The Real Thing | Page 7

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 affair--this
first book was to be a test--was 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.
"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 do 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. "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 would come as
you like," said Mrs. Monarch.
"She has got a lot of clothes at home: they might do for contemporary
life," her husband continued.
"Oh, I can fancy scenes in which you'd be quite natural." And indeed I
could see the slipshod rearrangements of stale properties--the stories I
tried to produce pictures for without the exasperation of reading
them--whose sandy tracts the good lady might help to people. But I had
to return to the fact that for this sort of work--the daily mechanical
grind--I was already equipped; the people I was working with were
fully adequate.
"We only thought we might be more like SOME characters," said Mrs.
Monarch mildly, getting up.
Her husband also rose; he stood looking at me with a dim wistfulness
that was touching in so fine a man. "Wouldn't it be rather a pull
sometimes to have--a--to have--?" He hung fire; he wanted me to help
him by phrasing what he meant. But I couldn't--I didn't know. So he
brought it out, awkwardly: "The REAL thing; a gentleman, you know,
or a lady." I was quite ready to give a general assent--I admitted that
there was a great deal in that. This encouraged Major Monarch to say,
following up his appeal with an unacted gulp: "It's awfully hard--we've
tried everything." The gulp was communicative; it proved too much for
his wife. Before I knew it Mrs. Monarch had dropped again upon a
divan and burst into tears. Her husband sat down beside her, holding
one of her hands; whereupon she quickly dried her eyes with the other,
while I felt embarrassed as she looked up at me. "There isn't a
confounded job I haven't applied for--waited for-- prayed for. You can
fancy we'd be pretty bad first. Secretaryships and that sort of thing?
You might as well ask for a peerage. I'd be ANYTHING--I'm strong; a
messenger or a coalheaver. I'd put on a gold-laced cap and open
carriage-doors in front of the haberdasher's; I'd hang about a station, to
carry portmanteaus; I'd be a postman. But they won't LOOK at you;
there are thousands, as good as yourself, already on the ground.

GENTLEMEN, poor beggars, who have drunk their wine, who have
kept their hunters!"
I was as reassuring as I knew how to be, and my visitors were presently
on their feet again while, for the experiment, we agreed on an hour. We
were discussing it when the door opened and Miss Churm came in with
a wet umbrella. Miss Churm had to take the omnibus to Maida Vale
and then walk half-a-mile. She looked a trifle blowsy and slightly
splashed. I scarcely ever saw her come in without thinking afresh how
odd it was that, being so little in herself, she should yet be so much in
others. She was a meagre little Miss Churm, but she was an ample
heroine of romance.