny drawing-rooms, sprinkled with periodicals she didn't 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 Icould 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 didn't 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 weren't superficial:
they were thorough and kept themselves up--it had been their line.
People with such a taste for activity had to have some line.Icould feel how even in a dull house they could have been counted on for the joy of life.At present something had happened--it didn't matter what, their little income had grown less, it had grown least--and they had to do something for pocket-money.Their friends could like them, I made out, without liking to support them.There was something about them that represented credit--their 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 help to make it so.Fortunately they had no children--I soon divined that.
They would also perhaps wish our relations to be kept secret: this was why it was "for the figure"--the reproduction of the face would betray them.
I liked them--I felt, quite as their friends must have done--they were so simple; and I had no objection to them if they would suit.
But somehow with all their perfections I didn't 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 perversity--an 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 recruits 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 still--perhaps ignobly--satisfied.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 edition de luxe of one of the writers of our day--the rarest of the novelists--who, long neglected by the multitudinous vulgar, and dearly prized by the attentive (need Imention Philip Vincent?) had had the happy fortune of seeing, late in life, the dawn and then the full light of a higher criticism; an estimate in which on the part of the public there was something really of expiation.The edition preparing, planned by a publisher of taste, was practically an act of high reparation; the woodcuts 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 they had hoped I might be able to work THEM into my branch of the enterprise.They knew Iwas 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 affair--this first book was to be a test--must depend on the satisfaction Ishould give.If this should be limited my employers would drop me with scarce common forms.It was therefore a crisis for me, and naturally I was making special preparations, looking about for new people, should they be necessary, and securing the best types.Iadmitted however that I should like to settle down to two or three good models who would do for everything.
"Should we have often to--a--put on special clothes?" Mrs.Monarch timidly demanded.
"Dear yes--that's half the business."
"And should we be expected to supply our own costumes?
"Oh no; I've got a lot of things.A painter's models put on--or put off--anything he likes.""And you mean--a--the same?"
"The same?"
Mrs.Monarch looked at her husband again.
"Oh she was just wondering," he explained, "if the costumes are in GENERAL use." I had to confess that they were, and I mentioned further that some of them--I had a lot of, genuine greasy last-century things--had served their time, a hundred years ago, on living world-stained men and women; on figures not perhaps so far removed, in that vanished world, from THEIR type, the Monarchs', quoi! of a breeched and bewigged age."We'll put, on anything that FITS," said the Major.
"Oh I arrange that--they fit in the pictures.""I'm afraid I should do better for the modern books.I'd come as you like," said Mrs.Monarch.
