With the remark that I might as well know something more about them the husband had handed me a card extracted from a neat new pocket-book--their appurtenances were all of the freshest--and inscribed with the words "Major Monarch." Impressive as these words were they didn't carry my knowledge much further; but my visitor presently added: "I've left the army and we've had the misfortune to lose our money.In fact our means are dreadfully small.""It's awfully trying--a regular strain,", said Mrs.Monarch.
They evidently wished to be discreet--to take care not to swagger because they were gentlefolk.I felt them willing to recognise this as something of a drawback, at the same time that I guessed at an underlying sense--their consolation in adversity--that they HADtheir points.They certainly had; but these advantages struck me as preponderantly social; such for instance as would help to make a drawing-room look well.However, a drawing-room was always, or ought to be, a picture.
In consequence of his wife's allusion to their age Major Monarch observed: "Naturally it's more for the figure that we thought of going in.We can still hold ourselves up." On the instant I saw that the figure was indeed their strong point.His "naturally"didn't sound vain, but it lighted up the question."SHE has the best one," he continued, nodding at his wife with a pleasant after-dinner absence of circumlocution.I could only reply, as if we were in fact sitting over our wine, that this didn't prevent his own from being very good; which led him in turn to make answer:
"We thought that if you ever have to do people like us we might be something like it.SHE particularly--for a lady in a book, you know."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.
"We'll 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 glance--he 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 at once 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 couldn't of course see the thing in detail, but I could see them make somebody's fortune--I don't mean their own.There was something in them for a waistcoat-maker, an hotel-keeper or a soap-vendor.Icould imagine "We always use it" pinned on their bosoms with the greatest effect; I had a vision of the brilliancy with which they would launch a table d'hote.
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 came back blushing, her fluttered eyes on the partner of her appeal.I was reminded of an incident I had accidentally had a glimpse of in Paris--being with a friend there, a dramatist about to produce a play, when an actress came to him to ask to be entrusted 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 Iabstained 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 "artistic"--which 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: "I've always kept her quiet.""I'm not a nasty fidget, am I?" It was going to wring tears from me, I felt, the way she hid her head, ostrich-like, in the other broad bosom.
The owner of this expanse addressed his answer to me."Perhaps it isn't out of place to mention--because we ought to be quite business-like, oughtn't 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," Irejoined.
"Of COURSE!"--and I had never heard such unanimity.
"And then I suppose you know that you'll get awfully tired.""Oh we NEVER get tired!" they eagerly cried.
"Have you had any kind of practice?"
They hesitated--they looked at each other.We've been photographed--IMMENSELY," said Mrs.Monarch.
"She means the fellows have asked us themselves," added the Major.
"I see--because you're so good-looking."
"I don't 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.
"I'm not sure we have any left.We've 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, HERS--they used to be."
"Not now," said Mrs.Monarch with her eyes on the floor.