The Real Thing | Page 6

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," 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.

CHAPTER 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 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 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 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 were not 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. I could feel how, even in
a dull house, they could have been counted upon for cheerfulness. 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 liked them, but didn't like 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 to 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--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 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 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 I mention 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