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Title: The Tragic Muse


Author: Henry James



Release Date: December 10, 2006  [eBook #20085]

Language: English

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THE TRAGIC MUSE

by

HENRY JAMES







MacMillan and Co., Limited St. Martin's Street, London

1921





PREFACE


I profess a certain vagueness of remembrance in respect to the origin
and growth of _The Tragic Muse_, which appeared in the _Atlantic
Monthly_ again, beginning January 1889 and running on, inordinately,
several months beyond its proper twelve. If it be ever of interest and
profit to put one's finger on the productive germ of a work of art, and
if in fact a lucid account of any such work involves that prime
identification, I can but look on the present fiction as a poor
fatherless and motherless, a sort of unregistered and unacknowledged
birth. I fail to recover my precious first moment of consciousness of
the idea to which it was to give form; to recognise in it--as I like to
do in general--the effect of some particular sharp impression or
concussion. I call such remembered glimmers always precious, because
without them comes no clear vision of what one may have intended, and
without that vision no straight measure of what one may have succeeded
in doing. What I make out from furthest back is that I must have had
from still further back, must in fact practically have always had, the
happy thought of some dramatic picture of the "artist-life" and of the
difficult terms on which it is at the best secured and enjoyed, the
general question of its having to be not altogether easily paid for. To
"do something about art"--art, that is, as a human complication and a
social stumbling-block--must have been for me early a good deal of a
nursed intention, the conflict between art and "the world" striking me
thus betimes as one of the half-dozen great primary motives. I remember
even having taken for granted with this fond inveteracy that no one of
these pregnant themes was likely to prove under the test more full of
matter. This being the case, meanwhile, what would all experience have
done but enrich one's conviction?--since if, on the one hand, I had
gained a more and more intimate view of the nature of art and the
conditions therewith imposed, so the world was a conception that clearly
required, and that would for ever continue to take, any amount of
filling-in. The happy and fruitful truth, at all events, was that there
was opposition--why there _should_ be was another matter--and that the
opposition would beget an infinity of situations. What had doubtless
occurred in fact, moreover, was that just this question of the essence
and the reasons of the opposition had shown itself to demand the light
of experience; so that to the growth of experience, truly, the treatment
of the subject had yielded. It had waited for that advantage.

Yet I continue to see experience giving me its jog mainly in the form of
an invitation from the gentle editor of the _Atlantic_, the late Thomas
Bailey Aldrich, to contribute to his pages a serial that should run
through the year. That friendly appeal becomes thus the most definite
statement I can make of the "genesis" of the book; though from the
moment of its reaching me everything else in the matter seems to live
again. What lives not least, to be quite candid, is the fact that I was
to see this production make a virtual end, for the time, as by its
sinister effect--though for reasons still obscure to me--of the pleasant
old custom of the "running" of the novel. Not for many years was I to
feel the practice, for my benefit, confidingly revive. The influence of
_The Tragic Muse_ was thus exactly other than what I had all earnestly
(if of course privately enough) invoked for it, and I remember well the
particular chill, at last, of the sense of my having launched it in a
great grey void from which no echo or message whatever would come back.
None, in the event, ever came, and as I now read the book over I find
the circumstance make, in its name, for a special tenderness of charity;
even for that finer consideration hanging in the parental breast about
the maimed or slighted, the disfigured or defeated, the unlucky or
unlikely child--with this hapless small mortal thought of further as
somehow "compromising." I am thus able to take the thing as having quite
wittingly and undisturbedly existed for itself alone, and to liken it to
some aromatic bag of gathered herbs of which the string has never been
loosed; or, better still, to some jar of potpourri, shaped and
overfigured and polished, but of which the lid, never lifted, has
provided for the intense accumulation of the fragrance within. The
consistent, the sustained, preserved _tone_ of _The Tragic Muse_, its
constant and doubtless rather fine-drawn truth to its particular sought
pitch and accent, are, critically speaking, its principal merit--the
inner harmony that I perhaps presumptuously permit myself to compare to
an unevaporated scent.

After which indeed I may well be summoned to say what I mean, in such a
business, by an appreciable "tone" and how I can justify my claim to
it--a demonstration that will await us later. Suffice it just here that
I find the latent historic clue in my hand again with the easy recall of
my prompt grasp of such a chance to make a story about art. _There_ was
my subject this time--all mature with having long waited, and with the
blest dignity that my original perception of its value was quite lost in
the mists of youth. I must long have carried in my head the notion of a
young man who should amid difficulty--the difficulties being the
story--have abandoned "public life" for the zealous pursuit of some
supposedly minor craft; just as, evidently, there had hovered before me
some possible picture (but all comic and ironic) of one of the most
salient London "social" passions, the unappeasable curiosity for the
things of the theatre; for every one of them, that is, except the drama
itself, and for the "personality" of the performer (almost any performer
quite sufficiently serving) in particular. This latter, verily, had
struck me as an aspect appealing mainly to satiric treatment; the only
adequate or effective treatment, I had again and again felt, for most of
the distinctively social aspects of London: the general artlessly
histrionised air of things caused so many examples to spring from behind
any hedge. What came up, however, at once, for my own stretched canvas,
was that it would have to be ample, give me really space to turn round,
and that a single illustrative case might easily be meagre fare. The
young man who should "chuck" admired politics, and of course some other
admired object with them, would be all very well; but he wouldn't be
enough--therefore what should one say to some other young man who would
chuck something and somebody else, admired in their way too?

There need never, at the worst, be any difficulty about the things
advantageously chuckable for art; the question is all but of choosing
them in the heap. Yet were I to represent a struggle--an interesting
one, indispensably--with the passions of the theatre (as a profession,
or at least as an absorption) I should have to place the theatre in
another light than the satiric. This, however, would by good luck be
perfectly possible too--without a sacrifice of truth; and I should
doubtless even be able to make my theatric case as important as I might
desire it. It seemed clear that I needed big cases--small ones would
practically give my central idea away; and I make out now my still
labouring under the illusion that the case of the sacrifice for art
_can_ ever be, with truth, with taste, with discretion involved,
apparently and showily "big." I daresay it glimmered upon me even then
that the very sharpest difficulty of the victim of the conflict I should
seek to represent, and the very highest interest of his predicament,
dwell deep in the fact that his repudiation of the great obvious, great
moral or functional or useful character, shall just have to consent to
resemble a surrender for absolutely nothing. Those characters are all
large and expansive, seated and established and endowed; whereas the
most charming truth about the preference for art is that to parade
abroad so thoroughly inward and so naturally embarrassed a matter is to
falsify and vulgarise it; that as a preference attended with the honours
of publicity it is indeed nowhere; that in fact, under the rule of its
sincerity, its only honours are those of contradiction, concentration
and a seemingly deplorable indifference to everything but itself.
Nothing can well figure as less "big," in an honest thesis, than a
marked instance of somebody's willingness to pass mainly for an ass. Of
these things I must, I say, have been in strictness aware; what I
perhaps failed of was to note that if a certain romantic glamour (even
that of mere eccentricity or of a fine perversity) may be flung over the
act of exchange of a "career" for the esthetic life in general, the
prose and the modesty of the matter yet come in with any exhibition of
the particular branch of esthetics selected. Then it is that the
attitude of hero or heroine may look too much--for the romantic
effect--like a low crouching over proved trifles. Art indeed has in our
day taken on so many honours and emoluments that the recognition of its
importance is more than a custom, has become on occasion almost a fury:
the line is drawn--especially in the English world--only at the
importance of heeding what it may mean.

The more I turn my pieces over, at any rate, the more I now see I must
have found in them, and I remember how, once well in presence of my
three typical examples, my fear of too ample a canvas quite dropped. The
only question was that if I had marked my political case, from so far
back, for "a story by itself," and then marked my theatrical case for
another, the joining together of these interests, originally seen as
separate, might, all disgracefully, betray the seam, show for mechanical
and superficial. A story was a story, a picture a picture, and I had a
mortal horror of two stories, two pictures, in one. The reason of this
was the clearest--my subject was immediately, under that disadvantage,
so cheated of its indispensable centre as to become of no more use for
expressing a main intention than a wheel without a hub is of use for
moving a cart. It was a fact, apparently, that one _had_ on occasion
seen two pictures in one; were there not for instance certain sublime
Tintorettos at Venice, a measureless Crucifixion in especial, which
showed without loss of authority half-a-dozen actions separately taking
place? Yes, that might be, but there had surely been nevertheless a
mighty pictorial fusion, so that the virtue of composition had somehow
thereby come all mysteriously to its own. Of course the affair would be
simple enough if composition could be kept out of the question; yet by
what art or process, what bars and bolts, what unmuzzled dogs and
pointed guns, perform that feat? I had to know myself utterly inapt for
any such valour and recognise that, to make it possible, sundry things
should have begun for me much further back than I had felt them even in
their dawn. A picture without composition slights its most precious
chance for beauty, and is, moreover, not composed at all unless the
painter knows _how_ that principle of health and safety, working as an
absolutely premeditated art, has prevailed. There may in its absence be
life, incontestably, as _The Newcomes_ has life, as _Les Trois
Mousquetaires_, as Tolstoi's _Peace and War_, have it; but what do such
large, loose, baggy monsters, with their queer elements of the
accidental and the arbitrary, artistically _mean_? We have heard it
maintained, we well remember, that such things are "superior to art";
but we understand least of all what _that_ may mean, and we look in vain
for the artist, the divine explanatory genius, who will come to our aid
and tell us. There is life and life, and as waste is only life
sacrificed and thereby prevented from "counting," I delight in a
deep-breathing economy and an organic form. My business was accordingly
to "go in" for complete pictorial fusion, some such common interest
between my two first notions as would, in spite of their birth under
quite different stars, do them no violence at all.

I recall with this confirmed infatuation of retrospect that through the
mild perceptions I here glance at there struck for _The Tragic Muse_ the
first hour of a season of no small subjective felicity; lighted mainly,
I seem to see, by a wide west window that, high aloft, looked over near
and far London sunsets, a half-grey, half-flushed expanse of London
life. The production of the thing, which yet took a good many months,
lives for me again all contemporaneously in that full projection, upon
my very table, of the good fog-filtered Kensington mornings; which had a
way indeed of seeing the sunset in and which at the very last are merged
to memory in a different and a sharper pressure, that of an hotel
bedroom in Paris during the autumn of 1889, with the Exposition du
Centenaire about to end--and my long story, through the usual
difficulties, as well. The usual difficulties--and I fairly cherish the
record as some adventurer in another line may hug the sense of his
inveterate habit of just saving in time the neck he ever
undiscourageably risks--were those bequeathed as a particular vice of
the artistic spirit, against which vigilance had been destined from the
first to exert itself in vain, and the effect of which was that again
and again, perversely, incurably, the centre of my structure would
insist on placing itself _not_, so to speak, in the middle. It mattered
little that the reader with the idea or the suspicion of a structural
centre is the rarest of friends and of critics--a bird, it would seem,
as merely fabled as the phoenix: the terminational terror was none the
less certain to break in and my work threaten to masquerade for me as an
active figure condemned to the disgrace of legs too short, ever so much
too short, for its body. I urge myself to the candid confession that in
very few of my productions, to my eye, _has_ the organic centre
succeeded in getting into proper position.

Time after time, then, has the precious waistband or girdle, studded and
buckled and placed for brave outward show, practically worked itself,
and in spite of desperate remonstrance, or in other words essential
counterplotting, to a point perilously near the knees--perilously I mean
for the freedom of these parts. In several of my compositions this
displacement has so succeeded, at the crisis, in defying and resisting
me, has appeared so fraught with probable dishonour, that I still turn
upon them, in spite of the greater or less success of final
dissimulation, a rueful and wondering eye. These productions have in
fact, if I may be so bold about it, specious and spurious centres
altogether, to make up for the failure of the true. As to which in my
list they are, however, that is another business, not on any terms to be
made known. Such at least would seem my resolution so far as I have
thus proceeded. Of any attention ever arrested by the pages forming the
object of this reference that rigour of discrimination has wholly and
consistently failed, I gather, to constitute a part. In which fact there
is perhaps after all a rough justice--since the infirmity I speak of,
for example, has been always but the direct and immediate fruit of a
positive excess of foresight, the overdone desire to provide for future
need and lay up heavenly treasure against the demands of my climax. If
the art of the drama, as a great French master of it has said, is above
all the art of preparations, that is true only to a less extent of the
art of the novel, and true exactly in the degree in which the art of the
particular novel comes near that of the drama. The first half of a
fiction insists ever on figuring to me as the stage or theatre for the
second half, and I have in general given so much space to making the
theatre propitious that my halves have too often proved strangely
unequal. Thereby has arisen with grim regularity the question of
artfully, of consummately masking the fault and conferring on the false
quantity the brave appearance of the true.

But I am far from pretending that these desperations of ingenuity have
not--as through seeming _most_ of the very essence of the problem--their
exasperated charm; so far from it that my particular supreme predicament
in the Paris hotel, after an undue primary leakage of time, no doubt,
over at the great river-spanning museum of the Champ de Mars and the
Trocadero, fairly takes on to me now the tender grace of a day that is
dead. Re-reading the last chapters of _The Tragic Muse_ I catch again
the very odour of Paris, which comes up in the rich rumble of the Rue de
la Paix--with which my room itself, for that matter, seems
impregnated--and which hangs for reminiscence about the embarrassed
effort to "finish," not ignobly, within my already exceeded limits; an
effort prolonged each day to those late afternoon hours during which the
tone of the terrible city seemed to deepen about one to an effect
strangely composed at once of the auspicious and the fatal. The "plot"
of Paris thickened at such hours beyond any other plot in the world, I
think; but there one sat meanwhile with another, on one's hands,
absolutely requiring precedence. Not the least imperative of one's
conditions was thus that one should have really, should have finely and
(given one's scale) concisely treated one's subject, in spite of there
being so much of the confounded irreducible quantity still to treat. If
I spoke just now, however, of the "exasperated" charm of supreme
difficulty, that is because the challenge of economic representation so
easily becomes, in any of the arts, intensely interesting to meet. To
put all that is possible of one's idea into a form and compass that will
contain and express it only by delicate adjustments and an exquisite
chemistry, so that there will at the end be neither a drop of one's
liquor left nor a hair's breadth of the rim of one's glass to
spare--every artist will remember how often that sort of necessity has
carried with it its particular inspiration. Therein lies the secret of
the appeal, to his mind, of the successfully _foreshortened_ thing,
where representation is arrived at, as I have already elsewhere had
occasion to urge, not by the addition of items (a light that has for its
attendant shadow a possible dryness) but by the art of figuring
synthetically, a compactness into which the imagination may cut thick,
as into the rich density of wedding-cake. The moral of all which indeed,
I fear, is, perhaps too trivially, but that the "thick," the false, the
dissembling second half of the work before me, associated throughout
with the effort to weight my dramatic values as heavily as might be,
since they had to be so few, presents that effort as at the very last a
quite convulsive, yet in its way highly agreeable, spasm. Of such mild
prodigies is the "history" of any specific creative effort composed!

But I have got too much out of the "old" Kensington light of twenty
years ago--a lingering oblique ray of which, to-day surely quite
extinct, played for a benediction over my canvas. From the moment I made
out, at my high-perched west window, my lucky title, that is from the
moment Miriam Rooth herself had given it me, so this young woman had
given me with it her own position in the book, and so that in turn had
given me my precious unity, to which no more than Miriam was either Nick
Dormer or Peter Sherringham to be sacrificed. Much of the interest of
the matter was immediately, therefore, in working out the detail of that
unity and--always entrancing range of questions--the order, the reason,
the relation, of presented aspects. With three _general_ aspects, that
of Miriam's case, that of Nick's and that of Sherringham's, there was
work in plenty cut out; since happy as it might be to say, "My several
actions beautifully become one," the point of the affair would be in
_showing_ them beautifully become so--without which showing foul failure
hovered and pounced. Well, the pleasure of handling an action (or,
otherwise expressed, of a "story") is at the worst, for a storyteller,
immense, and the interest of such a question as for example keeping Nick
Dormer's story his and yet making it also and all effectively in a large
part Peter Sherringham's, of keeping Sherringham's his and yet making it
in its high degree his kinsman's too, and Miriam Rooth's into the
bargain; just as Miriam Rooth's is by the same token quite operatively
his and Nick's, and just as that of each of the young men, by an equal
logic, is very contributively hers--the interest of such a question, I
say, is ever so considerably the interest of the system on which the
whole thing is done. I see to-day that it was but half a system to say,
"Oh Miriam, a case herself, is the _link_ between the two other cases";
that device was to ask for as much help as it gave and to require a good
deal more application than it announced on the surface. The sense of a
system saves the painter from the baseness of the _arbitrary_ stroke,
the touch without its reason, but as payment for that service the
process insists on being kept impeccably the right one.

These are intimate truths indeed, of which the charm mainly comes out
but on experiment and in practice; yet I like to have it well before me
here that, after all, _The Tragic Muse_ makes it not easy to say which
of the situations concerned in it predominates and rules. What has
become in that imperfect order, accordingly, of the famous centre of
one's subject? It is surely not in Nick's consciousness--since why, if
it be, are we treated to such an intolerable dose of Sherringham's? It
can't be in Sherringham's--we have for that altogether an excess of
Nick's. How, on the other hand, can it be in Miriam's, given that we
have no direct exhibition of hers whatever, that we get at it all
inferentially and inductively, seeing it only through a more or less
bewildered interpretation of it by others. The emphasis is all on an
absolutely objective Miriam, and, this affirmed, how--with such an
amount of exposed subjectivity all round her--can so dense a medium be a
centre? Such questions as those go straight--thanks to which they are, I
profess, delightful; going straight they are of the sort that makes
answers possible. Miriam _is_ central then to analysis, in spite of
being objective; central in virtue of the fact that the whole thing has
visibly, from the first, to get itself done in dramatic, or at least in
scenic conditions--though scenic conditions which are as near an
approach to the dramatic as the novel may permit itself and which have
this in common with the latter, that they move in the light of
_alternation_. This imposes a consistency other than that of the novel
at its loosest, and, for one's subject, a different view and a different
placing of the centre. The charm of the scenic consistency, the
consistency of the multiplication of _aspects_, that of making them
amusingly various, had haunted the author of _The Tragic Muse_ from far
back, and he was in due course to yield to it all luxuriously, too
luxuriously perhaps, in _The Awkward Age_, as will doubtless with the
extension of these remarks be complacently shown.

To put himself at any rate as much as possible under the protection of
it had been ever his practice (he had notably done so in _The Princess
Casamassima_, so frankly panoramic and processional); and in what case
could this protection have had more price than in the one before us? No
character in a play (any play not a mere monologue) has, for the right
expression of the thing, a _usurping_ consciousness; the consciousness
of others is exhibited exactly in the same way as that of the "hero";
the prodigious consciousness of Hamlet, the most capacious and most
crowded, the moral presence the most asserted, in the whole range of
fiction, only takes its turn with that of the other agents of the story,
no matter how occasional these may be. It is left, in other words, to
answer for itself equally with theirs: wherefore (by a parity of
reasoning if not of example) Miriam's might without inconsequence be
placed on the same footing; and all in spite of the fact that the "moral
presence" of each of the men most importantly concerned with her--or
with the second of whom she at least is importantly concerned--_is_
independently answered for. The idea of the book being, as I have said,
a picture of some of the personal consequences of the art-appetite
raised to intensity, swollen to voracity, the heavy emphasis falls where
the symbol of some of the complications so begotten might be made (as I
judged, heaven forgive me!) most "amusing": amusing I mean in the best
very modern sense. I never "go behind" Miriam; only poor Sherringham
goes, a great deal, and Nick Dormer goes a little, and the author, while
they so waste wonderment, goes behind _them_: but none the less she is
as thoroughly symbolic, as functional, for illustration of the idea, as
either of them, while her image had seemed susceptible of a livelier and
"prettier" concretion. I had desired for her, I remember, all manageable
vividness--so ineluctable had it long appeared to "do the actress," to
touch the theatre, to meet that connexion somehow or other, in any free
plunge of the speculative fork into the contemporary social salad.

The late R. L. Stevenson was to write to me, I recall--and precisely on
the occasion of _The Tragic Muse_--that he was at a loss to conceive how
one could find an interest in anything so vulgar or pretend to gather
fruit in so scrubby an orchard; but the view of a creature of the stage,
the view of the "histrionic temperament," as suggestive much less,
verily, in respect to the poor stage _per se_ than in respect to "art"
at large, affected me in spite of that as justly tenable. An objection
of a more pointed order was forced upon me by an acute friend later on
and in another connexion: the challenge of one's right, in any pretended
show of social realities, to attach to the image of a "public
character," a supposed particular celebrity, a range of interest, of
intrinsic distinction, greater than any such display of importance on
the part of eminent members of the class as we see them about us. There
_was_ a nice point if one would--yet only nice enough, after all, to be
easily amusing. We shall deal with it later on, however, in a more
urgent connexion. What would have worried me much more had it dawned
earlier is the light lately thrown by that admirable writer M. Anatole
France on the question of any animated view of the histrionic
temperament--a light that may well dazzle to distress any ingenuous
worker in the same field. In those parts of his brief but inimitable
_Histoire Comique_ on which he is most to be congratulated--for there
are some that prompt to reserves--he has "done the actress," as well as
the actor, done above all the mountebank, the mummer and the _cabotin_,
and mixed them up with the queer theatric air, in a manner that
practically warns all other hands off the material for ever. At the same
time I think I saw Miriam, and without a sacrifice of truth, that is of
the particular glow of verisimilitude I wished her most to benefit by,
in a complexity of relations finer than any that appear possible for the
gentry of M. Anatole France.

Her relation to Nick Dormer, for instance, was intended as a superior
interest--that of being (while perfectly sincere, sincere for _her_, and
therefore perfectly consonant with her impulse perpetually to perform
and with her success in performing) the result of a touched imagination,
a touched pride for "art," as well as of the charm cast on other
sensibilities still. Dormer's relation to herself is a different matter,
of which more presently; but the sympathy she, poor young woman, very
generously and intelligently offers him where most people have so
stinted it, is disclosed largely at the cost of her egotism and her
personal pretensions, even though in fact determined by her sense of
their together, Nick and she, postponing the "world" to their conception
of other and finer decencies. Nick can't on the whole see--for I have
represented him as in his day quite sufficiently troubled and
anxious--why he should condemn to ugly feebleness his most prized
faculty (most prized, at least, by himself) even in order to keep his
seat in Parliament, to inherit Mr. Carteret's blessing and money, to
gratify his mother and carry out the mission of his father, to marry
Julia Dallow in fine, a beautiful imperative woman with a great many
thousands a year. It all comes back in the last analysis to the
individual vision of decency, the critical as well as the passionate
judgement of it under sharp stress; and Nick's vision and judgement, all
on the esthetic ground, have beautifully coincided, to Miriam's
imagination, with a now fully marked, an inspired and impenitent, choice
of her own: so that, other considerations powerfully aiding indeed, she
is ready to see their interest all splendidly as one. She is in the
uplifted state to which sacrifices and submissions loom large, but loom
so just because they must write sympathy, write passion, large. Her
measure of what she would be capable of for him--capable, that is, of
_not_ asking of him--will depend on what he shall ask of _her_, but she
has no fear of not being able to satisfy him, even to the point of
"chucking" for him, if need be, that artistic identity of her own which
she has begun to build up. It will all be to the glory, therefore, of
their common infatuation with "art": she will doubtless be no less
willing to serve his than she was eager to serve her own, purged now of
the too great shrillness.

This puts her quite on a different level from that of the vivid monsters
of M. France, whose artistic identity is the last thing _they_ wish to
chuck--their only dismissal is of all material and social over-draping.
Nick Dormer in point of fact asks of Miriam nothing but that she shall
remain "awfully interesting to paint"; but that is _his_ relation,
which, as I say, is quite a matter by itself. He at any rate, luckily
for both of them it may be, doesn't put her to the test: he is so busy
with his own case, busy with testing himself and feeling his reality.
He has seen himself as giving up precious things for an object, and that
object has somehow not been the young woman in question, nor anything
very nearly like her. She, on the other hand, has asked everything of
Peter Sherringham, who has asked everything of _her_; and it is in so
doing that she has really most testified for art and invited him to
testify. With his professed interest in the theatre--one of those deep
subjections that, in men of "taste," the Comédie Française used in old
days to conspire for and some such odd and affecting examples of which
were to be noted--he yet offers her his hand and an introduction to the
very best society if she will leave the stage. The power--and her having
the sense of the power--to "shine" in the world is his highest measure
of her, the test applied by him to her beautiful human value; just as
the manner in which she turns on him is the application of her own
standard and touchstone. She is perfectly sure of her own; for--if there
were nothing else, and there is much--she has tasted blood, so to speak,
in the form of her so prompt and auspicious success with the public,
leaving all probations behind (the whole of which, as the book gives it,
is too rapid and sudden, though inevitably so: processes, periods,
intervals, stages, degrees, connexions, may be easily enough and barely
enough named, may be unconvincingly stated, in fiction, to the deep
discredit of the writer, but it remains the very deuce to _represent_
them, especially represent them under strong compression and in brief
and subordinate terms; and this even though the novelist who doesn't
represent, and represent "all the time," is lost, exactly as much lost
as the painter who, at his work and given his intention, doesn't paint
"all the time").

Turn upon her friend at any rate Miriam does; and one of my main points
is missed if it fails to appear that she does so with absolute
sincerity and with the cold passion of the high critic who knows, on
sight of them together, the more or less dazzling false from the
comparatively grey-coloured true. Sherringham's whole profession has
been that he rejoices in her as she is, and that the theatre, the
organised theatre, will be, as Matthew Arnold was in those very days
pronouncing it, irresistible; and it is the promptness with which he
sheds his pretended faith as soon as it feels in the air the breath of
reality, as soon as it asks of him a proof or a sacrifice, it is this
that excites her doubtless sufficiently arrogant scorn. Where is the
virtue of his high interest if it has verily never _been_ an interest to
speak of and if all it has suddenly to suggest is that, in face of a
serious call, it shall be unblushingly relinquished? If he and she
together, and her great field and future, and the whole cause they had
armed and declared for, have not been serious things they have been base
make-believes and trivialities--which is what in fact the homage of
society to art always turns out so soon as art presumes not to be vulgar
and futile. It is immensely the fashion and immensely edifying to listen
to, this homage, while it confines its attention to vanities and frauds;
but it knows only terror, feels only horror, the moment that, instead of
making all the concessions, art proceeds to ask for a few. Miriam is
nothing if not strenuous, and evidently nothing if not "cheeky," where
Sherringham is concerned at least: these, in the all-egotistical
exhibition to which she is condemned, are the very elements of her
figure and the very colours of her portrait. But she is mild and
inconsequent for Nick Dormer (who demands of her so little); as if
gravely and pityingly embracing the truth that _his_ sacrifice, on the
right side, is probably to have very little of her sort of recompense. I
must have had it well before me that she was all aware of the small
strain a great sacrifice to Nick would cost her--by reason of the strong
effect on her of his own superior logic, in which the very intensity of
concentration was so to find its account.

If the man, however, who holds her personally dear yet holds her
extremely personal message to the world cheap, so the man capable of a
consistency and, as she regards the matter, of an honesty so much higher
than Sherringham's, virtually cares, "really" cares, no straw for his
fellow-struggler. If Nick Dormer attracts and all-indifferently holds
her it is because, like herself and unlike Peter, he puts "art" first;
but the most he thus does for her in the event is to let her see how she
may enjoy, in intimacy, the rigour it has taught him and which he
cultivates at her expense. This is the situation in which we leave her,
though there would be more still to be said about the difference for her
of the two relations--that to each of the men--could I fondly suppose as
much of the interest of the book "left over" for the reader as for
myself. Sherringham, for instance, offers Miriam marriage, ever so
"handsomely"; but if nothing might lead me on further than the question
of what it would have been open to us--us novelists, especially in the
old days--to show, "serially," a young man in Nick Dormer's quite
different position as offering or a young woman in Miriam's as taking,
so for that very reason such an excursion is forbidden me. The trade of
the stage-player, and above all of the actress, must have so many
detestable sides for the person exercising it that we scarce imagine a
full surrender to it without a full surrender, not less, to every
immediate compensation, to every freedom and the largest ease within
reach: which presentment of the possible case for Miriam would yet have
been condemned--and on grounds both various and interesting to trace--to
remain very imperfect.

I feel, moreover, that I might still, with space, abound in remarks
about Nick's character and Nick's crisis suggested to my present more
reflective vision. It strikes me, alas, that he is not quite so
interesting as he was fondly intended to be, and this in spite of the
multiplication, within the picture, of his pains and penalties; so that
while I turn this slight anomaly over I come upon a reason that affects
me as singularly charming and touching and at which indeed I have
already glanced. Any presentation of the artist _in triumph_ must be
flat in proportion as it really sticks to its subject--it can only
smuggle in relief and variety. For, to put the matter in an image, all
we then--in his triumph--see of the charm-compeller is the back he turns
to us as he bends over his work. "His" triumph, decently, is but the
triumph of what he produces, and that is another affair. His romance is
the romance he himself projects; he eats the cake of the very rarest
privilege, the most luscious baked in the oven of the gods--therefore he
mayn't "have" it, in the form of the privilege of the hero, at the same
time. The privilege of the hero--that is, of the martyr or of the
interesting and appealing and comparatively floundering _person_--places
him in quite a different category, belongs to him only as to the artist
deluded, diverted, frustrated or vanquished; when the "amateur" in him
gains, for our admiration or compassion or whatever, all that the expert
has to do without. Therefore I strove in vain, I feel, to embroil and
adorn this young man on whom a hundred ingenious touches are thus
lavished: he has insisted in the event on looking as simple and flat as
some mere brass check or engraved number, the symbol and guarantee of a
stored treasure. The better part of him is locked too much away from us,
and the part we see has to pass for--well, what it passes for, so
lamentedly, among his friends and relatives. No, accordingly, Nick
Dormer isn't "the best thing in the book," as I judge I imagined he
would be, and it contains nothing better, I make out, than that
preserved and achieved unity and quality of tone, a value in itself,
which I referred to at the beginning of these remarks. What I mean by
this is that the interest created, and the expression of that interest,
are things kept, as to kind, genuine and true to themselves. The appeal,
the fidelity to the prime motive, is, with no little art, strained clear
(even as silver is polished) in a degree answering--at least by
intention--to the air of beauty. There is an awkwardness again in having
thus belatedly to point such features out; but in that wrought
appearance of animation and harmony, that effect of free movement and
yet of recurrent and insistent reference, _The Tragic Muse_ has struck
me again as conscious of a bright advantage.

HENRY JAMES.




BOOK FIRST




I


The people of France have made it no secret that those of England, as a
general thing, are to their perception an inexpressive and speechless
race, perpendicular and unsociable, unaddicted to enriching any bareness
of contact with verbal or other embroidery. This view might have derived
encouragement, a few years ago, in Paris, from the manner in which four
persons sat together in silence, one fine day about noon, in the garden,
as it is called, of the Palais de l'Industrie--the central court of the
great glazed bazaar where, among plants and parterres, gravelled walks
and thin fountains, are ranged the figures and groups, the monuments and
busts, which form in the annual exhibition of the Salon the department
of statuary. The spirit of observation is naturally high at the Salon,
quickened by a thousand artful or artless appeals, but it need have put
forth no great intensity to take in the characters I mention. As a
solicitation of the eye on definite grounds these visitors too
constituted a successful plastic fact; and even the most superficial
observer would have marked them as products of an insular neighbourhood,
representatives of that tweed-and-waterproof class with which, on the
recurrent occasions when the English turn out for a holiday--Christmas
and Easter, Whitsuntide and the autumn--Paris besprinkles itself at a
night's notice. They had about them the indefinable professional look
of the British traveller abroad; the air of preparation for exposure,
material and moral, which is so oddly combined with the serene
revelation of security and of persistence, and which excites, according
to individual susceptibility, the ire or the admiration of foreign
communities. They were the more unmistakable as they presented mainly
the happier aspects of the energetic race to which they had the honour
to belong. The fresh diffused light of the Salon made them clear and
important; they were finished creations, in their way, and, ranged there
motionless on their green bench, were almost as much on exhibition as if
they had been hung on the line.

Three ladies and a young man, they were obviously a family--a mother,
two daughters and a son; a circumstance which had the effect at once of
making each member of the group doubly typical and of helping to account
for their fine taciturnity. They were not, with each other, on terms of
ceremony, and also were probably fatigued with their course among the
pictures, the rooms on the upper floor. Their attitude, on the part of
visitors who had superior features even if they might appear to some
passers-by to have neglected a fine opportunity for completing these
features with an expression, was after all a kind of tribute to the
state of exhaustion, of bewilderment, to which the genius of France is
still capable of reducing the proud.

"En v'là des abrutis!" more than one of their fellow-gazers might have
been heard to exclaim; and certain it is that there was something
depressed and discouraged in this interesting group, who sat looking
vaguely before them, not noticing the life of the place, somewhat as if
each had a private anxiety. It might have been finely guessed, however,
that though on many questions they were closely united this present
anxiety was not the same for each. If they looked grave, moreover, this
was doubtless partly the result of their all being dressed in such
mourning as told of a recent bereavement. The eldest of the three ladies
had indeed a face of a fine austere mould which would have been moved to
gaiety only by some force more insidious than any she was likely to
recognise in Paris. Cold, still, and considerably worn, it was neither
stupid nor hard--it was firm, narrow and sharp. This competent matron,
acquainted evidently with grief but not weakened by it, had a high
forehead to which the quality of the skin gave a singular polish--it
glittered even when seen at a distance; a nose which achieved a high
free curve; and a tendency to throw back her head and carry it well
above her, as if to disengage it from the possible entanglements of the
rest of her person. If you had seen her walk you would have felt her to
tread the earth after a fashion suggesting that in a world where she had
long since discovered that one couldn't have one's own way one could
never tell what annoying aggression might take place, so that it was
well, from hour to hour, to save what one could. Lady Agnes saved her
head, her white triangular forehead, over which her close-crinkled
flaxen hair, reproduced in different shades in her children, made a
looped silken canopy like the marquee at a garden-party. Her daughters
were as tall as herself--that was visible even as they sat there--and
one of them, the younger evidently, altogether pretty; a straight,
slender, grey-eyed English girl of the sort who show "good" figures and
fresh complexions. The sister, who was not pretty, was also straight and
slender and grey-eyed. But the grey in this case was not so pure, nor
were the straightness and the slenderness so maidenly. The brother of
these young ladies had taken off his hat as if he felt the air of the
summer day heavy in the great pavilion. He was a lean, strong,
clear-faced youth, with a formed nose and thick light-brown hair which
lay continuously and profusely back from his forehead, so that to smooth
it from the brow to the neck but a single movement of the hand was
required. I cannot describe him better than by saying that he was the
sort of young Englishman who looks particularly well in strange lands
and whose general aspect--his inches, his limbs, his friendly eyes, the
modulation of his voice, the cleanness of his flesh-tints and the
fashion of his garments--excites on the part of those who encounter him
in far countries on the ground of a common speech a delightful sympathy
of race. This sympathy may sometimes be qualified by the seen limits of
his apprehension, but it almost revels as such horizons recede. We shall
see quickly enough how accurate a measure it might have taken of
Nicholas Dormer. There was food for suspicion perhaps in the wandering
blankness that sat at moments in his eyes, as if he had no attention at
all, not the least in the world, at his command; but it is no more than
just to add without delay that this discouraging symptom was known among
those who liked him by the indulgent name of dreaminess. By his mother
and sisters, for instance, his dreaminess was constantly noted. He is
the more welcome to the benefit of such an interpretation as there is
always held to be something engaging in the combination of the muscular
and the musing, the mildness of strength.

After some time, an interval during which these good people might have
appeared to have come, individually, to the Palais de l'Industrie much
less to see the works of art than to think over their domestic affairs,
the young man, rousing himself from his reverie, addressed one of the
girls.

"I say, Biddy, why should we sit moping here all day? Come and take a
turn about with me."

His younger sister, while he got up, leaned forward a little, looking
round her, but she gave for the moment no further sign of complying with
his invitation.

"Where shall we find you, then, if Peter comes?" asked the other Miss
Dormer, making no movement at all.

"I daresay Peter won't come. He'll leave us here to cool our heels."

"Oh Nick dear!" Biddy exclaimed in a small sweet voice of protest. It
was plainly her theory that Peter would come, and even a little her fond
fear that she might miss him should she quit that spot.

"We shall come back in a quarter of an hour. Really I must look at these
things," Nick declared, turning his face to a marble group which stood
near them on the right--a man with the skin of a beast round his loins,
tussling with a naked woman in some primitive effort of courtship or
capture.

Lady Agnes followed the direction of her son's eyes and then observed:
"Everything seems very dreadful. I should think Biddy had better sit
still. Hasn't she seen enough horrors up above?"

"I daresay that if Peter comes Julia'll be with him," the elder girl
remarked irrelevantly.

"Well then he can take Julia about. That will be more proper," said Lady
Agnes.

"Mother dear, she doesn't care a rap about art. It's a fearful bore
looking at fine things with Julia," Nick returned.

"Won't you go with him, Grace?"--and Biddy appealed to her sister.

"I think she has awfully good taste!" Grace exclaimed, not answering
this inquiry.

"_Don't_ say nasty things about her!" Lady Agnes broke out solemnly to
her son after resting her eyes on him a moment with an air of reluctant
reprobation.

"I say nothing but what she'd say herself," the young man urged. "About
some things she has very good taste, but about this kind of thing she
has no taste at all."

"That's better, I think," said Lady Agnes, turning her eyes again to the
"kind of thing" her son appeared to designate.

"She's awfully clever--awfully!" Grace went on with decision.

"Awfully, awfully!" her brother repeated, standing in front of her and
smiling down at her.

"You are nasty, Nick. You know you are," said the young lady, but more
in sorrow than in anger.

Biddy got up at this, as if the accusatory tone prompted her to place
herself generously at his side. "Mightn't you go and order lunch--in
that place, you know?" she asked of her mother. "Then we'd come back
when it was ready."

"My dear child, I can't order lunch," Lady Agnes replied with a cold
impatience which seemed to intimate that she had problems far more
important than those of victualling to contend with.

"Then perhaps Peter will if he comes. I'm sure he's up in everything of
that sort."

"Oh hang Peter!" Nick exclaimed. "Leave him out of account, and _do_
order lunch, mother; but not cold beef and pickles."

"I must say--about _him_--you're not nice," Biddy ventured to remark to
her brother, hesitating and even blushing a little.

"You make up for it, my dear," the young man answered, giving her
chin--a very charming, rotund, little chin--a friendly whisk with his
forefinger.

"I can't imagine what you've got against him," her ladyship said
gravely.

"Dear mother, it's disappointed fondness," Nick argued. "They won't
answer one's notes; they won't let one know where they are nor what to
expect. 'Hell has no fury like a woman scorned'; nor like a man
either."

"Peter has such a tremendous lot to do--it's a very busy time at the
embassy; there are sure to be reasons," Biddy explained with her pretty
eyes.

"Reasons enough, no doubt!" said Lady Agnes--who accompanied these words
with an ambiguous sigh, however, as if in Paris even the best reasons
would naturally be bad ones.

"Doesn't Julia write to you, doesn't she answer you the very day?" Grace
asked, looking at Nick as if she were the bold one.

He waited, returning her glance with a certain severity. "What do you
know about my correspondence? No doubt I ask too much," he went on; "I'm
so attached to them. Dear old Peter, dear old Julia!"

"She's younger than you, my dear!" cried the elder girl, still resolute.

"Yes, nineteen days."

"I'm glad you know her birthday."

"She knows yours; she always gives you something," Lady Agnes reminded
her son.

"Her taste is good _then_, isn't it, Nick?" Grace Dormer continued.

"She makes charming presents; but, dear mother, it isn't _her_ taste.
It's her husband's."

"How her husband's?"

"The beautiful objects of which she disposes so freely are the things he
collected for years laboriously, devotedly, poor man!"

"She disposes of them to you, but not to others," said Lady Agnes. "But
that's all right," she added, as if this might have been taken for a
complaint of the limitations of Julia's bounty. "She has to select among
so many, and that's a proof of taste," her ladyship pursued.

"You can't say she doesn't choose lovely ones," Grace remarked to her
brother in a tone of some triumph.

"My dear, they're all lovely. George Dallow's judgement was so sure, he
was incapable of making a mistake," Nicholas Dormer returned.

"I don't see how you can talk of him, he was dreadful," said Lady Agnes.

"My dear, if he was good enough for Julia to marry he's good enough for
us to talk of."

"She did him a very great honour."

"I daresay, but he was not unworthy of it. No such enlightened
collection of beautiful objects has been made in England in our time."

"You think too much of beautiful objects!" Lady Agnes sighed.

"I thought you were just now lamenting that I think too little."

"It's very nice--his having left Julia so well off," Biddy interposed
soothingly, as if she foresaw a tangle.

"He treated her _en grand seigneur_, absolutely," Nick went on.

"He used to look greasy, all the same"--Grace bore on it with a dull
weight. "His name ought to have been Tallow."

"You're not saying what Julia would like, if that's what you are trying
to say," her brother observed.

"Don't be vulgar, Grace," said Lady Agnes.

"I know Peter Sherringham's birthday!" Biddy broke out innocently, as a
pacific diversion. She had passed her hand into Nick's arm, to signify
her readiness to go with him, while she scanned the remoter reaches of
the garden as if it had occurred to her that to direct their steps in
some such sense might after all be the shorter way to get at Peter.

"He's too much older than you, my dear," Grace answered without
encouragement.

"That's why I've noticed it--he's thirty-four. Do you call that too
old? I don't care for slobbering infants!" Biddy cried.

"Don't be vulgar," Lady Agnes enjoined again.

"Come, Bid, we'll go and be vulgar together; for that's what we are, I'm
afraid," her brother said to her. "We'll go and look at all these low
works of art."

"Do you really think it's necessary to the child's development?" Lady
Agnes demanded as the pair turned away. And then while her son, struck
as by a challenge, paused, lingering a moment with his little sister on
his arm: "What we've been through this morning in this place, and what
you've paraded before our eyes--the murders, the tortures, all kinds of
disease and indecency!"

Nick looked at his mother as if this sudden protest surprised him, but
as if also there were lurking explanations of it which he quickly
guessed. Her resentment had the effect not so much of animating her cold
face as of making it colder, less expressive, though visibly prouder.
"Ah dear mother, don't do the British matron!" he replied
good-humouredly.

"British matron's soon said! I don't know what they're coming to."

"How odd that you should have been struck only with the disagreeable
things when, for myself, I've felt it to be most interesting, the most
suggestive morning I've passed for ever so many months!"

"Oh Nick, Nick!" Lady Agnes cried with a strange depth of feeling.

"I like them better in London--they're much less unpleasant," said Grace
Dormer.

"They're things you can look at," her ladyship went on. "We certainly
make the better show."

"The subject doesn't matter, it's the treatment, the treatment!" Biddy
protested in a voice like the tinkle of a silver bell.

"Poor little Bid!"--her brother broke into a laugh.

"How can I learn to model, mamma dear, if I don't look at things and if
I don't study them?" the girl continued.

This question passed unheeded, and Nicholas Dormer said to his mother,
more seriously, but with a certain kind explicitness, as if he could
make a particular allowance: "This place is an immense stimulus to me;
it refreshes me, excites me--it's such an exhibition of artistic life.
It's full of ideas, full of refinements; it gives one such an impression
of artistic experience. They try everything, they feel everything. While
you were looking at the murders, apparently, I observed an immense deal
of curious and interesting work. There are too many of them, poor
devils; so many who must make their way, who must attract attention.
Some of them can only _taper fort_, stand on their heads, turn
somersaults or commit deeds of violence, to make people notice them.
After that, no doubt, a good many will be quieter. But I don't know;
to-day I'm in an appreciative mood--I feel indulgent even to them: they
give me an impression of intelligence, of eager observation. All art is
one--remember that, Biddy dear," the young man continued, smiling down
from his height. "It's the same great many-headed effort, and any ground
that's gained by an individual, any spark that's struck in any province,
is of use and of suggestion to all the others. We're all in the same
boat."

"'We,' do you say, my dear? Are you really setting up for an artist?"
Lady Agnes asked.

Nick just hesitated. "I was speaking for Biddy."

"But you _are_ one, Nick--you are!" the girl cried.

Lady Agnes looked for an instant as if she were going to say once more
"Don't be vulgar!" But she suppressed these words, had she intended
them, and uttered sounds, few in number and not completely articulate,
to the effect that she hated talking about art. While her son spoke she
had watched him as if failing to follow; yet something in the tone of
her exclamation hinted that she had understood him but too well.

"We're all in the same boat," Biddy repeated with cheerful zeal.

"Not me, if you please!" Lady Agnes replied. "It's horrid messy work,
your modelling."

"Ah but look at the results!" said the girl eagerly--glancing about at
the monuments in the garden as if in regard even to them she were,
through that unity of art her brother had just proclaimed, in some
degree an effective cause.

"There's a great deal being done here--a real vitality," Nicholas Dormer
went on to his mother in the same reasonable informing way. "Some of
these fellows go very far."

"They do indeed!" said Lady Agnes.

"I'm fond of young schools--like this movement in sculpture," Nick
insisted with his slightly provoking serenity.

"They're old enough to know better!"

"Mayn't I look, mamma? It _is_ necessary to my development," Biddy
declared.

"You may do as you like," said Lady Agnes with dignity.

"She ought to see good work, you know," the young man went on.

"I leave it to your sense of responsibility." This statement was
somewhat majestic, and for a moment evidently it tempted Nick, almost
provoked him, or at any rate suggested to him an occasion for some
pronouncement he had had on his mind. Apparently, however, he judged the
time on the whole not quite right, and his sister Grace interposed with
the inquiry--

"Please, mamma, are we never going to lunch?"

"Ah mother, mother!" the young man murmured in a troubled way, looking
down at her with a deep fold in his forehead.

For Lady Agnes also, as she returned his look, it seemed an occasion;
but with this difference that she had no hesitation in taking advantage
of it. She was encouraged by his slight embarrassment, for ordinarily
Nick was not embarrassed. "You used to have so _much_ sense of
responsibility," she pursued; "but sometimes I don't know what has
become of it--it seems all, _all_ gone!"

"Ah mother, mother!" he exclaimed again--as if there were so many things
to say that it was impossible to choose. But now he stepped closer, bent
over her and in spite of the publicity of their situation gave her a
quick expressive kiss. The foreign observer whom I took for granted in
beginning to sketch this scene would have had to admit that the rigid
English family had after all a capacity for emotion. Grace Dormer indeed
looked round her to see if at this moment they were noticed. She judged
with satisfaction that they had escaped.




II


Nick Dormer walked away with Biddy, but he had not gone far before he
stopped in front of a clever bust, where his mother, in the distance,
saw him playing in the air with his hand, carrying out by this gesture,
which presumably was applausive, some critical remark he had made to his
sister. Lady Agnes raised her glass to her eyes by the long handle to
which rather a clanking chain was attached, perceiving that the bust
represented an ugly old man with a bald head; at which her ladyship
indefinitely sighed, though it was not apparent in what way such an
object could be detrimental to her daughter. Nick passed on and quickly
paused again; this time, his mother discerned, before the marble image
of a strange grimacing woman. Presently she lost sight of him; he
wandered behind things, looking at them all round.

"I ought to get plenty of ideas for my modelling, oughtn't I, Nick?" his
sister put to him after a moment.

"Ah my poor child, what shall I say?"

"Don't you think I've any capacity for ideas?" the girl continued
ruefully.

"Lots of them, no doubt. But the capacity for applying them, for putting
them into practice--how much of that have you?"

"How can I tell till I try?"

"What do you mean by trying, Biddy dear?"

"Why you know--you've seen me."

"Do you call that trying?" her brother amusedly demanded.

"Ah Nick!" she said with sensibility. But then with more spirit: "And
please what do you call it?"

"Well, this for instance is a good case." And her companion pointed to
another bust--a head of a young man in terra-cotta, at which they had
just arrived; a modern young man to whom, with his thick neck, his
little cap and his wide ring of dense curls, the artist had given the
air of some sturdy Florentine of the time of Lorenzo.

Biddy looked at the image a moment. "Ah that's not trying; that's
succeeding."

"Not altogether; it's only trying seriously."

"Well, why shouldn't I be serious?"

"Mother wouldn't like it. She has inherited the fine old superstition
that art's pardonable only so long as it's bad--so long as it's done at
odd hours, for a little distraction, like a game of tennis or of whist.
The only thing that can justify it, the effort to carry it as far as one
can (which you can't do without time and singleness of purpose), she
regards as just the dangerous, the criminal element. It's the oddest
hind-part-before view, the drollest immorality."

"She doesn't want one to be professional," Biddy returned as if she
could do justice to every system.

"Better leave it alone then. There are always duffers enough."

"I don't want to be a duffer," Biddy said. "But I thought you encouraged
me."

"So I did, my poor child. It was only to encourage myself."

"With your own work--your painting?"

"With my futile, my ill-starred endeavours. Union is strength--so that
we might present a wider front, a larger surface of resistance."

Biddy for a while said nothing and they continued their tour of
observation. She noticed how he passed over some things quickly, his
first glance sufficing to show him if they were worth another, and then
recognised in a moment the figures that made some appeal. His tone
puzzled but his certainty of eye impressed her, and she felt what a
difference there was yet between them--how much longer in every case she
would have taken to discriminate. She was aware of how little she could
judge of the value of a thing till she had looked at it ten minutes;
indeed modest little Biddy was compelled privately to add "And often not
even then." She was mystified, as I say--Nick was often mystifying, it
was his only fault--but one thing was definite: her brother had high
ability. It was the consciousness of this that made her bring out at
last: "I don't so much care whether or no I please mamma, if I please
you."

"Oh don't lean on me. I'm a wretched broken reed--I'm no use _really_!"
he promptly admonished her.

"Do you mean you're a duffer?" Biddy asked in alarm.

"Frightful, frightful!"

"So that you intend to give up your work--to let it alone, as you advise
_me_?"

"It has never been my work, all that business, Biddy. If it had it would
be different. I should stick to it."

"And you _won't_ stick to it?" the girl said, standing before him
open-eyed.

Her brother looked into her eyes a moment, and she had a compunction;
she feared she was indiscreet and was worrying him. "Your questions are
much simpler than the elements out of which my answer should come."

"A great talent--what's simpler than that?"

"One excellent thing, dear Biddy: no talent at all!"

"Well, yours is so real you can't help it."

"We shall see, we shall see," said Nick Dormer. "Let us go look at that
big group."

"We shall see if your talent's real?" Biddy went on as she accompanied
him.

"No; we shall see if, as you say, I can't help it. What nonsense Paris
makes one talk!" the young man added as they stopped in front of the
composition. This was true perhaps, but not in a sense he could find
himself tempted to deplore. The present was far from his first visit to
the French capital: he had often quitted England and usually made a
point of "putting in," as he called it, a few days there on the outward
journey to the Continent or on the return; but at present the feelings,
for the most part agreeable, attendant upon a change of air and of scene
had been more punctual and more acute than for a long time before, and
stronger the sense of novelty, refreshment, amusement, of the hundred
appeals from that quarter of thought to which on the whole his attention
was apt most frequently, though not most confessedly, to stray. He was
fonder of Paris than most of his countrymen, though not so fond perhaps
as some other captivated aliens: the place had always had the virtue of
quickening in him sensibly the life of reflexion and observation. It was
a good while since his impressions had been so favourable to the city by
the Seine; a good while at all events since they had ministered so to
excitement, to exhilaration, to ambition, even to a restlessness that
was not prevented from being agreeable by the excess of agitation in it.
Nick could have given the reason of this unwonted glow, but his
preference was very much to keep it to himself. Certainly to persons not
deeply knowing, or at any rate not deeply curious, in relation to the
young man's history the explanation might have seemed to beg the
question, consisting as it did of the simple formula that he had at last
come to a crisis. Why a crisis--what was it and why had he not come to
it before? The reader shall learn these things in time if he cares
enough for them.

Our young man had not in any recent year failed to see the Salon, which
the general voice this season pronounced not particularly good. None the
less it was the present exhibition that, for some cause connected with
his "crisis," made him think fast, produced that effect he had spoken of
to his mother as a sense of artistic life. The precinct of the marbles
and bronzes spoke to him especially to-day; the glazed garden, not
florally rich, with its new productions alternating with perfunctory
plants and its queer, damp smell, partly the odour of plastic clay, of
the studios of sculptors, put forth the voice of old associations, of
other visits, of companionships now ended--an insinuating eloquence
which was at the same time somehow identical with the general sharp
contagion of Paris. There was youth in the air, and a multitudinous
newness, for ever reviving, and the diffusion of a hundred talents,
ingenuities, experiments. The summer clouds made shadows on the roof of
the great building; the white images, hard in their crudity, spotted the
place with provocations; the rattle of plates at the restaurant sounded
sociable in the distance, and our young man congratulated himself more
than ever that he had not missed his chance. He felt how it would help
him to settle something. At the moment he made this reflexion his eye
fell upon a person who appeared--just in the first glimpse--to carry out
the idea of help. He uttered a lively ejaculation, which, however, in
its want of finish, Biddy failed to understand; so pertinent, so
relevant and congruous, was the other party to this encounter.

The girl's attention followed her brother's, resting with it on a young
man who faced them without seeing them, engaged as he was in imparting
to two companions his ideas about one of the works exposed to view. What
Biddy remarked was that this young man was fair and fat and of the
middle stature; he had a round face and a short beard and on his crown a
mere reminiscence of hair, as the fact that he carried his hat in his
hand permitted to be observed. Bridget Dormer, who was quick, placed him
immediately as a gentleman, but as a gentleman unlike any other
gentleman she had ever seen. She would have taken him for very foreign
but that the words proceeding from his mouth reached her ear and imposed
themselves as a rare variety of English. It was not that a foreigner
might not have spoken smoothly enough, nor yet that the speech of this
young man was not smooth. It had in truth a conspicuous and aggressive
perfection, and Biddy was sure no mere learner would have ventured to
play such tricks with the tongue. He seemed to draw rich effects and
wandering airs from it--to modulate and manipulate it as he would have
done a musical instrument. Her view of the gentleman's companions was
less operative, save for her soon making the reflexion that they were
people whom in any country, from China to Peru, you would immediately
have taken for natives. One of them was an old lady with a shawl; that
was the most salient way in which she presented herself. The shawl was
an ancient much-used fabric of embroidered cashmere, such as many ladies
wore forty years ago in their walks abroad and such as no lady wears
to-day. It had fallen half off the back of the wearer, but at the moment
Biddy permitted herself to consider her she gave it a violent jerk and
brought it up to her shoulders again, where she continued to arrange and
settle it, with a good deal of jauntiness and elegance, while she
listened to the talk of the gentleman. Biddy guessed that this little
transaction took place very frequently, and was not unaware of its
giving the old lady a droll, factitious, faded appearance, as if she
were singularly out of step with the age. The other person was very much
younger--she might have been a daughter--and had a pale face, a low
forehead, and thick dark hair. What she chiefly had, however, Biddy
rapidly discovered, was a pair of largely-gazing eyes. Our young friend
was helped to the discovery by the accident of their resting at this
moment for a time--it struck Biddy as very long--on her own. Both these
ladies were clad in light, thin, scant gowns, giving an impression of
flowered figures and odd transparencies, and in low shoes which showed a
great deal of stocking and were ornamented with large rosettes. Biddy's
slightly agitated perception travelled directly to their shoes: they
suggested to her vaguely that the wearers were dancers--connected
possibly with the old-fashioned exhibition of the shawl-dance. By the
time she had taken in so much as this the mellifluous young man had
perceived and addressed himself to her brother. He came on with an
offered hand. Nick greeted him and said it was a happy chance--he was
uncommonly glad to see him.

"I never come across you--I don't know why," Nick added while the two,
smiling, looked each other up and down like men reunited after a long
interval.

"Oh it seems to me there's reason enough: our paths in life are so
different." Nick's friend had a great deal of manner, as was evinced by
his fashion of saluting Biddy without knowing her.

"Different, yes, but not so different as that. Don't we both live in
London, after all, and in the nineteenth century?"

"Ah my dear Dormer, excuse me: I don't live in the nineteenth century.
_Jamais de la vie_!" the gentleman declared.

"Nor in London either?"

"Yes--when I'm not at Samarcand! But surely we've diverged since the old
days. I adore what you burn, you burn what I adore." While the stranger
spoke he looked cheerfully, hospitably, at Biddy; not because it was
she, she easily guessed, but because it was in his nature to desire a
second auditor--a kind of sympathetic gallery. Her life was somehow
filled with shy people, and she immediately knew she had never
encountered any one who seemed so to know his part and recognise his
cues.

"How do you know what I adore?" Nicholas Dormer asked.

"I know well enough what you used to."

"That's more than I do myself. There were so many things."

"Yes, there are many things--many, many: that's what makes life so
amusing."

"Do you find it amusing?"

"My dear fellow, _c'est à se tordre_. Don't you think so? Ah it was high
time I should meet you--I see. I've an idea you need me."

"Upon my word I think I do!" Nick said in a tone which struck his sister
and made her wonder still more why, if the gentleman was so important as
that, he didn't introduce him.

"There are many gods and this is one of their temples," the mysterious
personage went on. "It's a house of strange idols--isn't it?--and of
some strange and unnatural sacrifices."

To Biddy as much as to her brother this remark might have been offered;
but the girl's eyes turned back to the ladies who for the moment had
lost their companion. She felt irresponsive and feared she should pass
with this easy cosmopolite for a stiff, scared, English girl, which was
not the type she aimed at; but wasn't even ocular commerce overbold so
long as she hadn't a sign from Nick? The elder of the strange women had
turned her back and was looking at some bronze figure, losing her shawl
again as she did so; but the other stood where their escort had quitted
her, giving all her attention to his sudden sociability with others. Her
arms hung at her sides, her head was bent, her face lowered, so that she
had an odd appearance of raising her eyes from under her brows; and in
this attitude she was striking, though her air was so unconciliatory as
almost to seem dangerous. Did it express resentment at having been
abandoned for another girl? Biddy, who began to be frightened--there was
a moment when the neglected creature resembled a tigress about to
spring--was tempted to cry out that she had no wish whatever to
appropriate the gentleman. Then she made the discovery that the young
lady too had a manner, almost as much as her clever guide, and the rapid
induction that it perhaps meant no more than his. She only looked at
Biddy from beneath her eyebrows, which were wonderfully arched, but
there was ever so much of a manner in the way she did it. Biddy had a
momentary sense of being a figure in a ballet, a dramatic ballet--a
subordinate motionless figure, to be dashed at to music or strangely
capered up to. It would be a very dramatic ballet indeed if this young
person were the heroine. She had magnificent hair, the girl reflected;
and at the same moment heard Nick say to his interlocutor: "You're not
in London--one can't meet you there?"

"I rove, drift, float," was the answer; "my feelings direct me--if such
a life as mine may be said to have a direction. Where there's anything
to feel I try to be there!" the young man continued with his confiding
laugh.

"I should like to get hold of you," Nick returned.

"Well, in that case there would be no doubt the intellectual adventure.
Those are the currents--any sort of personal relation--that govern my
career."

"I don't want to lose you this time," Nick continued in a tone that
excited Biddy's surprise. A moment before, when his friend had said that
he tried to be where there was anything to feel, she had wondered how he
could endure him.

"Don't lose me, don't lose me!" cried the stranger after a fashion which
affected the girl as the highest expression of irresponsibility she had
ever seen. "After all why should you? Let us remain together unless I
interfere"--and he looked, smiling and interrogative, at Biddy, who
still remained blank, only noting again that Nick forbore to make them
acquainted. This was an anomaly, since he prized the gentleman so.
Still, there could be no anomaly of Nick's that wouldn't impose itself
on his younger sister.

"Certainly, I keep you," he said, "unless on my side I deprive those
ladies--!"

"Charming women, but it's not an indissoluble union. We meet, we
communicate, we part! They're going--I'm seeing them to the door. I
shall come back." With this Nick's friend rejoined his companions, who
moved away with him, the strange fine eyes of the girl lingering on
Biddy's brother as well as on Biddy herself as they receded.

"Who _is_ he--who _are_ they?" Biddy instantly asked.

"He's a gentleman," Nick made answer--insufficiently, she thought, and
even with a shade of hesitation. He spoke as if she might have supposed
he was not one, and if he was really one why didn't he introduce him?
But Biddy wouldn't for the world have put this question, and he now
moved to the nearest bench and dropped upon it as to await the other's
return. No sooner, however, had his sister seated herself than he said:
"See here, my dear, do you think you had better stay?"

"Do you want me to go back to mother?" the girl asked with a lengthening
visage.

"Well, what do you think?" He asked it indeed gaily enough.

"Is your conversation to be about--about private affairs?"

"No, I can't say that. But I doubt if mother would think it the sort of
thing that's 'necessary to your development.'"

This assertion appeared to inspire her with the eagerness with which she
again broke out: "But who are they--who are they?"

"I know nothing of the ladies. I never saw them before. The man's a
fellow I knew very well at Oxford. He was thought immense fun there.
We've diverged, as he says, and I had almost lost sight of him, but not
so much as he thinks, because I've read him--read him with interest. He
has written a very clever book."

"What kind of a book?"

"A sort of novel."

"What sort of novel?"

"Well, I don't know--with a lot of good writing." Biddy listened to this
so receptively that she thought it perverse her brother should add: "I
daresay Peter will have come if you return to mother."

"I don't care if he has. Peter's nothing to me. But I'll go if you wish
it."

Nick smiled upon her again and then said: "It doesn't signify. We'll all
go."

"All?" she echoed.

"He won't hurt us. On the contrary he'll do us good."

This was possible, the girl reflected in silence, but none the less the
idea struck her as courageous, of their taking the odd young man back to
breakfast with them and with the others, especially if Peter should be
there. If Peter was nothing to her it was singular she should have
attached such importance to this contingency. The odd young man
reappeared, and now that she saw him without his queer female appendages
he seemed personally less weird. He struck her moreover, as generally a
good deal accounted for by the literary character, especially if it were
responsible for a lot of good writing. As he took his place on the bench
Nick said to him, indicating her, "My sister Bridget," and then
mentioned his name, "Mr. Gabriel Nash."

"You enjoy Paris--you're happy here?" Mr. Nash inquired, leaning over
his friend to speak to the girl.

Though his words belonged to the situation it struck her that his tone
didn't, and this made her answer him more dryly than she usually spoke.
"Oh yes, it's very nice."

"And French art interests you? You find things here that please?"

"Oh yes, I like some of them."

Mr. Nash considered her kindly. "I hoped you'd say you like the Academy
better."

"She would if she didn't think you expected it," said Nicholas Dormer.

"Oh Nick!" Biddy protested.

"Miss Dormer's herself an English picture," their visitor pronounced in
the tone of a man whose urbanity was a general solvent.

"That's a compliment if you don't like them!" Biddy exclaimed.

"Ah some of them, some of them; there's a certain sort of thing!" Mr.
Nash continued. "We must feel everything, everything that we can. We're
here for that."

"You do like English art then?" Nick demanded with a slight accent of
surprise.

Mr. Nash indulged his wonder. "My dear Dormer, do you remember the old
complaint I used to make of you? You had formulas that were like walking
in one's hat. One may see something in a case and one may not."

"Upon my word," said Nick, "I don't know any one who was fonder of a
generalisation than you. You turned them off as the man at the
street-corner distributes hand-bills."

"They were my wild oats. I've sown them all."

"We shall see that!"

"Oh there's nothing of them now: a tame, scanty, homely growth. My only
good generalisations are my actions."

"We shall see _them_ then."

"Ah pardon me. You can't see them with the naked eye. Moreover, mine are
principally negative. People's actions, I know, are for the most part
the things they do--but mine are all the things I _don't_ do. There are
so many of those, so many, but they don't produce any effect. And then
all the rest are shades--extremely fine shades."

"Shades of behaviour?" Nick inquired with an interest which surprised
his sister, Mr. Nash's discourse striking her mainly as the twaddle of
the under-world.

"Shades of impression, of appreciation," said the young man with his
explanatory smile. "All my behaviour consists of my feelings."

"Well, don't you show your feelings? You used to!"

"Wasn't it mainly those of disgust?" Nash asked. "Those operate no
longer. I've closed that window."

"Do you mean you like everything?"

"Dear me, no! But I look only at what I do like."

"Do you mean that you've lost the noble faculty of disgust?"

"I haven't the least idea. I never try it. My dear fellow," said Gabriel
Nash, "we've only one life that we know anything about: fancy taking it
up with disagreeable impressions! When then shall we go in for the
agreeable?"

"What do you mean by the agreeable?" Nick demanded.

"Oh the happy moments of our consciousness--the multiplication of those
moments. We must save as many as possible from the dark gulf."

Nick had excited surprise on the part of his sister, but it was now
Biddy's turn to make him open his eyes a little. She raised her sweet
voice in appeal to the stranger.

"Don't you think there are any wrongs in the world--any abuses and
sufferings?"

"Oh so many, so many! That's why one must choose."

"Choose to stop them, to reform them--isn't that the choice?" Biddy
asked. "That's Nick's," she added, blushing and looking at this
personage.

"Ah our divergence--yes!" Mr. Nash sighed. "There are all kinds of
machinery for that--very complicated and ingenious. Your formulas, my
dear Dormer, your formulas!"

"Hang 'em, I haven't got any!" Nick now bravely declared.

"To me personally the simplest ways are those that appeal most," Mr.
Nash went on. "We pay too much attention to the ugly; we notice it, we
magnify it. The great thing is to leave it alone and encourage the
beautiful."

"You must be very sure you get hold of the beautiful," said Nick.

"Ah precisely, and that's just the importance of the faculty of
appreciation. We must train our special sense. It's capable of
extraordinary extension. Life's none too long for that."

"But what's the good of the extraordinary extension if there is no
affirmation of it, if it all goes to the negative, as you say? Where are
the fine consequences?" Dormer asked.

"In one's own spirit. One is one's self a fine consequence. That's the
most important one we have to do with. _I_ am a fine consequence," said
Gabriel Nash.

Biddy rose from the bench at this and stepped away a little as to look
at a piece of statuary. But she had not gone far before, pausing and
turning, she bent her eyes on the speaker with a heightened colour, an
air of desperation and the question, after a moment: "Are you then an
æsthete?"

"Ah there's one of the formulas! That's walking in one's hat! I've _no_
profession, my dear young lady. I've no _état civil_. These things are a
part of the complicated ingenious machinery. As I say, I keep to the
simplest way. I find that gives one enough to do. Merely to be is such a
_métier_; to live such an art; to feel such a career!"

Bridget Dormer turned her back and examined her statue, and her brother
said to his old friend: "And to write?"

"To write? Oh I shall never do it again!"

"You've done it almost well enough to be inconsistent. That book of
yours is anything but negative; it's complicated and ingenious."

"My dear fellow, I'm extremely ashamed of that book," said Gabriel Nash.

"Ah call yourself a bloated Buddhist and have done with it!" his
companion exclaimed.

"Have done with it? I haven't the least desire to have done with it. And
why should one call one's self anything? One only deprives other people
of their dearest occupation. Let me add that you don't _begin_ to have
an insight into the art of life till it ceases to be of the smallest
consequence to you what you may be called. That's rudimentary."

"But if you go in for shades you must also go in for names. You must
distinguish," Nick objected. "The observer's nothing without his
categories, his types and varieties."

"Ah trust him to distinguish!" said Gabriel Nash sweetly. "That's for
his own convenience; he has, privately, a terminology to meet it. That's
one's style. But from the moment it's for the convenience of others the
signs have to be grosser, the shades begin to go. That's a deplorable
hour! Literature, you see, is for the convenience of others. It requires
the most abject concessions. It plays such mischief with one's style
that really I've had to give it up."

"And politics?" Nick asked.

"Well, what about them?" was Mr. Nash's reply with a special cadence as
he watched his friend's sister, who was still examining her statue.
Biddy was divided between irritation and curiosity. She had interposed
space, but she had not gone beyond ear-shot. Nick's question made her
curiosity throb as a rejoinder to his friend's words.

"That, no doubt you'll say, is still far more for the convenience of
others--is still worse for one's style."

Biddy turned round in time to hear Mr. Nash answer: "It has simply
nothing in life to do with shades! I can't say worse for it than that."

Biddy stepped nearer at this and drew still further on her courage.
"Won't mamma be waiting? Oughtn't we to go to luncheon?"

Both the young men looked up at her and Mr. Nash broke out: "You ought
to protest! You ought to save him!"

"To save him?" Biddy echoed.

"He had a style, upon my word he had! But I've seen it go. I've read his
speeches."

"You were capable of that?" Nick laughed.

"For you, yes. But it was like listening to a nightingale in a brass
band."

"I think they were beautiful," Biddy declared.

Her brother got up at this tribute, and Mr. Nash, rising too, said with
his bright colloquial air: "But, Miss Dormer, he had eyes. He was made
to see--to see all over, to see everything. There are so few like that."

"I think he still sees," Biddy returned, wondering a little why Nick
didn't defend himself.

"He sees his 'side,' his dreadful 'side,' dear young lady. Poor man,
fancy your having a 'side'--you, you--and spending your days and your
nights looking at it! I'd as soon pass my life looking at an
advertisement on a hoarding."

"You don't see me some day a great statesman?" said Nick.

"My dear fellow, it's exactly what I've a terror of."

"Mercy! don't you admire them?" Biddy cried.

"It's a trade like another and a method of making one's way which
society certainly condones. But when one can be something better--!"

"Why what in the world is better?" Biddy asked.

The young man gasped and Nick, replying for him, said: "Gabriel Nash is
better! You must come and lunch with us. I must keep you--I must!" he
added.

"We shall save him yet," Mr. Nash kept on easily to Biddy while they
went and the girl wondered still more what her mother would make of
him.




III


After her companions left her Lady Agnes rested for five minutes in
silence with her elder daughter, at the end of which time she observed:
"I suppose one must have food at any rate," and, getting up, quitted the
place where they had been sitting. "And where are we to go? I hate
eating out of doors," she went on.

"Dear me, when one comes to Paris--!" Grace returned in a tone
apparently implying that in so rash an adventure one must be prepared
for compromises and concessions. The two ladies wandered to where they
saw a large sign of "Buffet" suspended in the air, entering a precinct
reserved for little white-clothed tables, straw-covered chairs and
long-aproned waiters. One of these functionaries approached them with
eagerness and with a _"Mesdames sont seules?"_ receiving in return from
her ladyship the slightly snappish announcement _"Non; nous sommes
beaucoup!"_ He introduced them to a table larger than most of the
others, and under his protection they took their places at it and began
rather languidly and vaguely to consider the question of the repast. The
waiter had placed a _carte_ in Lady Agnes's hands and she studied it,
through her eye-glass, with a failure of interest, while he enumerated
with professional fluency the resources of the establishment and Grace
watched the people at the other tables. She was hungry and had already
broken a morsel from a long glazed roll.

"Not cold beef and pickles, you know," she observed to her mother. Lady
Agnes gave no heed to this profane remark, but dropped her eye-glass and
laid down the greasy document. "What does it signify? I daresay it's all
nasty," Grace continued; and she added inconsequently: "If Peter comes
he's sure to be particular."

"Let him first be particular to come!" her ladyship exclaimed, turning a
cold eye upon the waiter.

_"Poulet chasseur, filets mignons sauce bearnaise,"_ the man suggested.

"You'll give us what I tell you," said Lady Agnes; and she mentioned
with distinctness and authority the dishes of which she desired that the
meal should be composed. He interjected three or four more suggestions,
but as they produced absolutely no impression on her he became silent
and submissive, doing justice apparently to her ideas. For Lady Agnes
had ideas, and, though it had suited her humour ten minutes before to
profess herself helpless in such a case, the manner in which she imposed
them on the waiter as original, practical, and economical, showed the
high executive woman, the mother of children, the daughter of earls, the
consort of an official, the dispenser of hospitality, looking back upon
a lifetime of luncheons. She carried many cares, and the feeding of
multitudes--she was honourably conscious of having fed them decently, as
she had always done everything--had ever been one of them. "Everything's
absurdly dear," she remarked to her daughter as the waiter went away. To
this remark Grace made no answer. She had been used for a long time back
to hearing that everything was very dear; it was what one always
expected. So she found the case herself, but she was silent and
inventive about it, and nothing further passed, in the way of
conversation with her mother, while they waited for the latter's orders
to be executed, till Lady Agnes reflected audibly: "He makes me unhappy,
the way he talks about Julia."

"Sometimes I think he does it to torment one. One can't mention her!"
Grace responded.

"It's better not to mention her, but to leave it alone."

"Yet he never mentions her of himself."

"In some cases that's supposed to show that people like people--though
of course something more's required to prove it," Lady Agnes continued
to meditate. "Sometimes I think he's thinking of her, then at others I
can't fancy _what_ he's thinking of."

"It would be awfully suitable," said Grace, biting her roll.

Her companion had a pause, as if looking for some higher ground to put
it upon. Then she appeared to find this loftier level in the
observation: "Of course he must like her--he has known her always."

"Nothing can be plainer than that she likes him," Grace opined.

"Poor Julia!" Lady Agnes almost wailed; and her tone suggested that she
knew more about that than she was ready to state.

"It isn't as if she wasn't clever and well read," her daughter went on.
"If there were nothing else there would be a reason in her being so
interested in politics, in everything that he is."

"Ah what Nick is--that's what I sometimes wonder!"

Grace eyed her parent in some despair: "Why, mother, isn't he going to
be like papa?" She waited for an answer that didn't come; after which
she pursued: "I thought you thought him so like him already."

"Well, I don't," said Lady Agnes quietly.

"Who is then? Certainly Percy isn't."

Lady Agnes was silent a space. "There's no one like your father."

"Dear papa!" Grace handsomely concurred. Then with a rapid transition:
"It would be so jolly for all of us--she'd be so nice to us."

"She's that already--in her way," said Lady Agnes conscientiously,
having followed the return, quick as it was. "Much good does it do her!"
And she reproduced the note of her bitterness of a moment before.

"It does her some good that one should look out for her. I do, and I
think she knows it," Grace declared. "One can at any rate keep other
women off."

"Don't meddle--you're very clumsy," was her mother's not particularly
sympathetic rejoinder. "There are other women who are beautiful, and
there are others who are clever and rich."

"Yes, but not all in one: that's what's so nice in Julia. Her fortune
would be thrown in; he wouldn't appear to have married her for it."

"If he does he won't," said Lady Agnes a trifle obscurely.

"Yes, that's what's so charming. And he could do anything then, couldn't
he?"

"Well, your father had no fortune to speak of."

"Yes, but didn't Uncle Percy help him?"

"His wife helped him," said Lady Agnes.

"Dear mamma!"--the girl was prompt. "There's one thing," she added:
"that Mr. Carteret will always help Nick."

"What do you mean by 'always'?"

"Why whether he marries Julia or not."

"Things aren't so easy," Lady Agnes judged. "It will all depend on
Nick's behaviour. He can stop it to-morrow."

Grace Dormer stared; she evidently thought Mr. Carteret's beneficence a
part of the scheme of nature. "How could he stop it?"

"By not being serious. It isn't so hard to prevent people giving you
money."

"Serious?" Grace repeated. "Does he want him to be a prig like Lord
Egbert?"

"Yes--that's exactly what he wants. And what he'll do for him he'll do
for him only if he marries Julia."

"Has he told you?" Grace inquired. And then, before her mother could
answer, "I'm delighted at that!" she cried.

"He hasn't told me, but that's the way things happen." Lady Agnes was
less optimistic than her daughter, and such optimism as she cultivated
was a thin tissue with the sense of things as they are showing through.
"If Nick becomes rich Charles Carteret will make him more so. If he
doesn't he won't give him a shilling."

"Oh mamma!" Grace demurred.

"It's all very well to say that in public life money isn't as necessary
as it used to be," her ladyship went on broodingly. "Those who say so
don't know anything about it. It's always intensely necessary."

Her daughter, visibly affected by the gloom of her manner, felt impelled
to evoke as a corrective a more cheerful idea. "I daresay; but there's
the fact--isn't there?--that poor papa had so little."

"Yes, and there's the fact that it killed him!"

These words came out with a strange, quick, little flare of passion.
They startled Grace Dormer, who jumped in her place and gasped, "Oh
mother!" The next instant, however, she added in a different voice, "Oh
Peter!" for, with an air of eagerness, a gentleman was walking up to
them.

"How d'ye do, Cousin Agnes? How d'ye do, little Grace?" Peter
Sherringham laughed and shook hands with them, and three minutes later
was settled in his chair at their table, on which the first elements of
the meal had been placed. Explanations, on one side and the other, were
demanded and produced; from which it appeared that the two parties had
been in some degree at cross-purposes. The day before Lady Agnes and her
companions travelled to Paris Sherringham had gone to London for
forty-eight hours on private business of the ambassador's, arriving, on
his return by the night-train, only early that morning. There had
accordingly been a delay in his receiving Nick Dormer's two notes. If
Nick had come to the embassy in person--he might have done him the
honour to call--he would have learned that the second secretary was
absent. Lady Agnes was not altogether successful in assigning a motive
to her son's neglect of this courteous form; she could but say: "I
expected him, I wanted him to go; and indeed, not hearing from you, he
would have gone immediately--an hour or two hence, on leaving this
place. But we're here so quietly--not to go out, not to seem to appeal
to the ambassador. Nick put it so--'Oh mother, we'll keep out of it; a
friendly note will do.' I don't know definitely what he wanted to keep
out of, unless anything like gaiety. The embassy isn't gay, I know. But
I'm sure his note was friendly, wasn't it? I daresay you'll see for
yourself. He's different directly he gets abroad; he doesn't seem to
care." Lady Agnes paused a moment, not carrying out this particular
elucidation; then she resumed: "He said you'd have seen Julia and that
you'd understand everything from her. And when I asked how she'd know he
said, 'Oh she knows everything!'"

"He never said a word to me about Julia," Peter Sherringham returned.
Lady Agnes and her daughter exchanged a glance at this: the latter had
already asked three times where Julia was, and her ladyship dropped that
they had been hoping she would be able to come with Peter. The young man
set forth that she was at the moment at an hotel in the Rue de la Paix,
but had only been there since that morning; he had seen her before
proceeding to the Champs Elysées. She had come up to Paris by an early
train--- she had been staying at Versailles, of all places in the world.
She had been a week in Paris on her return from Cannes--her stay there
had been of nearly a month: fancy!--and then had gone out to Versailles
to see Mrs. Billinghurst. Perhaps they'd remember her, poor Dallow's
sister. She was staying there to teach her daughters French--she had a
dozen or two!--and Julia had spent three days with her. She was to
return to England about the twenty-fifth. It would make seven weeks she
must have been away from town--a rare thing for her; she usually stuck
to it so in summer.

"Three days with Mrs. Billinghurst--how very good-natured of her!" Lady
Agnes commented.

"Oh they're very nice to her," Sherringham said.

"Well, I hope so!" Grace Dormer exhaled. "Why didn't you make her come
here?"

"I proposed it, but she wouldn't." Another eye-beam, at this, passed
between the two ladies and Peter went on: "She said you must come and
see her at the Hôtel de Hollande."

"Of course we'll do that," Lady Agnes declared. "Nick went to ask about
her at the Westminster."

"She gave that up; they wouldn't give her the rooms she wanted, her
usual set."

"She's delightfully particular!" Grace said complacently. Then she
added: "She _does_ like pictures, doesn't she?"

Peter Sherringham stared. "Oh I daresay. But that's not what she has in
her head this morning. She has some news from London--she's immensely
excited."

"What has she in her head?" Lady Agnes asked.

"What's her news from London?" Grace added.

"She wants Nick to stand."

"Nick to stand?" both ladies cried.

"She undertakes to bring him in for Harsh. Mr. Pinks is dead--the
fellow, you know, who got the seat at the general election. He dropped
down in London--disease of the heart or something of that sort. Julia
has her telegram, but I see it was in last night's papers."

"Imagine--Nick never mentioned it!" said Lady Agnes.

"Don't you know, mother?--abroad he only reads foreign papers."

"Oh I know. I've no patience with him," her ladyship continued. "Dear
Julia!"

"It's a nasty little place, and Pinks had a tight squeeze--107 or
something of that sort; but if it returned a Liberal a year ago very
likely it will do so again. Julia at any rate believes it can be made
to--if the man's Nick--and is ready to take the order to put him in."

"I'm sure if she can do it she will," Grace pronounced.

"Dear, dear Julia! And Nick can do something for himself," said the
mother of this candidate.

"I've no doubt he can do anything," Peter Sherringham returned
good-naturedly. Then, "Do you mean in expenses?" he inquired.

"Ah I'm afraid he can't do much in expenses, poor dear boy! And it's
dreadful how little we can look to Percy."

"Well, I daresay you may look to Julia. I think that's her idea."

"Delightful Julia!" Lady Agnes broke out. "If poor Sir Nicholas could
have known! Of course he must go straight home," she added.

"He won't like that," said Grace.

"Then he'll have to go without liking it."

"It will rather spoil _your_ little excursion, if you've only just
come," Peter suggested; "to say nothing of the great Biddy's, if she's
enjoying Paris."

"We may stay perhaps--with Julia to protect us," said Lady Agnes.

"Ah she won't stay; she'll go over for her man."

"Her man----?"

"The fellow who stands, whoever he is--especially if he's Nick." These
last words caused the eyes of Peter Sherringham's companions to meet
again, and he went on: "She'll go straight down to Harsh."

"Wonderful Julia!" Lady Agnes panted. "Of course Nick must go straight
there too."

"Well, I suppose he must see first if they'll have him."

"If they'll have him? Why how can he tell till he tries?"

"I mean the people at headquarters, the fellows who arrange it."

Lady Agnes coloured a little. "My dear Peter, do you suppose there will
be the least doubt of their 'having' the son of his father?"

"Of course it's a great name, Cousin Agnes--a very great name."

"One of the greatest, simply," Lady Agnes smiled.

"It's the best name in the world!" said Grace more emphatically.

"All the same it didn't prevent his losing his seat."

"By half-a-dozen votes: it was too odious!" her ladyship cried.

"I remember--I remember. And in such a case as that why didn't they
immediately put him in somewhere else?"

"How one sees you live abroad, dear Peter! There happens to have been
the most extraordinary lack of openings--I never saw anything like
it--for a year. They've had their hand on him, keeping him all ready. I
daresay they've telegraphed him."

"And he hasn't told you?"

Lady Agnes faltered. "He's so very odd when he's abroad!"

"At home too he lets things go," Grace interposed. "He does so
little--takes no trouble." Her mother suffered this statement to pass
unchallenged, and she pursued philosophically: "I suppose it's because
he knows he's so clever."

"So he is, dear old man. But what does he do, what has he been doing, in
a positive way?"

"He has been painting."

"Ah not seriously!" Lady Agnes protested.

"That's the worst way," said Peter Sherringham. "Good things?"

Neither of the ladies made a direct response to this, but Lady Agnes
said: "He has spoken repeatedly. They're always calling on him."

"He speaks magnificently," Grace attested.

"That's another of the things I lose, living in far countries. And he's
doing the Salon now with the great Biddy?"

"Just the things in this part. I can't think what keeps them so long,"
Lady Agnes groaned. "Did you ever see such a dreadful place?"

Sherringham stared. "Aren't the things good? I had an idea----!"

"Good?" cried Lady Agnes. "They're too odious, too wicked."

"Ah," laughed Peter, "that's what people fall into if they live abroad.
The French oughtn't to live abroad!"

"Here they come," Grace announced at this point; "but they've got a
strange man with them."

"That's a bore when we want to talk!" Lady Agnes sighed.

Peter got up in the spirit of welcome and stood a moment watching the
others approach. "There will be no difficulty in talking, to judge by
the gentleman," he dropped; and while he remains so conspicuous our eyes
may briefly rest on him. He was middling high and was visibly a
representative of the nervous rather than of the phlegmatic branch of
his race. He had an oval face, fine firm features, and a complexion that
tended to the brown. Brown were his eyes, and women thought them soft;
dark brown his hair, in which the same critics sometimes regretted the
absence of a little undulation. It was perhaps to conceal this plainness
that he wore it very short. His teeth were white, his moustache was
pointed, and so was the small beard that adorned the extremity of his
chin. His face expressed intelligence and was very much alive; it had
the further distinction that it often struck superficial observers with
a certain foreignness of cast. The deeper sort, however, usually felt it
latently English enough. There was an idea that, having taken up the
diplomatic career and gone to live in strange lands, he cultivated the
mask of an alien, an Italian or a Spaniard; of an alien in time
even--one of the wonderful ubiquitous diplomatic agents of the sixteenth
century. In fact, none the less, it would have been impossible to be
more modern than Peter Sherringham--more of one's class and one's
country. But this didn't prevent several stray persons--Bridget Dormer
for instance--from admiring the hue of his cheek for its olive richness
and his moustache and beard for their resemblance to those of Charles I.
At the same time--she rather jumbled her comparisons--she thought he
recalled a Titian.




IV


Peter's meeting with Nick was of the friendliest on both sides,
involving a great many "dear fellows" and "old boys," and his salutation
to the younger of the Miss Dormers consisted of the frankest "Delighted
to see you, my dear Bid!" There was no kissing, but there was cousinship
in the air, of a conscious, living kind, as Gabriel Nash doubtless
quickly noted, hovering for a moment outside the group. Biddy said
nothing to Peter Sherringham, but there was no flatness in a silence
which heaved, as it were, with the fairest physiognomic portents. Nick
introduced Gabriel Nash to his mother and to the other two as "a
delightful old friend" whom he had just come across, and Sherringham
acknowledged the act by saying to Mr. Nash, but as if rather less for
his sake than for that of the presenter: "I've seen you very often
before."

"Ah repetition--recurrence: we haven't yet, in the study of how to live,
abolished that clumsiness, have we?" Mr. Nash genially inquired. "It's a
poverty in the supernumeraries of our stage that we don't pass once for
all, but come round and cross again like a procession or an army at the
theatre. It's a sordid economy that ought to have been managed better.
The right thing would be just _one_ appearance, and the procession,
regardless of expense, for ever and for ever different." The company was
occupied in placing itself at table, so that the only disengaged
attention for the moment was Grace's, to whom, as her eyes rested on
him, the young man addressed these last words with a smile. "Alas, it's
a very shabby idea, isn't it? The world isn't got up regardless of
expense!"

Grace looked quickly away from him and said to her brother: "Nick, Mr.
Pinks is dead."

"Mr. Pinks?" asked Gabriel Nash, appearing to wonder where he should
sit.

"The member for Harsh; and Julia wants you to stand," the girl went on.

"Mr. Pinks, the member for Harsh? What names to be sure!" Gabriel mused
cheerfully, still unseated.

"Julia wants me? I'm much obliged to her!" Nick absently said. "Nash,
please sit by my mother, with Peter on her other side."

"My dear, it isn't Julia"--Lady Agnes spoke earnestly. "Every one wants
you. Haven't you heard from your people? Didn't you know the seat was
vacant?"

Nick was looking round the table to see what was on it. "Upon my word I
don't remember. What else have you ordered, mother?"

"There's some _boeuf braisé_, my dear, and afterwards some galantine.
Here's a dish of eggs with asparagus-tips."

"I advise you to go in for it, Nick," said Peter Sherringham, to whom
the preparation in question was presented.

"Into the eggs with asparagus-tips? _Donnez m'en s'il vous plaît_. My
dear fellow, how can I stand? how can I sit? Where's the money to come
from?"

"The money? Why from Jul----!" Grace began, but immediately caught her
mother's eye.

"Poor Julia, how you do work her!" Nick exclaimed. "Nash, I recommend
you the asparagus-tips. Mother, he's my best friend--do look after him."

"I've an impression I've breakfasted--I'm not sure," Nash smiled.

"With those beautiful ladies? Try again--you'll find out."

"The money can be managed; the expenses are very small and the seat's
certain," Lady Agnes pursued, not apparently heeding her son's
injunction in respect to Nash.

"Rather--if Julia goes down!" her elder daughter exclaimed.

"Perhaps Julia won't go down!" Nick answered humorously.

Biddy was seated next to Mr. Nash, so that she could take occasion to
ask, "Who are the beautiful ladies?" as if she failed to recognise her
brother's allusion. In reality this was an innocent trick: she was more
curious than she could have given a suitable reason for about the odd
women from whom her neighbour had lately separated.

"Deluded, misguided, infatuated persons!" Mr. Nash replied,
understanding that she had asked for a description. "Strange eccentric,
almost romantic, types. Predestined victims, simple-minded sacrificial
lambs!"

This was copious, yet it was vague, so that Biddy could only respond:
"Oh all that?" But meanwhile Peter Sherringham said to Nick: "Julia's
here, you know. You must go and see her."

Nick looked at him an instant rather hard, as if to say: "You too?" But
Peter's eyes appeared to answer, "No, no, not I"; upon which his cousin
rejoined: "Of course I'll go and see her. I'll go immediately. Please to
thank her for thinking of me."

"Thinking of you? There are plenty to think of you!" Lady Agnes said.
"There are sure to be telegrams at home. We must go back--we must go
back!"

"We must go back to England?" Nick Dormer asked; and as his mother made
no answer he continued: "Do you mean I must go to Harsh?"

Her ladyship evaded this question, inquiring of Mr. Nash if he would
have a morsel of fish; but her gain was small, for this gentleman,
struck again by the unhappy name of the bereaved constituency, only
broke out: "Ah what a place to represent! How can you--how can you?"

"It's an excellent place," said Lady Agnes coldly. "I imagine you've
never been there. It's a very good place indeed. It belongs very largely
to my cousin, Mrs. Dallow."

Gabriel partook of the fish, listening with interest. "But I thought we
had no more pocket-boroughs."

"It's pockets we rather lack, so many of us. There are plenty of
Harshes," Nick Dormer observed.

"I don't know what you mean," Lady Agnes said to Nash with considerable
majesty.

Peter Sherringham also addressed him with an "Oh it's all right; they
come down on you like a shot!" and the young man continued ingenuously:

"Do you mean to say you've to pay money to get into that awful
place--that it's not _you_ who are paid?"

"Into that awful place?" Lady Agnes repeated blankly.

"Into the House of Commons. That you don't get a high salary?"

"My dear Nash, you're delightful: don't leave me--don't leave me!" Nick
cried; while his mother looked at him with an eye that demanded: "Who in
the world's this extraordinary person?"

"What then did you think pocket-boroughs were?" Peter Sherringham asked.

Mr. Nash's facial radiance rested on him. "Why, boroughs that filled
your pocket. To do that sort of thing without a bribe--_c'est trop
fort!_"

"He lives at Samarcand," Nick Dormer explained to his mother, who
flushed perceptibly. "What do you advise me? I'll do whatever you say,"
he went on to his old acquaintance.

"My dear, my dear----!" Lady Agnes pleaded.

"See Julia first, with all respect to Mr. Nash. She's of excellent
counsel," said Peter Sherringham.

Mr. Nash smiled across the table at his host. "The lady first--the lady
first! I've not a word to suggest as against any idea of hers."

"We mustn't sit here too long, there'll be so much to do," said Lady
Agnes anxiously, perceiving a certain slowness in the service of the
_boeuf braisé_.

Biddy had been up to this moment mainly occupied in looking, covertly
and in snatches, at Peter Sherringham; as was perfectly lawful in a
young lady with a handsome cousin whom she had not seen for more than a
year. But her sweet voice now took license to throw in the words: "We
know what Mr. Nash thinks of politics: he told us just now he thinks
them dreadful."

"No, not dreadful--only inferior," the personage impugned protested.
"Everything's relative."

"Inferior to what?" Lady Agnes demanded.

Mr. Nash appeared to consider a moment. "To anything else that may be in
question."

"Nothing else is in question!" said her ladyship in a tone that would
have been triumphant if it had not been so dry.

"Ah then!" And her neighbour shook his head sadly. He turned after this
to Biddy. "The ladies whom I was with just now and in whom you were so
good as to express an interest?" Biddy gave a sign of assent and he went
on: "They're persons theatrical. The younger one's trying to go upon the
stage."

"And are you assisting her?" Biddy inquired, pleased she had guessed so
nearly right.

"Not in the least--I'm rather choking her off. I consider it the lowest
of the arts."

"Lower than politics?" asked Peter Sherringham, who was listening to
this.

"Dear no, I won't say that. I think the Théâtre Français a greater
institution than the House of Commons."

"I agree with you there!" laughed Sherringham; "all the more that I
don't consider the dramatic art a low one. It seems to me on the
contrary to include all the others."

"Yes--that's a view. I think it's the view of my friends."

"Of your friends?"

"Two ladies--old acquaintances--whom I met in Paris a week ago and whom
I've just been spending an hour with in this place."

"You should have seen them; they struck me very much," Biddy said to her
cousin.

"I should like to see them if they really have anything to say to the
theatre."

"It can easily be managed. Do you believe in the theatre?" asked Gabriel
Nash.

"Passionately," Sherringham confessed. "Don't you?"

Before Nash had had time to answer Biddy had interposed with a sigh.
"How I wish I could go--but in Paris I can't!"

"I'll take you, Biddy--I vow I'll take you."

"But the plays, Peter," the girl objected. "Mamma says they're worse
than the pictures."

"Oh, we'll arrange that: they shall do one at the Français on purpose
for a delightful little yearning English girl."

"Can you make them?"

"I can make them do anything I choose."

"Ah then it's the theatre that believes in _you_," said Mr. Nash.

"It would be ungrateful if it didn't after all I've done for it!"
Sherringham gaily opined.

Lady Agnes had withdrawn herself from between him and her other guest
and, to signify that she at least had finished eating, had gone to sit
by her son, whom she held, with some importunity, in conversation. But
hearing the theatre talked of she threw across an impersonal challenge
to the paradoxical young man. "Pray should you think it better for a
gentleman to be an actor?"

"Better than being a politician? Ah, comedian for comedian, isn't the
actor more honest?"

Lady Agnes turned to her son and brought forth with spirit: "Think of
your great father, Nicholas!"

"He was an honest man," said Nicholas. "That's perhaps why he couldn't
stand it."

Peter Sherringham judged the colloquy to have taken an uncomfortable
twist, though not wholly, as it seemed to him, by the act of Nick's
queer comrade. To draw it back to safer ground he said to this
personage: "May I ask if the ladies you just spoke of are English--Mrs.
and Miss Rooth: isn't that the rather odd name?"

"The very same. Only the daughter, according to her kind, desires to be
known by some _nom de guerre_ before she has even been able to enlist."

"And what does she call herself?" Bridget Dormer asked.

"Maud Vavasour, or Edith Temple, or Gladys Vane--some rubbish of that
sort."

"What then is her own name?"

"Miriam--Miriam Rooth. It would do very well and would give her the
benefit of the prepossessing fact that--to the best of my belief at
least--she's more than half a Jewess."

"It is as good as Rachel Felix," Sherringham said.

"The name's as good, but not the talent. The girl's splendidly stupid."

"And more than half a Jewess? Don't you believe it!" Sherringham
laughed.

"Don't believe she's a Jewess?" Biddy asked, still more interested in
Miriam Rooth.

"No, no--that she's stupid, really. If she is she'll be the first."

"Ah you may judge for yourself," Nash rejoined, "if you'll come
to-morrow afternoon to Madame Carré, Rue de Constantinople, _à
l'entresol_."

"Madame Carré? Why, I've already a note from her--I found it this
morning on my return to Paris--asking me to look in at five o'clock and
listen to a _jeune Anglaise_."

"That's my arrangement--I obtained the favour. The ladies want an
opinion, and dear old Carré has consented to see them and to give one.
Maud Vavasour will recite, and the venerable artist will pass
judgement."

Sherringham remembered he had his note in his pocket and took it out to
look it over. "She wishes to make her a little audience--she says she'll
do better with that--and she asks me because I'm English. I shall make a
point of going."

"And bring Dormer if you can: the audience will be better. Will you
come, Dormer?" Mr. Nash continued, appealing to his friend--"will you
come with me to hear an English amateur recite and an old French actress
pitch into her?"

Nick looked round from his talk with his mother and Grace. "I'll go
anywhere with you so that, as I've told you, I mayn't lose sight of
you--may keep hold of you."

"Poor Mr. Nash, why is he so useful?" Lady Agnes took a cold freedom to
inquire.

"He steadies me, mother."

"Oh I wish you'd take _me_, Peter," Biddy broke out wistfully to her
cousin.

"To spend an hour with an old French actress? Do _you_ want to go upon
the stage?" the young man asked.

"No, but I want to see something--to know something."

"Madame Carré's wonderful in her way, but she's hardly company for a
little English girl."

"I'm not little, I'm only too big; and _she_ goes, the person you speak
of."

"For a professional purpose and with her good mother," smiled Mr. Nash.
"I think Lady Agnes would hardly venture----!"

"Oh I've seen her good mother!" said Biddy as if she had her impression
of what the worth of that protection might be.

"Yes, but you haven't heard her. It's then that you measure her."

Biddy was wistful still. "Is it the famous Honorine Carré, the great
celebrity?"

"Honorine in person: the incomparable, the perfect!" said Peter
Sherringham. "The first artist of our time, taking her altogether. She
and I are old pals; she has been so good as to come and 'say'
things--which she does sometimes still _dans le monde_ as no one else
_can_--- in my rooms."

"Make her come then. We can go _there_!"

"One of these days!"

"And the young lady--Miriam, Maud, Gladys--make her come too."

Sherringham looked at Nash and the latter was bland. "Oh you'll have no
difficulty. She'll jump at it!"

"Very good. I'll give a little artistic tea--with Julia too of course.
And you must come, Mr. Nash." This gentleman promised with an
inclination, and Peter continued: "But if, as you say, you're not for
helping the young lady, how came you to arrange this interview with the
great model?"

"Precisely to stop her short. The great model will find her very bad.
Her judgements, as you probably know, are Rhadamanthine."

"Unfortunate creature!" said Biddy. "I think you're cruel."

"Never mind--I'll look after them," Sherringham laughed.

"And how can Madame Carré judge if the girl recites English?"

"She's so intelligent that she could judge if she recited Chinese,"
Peter declared.

"That's true, but the _jeune Anglaise_ recites also in French," said
Gabriel Nash.

"Then she isn't stupid."

"And in Italian, and in several more tongues, for aught I know."

Sherringham was visibly interested. "Very good--we'll put her through
them all."

"She must be _most_ clever," Biddy went on yearningly.

"She has spent her life on the Continent; she has wandered about with
her mother; she has picked up things."

"And is she a lady?" Biddy asked.

"Oh tremendous! The great ones of the earth on the mother's side. On the
father's, on the other hand, I imagine, only a Jew stockbroker in the
City."

"Then they're rich--or ought to be," Sherringham suggested.

"Ought to be--ah there's the bitterness! The stockbroker had too short a
go--he was carried off in his flower. However, he left his wife a
certain property, which she appears to have muddled away, not having the
safeguard of being herself a Hebrew. This is what she has lived on till
to-day--this and another resource. Her husband, as she has often told
me, had the artistic temperament: that's common, as you know, among _ces
messieurs_. He made the most of his little opportunities and collected
various pictures, tapestries, enamels, porcelains, and similar gewgaws.
He parted with them also, I gather, at a profit; in short he carried on
a neat little business as a _brocanteur_. It was nipped in the bud, but
Mrs. Rooth was left with a certain number of these articles in her
hands; indeed they must have formed her only capital. She was not a
woman of business; she turned them, no doubt, to indifferent account;
but she sold them piece by piece, and they kept her going while her
daughter grew up. It was to this precarious traffic, conducted with
extraordinary mystery and delicacy, that, five years ago, in Florence, I
was indebted for my acquaintance with her. In those days I used to
collect--heaven help me!--I used to pick up rubbish which I could ill
afford. It was a little phase--we have our little phases, haven't we?"
Mr. Nash asked with childlike trust--"and I've come out on the other
side. Mrs. Rooth had an old green pot and I heard of her old green pot.
To hear of it was to long for it, so that I went to see it under cover
of night. I bought it and a couple of years ago I overturned and smashed
it. It was the last of the little phase. It was not, however, as you've
seen, the last of Mrs. Rooth. I met her afterwards in London, and I
found her a year or two ago in Venice. She appears to be a great
wanderer. She had other old pots, of other colours, red, yellow, black,
or blue--she could produce them of any complexion you liked. I don't
know whether she carried them about with her or whether she had little
secret stores in the principal cities of Europe. To-day at any rate they
seem all gone. On the other hand she has her daughter, who has grown up
and who's a precious vase of another kind--less fragile I hope than the
rest. May she not be overturned and smashed!"

Peter Sherringham and Biddy Dormer listened with attention to this
history, and the girl testified to the interest with which she had
followed it by saying when Mr. Nash had ceased speaking: "A Jewish
stockbroker, a dealer in curiosities: what an odd person to marry--for a
person who was well born! I daresay he was a German."

"His name must have been simply Roth, and the poor lady, to smarten it
up, has put in another _o_," Sherringham ingeniously suggested.

"You're both very clever," said Gabriel, "and Rudolf Roth, as I happen
to know, was indeed the designation of Maud Vavasour's papa. But so far
as the question of derogation goes one might as well drown as
starve--for what connexion is _not_ a misalliance when one happens to
have the unaccommodating, the crushing honour of being a Neville-Nugent
of Castle Nugent? That's the high lineage of Maud's mamma. I seem to
have heard it mentioned that Rudolf Roth was very versatile and, like
most of his species, not unacquainted with the practice of music. He had
been employed to teach the harmonium to Miss Neville-Nugent and she had
profited by his lessons. If his daughter's like him--and she's not like
her mother--he was darkly and dangerously handsome. So I venture rapidly
to reconstruct the situation."

A silence, for the moment, had fallen on Lady Agnes and her other two
children, so that Mr. Nash, with his universal urbanity, practically
addressed these last remarks to them as well as to his other auditors.
Lady Agnes looked as if she wondered whom he was talking about, and
having caught the name of a noble residence she inquired: "Castle
Nugent--where in the world's that?"

"It's a domain of immeasurable extent and almost inconceivable
splendour, but I fear not to be found in any prosaic earthly geography!"
Lady Agnes rested her eyes on the tablecloth as if she weren't sure a
liberty had not been taken with her, or at least with her "order," and
while Mr. Nash continued to abound in descriptive suppositions--"It must
be on the banks of the Manzanares or the Guadalquivir"--Peter
Sherringham, whose imagination had seemingly been kindled by the sketch
of Miriam Rooth, took up the argument and reminded him that he had a
short time before assigned a low place to the dramatic art and had not
yet answered the question as to whether he believed in the theatre.
Which gave the speaker a further chance. "I don't know that I understand
your question; there are different ways of taking it. Do I think it's
important? Is that what you mean? Important certainly to managers and
stage-carpenters who want to make money, to ladies and gentlemen who
want to produce themselves in public by limelight, and to other ladies
and gentlemen who are bored and stupid and don't know what to do with
their evening. It's a commercial and social convenience which may be
infinitely worked. But important artistically, intellectually? How _can_
it be--so poor, so limited a form?"

"Upon my honour it strikes me as rich and various! Do _you_ think it's a
poor and limited form, Nick?" Sherringham added, appealing to his
kinsman.

"I think whatever Nash thinks. I've no opinion to-day but his."

This answer of the hope of the Dormers drew the eyes of his mother and
sisters to him and caused his friend to exclaim that he wasn't used to
such responsibilities--so few people had ever tested his presence of
mind by agreeing with him. "Oh I used to be of your way of feeling,"
Nash went on to Sherringham. "I understand you perfectly. It's a phase
like another. I've been through it--_j'ai été comme ça._"

"And you went then very often to the Théâtre Français, and it was there
I saw you. I place you now."

"I'm afraid I noticed none of the other spectators," Nash explained. "I
had no attention but for the great Carré--she was still on the stage.
Judge of my infatuation, and how I can allow for yours, when I tell you
that I sought her acquaintance, that I couldn't rest till I had told her
how I hung upon her lips."

"That's just what _I_ told her," Sherringham returned.

"She was very kind to me. She said: '_Vous me rendez des forces_.'"

"That's just what she said to me!"

"And we've remained very good friends."

"So have we!" laughed Sherringham. "And such perfect art as hers--do you
mean to say you don't consider _that_ important, such a rare dramatic
intelligence?"

"I'm afraid you read the _feuilletons_. You catch their phrases"--Nash
spoke with pity. "Dramatic intelligence is never rare; nothing's more
common."

"Then why have we so many shocking actors?"

"Have we? I thought they were mostly good; succeeding more easily and
more completely in that business than in anything else. What could they
do--those people generally--if they didn't do that poor thing? And
reflect that the poor thing enables them to succeed! Of course, always,
there are numbers of people on the stage who are no actors at all, for
it's even easier to our poor humanity to be ineffectively stupid and
vulgar than to bring down the house."

"It's not easy, by what I can see, to produce, completely, any artistic
effect," Sherringham declared; "and those the actor produces are among
the most momentous we know. You'll not persuade me that to watch such an
actress as Madame Carré wasn't an education of the taste, an enlargement
of one's knowledge."

"She did what she could, poor woman, but in what belittling, coarsening
conditions! She had to interpret a character in a play, and a character
in a play--not to say the whole piece: I speak more particularly of
modern pieces--is such a wretchedly small peg to hang anything on! The
dramatist shows us so little, is so hampered by his audience, is
restricted to so poor an analysis."

"I know the complaint. It's all the fashion now. The _raffinés_ despise
the theatre," said Peter Sherringham in the manner of a man abreast with
the culture of his age and not to be captured by a surprise. "_Connu,
connu_!"

"It will be known better yet, won't it? when the essentially brutal
nature of the modern audience is still more perceived, when it has been
properly analysed: the _omnium gatherum_ of the population of a big
commercial city at the hour of the day when their taste is at its
lowest, flocking out of hideous hotels and restaurants, gorged with
food, stultified with buying and selling and with all the other sordid
preoccupations of the age, squeezed together in a sweltering mass,
disappointed in their seats, timing the author, timing the actor,
wishing to get their money back on the spot--all before eleven o'clock.
Fancy putting the exquisite before such a tribunal as that! There's not
even a question of it. The dramatist wouldn't if he could, and in nine
cases out of ten he couldn't if he would. He has to make the basest
concessions. One of his principal canons is that he must enable his
spectators to catch the suburban trains, which stop at 11.30. What would
you think of any other artist--the painter or the novelist--whose
governing forces should be the dinner and the suburban trains? The old
dramatists didn't defer to them--not so much at least--and that's why
they're less and less actable. If they're touched--the large loose
men--it's only to be mutilated and trivialised. Besides, they had a
simpler civilisation to represent--societies in which the life of man
was in action, in passion, in immediate and violent expression. Those
things could be put upon the playhouse boards with comparatively little
sacrifice of their completeness and their truth. To-day we're so
infinitely more reflective and complicated and diffuse that it makes all
the difference. What can you do with a character, with an idea, with a
feeling, between dinner and the suburban trains? You can give a gross,
rough sketch of them, but how little you touch them, how bald you leave
them! What crudity compared with what the novelist does!"

"Do you write novels, Mr. Nash?" Peter candidly asked.

"No, but I read them when they're extraordinarily good, and I don't go
to plays. I read Balzac for instance--I encounter the admirable portrait
of Valérie Marneffe in _La Cousine Bette_."

"And you contrast it with the poverty of Emile Augier's Séraphine in
_Les Lionnes Pauvres_? I was awaiting you there. That's the _cheval de
bataille_ of you fellows."

"What an extraordinary discussion! What dreadful authors!" Lady Agnes
murmured to her son. But he was listening so attentively to the other
young men that he made no response, and Peter Sherringham went on:

"I've seen Madame Carré in things of the modern repertory, which she has
made as vivid to me, caused to abide as ineffaceably in my memory, as
Valérie Marneffe. She's the Balzac, as one may say, of actresses."

"The miniaturist, as it were, of whitewashers!" Nash offered as a
substitute.

It might have been guessed that Sherringham resented his damned freedom,
yet could but emulate his easy form. "You'd be magnanimous if you
thought the young lady you've introduced to our old friend would be
important."

Mr. Nash lightly weighed it. "She might be much more so than she ever
will be."

Lady Agnes, however, got up to terminate the scene and even to signify
that enough had been said about people and questions she had never so
much as heard of. Every one else rose, the waiter brought Nicholas the
receipt of the bill, and Sherringham went on, to his interlocutor:
"Perhaps she'll be more so than you think."

"Perhaps--if you take an interest in her!"

"A mystic voice seems to exhort me to do so, to whisper that though I've
never seen her I shall find something in her." On which Peter appealed.
"What do you say, Biddy--shall I take an interest in her?"

The girl faltered, coloured a little, felt a certain embarrassment in
being publicly treated as an oracle. "If she's not nice I don't advise
it."

"And if she _is_ nice?"

"You advise it still less!" her brother exclaimed, laughing and putting
his arm round her.

Lady Agnes looked sombre--she might have been saying to herself: "Heaven
help us, what chance has a girl of mine with a man who's so agog about
actresses?" She was disconcerted and distressed; a multitude of
incongruous things, all the morning, had been forced upon her
attention--displeasing pictures and still more displeasing theories
about them, vague portents of perversity on Nick's part and a strange
eagerness on Peter's, learned apparently in Paris, to discuss, with a
person who had a tone she never had been exposed to, topics irrelevant
and uninteresting, almost disgusting, the practical effect of which was
to make light of her presence. "Let us leave this--let us leave this!"
she grimly said. The party moved together toward the door of departure,
and her ruffled spirit was not soothed by hearing her son remark to his
terrible friend: "You know you don't escape me; I stick to you!"

At this Lady Agnes broke out and interposed. "Pardon my reminding you
that you're going to call on Julia."

"Well, can't Nash also come to call on Julia? That's just what I
want--that she should see him."

Peter Sherringham came humanely to his kinswoman's assistance. "A better
way perhaps will be for them to meet under my auspices at my 'dramatic
tea.' This will enable me to return one favour for another. If Mr. Nash
is so good as to introduce me to this aspirant for honours we estimate
so differently, I'll introduce him to my sister, a much more positive
quantity."

"It's easy to see who'll have the best of it!" Grace Dormer declared;
while Nash stood there serenely, impartially, in a graceful detached way
which seemed characteristic of him, assenting to any decision that
relieved him of the grossness of choice and generally confident that
things would turn out well for him. He was cheerfully helpless and
sociably indifferent; ready to preside with a smile even at a
discussion of his own admissibility.

"Nick will bring you. I've a little corner at the embassy," Sherringham
continued.

"You're very kind. You must bring _him_ then to-morrow--Rue de
Constantinople."

"At five o'clock--don't be afraid."

"Oh dear!" Biddy wailed as they went on again and Lady Agnes, seizing
his arm, marched off more quickly with her son. When they came out into
the Champs Elysées Nick Dormer, looking round, saw his friend had
disappeared. Biddy had attached herself to Peter, and Grace couldn't
have encouraged Mr. Nash.




V


Lady Agnes's idea had been that her son should go straight from the
Palais de l'Industrie to the Hôtel de Hollande, with or without his
mother and his sisters as his humour should seem to recommend. Much as
she desired to see their valued Julia, and as she knew her daughters
desired it, she was quite ready to put off their visit if this sacrifice
should contribute to a speedy confrontation for Nick. She was anxious he
should talk with Mrs. Dallow, and anxious he should be anxious himself;
but it presently appeared that he was conscious of no pressure of
eagerness. His view was that she and the girls should go to their cousin
without delay and should, if they liked, spend the rest of the day in
her society. He would go later; he would go in the evening. There were
lots of things he wanted to do meanwhile.

This question was discussed with some intensity, though not at length,
while the little party stood on the edge of the Place de la Concorde, to
which they had proceeded on foot; and Lady Agnes noticed that the "lots
of things" to which he proposed to give precedence over an urgent duty,
a conference with a person who held out full hands to him, were implied
somehow in the friendly glance with which he covered the great square,
the opposite bank of the Seine, the steep blue roofs of the quay, the
bright immensity of Paris. What in the world could be more important
than making sure of his seat?--so quickly did the good lady's
imagination travel. And now that idea appealed to him less than a ramble
in search of old books and prints--since she was sure this was what he
had in his head. Julia would be flattered should she know it, but of
course she mustn't know it. Lady Agnes was already thinking of the least
injurious account she could give of the young man's want of
precipitation. She would have liked to represent him as tremendously
occupied, in his room at their own hotel, in getting off political
letters to every one it should concern, and particularly in drawing up
his address to the electors of Harsh. Fortunately she was a woman of
innumerable discretions, and a part of the worn look that sat in her
face came from her having schooled herself for years, in commerce with
her husband and her sons, not to insist unduly. She would have liked to
insist, nature had formed her to insist, and the self-control had told
in more ways than one. Even now it was powerless to prevent her
suggesting that before doing anything else Nick should at least repair
to the inn and see if there weren't some telegrams.

He freely consented to do as much as this, and, having called a cab that
she might go her way with the girls, kissed her again as he had done at
the exhibition. This was an attention that could never displease her,
but somehow when he kissed her she was really the more worried: she had
come to recognise it as a sign that he was slipping away from her, and
she wished she might frankly take it as his clutch at her to save him.
She drove off with a vague sense that at any rate she and the girls
might do something toward keeping the place warm for him. She had been a
little vexed that Peter had not administered more of a push toward the
Hôtel de Hollande, clear as it had become to her now that there was a
foreignness in Peter which was not to be counted on and which made him
speak of English affairs and even of English domestic politics as local
and even "funny." They were very grandly local, and if one recalled, in
public life, an occasional droll incident wasn't that, liberally viewed,
just the warm human comfort of them? As she left the two young men
standing together in the middle of the Place de la Concorde, the grand
composition of which Nick, as she looked back, appeared to have paused
to admire--as if he hadn't seen it a thousand times!--she wished she
might have thought of Peter's influence with her son as exerted a little
more in favour of localism. She had a fear he wouldn't abbreviate the
boy's ill-timed _flânerie_. However, he had been very nice: he had
invited them all to dine with him that evening at a convenient café,
promising to bring Julia and one of his colleagues. So much as this he
had been willing to do to make sure Nick and his sister should meet. His
want of localism, moreover, was not so great as that if it should turn
out that there _was_ anything beneath his manner toward Biddy--! The
upshot of this reflexion might have been represented by the circumstance
of her ladyship's remarking after a minute to her younger daughter, who
sat opposite her in the _voiture de place_, that it would do no harm if
she should get a new hat and that the search might be instituted that
afternoon.

"A French hat, mamma?" said Grace. "Oh do wait till she gets home!"

"I think they're really prettier here, you know," Biddy opined; and Lady
Agnes said simply: "I daresay they're cheaper." What was in her mind in
fact was: "I daresay Peter thinks them becoming." It will be seen she
had plenty of inward occupation, the sum of which was not lessened by
her learning when she reached the top of the Rue de la Paix that Mrs.
Dallow had gone out half an hour before and had left no message. She was
more disconcerted by this incident than she could have explained or than
she thought was right, as she had taken for granted Julia would be in a
manner waiting for them. How could she be sure Nick wasn't coming? When
people were in Paris a few days they didn't mope in the house, but she
might have waited a little longer or have left an explanation. Was she
then not so much in earnest about Nick's standing? Didn't she recognise
the importance of being there to see him about it? Lady Agnes wondered
if her behaviour were a sign of her being already tired of the way this
young gentleman treated her. Perhaps she had gone out because an
instinct told her that the great propriety of their meeting early would
make no difference with him--told her he wouldn't after all come. His
mother's heart sank as she glanced at this possibility that their
precious friend was already tired, she having on her side an intuition
that there were still harder things in store. She had disliked having to
tell Mrs. Dallow that Nick wouldn't see her till the evening, but now
she disliked still more her not being there to hear it. She even
resented a little her kinswoman's not having reasoned that she and the
girls would come in any event, and not thought them worth staying in
for. It came up indeed that she would perhaps have gone to their hotel,
which was a good way up the Rue de Rivoli, near the Palais Royal--on
which the cabman was directed to drive to that establishment.

As he jogged along she took in some degree the measure of what that
might mean, Julia's seeking a little to avoid them. Was she growing to
dislike them? Did she think they kept too sharp an eye on her, so that
the idea of their standing in a still closer relation wouldn't be
enticing? Her conduct up to this time had not worn such an appearance,
unless perhaps a little, just a very little, in the matter of her ways
with poor Grace. Lady Agnes knew she wasn't particularly fond of poor
Grace, and could even sufficiently guess the reason--the manner in which
Grace betrayed most how they wanted to make sure of her. She remembered
how long the girl had stayed the last time she had been at Harsh--going
for an acceptable week and dragging out her visit to a month. She took a
private heroic vow that Grace shouldn't go near the place again for a
year; not, that is, unless Nick and Julia were married within the time.
If that were to happen she shouldn't care. She recognised that it wasn't
absolutely everything Julia should be in love with Nick; it was also
better she should dislike his mother and sisters after a probable
pursuit of him than before. Lady Agnes did justice to the natural rule
in virtue of which it usually comes to pass that a woman doesn't get on
with her husband's female belongings, and was even willing to be
sacrificed to it in her disciplined degree. But she desired not to be
sacrificed for nothing: if she was to be objected to as a mother-in-law
she wished to be the mother-in-law first.

At the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli she had the disappointment of finding
that Mrs. Dallow had not called, and also that no telegrams had come.
She went in with the girls for half an hour and then straggled out with
them again. She was undetermined and dissatisfied and the afternoon was
rather a problem; of the kind, moreover, that she disliked most and was
least accustomed to: not a choice between different things to do--her
life had been full of that--but a want of anything to do at all. Nick
had said to her before they separated: "You can knock about with the
girls, you know; everything's amusing here." That was easily said while
he sauntered and gossiped with Peter Sherringham and perhaps went to
see more pictures like those in the Salon. He was usually, on such
occasions, very good-natured about spending his time with them; but this
episode had taken altogether a perverse, profane form. She had no desire
whatever to knock about and was far from finding everything in Paris
amusing. She had no aptitude for aimlessness, and moreover thought it
vulgar. If she had found Julia's card at the hotel--the sign of a hope
of catching them just as they came back from the Salon--she would have
made a second attempt to see her before the evening; but now certainly
they would leave her alone. Lady Agnes wandered joylessly with the girls
in the Palais Royal and the Rue de Richelieu, and emerged upon the
Boulevard, where they continued their frugal prowl, as Biddy rather
irritatingly called it. They went into five shops to buy a hat for
Biddy, and her ladyship's presumptions of cheapness were woefully
belied.

"Who in the world's your comic friend?" Peter Sherringham was meanwhile
asking of his kinsman as they walked together.

"Ah there's something else you lost by going to Cambridge--you lost
Gabriel Nash!"

"He sounds like an Elizabethan dramatist," Sherringham said. "But I
haven't lost him, since it appears now I shan't be able to have you
without him."

"Oh, as for that, wait a little. I'm going to try him again, but I don't
know how he wears. What I mean is that you've probably lost his
freshness, which was the great thing. I rather fear he's becoming
conventional, or at any rate serious."

"Bless me, do you call that serious?"

"He used to be so gay. He had a real genius for playing with ideas. He
was a wonderful talker."

"It seems to me he does very well now," said Peter Sherringham.

"Oh this is nothing. He had great flights of old, very great flights;
one saw him rise and rise and turn somersaults in the blue--one wondered
how far he could go. He's very intelligent, and I should think it might
be interesting to find out what it is that prevents the whole man from
being as good as his parts. I mean in case he isn't so good."

"I see you more than suspect that. Mayn't it be simply that he's too
great an ass?"

"That would be the whole--I shall see in time--but it certainly isn't
one of the parts. It may be the effect, but it isn't the cause, and it's
for the cause I claim an interest. Do you think him an ass for what he
said about the theatre--his pronouncing it a coarse art?"

"To differ from you about him that reason would do," said Sherringham.
"The only bad one would be one that shouldn't preserve our difference.
You needn't tell me you agree with him, for frankly I don't care."

"Then your passion still burns?" Nick Dormer asked.

"My passion--?"

"I don't mean for any individual exponent of the equivocal art: mark the
guilty conscience, mark the rising blush, mark the confusion of mind! I
mean the old sign one knew you best by; your permanent stall at the
Français, your inveterate attendance at _premières_, the way you
'follow' the young talents and the old."

"Yes, it's still my little hobby, my little folly if you like,"
Sherringham said. "I don't find I get tired of it. What will you have?
Strong predilections are rather a blessing; they're simplifying. I'm
fond of representation--the representation of life: I like it better, I
think, than the real thing. You like it too, you'd be ready in other
conditions to go in for it, in your way--so you've no right to cast the
stone. You like it best done by one vehicle and I by another; and our
preference on either side has a deep root in us. There's a fascination
to me in the way the actor does it, when his talent--ah he must have
that!--has been highly trained. Ah it must _be_ that! The things he can
do in this effort at representation, with the dramatist to back him,
seem to me innumerable--he can carry it to a point!--and I take great
pleasure in observing them, in recognising and comparing them. It's an
amusement like another--I don't pretend to call it by any exalted name,
but in this vale of friction it will serve. One can lose one's self in
it, and it has the recommendation--in common, I suppose, with the study
of the other arts--that the further you go in it the more you find. So I
go rather far, if you will. But is it the principal sign one knows me
by?" Peter abruptly asked.

"Don't be ashamed of it," Nick returned--"else it will be ashamed of
you. I ought to discriminate. You're distinguished among my friends and
relations by your character of rising young diplomatist; but you know I
always want the final touch to the picture, the last fruit of analysis.
Therefore I make out that you're conspicuous among rising young
diplomatists for the infatuation you describe in such pretty terms."

"You evidently believe it will prevent my ever rising very high. But
pastime for pastime is it any idler than yours?"

"Than mine?"

"Why you've half-a-dozen while I only allow myself the luxury of one.
For the theatre's my sole vice, really. Is this more wanton, say, than
to devote weeks to the consideration of the particular way in which your
friend Mr. Nash may be most intensely a twaddler and a bore? That's not
my ideal of choice recreation, but I'd undertake to satisfy you about
him sooner. You're a young statesman--who happens to be an _en
disponibilité_ for the moment--but you spend not a little of your time
in besmearing canvas with bright-coloured pigments. The idea of
representation fascinates you, but in your case it's representation in
oils--or do you practise water-colours and pastel too? You even go much
further than I, for I study my art of predilection only in the works of
others. I don't aspire to leave works of my own. You're a painter,
possibly a great one; but I'm not an actor." Nick Dormer declared he
would certainly become one--he was so well on the way to it; and
Sherringham, without heeding this charge, went on: "Let me add that,
considering you _are_ a painter, your portrait of the complicated Nash
is lamentably dim."

"He's not at all complicated; he's only too simple to give an account
of. Most people have a lot of attributes and appendages that dress them
up and superscribe them, and what I like Gabriel for is that he hasn't
any at all. It makes him, it keeps him, so refreshingly cool."

"By Jove, you match him there! Isn't it an appendage and an attribute to
escape kicking? How does he manage that?" Sherringham asked.

"I haven't the least idea--I don't know that he doesn't rouse the
kicking impulse. Besides, he can kick back and I don't think any one has
ever seen him duck or dodge. His means, his profession, his belongings
have never anything to do with the question. He doesn't shade off into
other people; he's as neat as an outline cut out of paper with scissors.
I like him, therefore, because in dealing with him you know what you've
got hold of. With most men you don't: to pick the flower you must break
off the whole dusty, thorny, worldly branch; you find you're taking up
in your grasp all sorts of other people and things, dangling accidents
and conditions. Poor Nash has none of those encumbrances: he's the
solitary-fragrant blossom."

"My dear fellow, you'd be better for a little of the same pruning!"
Sherringham retorted; and the young men continued their walk and their
gossip, jerking each other this way and that, punching each other here
and there, with an amicable roughness consequent on their having, been
boys together. Intimacy had reigned of old between the little
Sherringhams and the little Dormers, united in the country by ease of
neighbouring and by the fact that there was first cousinship, not
neglected, among the parents, Lady Agnes standing in this plastic
relation to Lady Windrush, the mother of Peter and Julia as well as of
other daughters and of a maturer youth who was to inherit, and who since
then had inherited, the ancient barony. Many things had altered later
on, but not the good reasons for not explaining. One of our young men
had gone to Eton and the other to Harrow--the scattered school on the
hill was the tradition of the Dormers--and the divergence had rather
taken its course in university years. Bricket, however, had remained
accessible to Windrush, and Windrush to Bricket, to which estate
Percival Dormer had now succeeded, terminating the interchange a trifle
rudely by letting out that pleasant white house in the midlands--its
expropriated inhabitants, Lady Agnes and her daughters, adored it--to an
American reputed rich, who in the first flush of his sense of contrasts
considered that for twelve hundred a year he got it at a bargain.
Bricket had come to the late Sir Nicholas from his elder brother, dying
wifeless and childless. The new baronet, so different from his
father--though recalling at some points the uncle after whom he had
been named--that Nick had to make it up by cultivating conformity,
roamed about the world, taking shots which excited the enthusiasm of
society, when society heard of them, at the few legitimate creatures of
the chase the British rifle had up to that time spared. Lady Agnes
meanwhile settled with her girls in a gabled, latticed house in a
mentionable quarter, though it still required a little explaining, of
the temperate zone of London. It was not into her lap, poor woman, that
the revenues of Bricket were poured. There was no dower-house attached
to that moderate property, and the allowance with which the estate was
charged on her ladyship's behalf was not an incitement to grandeur.

Nick had a room under his mother's roof, which he mainly used to dress
for dinner when dining in Calcutta Gardens, and he had "kept on" his
chambers in the Temple; for to a young man in public life an independent
address was indispensable. Moreover, he was suspected of having a studio
in an out-of-the-way district, the indistinguishable parts of South
Kensington, incongruous as such a retreat might seem in the case of a
member of Parliament. It was an absurd place to see his constituents
unless he wanted to paint their portraits, a kind of "representation"
with which they would scarce have been satisfied; and in fact the only
question of portraiture had been when the wives and daughters of several
of them expressed a wish for the picture of their handsome young member.
Nick had not offered to paint it himself, and the studio was taken for
granted rather than much looked into by the ladies in Calcutta Gardens.
Too express a disposition to regard whims of this sort as extravagance
pure and simple was known by them to be open to correction; for they
were not oblivious that Mr. Carteret had humours which weighed against
them in the shape of convenient cheques nestling between the inside
pages of legible letters of advice. Mr. Carteret was Nick's providence,
just as Nick was looked to, in a general way, to be that of his mother
and sisters, especially since it had become so plain that Percy, who was
not subtly selfish, would operate, mainly with a "six-bore," quite out
of that sphere. It was not for studios certainly that Mr. Carteret sent
cheques; but they were an expression of general confidence in Nick, and
a little expansion was natural to a young man enjoying such a luxury as
that. It was sufficiently felt in Calcutta Gardens that he could be
looked to not to betray such confidence; for Mr. Carteret's behaviour
could have no name at all unless one were prepared to call it
encouraging. He had never promised anything, but he was one of the
delightful persons with whom the redemption precedes or dispenses with
the vow. He had been an early and lifelong friend of the late right
honourable gentleman, a political follower, a devoted admirer, a stanch
supporter in difficult hours. He had never married, espousing nothing
more reproductive than Sir Nicholas's views--he used to write letters to
the _Times_ in favour of them--and had, so far as was known, neither
chick nor child; nothing but an amiable little family of eccentricities,
the flower of which was his odd taste for living in a small, steep,
clean country town, all green gardens and red walls with a girdle of
hedge-rows, all clustered about an immense brown old abbey. When Lady
Agnes's imagination rested upon the future of her second son she liked
to remember that Mr. Carteret had nothing to "keep up": the inference
seemed so direct that he would keep up Nick.

The most important event in the life of this young man had been
incomparably his success, under his father's eyes, more than two years
before, in the sharp contest for Crockhurst--a victory which his
consecrated name, his extreme youth, his ardour in the fray, the marked
personal sympathy of the party, and the attention excited by the fresh
cleverness of his speeches, tinted with young idealism and yet sticking
sufficiently to the question--the burning question which has since
burned out--had made quite splendid. There had been leaders in the
newspapers about it, half in compliment to her husband, who was known to
be failing so prematurely--he was almost as young to die, and to die
famous, for Lady Agnes regarded it as famous, as his son had been to
stand--tributes the boy's mother religiously preserved, cut out and tied
together with a ribbon, in the innermost drawer of a favourite cabinet.
But it had been a barren, or almost a barren triumph, for in the order
of importance in Nick's history another incident had run it, as the
phrase is, very close: nothing less than the quick dissolution of the
Parliament in which he was so manifestly destined to give symptoms of a
future. He had not recovered his seat at the general election, for the
second contest was even sharper than the first and the Tories had put
forward a loud, vulgar, rattling, bullying, money-spending man. It was
to a certain extent a comfort that poor Sir Nicholas, who had been
witness of the bright hour, should have passed away before the darkness.
He died with all his hopes on his second son's head, unconscious of near
disappointment, handing on the torch and the tradition, after a long,
supreme interview with Nick at which Lady Agnes had not been present,
but which she knew to have been a thorough paternal dedication, an
august communication of ideas on the highest national questions (she had
reason to believe he had touched on those of external as well as of
domestic and of colonial policy) leaving on the boy's nature and manner
from that moment the most unmistakable traces. If his tendency to
reverie increased it was because he had so much to think over in what
his pale father had said to him in the hushed dim chamber, laying on him
the great mission that death had cut short, breathing into him with
unforgettable solemnity the very accents--Sir Nicholas's voice had been
wonderful for richness--that he was to sound again. It was work cut out
for a lifetime, and that "co-ordinating power in relation to detail"
which was one of the great characteristics of the lamented statesman's
high distinction--the most analytic of the weekly papers was always
talking about it--had enabled him to rescue the prospect from any shade
of vagueness or of ambiguity.

Five years before Nick Dormer went up to be questioned by the electors
of Crockhurst Peter Sherringham had appeared before a board of examiners
who let him off much less easily, though there were also some flattering
prejudices in his favour; such influences being a part of the copious,
light, unembarrassing baggage with which each of the young men began
life. Peter passed, however, passed high, and had his reward in prompt
assignment to small, subordinate, diplomatic duties in Germany. Since
then he had had his professional adventures, which need not arrest us,
inasmuch as they had all paled in the light of his appointment, nearly
three years previous to the moment of our making his acquaintance, to a
secretaryship of embassy in Paris. He had done well and had gone fast
and for the present could draw his breath at ease. It pleased him better
to remain in Paris as a subordinate than to go to Honduras as a
principal, and Nick Dormer had not put a false colour on the matter in
speaking of his stall at the Théâtre Français as a sedative to his
ambition. Nick's inferiority in age to his cousin sat on him more
lightly than when they had been in their teens; and indeed no one can
very well be much older than a young man who has figured for a year,
however imperceptibly, in the House of Commons. Separation and diversity
had made them reciprocally strange enough to give a price to what they
shared; they were friends without being particular friends; that further
degree could always hang before them as a suitable but not oppressive
contingency, and they were both conscious that it was in their interest
to keep certain differences to "chaff" each other about--so possible was
it that they might have quarrelled if they had had everything in common.
Peter, as being wide-minded, was a little irritated to find his cousin
always so intensely British, while Nick Dormer made him the object of
the same compassionate criticism, recognised in him a rare knack with
foreign tongues, but reflected, and even with extravagance declared,
that it was a pity to have gone so far from home only to remain so
homely. Moreover, Nick had his ideas about the diplomatic mind, finding
in it, for his own sympathy, always the wrong turn. Dry, narrow, barren,
poor he pronounced it in familiar conversation with the clever
secretary; wanting in imagination, in generosity, in the finest
perceptions and the highest courage. This served as well as anything
else to keep the peace between them; it was a necessity of their
friendly intercourse that they should scuffle a little, and it scarcely
mattered what they scuffled about. Nick Dormer's express enjoyment of
Paris, the shop-windows on the quays, the old books on the parapet, the
gaiety of the river, the grandeur of the Louvre, every fine feature of
that prodigious face, struck his companion as a sign of insularity; the
appreciation of such things having become with Sherringham an
unconscious habit, a contented assimilation. If poor Nick, for the
hour, was demonstrative and lyrical, it was because he had no other way
of sounding the note of farewell to the independent life of which the
term seemed now definitely in sight--the sense so pressed upon him that
these were the last moments of his freedom. He would waste time till
half-past seven, because half-past seven meant dinner, and dinner meant
his mother solemnly attended by the strenuous shade of his father and
re-enforced by Julia.




VI


When he arrived with the three members of his family at the restaurant
of their choice Peter Sherringham was already seated there by one of the
immaculate tables, but Mrs. Dallow was not yet on the scene, and they
had time for a sociable settlement--time to take their places and unfold
their napkins, crunch their rolls, breathe the savoury air, and watch
the door, before the usual raising of heads and suspension of forks, the
sort of stir that accompanied most of this lady's movements, announced
her entrance. The _dame de comptoir_ ducked and re-ducked, the people
looked round, Peter and Nick got up, there was a shuffling of
chairs--Julia had come. Peter was relating how he had stopped at her
hotel to bring her with him and had found her, according to her custom,
by no means ready; on which, fearing his guests would arrive first at
the rendezvous and find no proper welcome, he had come off without her,
leaving her to follow. He had not brought a friend, as he intended,
having divined that Julia would prefer a pure family party if she wanted
to talk about her candidate. Now she stood looking down at the table and
her expectant kinsfolk, drawing off her gloves, letting her brother draw
off her jacket, lifting her hands for some rearrangement of her hat. She
looked at Nick last, smiling, but only for a moment. She said to Peter:
"Are we going to dine here? Oh dear, why didn't you have a private
room?"

Nick had not seen her at all for several weeks and had seen her but
little for a year, but her off-hand cursory manner had not altered in
the interval. She spoke remarkably fast, as if speech were not in itself
a pleasure--to have it over as soon as possible; and her _brusquerie_
was of the dark shade friendly critics account for by pleading shyness.
Shyness had never appeared to him an ultimate quality or a real
explanation of anything; it only explained an effect by another effect,
neither with a cause to boast of. What he suspected in Julia was that
her mind was less pleasing than her person; an ugly, a really blighting
idea, which as yet he had but half accepted. It was a case in which she
was entitled to the benefit of every doubt and oughtn't to be judged
without a complete trial. Nick meanwhile was afraid of the trial--this
was partly why he had been of late to see her so little--because he was
afraid of the sentence, afraid of anything that might work to lessen the
charm it was actually in the power of her beauty to shed. There were
people who thought her rude, and he hated rude women. If he should
fasten on that view, or rather if that view should fasten on him, what
could still please and what he admired in her would lose too much of its
sweetness. If it be thought odd that he had not yet been able to read
the character of a woman he had known since childhood the answer is that
this character had grown faster than Nick's observation. The growth was
constant, whereas the observation was but occasional, though it had
begun early. If he had attempted inwardly to phrase the matter, as he
probably had not, he might have pronounced the effect she produced upon
him too much a compulsion; not the coercion of design, of importunity,
nor the vulgar pressure of family expectation, a betrayed desire he
should like her enough to marry her, but a mixture of divers urgent
things; of the sense that she was imperious and generous--probably more
the former than the latter--and of a certain prevision of doom, the
influence of the idea that he should come to it, that he was
predestined.

This had made him shrink from knowing the worst about her; not the wish
to get used to it in time, but what was more characteristic of him, the
wish to interpose a temporary illusion. Illusions and realities and
hopes and fears, however, fell into confusion whenever he met her after
a separation. The separation, so far as seeing her alone or as
continuous talk was concerned, had now been tolerably long; had lasted
really ever since his failure to regain his seat. An impression had come
to him that she judged that failure rather stiffly, had thought, and had
somewhat sharply said, that he ought to have done better. This was a
part of her imperious way, and a part not _all_ to be overlooked on a
mere present basis. If he were to marry her he should come to an
understanding with her: he should give her his own measure as well as
take hers. But the understanding might in the actual case suggest too
much that he _was_ to marry her. You could quarrel with your wife
because there were compensations--for her; but you mightn't be prepared
to offer these compensations as prepayment for the luxury of
quarrelling.

It was not that such a luxury wouldn't be considerable, our young man
none the less thought as Julia Dallow's fine head poised itself before
him again; a high spirit was of course better than a mawkish to be
mismated with, any day in the year. She had much the same colour as her
brother, but as nothing else in her face was the same the resemblance
was not striking. Her hair was of so dark a brown that it was commonly
regarded as black, and so abundant that a plain arrangement was required
to keep it in natural relation to the rest of her person. Her eyes were
of a grey sometimes pronounced too light, and were not sunken in her
face, but placed well on the surface. Her nose was perfect, but her
mouth was too small; and Nick Dormer, and doubtless other persons as
well, had sometimes wondered how with such a mouth her face could have
expressed decision. Her figure helped it, for she appeared tall--being
extremely slender--yet was not; and her head took turns and positions
which, though a matter of but half an inch out of the common this way or
that, somehow contributed to the air of resolution and temper. If it had
not been for her extreme delicacy of line and surface she might have
been called bold; but as it was she looked refined and quiet--refined by
tradition and quiet for a purpose. And altogether she was beautiful,
with the gravity of her elegant head, her hair like the depths of
darkness, her eyes like its earlier clearing, her mouth like a rare pink
flower.

Peter said he had not taken a private room because he knew Biddy's
tastes; she liked to see the world--she had told him so--the curious
people, the coming and going of Paris. "Oh anything for Biddy!" Julia
replied, smiling at the girl and taking her place. Lady Agnes and her
elder daughter exchanged one of their looks, and Nick exclaimed jocosely
that he didn't see why the whole party should be sacrificed to a
presumptuous child. The presumptuous child blushingly protested she had
never expressed any such wish to Peter, upon which Nick, with broader
humour, revealed that Peter had served them so out of stinginess: he had
pitchforked them together in the public room because he wouldn't go to
the expense of a _cabinet_. He had brought no guest, no foreigner of
distinction nor diplomatic swell, to honour them, and now they would see
what a paltry dinner he would give them. Peter stabbed him indignantly
with a long roll, and Lady Agnes, who seemed to be waiting for some
manifestation on Mrs. Dallow's part which didn't come, concluded, with a
certain coldness, that they quite sufficed to themselves for privacy as
well as for society. Nick called attention to this fine phrase of his
mother's and said it was awfully neat, while Grace and Biddy looked
harmoniously at Julia's clothes. Nick felt nervous and joked a good deal
to carry it off--a levity that didn't prevent Julia's saying to him
after a moment: "You might have come to see me to-day, you know. Didn't
you get my message from Peter?"

"Scold him, Julia--scold him well. I begged him to go," said Lady Agnes;
and to this Grace added her voice with an "Oh Julia, do give it to him!"
These words, however, had not the effect they suggested, since Mrs.
Dallow only threw off for answer, in her quick curt way, that that would
be making far too much of him. It was one of the things in her that Nick
mentally pronounced ungraceful, the perversity of pride or of shyness
that always made her disappoint you a little if she saw you expected a
thing. She snubbed effusiveness in a way that yet gave no interesting
hint of any wish to keep it herself in reserve. Effusiveness, however,
certainly, was the last thing of which Lady Agnes would have consented
to be accused; and Nick, while he replied to Julia that he was sure he
shouldn't have found her, was not unable to perceive the operation on
his mother of that shade of manner. "He ought to have gone; he owed you
that," she went on; "but it's very true he would have had the same luck
as we. I went with the girls directly after luncheon. I suppose you got
our card."

"He might have come after I came in," said Mrs. Dallow.

"Dear Julia, I'm going to see you to-night. I've been waiting for that,"
Nick returned.

"Of course _we_ had no idea when you'd come in," said Lady Agnes.

"I'm so sorry. You must come to-morrow. I hate calls at night," Julia
serenely added.

"Well then, will you roam with me? Will you wander through Paris on my
arm?" Nick asked, smiling. "Will you take a drive with me?"

"Oh that would be perfection!" cried Grace.

"I thought we were all going somewhere--to the Hippodrome, Peter," Biddy
said.

"Oh not all; just you and me!" laughed Peter.

"I'm going home to my bed. I've earned my rest," Lady Agnes sighed.

"Can't Peter take _us_?" demanded Grace. "Nick can take you home, mamma,
if Julia won't receive him, and I can look perfectly after Peter and
Biddy."

"Take them to something amusing; please take them," Mrs. Dallow said to
her brother. Her voice was kind, but had the expectation of assent in
it, and Nick observed both the good nature and the pressure. "You're
tired, poor dear," she continued to Lady Agnes. "Fancy your being
dragged about so! What did you come over for?"

"My mother came because I brought her," Nick said. "It's I who have
dragged her about. I brought her for a little change. I thought it would
do her good. I wanted to see the Salon."

"It isn't a bad time. I've a carriage and you must use it; you must use
nothing else. It shall take you everywhere. I'll drive you about
to-morrow." Julia dropped these words with all her air of being able
rather than of wanting; but Nick had already noted, and he noted now
afresh and with pleasure, that her lack of unction interfered not a bit
with her always acting. It was quite sufficiently manifest to him that
for the rest of the time she might be near his mother she would do for
her numberless good turns. She would give things to the girls--he had a
private adumbration of that; expensive Parisian, perhaps not perfectly
useful, things.

Lady Agnes was a woman who measured outlays and returns, but she was
both too acute and too just not to recognise the scantest offer from
which an advantage could proceed. "Dear Julia!" she exclaimed
responsively; and her tone made this brevity of acknowledgment adequate.
Julia's own few words were all she wanted. "It's so interesting about
Harsh," she added. "We're immensely excited."

"Yes, Nick looks it. _Merci, pas de vin_. It's just the thing for you,
you know," Julia said to him.

"To be sure he knows it. He's immensely grateful. It's really very kind
of you."

"You do me a very great honour, Julia," Nick hastened to add.

"Don't be tiresome, please," that lady returned.

"We'll talk about it later. Of course there are lots of points," Nick
pursued. "At present let's be purely convivial. Somehow Harsh is such a
false note here. _Nous causerons de ça_."

"My dear fellow, you've caught exactly the tone of Mr. Gabriel Nash,"
Peter Sherringham declared on this.

"Who's Mr. Gabriel Nash?" Mrs. Dallow asked.

"Nick, is he a gentleman? Biddy says so," Grace Dormer interposed before
this inquiry was answered.

"It's to be supposed that any one Nick brings to lunch with us--!" Lady
Agnes rather coldly sighed.

"Ah Grace, with your tremendous standard!" her son said; while Peter
Sherringham explained to his sister that Mr. Nash was Nick's new Mentor
or oracle--whom, moreover, she should see if she would come and have tea
with him.

"I haven't the least desire to see him," Julia made answer, "any more
than I have to talk about Harsh and bore poor Peter."

"Oh certainly, dear, you'd bore me," her brother rang out.

"One thing at a time then. Let us by all means be convivial. Only you
must show me how," Mrs. Dallow went on to Nick. "What does he mean,
Cousin Agnes? Does he want us to drain the wine-cup, to flash with
repartee?"

"You'll do very well," said Nick. "You're thoroughly charming to-night."

"Do go to Peter's, Julia, if you want something exciting. You'll see a
wonderful girl," Biddy broke in with her smile on Peter.

"Wonderful for what?"

"For thinking she can act when she can't," said the roguish Biddy.

"Dear me, what people you all know! I hate Peter's theatrical people."

"And aren't you going home, Julia?" Lady Agnes inquired.

"Home to the hotel?"

"Dear, no, to Harsh--to see about everything."

"I'm in the midst of telegrams. I don't know yet."

"I suppose there's no doubt they'll have him," Lady Agnes decided to
pursue.

"Who'll have whom?"

"Why, the local people and the party managers. I'm speaking of the
question of my son's standing."

"They'll have the person I want them to have, I daresay. There are so
many people in it, in one way or another--it's dreadful. I like the way
you sit there," Julia went on to Nick.

"So do I," he smiled back at her; and he thought she _was_ charming now,
because she was gay and easy and willing really, though she might plead
incompetence, to understand how jocose a dinner in a pothouse in a
foreign town might be. She was in good humour or was going to be, and
not grand nor stiff nor indifferent nor haughty nor any of the things
people who disliked her usually found her and sometimes even a little
made him believe her. The spirit of mirth in some cold natures manifests
itself not altogether happily, their effort of recreation resembles too
much the bath of the hippopotamus; but when Mrs. Dallow put her elbows
on the table one felt she could be trusted to get them safely off again.

For a family in mourning the dinner was lively; the more so that before
it was half over Julia had arranged that her brother, eschewing the
inferior spectacle, should take the girls to the Théâtre Français. It
was her idea, and Nick had a chance to observe how an idea was apt to be
not successfully controverted when it was Julia's. Even the programme
appeared to have been prearranged to suit it, just the thing for the
cheek of the young person--_Il ne Faut Jurer de Rien_ and _Mademoiselle
de la Seiglière_. Peter was all willingness, but it was Julia who
settled it, even to sending for the newspaper--he was by a rare accident
unconscious of the evening's bill--and to reassuring Biddy, who was
happy but anxious, on the article of their being too late for good
places. Peter could always get good places: a word from him and the best
box was at his disposal. She made him write the word on a card and saw a
messenger despatched with it to the Rue de Richelieu; and all this
without loudness or insistence, parenthetically and authoritatively. The
box was bespoken and the carriage, as soon as they had had their coffee,
found to be in attendance. Peter drove off in it with the girls,
understanding that he was to send it back, and Nick waited for it over
the finished repast with the two ladies. After this his mother was
escorted to it and conveyed to her apartments, and all the while it had
been Julia who governed the succession of events. "Do be nice to her,"
Lady Agnes breathed to him as he placed her in the vehicle at the door
of the café; and he guessed it gave her a comfort to have left him
sitting there with Mrs. Dallow.

He had every disposition to be nice to his charming cousin; if things
went as she liked them it was the proof of a certain fine force in
her--the force of assuming they would. Julia had her differences--some
of them were much for the better; and when she was in a mood like this
evening's, liberally dominant, he was ready to encourage most of what
she took for granted. While they waited for the return of the carriage,
which had rolled away with his mother, she sat opposite him with her
elbows on the table, playing first with one and then with another of the
objects that encumbered it; after five minutes of which she exclaimed,
"Oh I say, well go!" and got up abruptly, asking for her jacket. He said
something about the carriage and its order to come back for them, and
she replied, "Well, it can go away again. I don't want a carriage," she
added: "I want to walk"--and in a moment she was out of the place, with
the people at the tables turning round again and the _caissière_ swaying
in her high seat. On the pavement of the boulevard she looked up and
down; there were people at little tables by the door; there were people
all over the broad expanse of the asphalt; there was a profusion of
light and a pervasion of sound; and everywhere, though the establishment
at which they had been dining was not in the thick of the fray, the
tokens of a great traffic of pleasure, that night-aspect of Paris which
represents it as a huge market for sensations. Beyond the Boulevard des
Capucines it flared through the warm evening like a vast bazaar, and
opposite the Café Durand the Madeleine rose theatrical, a high artful
_décor_ before the footlights of the Rue Royale. "Where shall we go,
what shall we do?" Mrs. Dallow asked, looking at her companion and
somewhat to his surprise, as he had supposed she wanted but to go home.

"Anywhere you like. It's so warm we might drive instead of going
indoors. We might go to the Bois. That would be agreeable."

"Yes, but it wouldn't be walking. However, that doesn't matter. It's
mild enough for anything--for sitting out like all these people. And
I've never walked in Paris at night. It would amuse me."

Nick hesitated. "So it might, but it isn't particularly recommended to
ladies."

"I don't care for that if it happens to suit me."

"Very well then, we'll walk to the Bastille if you like."

Julia hesitated, on her side, still looking about. "It's too far; I'm
tired; we'll sit here." And she dropped beside an empty table on the
"terrace" of M. Durand. "This will do; it's amusing enough and we can
look at the Madeleine--that's respectable. If we must have something
we'll have a _madère_--is that respectable? Not particularly? So much
the better. What are those people having? _Bocks_? Couldn't we have
_bocks_? Are they very low? Then I shall have one. I've been so
wonderfully good--I've been staying at Versailles: _je me dois bien
cela_."

She insisted, but pronounced the thin liquid in the tall glass very
disgusting when it was brought. Nick was amazed, reflecting that it was
not for such a discussion as this that his mother had left him with
hands in his pockets. He had been looking out, but as his eloquence
flowed faster he turned to his friend, who had dropped upon a sofa with
her face to the window. She had given her jacket and gloves to her maid,
but had kept on her hat; and she leaned forward a little as she sat,
clasping her hands together in her lap and keeping her eyes on him. The
lamp, in a corner, was so thickly veiled that the room was in tempered
obscurity, lighted almost equally from the street and the brilliant
shop-fronts opposite. "Therefore why be sapient and solemn about it,
like an editorial in a newspaper?" Nick added with a smile.

She continued to look at him after he had spoken, then she said: "If you
don't want to stand you've only to say so. You needn't give your
reasons."

"It's too kind of you to let me off that! And then I'm a tremendous
fellow for reasons; that's my strong point, don't you know? I've a lot
more besides those I've mentioned, done up and ready for delivery. The
odd thing is that they don't always govern my behaviour. I rather think
I do want to stand."

"Then what you said just now was a speech," Julia declared.

"A speech?"

"The 'rot,' the humbug of the hustings."

"No, those great truths remain, and a good many others. But an inner
voice tells me I'm in for it. And it will be much more graceful to
embrace this opportunity, accepting your co-operation, than to wait for
some other and forfeit that advantage."

"I shall be very glad to help you anywhere," she went on.

"Thanks awfully," he returned, still standing there with his hands in
his pockets. "You'd do it best in your own place, and I've no right to
deny myself such a help."

Julia calmly considered. "I don't do it badly."

"Ah you're so political!"

"Of course I am; it's the only decent thing to be. But I can only help
you if you'll help yourself. I can do a good deal, but I can't do
everything. If you'll work I'll work with you; but if you're going into
it with your hands in your pockets I'll have nothing to do with you."
Nick instantly changed the position of these members and sank into a
seat with his elbows on his knees. "You're very clever, but you must
really take a little trouble. Things don't drop into people's mouths."

"I'll try--I'll try. I've a great incentive," he admitted.

"Of course you have."

"My mother, my poor mother." Julia breathed some vague sound and he went
on: "And of course always my father, dear good man. My mother's even
more political than you."

"I daresay she is, and quite right!" said Mrs. Dallow.

"And she can't tell me a bit more than you can what she thinks, what she
believes, what she wants."

"Pardon me, I can tell you perfectly. There's one thing I always
immensely want--to keep out a Tory."

"I see. That's a great philosophy."

"It will do very well. And I desire the good of the country. I'm not
ashamed of that."

"And can you give me an idea of what it is--the good of the country?"

"I know perfectly what it isn't. It isn't what the Tories want to do."

"What do they want to do?"

"Oh it would take me long to tell you. All sorts of trash."

"It would take you long, and it would take them longer! All they want
to do is to prevent _us_ from doing. On our side we want to prevent them
from preventing us. That's about as clearly as we all see it. So on both
sides it's a beautiful, lucid, inspiring programme."

"I don't believe in you," Mrs. Dallow replied to this, leaning back on
her sofa.

"I hope not, Julia, indeed!" He paused a moment, still with his face
toward her and his elbows on his knees; then he pursued: "You're a very
accomplished woman and a very zealous one; but you haven't an idea, you
know--not to call an idea. What you mainly want is to be at the head of
a political salon; to start one, to keep it up, to make it a success."

"Much you know me!" Julia protested; but he could see, through the
dimness, that her face spoke differently.

"You'll have it in time, but I won't come to it," Nick went on.

"You can't come less than you do."

"When I say you'll have it I mean you've already got it. That's why I
don't come."

"I don't think you know what you mean," said Mrs. Dallow. "I've an idea
that's as good as any of yours, any of those you've treated me to this
evening, it seems to me--the simple idea that one ought to do something
or other for one's country."

"'Something or other' certainly covers all the ground. There's one thing
one can always do for one's country, which is not to be afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

Nick Dormer waited a little, as if his idea amused him, but he presently
said, "I'll tell you another time. It's very well to talk so glibly of
standing," he added; "but it isn't absolutely foreign to the question
that I haven't got the cash."

"What did you do before?" she asked.

"The first time my father paid."

"And the other time?"

"Oh Mr. Carteret."

"Your expenses won't be at all large; on the contrary," said Julia.

"They shan't be; I shall look out sharp for that. I shall have the great
Hutchby."

"Of course; but you know I want you to do it well." She paused an
instant and then: "Of course you can send the bill to me."

"Thanks awfully; you're tremendously kind. I shouldn't think of that."
Nick Dormer got up as he spoke, and walked to the window again, his
companion's eyes resting on him while he stood with his back to her. "I
shall manage it somehow," he wound up.

"Mr. Carteret will be delighted," said Julia.

"I daresay, but I hate taking people's money."

"That's nonsense--when it's for the country. Isn't it for _them_?"

"When they get it back!" Nick replied, turning round and looking for his
hat. "It's startlingly late; you must be tired." Mrs. Dallow made no
response to this, and he pursued his quest, successful only when he
reached a duskier corner of the room, to which the hat had been
relegated by his cousin's maid. "Mr. Carteret will expect so much if he
pays. And so would you."

"Yes, I'm bound to say I should! I should expect a great
deal--everything." And Mrs. Dallow emphasised this assertion by the way
she rose erect. "If you're riding for a fall, if you're only going in to
miss it, you had better stay out."

"How can I miss it with _you_?" the young man smiled. She uttered a
word, impatiently but indistinguishably, and he continued: "And even if
I do it will have been immense fun."

"It is immense fun," said Julia. "But the best fun is to win. If you
don't----!"

"If I don't?" he repeated as she dropped.

"I'll never speak to you again."

"How much you expect even when you don't pay!"

Mrs. Dallow's rejoinder was a justification of this remark, expressing
as it did the fact that should they receive on the morrow information on
which she believed herself entitled to count, information tending to
show how hard the Conservatives meant to fight, she should look to him
to be in the field as early as herself. Sunday was a lost day; she
should leave Paris on Monday.

"Oh they'll fight it hard; they'll put up Kingsbury," said Nick,
smoothing his hat. "They'll all come down--all that can get away. And
Kingsbury has a very handsome wife."

"She's not so handsome as your cousin," Julia smiled.

"Oh dear, no--a cousin sooner than a wife any day!" Nick laughed as soon
as he had said this, as if the speech had an awkward side; but the
reparation perhaps scarcely mended it, the exaggerated mock-meekness
with which he added: "I'll do any blessed thing you tell me."

"Come here to-morrow then--as early as ten." She turned round, moving to
the door with him; but before they reached it she brought out: "Pray
isn't a gentleman to do anything, to be anything?"

"To be anything----?"

"If he doesn't aspire to serve the State."

"Aspire to make his political fortune, do you mean? Oh bless me, yes,
there are other things."

"What other things that can compare with that?"

"Well, I for instance, I'm very fond of the arts."

"Of the arts?" she echoed.

"Did you never hear of them? I'm awfully fond of painting."

At this Julia stopped short, and her fine grey eyes had for a moment the
air of being set further forward in her head. "Don't be odious!
Good-night," she said, turning away and leaving him to go.




BOOK SECOND




VII


Peter Sherringham reminded Nick the next day that he had promised to be
present at Madame Carré's interview with the ladies introduced to her by
Gabriel Nash; and in the afternoon, conformably to this arrangement, the
two men took their way to the Rue de Constantinople. They found Mr. Nash
and his friends in the small beflounced drawing-room of the old actress,
who, as they learned, had sent in a request for ten minutes' grace,
having been detained at a lesson--a rehearsal of the _comédie de salon_
about to be given for a charity by a fine lady, at which she had
consented to be present as an adviser. Mrs. Rooth sat on a black satin
sofa with her daughter beside her while Gabriel Nash, wandering about
the room, looked at the votive offerings which converted the little
panelled box, decorated in sallow white and gold, into a theatrical
museum: the presents, the portraits, the wreaths, the diadems, the
letters, framed and glazed, the trophies and tributes and relics
collected by Madame Carré during half a century of renown. The profusion
of this testimony was hardly more striking than the confession of
something missed, something hushed, which seemed to rise from it all and
make it melancholy, like a reference to clappings which, in the nature
of things, could now only be present as a silence: so that if the place
was full of history it was the form without the fact, or at the most a
redundancy of the one to a pinch of the other--the history of a mask,
of a squeak, of a series of vain gestures.

Some of the objects exhibited by the distinguished artist, her early
portraits, in lithograph or miniature, represented the costume and
embodied the manner of a period so remote that Nick Dormer, as he
glanced at them, felt a quickened curiosity to look at the woman who
reconciled being alive to-day with having been alive so long ago. Peter
Sherringham already knew how she managed this miracle, but every visit
he paid her added to his amused, charmed sense that it _was_ a miracle
and that his extraordinary old friend had seen things he should never,
never see. Those were just the things he wanted to see most, and her
duration, her survival, cheated him agreeably and helped him a little to
guess them. His appreciation of the actor's art was so systematic that
it had an antiquarian side, and at the risk of representing him as
attached to an absurd futility it must be said that he had as yet hardly
known a keener regret for anything than for the loss of that antecedent
world, and in particular for his having belatedly missed the great
_comédienne_, the light of the French stage in the early years of the
century, of whose example and instruction Madame Carré had had the
inestimable benefit. She had often described to him her rare
predecessor, straight from whose hands she had received her most
celebrated parts and of whom her own manner was often a religious
imitation; but her descriptions troubled him more than they consoled,
only confirming his theory, to which so much of his observation had
already ministered, that the actor's art in general was going down and
down, descending a slope with abysses of vulgarity at its foot, after
having reached its perfection, more than fifty years ago, in the talent
of the lady in question. He would have liked to dwell for an hour
beneath the meridian.

Gabriel Nash introduced the new-comers to his companions; but the
younger of the two ladies gave no sign of lending herself to this
transaction. The girl was very white; she huddled there, silent and
rigid, frightened to death, staring, expressionless. If Bridget Dormer
had seen her at this moment she might have felt avenged for the
discomfiture of her own spirit suffered at the Salon, the day before,
under the challenging eyes of Maud Vavasour. It was plain at the present
hour that Miss Vavasour would have run away had she not regarded the
persons present as so many guards and keepers. Her appearance made Nick
feel as if the little temple of art in which they were collected had
been the waiting-room of a dentist. Sherringham had seen a great many
nervous girls tremble before the same ordeal, and he liked to be kind to
them, to say things that would help them to do themselves justice. The
probability in a given case was almost overwhelmingly in favour of their
having any other talent one could think of in a higher degree than the
dramatic; but he could rarely refrain from some care that the occasion
shouldn't be, even as against his conscience, too cruel. There were
occasions indeed that could scarce be too cruel to punish properly
certain examples of presumptuous ineptitude. He remembered what Mr. Nash
had said about this blighted maiden, and perceived that though she might
be inept she was now anything but presumptuous. Gabriel fell to talking
with Nick Dormer while Peter addressed himself to Mrs. Rooth. There was
no use as yet for any direct word to the girl, who was too scared even
to hear. Mrs. Rooth, with her shawl fluttering about her, nestled
against her daughter, putting out her hand to take one of Miriam's
soothingly. She had pretty, silly, near-sighted eyes, a long thin nose,
and an upper lip which projected over the under as an ornamental cornice
rests on its support. "So much depends--really everything!" she said in
answer to some sociable observation of Sherringham's. "It's either
this," and she rolled her eyes expressively about the room, "or it's--I
don't know what!"

"Perhaps we're too many," Peter hazarded to her daughter. "But really
you'll find, after you fairly begin, that you'll do better with four or
five."

Before she answered she turned her head and lifted her fine eyes. The
next instant he saw they were full of tears. The words she spoke,
however, though uttered as if she had tapped a silver gong, had not the
note of sensibility: "Oh, I don't care for _you_!" He laughed at this,
declared it was very well said and that if she could give Madame Carré
such a specimen as that----! The actress came in before he had finished
his phrase, and he observed the way the girl ruefully rose to the
encounter, hanging her head a little and looking out from under her
brows. There was no sentiment in her face--only a vacancy of awe and
anguish which had not even the merit of being fine of its kind, for it
spoke of no spring of reaction. Yet the head was good, he noted at the
same moment; it was strong and salient and made to tell at a distance.
Madame Carré scarcely heeded her at first, greeting her only in her
order among the others and pointing to seats, composing the circle with
smiles and gestures, as if they were all before the prompter's box. The
old actress presented herself to a casual glance as a red-faced, raddled
woman in a wig, with beady eyes, a hooked nose, and pretty hands; but
Nick Dormer, who had a sense for the over-scored human surface, soon
observed that these comparatively gross marks included a great deal of
delicate detail--an eyebrow, a nostril, a flitting of expressions, as if
a multitude of little facial wires were pulled from within. This
accomplished artist had in particular a mouth which was visibly a rare
instrument, a pair of lips whose curves and fine corners spoke of a
lifetime of "points" unerringly made and verses exquisitely spoken,
helping to explain the purity of the sound that issued from them. Her
whole countenance had the look of long service--of a thing infinitely
worn and used, drawn and stretched to excess, with its elasticity
overdone and its springs relaxed, yet religiously preserved and kept in
repair, even as some valuable old timepiece which might have quivered
and rumbled but could be trusted to strike the hour. At the first words
she spoke Gabriel Nash exclaimed endearingly: _"Ah la voix de
Célimène!"_ Célimène, who wore a big red flower on the summit of her
dense wig, had a very grand air, a toss of the head, and sundry little
majesties of manner; in addition to which she was strange, almost
grotesque, and to some people would have been even terrifying, capable
of reappearing, with her hard eyes, as a queer vision of the darkness.
She excused herself for having made the company wait, and mouthed and
mimicked in the drollest way, with intonations as fine as a flute, the
performance and the pretensions of the _belles dames_ to whom she had
just been endeavouring to communicate a few of the rudiments. _"Mais
celles-là, c'est une plaisanterie,"_ she went on to Mrs. Rooth; "whereas
you and your daughter, _chère madame_--I'm sure you are quite another
matter."

The girl had got rid of her tears, and was gazing at her, and Mrs. Rooth
leaned forward and said portentously: "She knows four languages."

Madame Carré gave one of her histrionic stares, throwing back her head.
"That's three too many. The thing's to do something proper with one."

"We're very much in earnest," continued Mrs. Rooth, who spoke excellent
French.

"I'm glad to hear it--_il n'y a que ça. La tête est bien_--the head's
very good," she said as she looked at the girl. "But let us see, my dear
child, what you've got in it!" The young lady was still powerless to
speak; she opened her lips, but nothing came. With the failure of this
effort she turned her deep sombre eyes to the three men. "_Un beau
regard_--it carries well." Madame Carré further commented. But even as
she spoke Miss Rooth's fine gaze was suffused again and the next moment
she had definitely begun to weep. Nick Dormer sprung up; he felt
embarrassed and intrusive--there was such an indelicacy in sitting there
to watch a poor working-girl's struggle with timidity. There was a
momentary confusion; Mrs. Rooth's tears were seen also to flow; Mr. Nash
took it gaily, addressing, however, at the same time, the friendliest,
most familiar encouragement to his companions, and Peter Sherringham
offered to retire with Nick on the spot, should their presence incommode
the young lady. But the agitation was over in a minute; Madame Carré
motioned Mrs. Rooth out of her seat and took her place beside the girl,
and Nash explained judiciously to the other men that she'd be worse
should they leave her. Her mother begged them to remain, "so that there
should be at least some English"; she spoke as if the old actress were
an army of Frenchwomen. The young heroine of the occasion quickly came
round, and Madame Carré, on the sofa beside her, held her hand and
emitted a perfect music of reassurance. "The nerves, the nerves--they're
half our affair. Have as many as you like, if you've got something else
too. _Voyons_--do you know anything?"

"I know some pieces."

"Some pieces of the _répertoire_?"

Miriam Rooth stared as if she didn't understand. "I know some poetry."

"English, French, Italian, German," said her mother.

Madame Carré gave Mrs. Rooth a look which expressed irritation at the
recurrence of this announcement. "Does she wish to act in all those
tongues? The phrase-book isn't the comedy!"

"It's only to show you how she has been educated."

"Ah, _chère madame_, there's no education that matters! I mean save the
right one. Your daughter must have a particular form of speech, like me,
like _ces messieurs_."

"You see if I can speak French," said the girl, smiling dimly at her
hostess. She appeared now almost to have collected herself.

"You speak it in perfection."

"And English just as well," said Miss Rooth.

"You oughtn't to be an actress--you ought to be a governess."

"Oh don't tell us that: it's to escape from that!" pleaded Mrs. Rooth.

"I'm very sure your daughter will escape from that," Peter Sherringham
was moved to interpose.

"Oh if _you_ could help her!" said the lady with a world of longing.

"She has certainly all the qualities that strike the eye," Peter
returned.

"You're _most_ kind, sir!" Mrs. Rooth declared, elegantly draping
herself.

"She knows Célimène; I've heard her do Célimène," Gabriel Nash said to
Madame Carré".

"And she knows Juliet, she knows Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra," added Mrs.
Rooth.

"_Voyons_, my dear child, do you wish to work for the French stage or
for the English?" the old actress demanded.

"Ours would have sore need of you, Miss Rooth," Sherringham gallantly
threw off.

"Could you speak to any one in London--could you introduce her?" her
mother eagerly asked.

"Dear madam, I must hear her first, and hear what Madame Carré says."

"She has a voice of rare beauty, and I understand voices," said Mrs.
Rooth.

"Ah then if she has intelligence she has every gift."

"She has a most poetic mind," the old lady went on.

"I should like to paint her portrait; she's made for that," Nick Dormer
ventured to observe to Mrs. Rooth; partly because struck with the girl's
suitability for sitting, partly to mitigate the crudity of inexpressive
spectatorship.

"So all the artists say. I've had three or four heads of her, if you
would like to see them: she has been done in several styles. If you were
to do her I'm sure it would make her celebrated."

"And me too," Nick easily laughed.

"It would indeed--a member of Parliament!" Nash declared.

"Ah, I have the honour----?" murmured Mrs. Rooth, looking gratified and
mystified.

Nick explained that she had no honour at all, and meanwhile Madame Carré
had been questioning the girl "_Chère madame_, I can do nothing with
your daughter: she knows too much!" she broke out. "It's a pity, because
I like to catch them wild."

"Oh she's wild enough, if that's all! And that's the very point, the
question of where to try," Mrs. Rooth went on. "Into what do I launch
her--upon what dangerous stormy sea? I've thought of it so anxiously."

"Try here--try the French public: they're so much the most serious,"
said Gabriel Nash.

"Ah no, try the English: there's such a rare opening!" Sherringham urged
in quick opposition.

"Oh it isn't the public, dear gentlemen. It's the private side, the
other people--it's the life, it's the moral atmosphere."

"_Je ne connais qu'une scène,--la nôtre_," Madame Carré declared. "I'm
assured by every one who knows that there's no other."

"Very correctly assured," said Mr. Nash. "The theatre in our countries
is puerile and barbarous."

"There's something to be done for it, and perhaps mademoiselle's the
person to do it," Sherringham contentiously suggested.

"Ah but, _en attendant_, what can it do for her?" Madame Carré asked.

"Well, anything I can help to bring about," said Peter Sherringham, more
and more struck with the girl's rich type. Miriam Rooth sat in silence
while this discussion went on, looking from one speaker to the other
with a strange dependent candour.

"Ah, if your part's marked out I congratulate you, mademoiselle!"--and
the old actress underlined the words as she had often underlined others
on the stage. She smiled with large permissiveness on the young
aspirant, who appeared not to understand her. Her tone penetrated,
however, to certain depths in the mother's nature, adding another stir
to agitated waters.

"I feel the responsibility of what she shall find in the life, the
standards, of the theatre," Mrs. Rooth explained. "Where is the purest
tone--where are the highest standards? That's what I ask," the good lady
continued with a misguided intensity which elicited a peal of
unceremonious but sociable laughter from Gabriel Nash.

"The purest tone--_qu'est-ce que c'est que ça_?" Madame Carré demanded
in the finest manner of modern comedy.

"We're very, _very_ respectable," Mrs. Rooth went on, but now smiling
and achieving lightness too.

"What I want is to place my daughter where the conduct--and the picture
of conduct in which she should take part--wouldn't be quite absolutely
dreadful. Now, _chère madame_, how about all that; how about _conduct_
in the French theatre--all the things she should see, the things she
should hear, the things she should learn?"

Her hostess took it, as Sherringham felt, _de très-haut_. "I don't think
I know what you're talking about. They're the things she may see and
hear and learn everywhere; only they're better done, they're better
said, above all they're better taught. The only conduct that concerns
an, actress, it seems to me, is her own, and the only way for her to
behave herself is not to be a helpless stick. I know no other conduct."

"But there are characters, there are situations, which I don't think I
should like to see _her_ undertake."

"There are many, no doubt, which she would do well to leave alone!"
laughed the Frenchwoman.

"I shouldn't like to see her represent a very bad woman--a _really_ bad
one," Mrs. Rooth serenely pursued.

"Ah in England then, and in your theatre, every one's immaculately good?
Your plays must be even more ingenious than I supposed!"

"We haven't any plays," said Gabriel Nash.

"People will write them for Miss Rooth--it will be a new era,"
Sherringham threw in with wanton, or at least with combative, optimism.

"Will _you_, sir--will you do something? A sketch of one of our grand
English ideals?" the old lady asked engagingly.

"Oh I know what you do with our pieces--to show your superior virtue!"
Madame Carré cried before he had time to reply that he wrote nothing
but diplomatic memoranda. "Bad women? _Je n'ai joué que ça, madame_.
'Really' bad? I tried to make them real!"

"I can say 'L'Aventurière,'" Miriam interrupted in a cold voice which
seemed to hint at a want of participation in the maternal solicitudes.

"Allow us the pleasure of hearing you then. Madame Carré will give you
the _réplique_," said Peter Sherringham.

"Certainly, my child; I can say it without the book," Madame Carré
responded. "Put yourself there--move that chair a little away." She
patted her young visitor, encouraging her to rise, settling with her the
scene they should take, while the three men sprang up to arrange a place
for the performance. Miriam left her seat and looked vaguely about her;
then having taken off her hat and given it to her mother she stood on
the designated spot with her eyes to the ground. Abruptly, however,
instead of beginning the scene, Madame Carré turned to the elder lady
with an air which showed that a rejoinder to this visitor's remarks of a
moment before had been gathering force in her breast.

"You mix things up, _chère madame_, and I have it on my heart to tell
you so. I believe it's rather the case with you other English, and I've
never been able to learn that either your morality or your talent is the
gainer by it. To be too respectable to go where things are done best is
in my opinion to be very vicious indeed; and to do them badly in order
to preserve your virtue is to fall into a grossness more shocking than
any other. To do them well is virtue enough, and not to make a mess of
it the only respectability. That's hard enough to merit Paradise.
Everything else is base humbug! _Voilà, chère madame_, the answer I have
for your scruples!"

"It's admirable--admirable; and I am glad my friend Dormer here has had
the great advantage of hearing you utter it!" Nash exclaimed with a free
designation of Nick.

That young man thought it in effect a speech denoting an intelligence of
the question, yet he rather resented the idea that Gabriel should assume
it would strike him as a revelation; and to show his familiarity with
the line of thought it indicated, as well as to play his part
appreciatively in the little circle, he observed to Mrs. Rooth, as if
they might take many things for granted: "In other words, your daughter
must find her safeguard in the artistic conscience." But he had no
sooner spoken than he was struck with the oddity of their discussing so
publicly, and under the poor girl's handsome nose, the conditions which
Miss Rooth might find the best for the preservation of her personal
integrity. However, the anomaly was light and unoppressive--the echoes
of a public discussion of delicate questions seemed to linger so
familiarly in the egotistical little room. Moreover, the heroine of the
occasion evidently was losing her embarrassment; she was the priestess
on the tripod, awaiting the afflatus and thinking only of that. Her
bared head, of which she had changed the position, holding it erect,
while her arms hung at her sides, was admirable; her eyes gazed straight
out of the window and at the houses on the opposite side of the Rue de
Constantinople.

Mrs. Rooth had listened to Madame Carré with startled, respectful
attention, but Nick, considering her, was very sure she hadn't at all
taken in the great artist's little lesson. Yet this didn't prevent her
from exclaiming in answer to himself: "Oh a fine artistic life--what
indeed is more beautiful?"

Peter Sherringham had said nothing; he was watching Miriam and her
attitude. She wore a black dress which fell in straight folds; her face,
under her level brows, was pale and regular--it had a strange, strong,
tragic beauty. "I don't know what's in her," he said to himself;
"nothing, it would seem, from her persistent vacancy. But such a face as
that, such a head, is a fortune!" Madame Carré brought her to book,
giving her the first line of the speech of Clorinde: "_Vous ne me fuyez
pas, mon enfant, aujourd'hui_." But still the girl hesitated, and for an
instant appeared to make a vain, convulsive effort. In this convulsion
she frowned portentously; her low forehead overhung her eyes; the eyes
themselves, in shadow, stared, splendid and cold, and her hands clinched
themselves at her sides. She looked austere and terrible and was during
this moment an incarnation the vividness of which drew from Sherringham
a stifled cry. "_Elle est bien belle--ah ça_," murmured the old
actress; and in the pause which still preceded the issue of sound from
the girl's lips Peter turned to his kinsman and said in a low tone: "You
must paint her just like that."

"Like that?"

"As the Tragic Muse."

She began to speak; a long, strong, colourless voice quavered in her
young throat. She delivered the lines of Clorinde in the admired
interview with Célie, the gem of the third act, with a rude monotony,
and then, gaining confidence, with an effort at modulation which was not
altogether successful and which evidently she felt not to be so. Madame
Carré sent back the ball without raising her hand, repeating the
speeches of Célie, which her memory possessed from their having so often
been addressed to her, and uttering the verses with soft, communicative
art. So they went on through the scene, which, when it was over, had not
precisely been a triumph for Miriam Rooth. Sherringham forbore to look
at Gabriel Nash, and Madame Carré said: "I think you've a voice, _ma
fille_, somewhere or other. We must try and put our hand on it." Then
she asked her what instruction she had had, and the girl, lifting her
eyebrows, looked at her mother while her mother prompted her.

"Mrs. Delamere in London; she was once an ornament of the English stage.
She gives lessons just to a very few; it's a great favour. Such a very
nice person! But above all, Signor Ruggieri--I think he taught us most."
Mrs. Rooth explained that this gentleman was an Italian tragedian, in
Rome, who instructed Miriam in the proper manner of pronouncing his
language and also in the art of declaiming and gesticulating.

"Gesticulating I'll warrant!" declared their hostess. "They mimic as for
the deaf, they emphasise as for the blind. Mrs. Delamere is doubtless an
epitome of all the virtues, but I never heard of her. You travel too
much," Madame Carré went on; "that's very amusing, but the way to study
is to stay at home, to shut yourself up and hammer at your scales." Mrs.
Rooth complained that they had no home to stay at; in reply to which the
old actress exclaimed: "Oh you English, you're _d'une légèreté à faire
frémir._ If you haven't a home you must make, or at least for decency
pretend to, one. In our profession it's the first requisite."

"But where? That's what I ask!" said Mrs. Rooth.

"Why not here?" Sherringham threw out.

"Oh here!" And the good lady shook her head with a world of sad
significance.

"Come and live in London and then I shall be able to paint your
daughter," Nick Dormer interposed.

"Is that all it will take, my dear fellow?" asked Gabriel Nash.

"Ah, London's full of memories," Mrs. Rooth went on. "My father had a
great house there--we always came up. But all that's over."

"Study here and then go to London to appear," said Peter, feeling
frivolous even as he spoke.

"To appear in French?"

"No, in the language of Shakespeare."

"But we can't study that here."

"Mr. Sherringham means that he will give you lessons," Madame Carré
explained. "Let me not fail to say it--he's an excellent critic."

"How do you know that--you who're beyond criticism and perfect?" asked
Sherringham: an inquiry to which the answer was forestalled by the
girl's rousing herself to make it public that she could recite the
"Nights" of Alfred de Musset.

"Diable!" said the actress: "that's more than I can! By all means give
us a specimen."

The girl again placed herself in position and rolled out a fragment of
one of the splendid conversations of Musset's poet with his muse--rolled
it loudly and proudly, tossed it and tumbled it about the room. Madame
Carré watched her at first, but after a few moments she shut her eyes,
though the best part of the business was to take in her young
candidate's beauty. Sherringham had supposed Miriam rather abashed by
the flatness of her first performance, but he now saw how little she
could have been aware of this: she was rather uplifted and emboldened.
She made a mush of the divine verses, which in spite of certain
sonorities and cadences, an evident effort to imitate a celebrated
actress, a comrade of Madame Carré, whom she had heard declaim them, she
produced as if she had been dashing blindfold at some playfellow she was
to "catch." When she had finished Madame Carré passed no judgement, only
dropping: "Perhaps you had better say something English." She suggested
some little piece of verse--some fable if there were fables in English.
She appeared but scantily surprised to hear that there were not--it was
a language of which one expected so little. Mrs. Rooth said: "She knows
her Tennyson by heart. I think he's much deeper than La Fontaine"; and
after some deliberation and delay Miriam broke into "The Lotus-Eaters,"
from which she passed directly, almost breathlessly, to "Edward Gray."
Sherringham had by this time heard her make four different attempts, and
the only generalisation very present to him was that she uttered these
dissimilar compositions in exactly the same tone--a solemn, droning,
dragging measure suggestive of an exhortation from the pulpit and
adopted evidently with the "affecting" intention and from a crude idea
of "style." It was all funereal, yet was artlessly rough. Sherringham
thought her English performance less futile than her French, but he
could see that Madame Carré listened to it even with less pleasure. In
the way the girl wailed forth some of her Tennysonian lines he detected
a faint gleam as of something pearly in deep water. But the further she
went the more violently she acted on the nerves of Mr. Gabriel Nash:
that also he could discover from the way this gentleman ended by
slipping discreetly to the window and leaning there with his head out
and his back to the exhibition. He had the art of mute expression; his
attitude said as clearly as possible: "No, no, you can't call me either
ill-mannered or ill-natured. I'm the showman of the occasion, moreover,
and I avert myself, leaving you to judge. If there's a thing in life I
hate it's this idiotic new fashion of the drawing-room recitation and of
the insufferable creatures who practise it, who prevent conversation,
and whom, as they're beneath it, you can't punish by criticism.
Therefore what I'm doing's only too magnanimous--bringing these
benighted women here, paying with my person, stifling my just
repugnance."

While Sherringham judged privately that the manner in which Miss Rooth
had acquitted herself offered no element of interest, he yet remained
aware that something surmounted and survived her failure, something that
would perhaps be worth his curiosity. It was the element of outline and
attitude, the way she stood, the way she turned her eyes, her head, and
moved her limbs. These things held the attention; they had a natural
authority and, in spite of their suggesting too much the school-girl in
the _tableau-vivant_, a "plastic" grandeur. Her face, moreover, grew as
he watched it; something delicate dawned in it, a dim promise of variety
and a touching plea for patience, as if it were conscious of being able
to show in time more shades than the simple and striking gloom which had
as yet mainly graced it. These rather rude physical felicities formed in
short her only mark of a vocation. He almost hated to have to recognise
them; he had seen them so often when they meant nothing at all that he
had come at last to regard them as almost a guarantee of incompetence.
He knew Madame Carré valued them singly so little that she counted them
out in measuring an histrionic nature; when deprived of the escort of
other properties which helped and completed them she almost held them a
positive hindrance to success--success of the only kind she esteemed.
Far oftener than himself she had sat in judgement on young women for
whom hair and eyebrows and a disposition for the statuesque would have
worked the miracle of sanctifying their stupidity if the miracle were
workable. But that particular miracle never was. The qualities she rated
highest were not the gifts but the conquests, the effects the actor had
worked hard for, had dug out of the mine by unwearied study.
Sherringham remembered to have had in the early part of their
acquaintance a friendly dispute with her on this subject, he having been
moved at that time to defend doubtless to excess the cause of the gifts.
She had gone so far as to say that a serious comedian ought to be
ashamed of them--ashamed of resting his case on them; and when
Sherringham had cited the great Rachel as a player whose natural
endowment was rich and who had owed her highest triumphs to it, she had
declared that Rachel was the very instance that proved her point;--a
talent assisted by one or two primary aids, a voice and a portentous
brow, but essentially formed by work, unremitting and ferocious work. "I
don't care a straw for your handsome girls," she said; "but bring me one
who's ready to drudge the tenth part of the way Rachel drudged, and I'll
forgive her her beauty. Of course, _notez bien_, Rachel wasn't a _grosse
bête_: that's a gift if you like!"

Mrs. Rooth, who was evidently very proud of the figure her daughter had
made--her daughter who for all one could tell affected their hostess
precisely as a _grosse bête_--appealed to Madame Carré rashly and
serenely for a verdict; but fortunately this lady's voluble _bonne_ came
rattling in at the same moment with the tea-tray. The old actress busied
herself in dispensing this refreshment, an hospitable attention to her
English visitors, and under cover of the diversion thus obtained, while
the others talked together, Sherringham put her the question: "Well, is
there anything in my young friend?"

"Nothing I can see. She's loud and coarse."

"She's very much afraid. You must allow for that."

"Afraid of me, immensely, but not a bit afraid of her authors--nor of
you!" Madame Carré smiled.

"Aren't you prejudiced by what that fellow Nash has told you?"

"Why prejudiced? He only told me she was very handsome."

"And don't you think her so?"

"Admirable. But I'm not a photographer nor a dressmaker nor a coiffeur.
I can't do anything with 'back hair' nor with a mere big stare."

"The head's very noble," said Peter Sherringham. "And the voice, when
she spoke English, had some sweet tones."

"Ah your English--possibly! All I can say is that I listened to her
conscientiously, and I didn't perceive in what she did a single
_nuance_, a single inflexion or intention. But not one, _mon cher_. I
don't think she's intelligent."

"But don't they often seem stupid at first?"

"Say always!"

"Then don't some succeed--even when they're handsome?"

"When they're handsome they always succeed--in one way or another."

"You don't understand us English," said Peter Sherringham.

Madame Carré drank her tea; then she replied: "Marry her, my son, and
give her diamonds. Make her an ambassadress; she'll look very well."

"She interests you so little that you don't care to do anything for
her?"

"To do anything?"

"To give her a few lessons."

The old actress looked at him a moment; after which, rising from her
place near the table on which the tea had been served, she said to
Miriam Rooth: "My dear child, I give my voice for the _scène anglaise_.
You did the English things best."

"Did I do them well?" asked the girl.

"You've a great deal to learn; but you've rude force. The main things
_sont encore a dégager_, but they'll come. You must work."

"I think she has ideas," said Mrs. Rooth.

"She gets them from you," Madame Carré replied.

"I must say that if it's to be _our_ theatre I'm relieved. I do think
ours safer," the good lady continued.

"Ours is dangerous, no doubt."

"You mean you're more severe," said the girl.

"Your mother's right," the actress smiled; "you have ideas."

"But what shall we do then--how shall we proceed?" Mrs. Rooth made this
appeal, plaintively and vaguely, to the three gentlemen; but they had
collected a few steps off and were so occupied in talk that it failed to
reach them.

"Work--work--work!" exclaimed the actress.

"In English I can play Shakespeare. I want to play Shakespeare," Miriam
made known.

"That's fortunate, as in English you haven't any one else to play."

"But he's so great--and he's so pure!" said Mrs. Rooth.

"That indeed seems the saving of you," Madame Carré returned.

"You think me actually pretty bad, don't you?" the girl demanded with
her serious face.

"_Mon Dieu, que vous dirai-je?_ Of course you're rough; but so was I at
your age. And if you find your voice it may carry you far. Besides, what
does it matter what I think? How can I judge for your English public?"

"How shall I find my voice?" asked Miriam Rooth.

"By trying. _Il n'y a que ça_. Work like a horse, night and day.
Besides, Mr. Sherringham, as he says, will help you."

That gentleman, hearing his name, turned round and the girl appealed to
him. "Will you help me really?"

"To find her voice," said Madame Carré.

"The voice, when it's worth anything, comes from the heart; so I suppose
that's where to look for it," Gabriel Nash suggested.

"Much you know; you haven't got any!" Miriam retorted with the first
scintillation of gaiety she had shown on this occasion.

"Any voice, my child?" Mr. Nash inquired.

"Any heart--or any manners!"

Peter Sherringham made the secret reflexion that he liked her better
lugubrious, as the note of pertness was not totally absent from her mode
of emitting these few words. He was irritated, moreover, for in the
brief conference he had just had with the young lady's introducer he had
had to meet the rather difficult call of speaking of her hopefully. Mr.
Nash had said with his bland smile, "And what impression does my young
friend make?"--in respect to which Peter's optimism felt engaged by an
awkward logic. He answered that he recognised promise, though he did
nothing of the sort;--at the same time that the poor girl, both with the
exaggerated "points" of her person and the vanity of her attempt at
expression, constituted a kind of challenge, struck him as a subject for
inquiry, a problem, an explorable tract. She was too bad to jump at and
yet too "taking"--perhaps after all only vulgarly--to overlook,
especially when resting her tragic eyes on him with the trust of her
deep "Really?" This note affected him as addressed directly to his
honour, giving him a chance to brave verisimilitude, to brave ridicule
even a little, in order to show in a special case what he had always
maintained in general, that the direction of a young person's studies
for the stage may be an interest of as high an order as any other
artistic appeal.

"Mr. Nash has rendered us the great service of introducing us to Madame
Carré, and I'm sure we're immensely indebted to him," Mrs. Rooth said to
her daughter with an air affectionately corrective.

"But what good does that do us?" the girl asked, smiling at the actress
and gently laying her finger-tips upon her hand. "Madame Carré listens
to me with adorable patience, and then sends me about my business--ah in
the prettiest way in the world."

"Mademoiselle, you're not so rough; the tone of that's very _juste. A la
bonne heure_; work--work!" the actress cried. "There was an inflexion
there--or very nearly. Practise it till you've got it."

"Come and practise it to _me_, if your mother will be so kind as to
bring you," said Peter Sherringham.

"Do you give lessons--do you understand?" Miriam asked.

"I'm an old play-goer and I've an unbounded belief in my own judgement."

"'Old,' sir, is too much to say," Mrs. Rooth remonstrated. "My daughter
knows your high position, but she's very direct. You'll always find her
so. Perhaps you'll say there are less honourable faults. We'll come to
see you with pleasure. Oh I've been at the embassy when I was her age.
Therefore why shouldn't she go to-day? That was in Lord Davenant's
time."

"A few people are coming to tea with me to-morrow. Perhaps you'll come
then at five o'clock."

"It will remind me of the dear old times," said Mrs. Rooth.

"Thank you; I'll try and do better to-morrow," Miriam professed very
sweetly.

"You do better every minute!" Sherringham returned--and he looked at
their hostess in support of this declaration.

"She's finding her voice," Madame Carré acknowledged.

"She's finding a friend!" Mrs. Rooth threw in.

"And don't forget, when you come to London, my hope that you'll come and
see _me_," Nick Dormer said to the girl. "To try and paint you--that
would do me good!"

"She's finding even two," said Madame Carré.

"It's to make up for one I've lost!" And Miriam looked with very good
stage-scorn at Gabriel Nash. "It's he who thinks I'm bad."

"You say that to make me drive you home; you know it will," Nash
returned.

"We'll all take you home; why not?" Sherringham asked.

Madame Carré looked at the handsome girl, handsomer than ever at this
moment, and at the three young men who had taken their hats and stood
ready to accompany her. A deeper expression came for an instant into her
hard, bright eyes. "_Ah la jeunesse_!" she sighed. "You'd always have
that, my child, if you were the greatest goose on earth!"




VIII


At Peter Sherringham's the next day Miriam had so evidently come with
the expectation of "saying" something that it was impossible such a
patron of the drama should forbear to invite her, little as the
exhibition at Madame Carré's could have contributed to render the
invitation prompt. His curiosity had been more appeased than stimulated,
but he felt none the less that he had "taken up" the dark-browed girl
and her reminiscential mother and must face the immediate consequences
of the act. This responsibility weighed upon him during the twenty-four
hours that followed the ultimate dispersal of the little party at the
door of the Hôtel de la Garonne.

On quitting Madame Carré the two ladies had definitely declined Mr.
Nash's offered cab and had taken their way homeward on foot and with the
gentlemen in attendance. The streets of Paris at that hour were bright
and episodical, and Sherringham trod them good-humouredly enough and not
too fast, leaning a little to talk with Miriam as he went. Their pace
was regulated by her mother's, who advanced on the arm of Gabriel Nash
(Nick Dormer was on her other side) in refined deprecation. Her sloping
back was before them, exempt from retentive stillness in spite of her
rigid principles, with the little drama of her lost and recovered shawl
perpetually going on.

Sherringham said nothing to the girl about her performance or her
powers; their talk was only of her manner of life with her mother--their
travels, their _pensions_, their economies, their want of a home, the
many cities she knew well, the foreign tongues and the wide view of the
world she had acquired. He guessed easily enough the dolorous type of
exile of the two ladies, wanderers in search of Continental cheapness,
inured to queer contacts and compromises, "remarkably well connected" in
England, but going out for their meals. The girl was but indirectly
communicative; though seemingly less from any plan of secrecy than from
the habit of associating with people whom she didn't honour with her
confidence. She was fragmentary and abrupt, as well as not in the least
shy, subdued to dread of Madame Carré as she had been for the time. She
gave Sherringham a reason for this fear, and he thought her reason
innocently pretentious. "She admired a great artist more than anything
in the world; and in the presence of art, of _great_ art, her heart beat
so fast." Her manners were not perfect, and the friction of a varied
experience had rather roughened than smoothed her. She said nothing that
proved her intelligent, even though he guessed this to be the design of
two or three of her remarks; but he parted from her with the suspicion
that she was, according to the contemporary French phrase, a "nature."

The Hôtel de la Garonne was in a small unrenovated street in which the
cobble-stones of old Paris still flourished, lying between the Avenue de
l'Opéra and the Place de la Bourse. Sherringham had occasionally
traversed the high dimness, but had never noticed the tall, stale
_maison meublée_, the aspect of which, that of a third-rate provincial
inn, was an illustration of Mrs. Rooth's shrunken standard. "We would
ask you to come up, but it's quite at the top and we haven't a
sitting-room," the poor lady bravely explained. "We had to receive Mr.
Nash at a café."

Nick Dormer declared that he liked cafés, and Miriam, looking at his
cousin, dropped with a flash of passion the demand: "Do you wonder I
should want to do something--so that we can stop living like pigs?"

Peter recognised the next day that though it might be boring to listen
to her it was better to make her recite than to let her do nothing, so
effectually did the presence of his sister and that of Lady Agnes, and
even of Grace and Biddy, appear, by a strange tacit opposition, to
deprive hers, ornamental as it was, of a reason. He had only to see them
all together to perceive that she couldn't pass for having come to
"meet" them--even her mother's insinuating gentility failed to put the
occasion on that footing--and that she must therefore be assumed to have
been brought to show them something. She was not subdued, not colourless
enough to sit there for nothing, or even for conversation--the sort of
conversation that was likely to come off--so that it was inevitable to
treat her position as connected with the principal place on the carpet,
with silence and attention and the pulling together of chairs. Even when
so established it struck him at first as precarious, in the light, or
the darkness, of the inexpressive faces of the other ladies, seated in
couples and rows on sofas--there were several in addition to Julia and
the Dormers; mainly the wives, with their husbands, of Sherringham's
fellow-secretaries--scarcely one of whom he felt he might count upon for
a modicum of gush when the girl should have finished.

Miss Rooth gave a representation of Juliet drinking the potion,
according to the system, as her mother explained, of the famous Signor
Ruggieri--a scene of high fierce sound, of many cries and contortions:
she shook her hair (which proved magnificent) half-down before the
performance was over. Then she declaimed several short poems by Victor
Hugo, selected among many hundred by Mrs. Rooth, as the good lady was
careful to make known. After this she jumped to the American lyre,
regaling the company with specimens, both familiar and fresh, of
Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, and of two or three poetesses now
revealed to Sherringham for the first time. She flowed so copiously,
keeping the floor and rejoicing visibly in her luck, that her host was
mainly occupied with wondering how he could make her leave off. He was
surprised at the extent of her repertory, which, in view of the
circumstance that she could never have received much encouragement--it
must have come mainly from her mother, and he didn't believe in Signor
Ruggieri--denoted a very stiff ambition and a blundering energy. It was
her mother who checked her at last, and he found himself suspecting that
Gabriel Nash had intimated to the old woman that interference was
necessary. For himself he was chiefly glad Madame Carré hadn't come. It
was present to him that she would have judged the exhibition, with its
badness, its impudence, the absence of criticism, wholly indecent.

His only new impression of the heroine of the scene was that of this
same high assurance--her coolness, her complacency, her eagerness to go
on. She had been deadly afraid of the old actress but was not a bit
afraid of a cluster of _femmes du monde_, of Julia, of Lady Agnes, of
the smart women of the embassy. It was positively these personages who
were rather in fear; there was certainly a moment when even Julia was
scared for the first time he had ever remarked it. The space was too
small, the cries, the convulsions and rushes of the dishevelled girl
were too near. Lady Agnes wore much of the time the countenance she
might have shown at the theatre during a play in which pistols were
fired; and indeed the manner of the young reciter had become more
spasmodic and more explosive. It appeared, however, that the company in
general thought her very clever and successful; which showed, to
Sherringham's sense, how little they understood the matter. Poor Biddy
was immensely struck; she grew flushed and absorbed in proportion as
Miriam, at her best moments, became pale and fatal. It was she who spoke
to her first, after it was agreed that they had better not fatigue her
any more; she advanced a few steps, happening to be nearest--she
murmured: "Oh thank you so much. I never saw anything so beautiful, so
grand."

She looked very red and very pretty as she said this, and Peter
Sherringham liked her enough to notice her more and like her better when
she looked prettier than usual. As he turned away he heard Miriam make
answer with no great air of appreciation of her tribute: "I've seen you
before--two days ago at the Salon with Mr. Dormer. Yes, I know he's your
brother. I've made his acquaintance since. He wants to paint my
portrait. Do you think he'll do it well?" He was afraid the girl was
something of a brute--also somewhat grossly vain. This impression would
perhaps have been confirmed if a part of the rest of the short
conversation of the two young women had reached his ear. Biddy ventured
to observe that she herself had studied modelling a little and that she
could understand how any artist would think Miss Rooth a splendid
subject. If indeed _she_ could attempt her head, that would be a chance
indeed.

"Thank you," said Miriam with a laugh as of high comedy. "I think I had
rather not _passer par toute la famille_!" Then she added: "If your
brother's an artist I don't understand how he's in Parliament."

"Oh he isn't in Parliament now--we only hope he will be."

"Ah I see."

"And he isn't an artist either," Biddy felt herself conscientiously
bound to state.

"Then he isn't anything," said Miss Rooth.

"Well--he's immensely clever."

"Ah I see," Miss Rooth again replied. "Mr. Nash has puffed him up so."

"I don't know Mr. Nash," said Biddy, guilty of a little dryness as well
as of a little misrepresentation, and feeling rather snubbed.

"Well, you needn't wish to."

Biddy stood with her a moment longer, still looking at her and not
knowing what to say next, but not finding her any less handsome because
she had such odd manners. Biddy had an ingenious little mind, which
always tried as much as possible to keep different things separate. It
was pervaded now by the reflexion, attended with some relief, that if
the girl spoke to her with such unexpected familiarity of Nick she said
nothing at all about Peter. Two gentlemen came up, two of Peter's
friends, and made speeches to Miss Rooth of the kind Biddy supposed
people learned to make in Paris. It was also doubtless in Paris, the
girl privately reasoned, that they learned to listen to them as this
striking performer listened. She received their advances very
differently from the way she had received Biddy's. Sherringham noticed
his young kinswoman turn away, still very red, to go and sit near her
mother again, leaving Miriam engaged with the two men. It appeared to
have come over her that for a moment she had been strangely spontaneous
and bold, and that she had paid a little of the penalty. The seat next
her mother was occupied by Mrs. Rooth, toward whom Lady Agnes's head had
inclined itself with a preoccupied tolerance. He had the conviction
Mrs. Rooth was telling her about the Neville-Nugents of Castle Nugent
and that Lady Agnes was thinking it odd she never had heard of them. He
said to himself that Biddy was generous. She had urged Julia to come in
order that they might see how bad the strange young woman would be, but
now that the event had proved dazzling she forgot this calculation and
rejoiced in what she innocently supposed to be the performer's triumph.
She kept away from Julia, however; she didn't even look at her to invite
her also to confess that, in vulgar parlance, they had been sold. He
himself spoke to his sister, who was leaning back with a detached air in
the corner of a sofa, saying something which led her to remark in reply:
"Ah I daresay it's extremely fine, but I don't care for tragedy when it
treads on one's toes. She's like a cow who has kicked over the
milking-pail. She ought to be tied up."

"My poor Julia, it isn't extremely fine; it isn't fine at all,"
Sherringham returned with some irritation.

"Pardon me then. I thought that was why you invited us."

"I imagined she was different," Peter said a little foolishly.

"Ah if you don't care for her so much the better. It has always seemed
to me you make too awfully much of those people."

"Oh I do care for her too--rather. She's interesting." His sister gave
him a momentary, mystified glance and he added: "And she's dreadful." He
felt stupidly annoyed and was ashamed of his annoyance, as he could have
assigned no reason for it. It didn't grow less for the moment from his
seeing Gabriel Nash approach Julia, introduced by Nick Dormer. He gave
place to the two young men with some alacrity, for he had a sense of
being put in the wrong in respect to their specimen by Nash's very
presence. He remembered how it had been a part of their bargain, as it
were, that he should present that gentleman to his sister. He was not
sorry to be relieved of the office by Nick, and he even tacitly and
ironically wished his kinsman's friend joy of a colloquy with Mrs.
Dallow. Sherringham's life was spent with people, he was used to people,
and both as host and as guest he carried the social burden in general
lightly. He could observe, especially in the former capacity, without
uneasiness and take the temperature without anxiety. But at present his
company oppressed him; he felt worried and that he showed it--which was
the thing in the world he had ever held least an honour to a gentleman
dedicated to diplomacy. He was vexed with the levity that had made him
call his roomful together on so poor a pretext, and yet was vexed with
the stupidity that made the witnesses so evidently find the pretext
sufficient. He inwardly groaned at the delusion under which he had
saddled himself with the Tragic Muse--a tragic muse who was strident and
pert--and yet wished his visitors would go away and leave him alone with
her.

Nick Dormer said to Mrs. Dallow that he wanted her to know an old friend
of his, one of the cleverest men he knew; and he added the hope that she
would be gentle and encouraging with him; he was so timid and so easily
disconcerted. Mr. Nash hereupon dropped into a chair by the arm of her
sofa, their companion went away, and Mrs. Dallow turned her glance upon
her new acquaintance without a perceptible change of position. Then she
emitted with rapidity the remark: "It's very awkward when people are
told one's clever."

"It's only awkward if one isn't," Gabriel smiled.

"Yes, but so few people are--enough to be talked about."

"Isn't that just the reason why such a matter, such an exception, ought
to be mentioned to them?" he asked. "They mightn't find it out for
themselves. Of course, however, as you say, there ought to be a
certainty; then they're surer to know it. Dormer's a dear fellow, but
he's rash and superficial."

Mrs. Dallow, at this incitement, turned her glance a second time on her
visitor; but during the rest of the conversation she rarely repeated the
movement. If she liked Nick Dormer extremely--and it may without more
delay be communicated to the reader that she did--her liking was of a
kind that opposed no difficulty whatever to her not liking, in case of
such a complication, a person attached or otherwise belonging to him. It
was not in her nature to "put up" with others for the sake of an
individual she loved: the putting up was usually consumed in the loving,
and with nothing left over. If the affection that isolates and
simplifies its object may be distinguished from the affection that seeks
communications and contracts for it, Julia Dallow's was quite of the
encircling, not to say the narrowing sort. She was not so much jealous
as essentially exclusive. She desired no experience for the familiar and
yet partly unsounded kinsman in whom she took an interest that she
wouldn't have desired for herself; and indeed the cause of her interest
in him was partly the vision of his helping her to the particular
extensions she did desire--the taste and thrill of great affairs and of
public action. To have such ambitions for him appeared to her the
highest honour she could do him; her conscience was in it as well as her
inclination, and her scheme, to her sense, was noble enough to varnish
over any disdain she might feel for forces drawing him another way. She
had a prejudice, in general, against his existing connexions, a
suspicion of them, and a supply of off-hand contempt in waiting. It was
a singular circumstance that she was sceptical even when, knowing her as
well as he did, he thought them worth recommending to her: the
recommendation indeed mostly confirmed the suspicion.

This was a law from which Gabriel Nash was condemned to suffer, if
suffering could on any occasion be predicated of Gabriel Nash. His
pretension was in truth that he had purged his life of such
possibilities of waste, though probably he would have admitted that if
that fair vessel should spring a leak the wound in its side would have
been dealt by a woman's hand. In dining two evenings before with her
brother and with the Dormers Mrs. Dallow had been moved to exclaim that
Peter and Nick knew the most extraordinary people. As regards Peter the
attitudinising girl and her mother now pointed that moral with
sufficient vividness; so that there was little arrogance in taking a
similar quality for granted of the conceited man at her elbow, who sat
there as if he might be capable from one moment to another of leaning
over the arm of her sofa. She had not the slightest wish to talk with
him about himself, and was afraid for an instant that he was on the
point of passing from the chapter of his cleverness to that of his
timidity. It was a false alarm, however, for he only animadverted on the
pleasures of the elegant extract hurled--literally _hurlé_ in
general--from the centre of the room at one's defenceless head. He
intimated that in his opinion these pleasures were all for the
performers. The auditors had at any rate given Miss Rooth a charming
afternoon; that of course was what Mrs. Dallow's kind brother had mainly
intended in arranging the little party. (Julia hated to hear him call
her brother "kind": the term seemed offensively patronising.) But he
himself, he related, was now constantly employed in the same
beneficence, listening two-thirds of his time to "intonations" and
shrieks. She had doubtless observed it herself, how the great current of
the age, the adoration of the mime, was almost too strong for any
individual; how it swept one along and dashed one against the rocks. As
she made no response to this proposition Gabriel Nash asked her if she
hadn't been struck with the main sign of the time, the preponderance of
the mountebank, the glory and renown, the personal favour, he enjoyed.
Hadn't she noticed what an immense part of the public attention he held
in London at least? For in Paris society was not so pervaded with him,
and the women of the profession, in particular, were not in every
drawing-room.

"I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Dallow said. "I know nothing of any
such people."

"Aren't they under your feet wherever you turn--their performances,
their portraits, their speeches, their autobiographies, their names,
their manners, their ugly mugs, as the people say, and their idiotic
pretensions?"

"I daresay it depends on the places one goes to. If they're
everywhere"--and she paused a moment--"I don't go everywhere."

"I don't go anywhere, but they mount on my back at home like the Old Man
of the Sea. Just observe a little when you return to London," Mr. Nash
went on with friendly instructiveness. Julia got up at this--she didn't
like receiving directions; but no other corner of the room appeared to
offer her any particular reason for crossing to it: she never did such a
thing without a great inducement. So she remained standing there as if
she were quitting the place in a moment, which indeed she now
determined to do; and her interlocutor, rising also, lingered beside
her unencouraged but unperturbed. He proceeded to remark that Mr.
Sherringham was quite right to offer Miss Rooth an afternoon's sport;
she deserved it as a fine, brave, amiable girl. She was highly educated,
knew a dozen languages, was of illustrious lineage, and was immensely
particular.

"Immensely particular?" Mrs. Dallow repeated.

"Perhaps I should say rather that her mother's so on her behalf.
Particular about the sort of people they meet--the tone, the standard.
I'm bound to say they're like _you_: they don't go everywhere. That
spirit's not so common in the mob calling itself good society as not to
deserve mention."

She said nothing for a moment; she looked vaguely round the room, but
not at Miriam Rooth. Nevertheless she presently dropped as in forced
reference to her an impatient shake. "She's dreadfully vulgar."

"Ah don't say that to my friend Dormer!" Mr. Nash laughed.

"Are you and he such great friends?" Mrs. Dallow asked, meeting his
eyes.

"Great enough to make me hope we shall be greater."

Again for a little she said nothing, but then went on: "Why shouldn't I
say to him that she's vulgar?"

"Because he admires her so much. He wants to paint her."

"To paint her?"

"To paint her portrait."

"Oh I see. I daresay she'd do for that."

Mr. Nash showed further amusement. "If that's your opinion of her you're
not very complimentary to the art he aspires to practise."

"He aspires to practise?" she echoed afresh.

"Haven't you talked with him about it? Ah you must keep him up to it!"

Julia Dallow was conscious for a moment of looking uncomfortable; but it
relieved her to be able to demand of her neighbour with a certain
manner: "Are you an artist?"

"I try to be," Nash smiled, "but I work in such difficult material."

He spoke this with such a clever suggestion of mysterious things that
she was to hear herself once more pay him the attention of taking him
up. "Difficult material?"

"I work in life!"

At this she turned away, leaving him the impression that she probably
misunderstood his speech, thinking he meant that he drew from the living
model or some such platitude: as if there could have been any likelihood
he would have dealings with the dead. This indeed would not fully have
explained the abruptness with which she dropped their conversation.
Gabriel, however, was used to sudden collapses and even to sudden
ruptures on the part of those addressed by him, and no man had more the
secret of remaining gracefully with his conversational wares on his
hands. He saw Mrs. Dallow approach Nick Dormer, who was talking with one
of the ladies of the embassy, and apparently signify that she wished to
speak to him. He got up and they had a minute's talk, after which he
turned and took leave of his fellow-visitors. She said a word to her
brother, Nick joined her, and they then came together to the door. In
this movement they had to pass near Nash, and it gave her an opportunity
to nod good-bye to him, which he was by no means sure she would have
done if Nick hadn't been with her. The young man just stopped; he said
to Nash: "I should like to see you this evening late. You must meet me
somewhere."

"Well take a walk--I should like that," Nash replied. "I shall smoke a
cigar at the café on the corner of the Place de l'Opéra--you'll find me
there." He prepared to compass his own departure, but before doing so he
addressed himself to the duty of a few civil words to Lady Agnes. This
effort proved vain, for on one side she was defended by the wall of the
room and on the other rendered inaccessible by Miriam's mother, who
clung to her with a quickly-rooted fidelity, showing no symptom of
desistance. Nash declined perforce upon her daughter Grace, who said to
him: "You were talking with my cousin Mrs. Dallow."

"To her rather than with her," he smiled.

"Ah she's very charming," Grace said.

"She's very beautiful."

"And very clever," the girl continued.

"Very, very intelligent." His conversation with Miss Dormer went little
beyond this, and he presently took leave of Peter Sherringham, remarking
to him as they shook hands that he was very sorry for him. But he had
courted his fate.

"What do you mean by my fate?" Sherringham asked.

"You've got them for life."

"Why for life, when I now clearly and courageously recognise that she
isn't good?"

"Ah but she'll become so," said Gabriel Nash.

"Do you think that?" Sherringham brought out with a candour that made
his visitor laugh.

"_You_ will--that's more to the purpose!" the latter declared as he went
away.

Ten minutes later Lady Agnes substituted a general, vague assent for all
further particular ones, drawing off from Mrs. Rooth and from the rest
of the company with her daughters. Peter had had very little talk with
Biddy, but the girl kept her disappointment out of her pretty eyes and
said to him: "You told us she didn't know how--but she does!" There was
no suggestion of disappointment in this.

Sherringham held her hand a moment. "Ah it's you who know how, dear
Biddy!" he answered; and he was conscious that if the occasion had been
more private he would have all lawfully kissed her.

Presently three more of his guests took leave, and Mr. Nash's assurance
that he had them for life recurred to him as he observed that Mrs. Rooth
and her damsel quite failed to profit by so many examples. The Lovicks
remained--a colleague and his sociable wife--and Peter gave them a hint
that they were not to plant him there only with the two ladies. Miriam
quitted Mrs. Lovick, who had attempted, with no great subtlety, to
engage her, and came up to her host as if she suspected him of a design
of stealing from the room and had the idea of preventing it.

"I want some more tea: will you give me some more? I feel quite faint.
You don't seem to suspect how this sort of thing takes it out of one."

Peter apologised extravagantly for not having seen to it that she had
proper refreshment, and took her to the round table, in a corner, on
which the little collation had been served. He poured out tea for her
and pressed bread and butter on her and _petits fours_, of all which she
profusely and methodically partook. It was late; the afternoon had faded
and a lamp been brought in, the wide shade of which shed a fair glow on
the tea-service and the plates of pretty food. The Lovicks sat with Mrs.
Rooth at the other end of the room, and the girl stood at the table,
drinking her tea and eating her bread and butter. She consumed these
articles so freely that he wondered if she had been truly in want of a
meal--if they were so poor as to have to count with that sort of
privation. This supposition was softening, but still not so much so as
to make him ask her to sit down. She appeared indeed to prefer to stand:
she looked better so, as if the freedom, the conspicuity of being on her
feet and treading a stage were agreeable to her. While Sherringham
lingered near her all vaguely, his hands in his pockets and his mind now
void of everything but a planned evasion of the theatrical
question--there were moments when he was so plentifully tired of it--she
broke out abruptly: "Confess you think me intolerably bad!"

"Intolerably--no."

"Only tolerably! I find that worse."

"Every now and then you do something very right," Sherringham said.

"How many such things did I do to-day?"

"Oh three or four. I don't know that I counted very carefully."

She raised her cup to her lips, looking at him over the rim of it--a
proceeding that gave her eyes a strange expression. "It bores you and
you think it disagreeable," she then said--"I mean a girl always talking
about herself." He protested she could never bore him and she added: "Oh
I don't want compliments--I want the hard, the precious truth. An
actress has to talk about herself. What else can she talk about, poor
vain thing?"

"She can talk sometimes about other actresses."

"That comes to the same thing. You won't be serious. I'm awfully
serious." There was something that caught his attention in the note of
this--a longing half hopeless, half argumentative to be believed in. "If
one really wants to do anything one must worry it out; of course
everything doesn't come the first day," she kept on. "I can't see
everything at once; but I can see a little more--step by step--as I go;
can't I?"

"That's the way--that's the way," he gently enough returned. "When you
see the things to do the art of doing them will come--if you hammer
away. The great point's to see them."

"Yes; and you don't think me clever enough for that."

"Why do you say so when I've asked you to come here on purpose?"

"You've asked me to come, but I've had no success."

"On the contrary; every one thought you wonderful."

"Oh but they don't know!" said Miriam Rooth. "You've not said a word to
me. I don't mind your not having praised me; that would be too banal.
But if I'm bad--and I know I'm dreadful--I wish you'd talk to me about
it."

"It's delightful to talk to you," Peter found himself saying.

"No, it isn't, but it's kind"; and she looked away from him.

Her voice had with this a quality which made him exclaim: "Every now and
then you 'say' something--!"

She turned her eyes back to him and her face had a light. "I don't want
it to come by accident." Then she added: "If there's any good to be got
from trying, from showing one's self, how can it come unless one hears
the simple truth, the truth that turns one inside out? It's all for
that--to know what one is, if one's a stick!"

"You've great courage, you've rare qualities," Sherringham risked. She
had begun to touch him, to seem different: he was glad she had not gone.

But for a little she made no answer, putting down her empty cup and
yearning over the table as for something more to eat. Suddenly she
raised her head and broke out with vehemence: "I will, I will, I will!"

"You'll do what you want, evidently."

"I _will_ succeed--I _will_ be great. Of course I know too little, I've
seen too little. But I've always liked it; I've never liked anything
else. I used to learn things and do scenes and rant about the room when
I was but five years old." She went on, communicative, persuasive,
familiar, egotistical (as was necessary), and slightly common, or
perhaps only natural; with reminiscences, reasons, and anecdotes, an
unexpected profusion, and with an air of comradeship, of freedom in any
relation, which seemed to plead that she was capable at least of
embracing that side of the profession she desired to adopt. He noted
that if she had seen very little, as she said, she had also seen a great
deal; but both her experience and her innocence had been accidental and
irregular. She had seen very little acting--the theatre was always too
expensive. If she could only go often--in Paris for instance every night
for six months--to see the best, the worst, everything, she would make
things out, would observe and learn what to do, what not to do: it would
be a school of schools. But she couldn't without selling the clothes off
her back. It was vile and disgusting to be poor, and if ever she were to
know the bliss of having a few francs in her pocket she would make up
for it--that she could promise! She had never been acquainted with any
one who could tell her anything--if it was good or bad or right or
wrong--except Mrs. Delamere and poor Ruggieri. She supposed they had
told her a great deal, but perhaps they hadn't, and she was perfectly
willing to give it up if it was bad. Evidently Madame Carré thought so;
she thought it was horrid. Wasn't it perfectly divine, the way the old
woman had said those verses, those speeches of Célie? If she would only
let her come and listen to her once in a while like that it was all she
would ask. She had got lots of ideas just from that half-hour; she had
practised them over, over, and over again, the moment she got home. He
might ask her mother--he might ask the people next door. If Madame Carré
didn't think she could work, she might have heard, could she have
listened at the door, something that would show her. But she didn't
think her even good enough to criticise--since that wasn't criticism,
telling her her head was good. Of course her head was good--she needn't
travel up to the _quartiers excentriques_ to find that out. It was her
mother, the way she talked, who gave the idea that she wanted to be
elegant and moral and a _femme du monde_ and all that sort of trash. Of
course that put people off, when they were only thinking of the real
right way. Didn't she know, Miriam herself, that this was the one thing
to think of? But any one would be kind to her mother who knew what a
dear she was. "She doesn't know when any thing's right or wrong, but
she's a perfect saint," said the girl, obscuring considerably her
vindication. "She doesn't mind when I say things over by the hour,
dinning them into her ears while she sits there and reads. She's a
tremendous reader; she's awfully up in literature. She taught me
everything herself. I mean all that sort of thing. Of course I'm not so
fond of reading; I go in for the book of life." Sherringham wondered if
her mother had not at any rate taught her that phrase--he thought it
highly probable. "It would give on _my_ nerves, the life I lead her,"
Miriam continued; "but she's really a delicious woman."

The oddity of this epithet made Peter laugh, and altogether, in a few
minutes, which is perhaps a sign that he abused his right to be a man of
moods, the young lady had produced in him a revolution of curiosity, set
his sympathy in motion. Her mixture, as it spread itself before him, was
an appeal and a challenge: she was sensitive and dense, she was
underbred and fine. Certainly she was very various, and that was rare;
quite not at this moment the heavy-eyed, frightened creature who had
pulled herself together with such an effort at Madame Carré's, nor the
elated "phenomenon" who had just been declaiming, nor the rather
affected and contradictious young person with whom he had walked home
from the Rue de Constantinople. Was this succession of phases a sign she
was really a case of the celebrated artistic temperament, the nature
that made people provoking and interesting? That Sherringham himself was
of this shifting complexion is perhaps proved by his odd capacity for
being of two different minds very nearly at the same time. Miriam was
pretty now, with felicities and graces, with charming, unusual eyes.
Yes, there were things he could do for her; he had already forgotten the
chill of Mr. Nash's irony, of his prophecy. He was even scarce conscious
how little in general he liked hints, insinuations, favours asked
obliquely and plaintively: that was doubtless also because the girl was
suddenly so taking and so fraternising. Perhaps indeed it was unjust to
qualify as roundabout the manner in which Miss Rooth conveyed that it
was open to him not only to pay for her lessons, but to meet the expense
of her nightly attendance with her mother at instructive exhibitions of
theatrical art. It was a large order, sending the pair to all the plays;
but what Peter now found himself thinking of was not so much its
largeness as the possible interest of going with them sometimes and
pointing the moral--the technical one--of showing her the things he
liked, the things he disapproved. She repeated her declaration that she
recognised the fallacy of her mother's view of heroines impossibly
virtuous and of the importance of her looking out for such tremendously
proper people. "One must let her talk, but of course it creates a
prejudice," she said with her eyes on Mr. and Mrs. Lovick, who had got
up, terminating their communion with Mrs. Rooth. "It's a great muddle, I
know, but she can't bear anything coarse or nasty--and quite right too.
I shouldn't either if I didn't have to. But I don't care a sou where I
go if I can get to act, or who they are if they'll help me. I want to
act--that's what I want to do; I don't want to meddle in people's
affairs. I can look out for myself--I'm all right!" the girl exclaimed
roundly, frankly, with a ring of honesty which made her crude and pure.
"As for doing the bad ones I'm not afraid of that."

"The bad ones?"

"The bad women in the plays--like Madame Carré. I'll do any vile
creature."

"I think you'll do best what you are"--and Sherringham laughed for the
interest of it. "You're a strange girl."

"_Je crois bien_! Doesn't one have to be, to want to go and exhibit
one's self to a loathsome crowd, on a platform, with trumpets and a big
drum, for money--to parade one's body and one's soul?"

He looked at her a moment: her face changed constantly; now it had a
fine flush and a noble delicacy. "Give it up. You're too good for it,"
he found himself pleading. "I doubt if you've an idea of what girls have
to go through."

"Never, never--never till I'm pelted!" she cried.

"Then stay on here a bit. I'll take you to the theatres."

"Oh you dear!" Miriam delightedly exclaimed. Mr. and Mrs. Lovick,
accompanied by Mrs. Rooth, now crossed the room to them, and the girl
went on in the same tone: "Mamma dear, he's the best friend we've ever
had--he's a great deal nicer than I thought."

"So are you, mademoiselle," said Peter Sherringham.

"Oh, I trust Mr. Sherringham--I trust him infinitely," Mrs. Rooth
returned, covering him with her mild, respectable, wheedling eyes. "The
kindness of every one has been beyond everything. Mr. and Mrs. Lovick
can't say enough. They make the most obliging offers. They want you to
know their brother."

"Oh I say, he's no brother of mine," Mr. Lovick protested
good-naturedly.

"They think he'll be so suggestive, he'll put us up to the right
things," Mrs. Rooth went on.

"It's just a little brother of mine--such a dear, amusing, clever boy,"
Mrs. Lovick explained.

"Do you know she has got nine? Upon my honour she has!" said her
husband. "This one is the sixth. Fancy if I had to take them all over!"

"Yes, it makes it rather awkward," Mrs. Lovick amiably conceded. "He has
gone on the stage, poor darling--but he acts rather well."

"He tried for the diplomatic service, but he didn't precisely dazzle his
examiners," Mr. Lovick further mentioned.

"Edmund's very nasty about him. There are lots of gentlemen on the
stage--he's not the first."

"It's such a comfort to hear that," said Mrs. Rooth.

"I'm much obliged to you. Has he got a theatre?" Miriam asked.

"My dear young lady, he hasn't even got an engagement," replied the
young man's terrible brother-in-law.

"He hasn't been at it very long, but I'm sure he'll get on. He's
immensely in earnest and very good-looking. I just said that if he
should come over to see us you might rather like to meet him. He might
give you some tips, as my husband says."

"I don't care for his looks, but I should like his tips," Miriam
liberally smiled.

"And is he coming over to see you?" asked Sherringham, to whom, while
this exchange of remarks, which he had not lost, was going on, Mrs.
Rooth had in lowered accents addressed herself.

"Not if I can help it I think!" But Mr. Lovick was so gaily rude that it
wasn't embarrassing.

"Oh sir, I'm sure you're fond of him," Mrs. Rooth remonstrated as the
party passed together into the antechamber.

"No, really, I like some of the others--four or five of them; but I
don't like Arty."

"We'll make it up to him, then; _we_'ll like him," Miriam answered with
spirit; and her voice rang in the staircase--Sherringham attended them a
little way--with a charm which her host had rather missed in her
loudness of the day before.




IX


Nick Dormer found his friend Nash that evening at the place of their
tryst--smoking a cigar, in the warm bright night, on the terrace of the
café forming one of the angles of the Place de l'Opéra. He sat down with
him, but at the end of five minutes uttered a protest against the crush
and confusion, the publicity and vulgarity of the place, the shuffling
procession of the crowd, the jostle of fellow-customers, the perpetual
brush of waiters. "Come away; I want to talk to you and I can't talk
here. I don't care where we go. It will be pleasant to walk; well stroll
away to the _quartiers sérieux_. Each time I come to Paris I at the end
of three days take the Boulevard, with its conventional grimace, into
greater aversion. I hate even to cross it--I go half a mile round to
avoid it."

The young men took their course together down the Rue de la Paix to the
Rue de Rivoli, which they crossed, passing beside the gilded rails of
the Tuileries. The beauty of the night--the only defect of which was
that the immense illumination of Paris kept it from being quite night
enough, made it a sort of bedizened, rejuvenated day--gave a charm to
the quieter streets, drew our friends away to the right, to the river
and the bridges, the older, duskier city. The pale ghost of the palace
that had perished by fire hung over them a while, and, by the passage
now open at all times across the garden of the Tuileries, they came out
upon the Seine. They kept on and on, moving slowly, smoking, talking,
pausing, stopping to look, to emphasise, to compare. They fell into
discussion, into confidence, into inquiry, sympathetic or satiric, and
into explanations which needed in turn to be explained. The balmy night,
the time for talk, the amusement of Paris, the memory of younger
passages, gave a lift to the occasion. Nick had already forgotten his
little brush with Julia on his leaving Peter's tea-party at her side,
and that he had been almost disconcerted by the asperity with which she
denounced the odious man he had taken it into his head to force upon
her. Impertinent and fatuous she had called him; and when Nick began to
plead that he was really neither of these things, though he could
imagine his manner might sometimes suggest them, she had declared that
she didn't wish to argue about him or ever to hear of him again. Nick
hadn't counted on her liking Gabriel Nash, but had thought her not
liking him wouldn't perceptibly matter. He had given himself the
diversion, not cruel surely to any one concerned, of seeing what she
would make of a type she had never before met. She had made even less
than he expected, and her intimation that he had played her a trick had
been irritating enough to prevent his reflecting that the offence might
have been in some degree with Nash. But he had recovered from his
resentment sufficiently to ask this personage, with every possible
circumstance of implied consideration for the lady, what had been the
impression made by his charming cousin.

"Upon my word, my dear fellow, I don't regard that as a fair question,"
Gabriel said. "Besides, if you think Mrs. Dallow charming what on earth
need it matter to you what I think? The superiority of one man's
opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion's about a
woman."

"It was to help me to find out what I think of yourself," Nick returned.

"Oh, that you'll never do. I shall bewilder you to the end. The lady
with whom you were so good as to make me acquainted is a beautiful
specimen of the English garden-flower, the product of high cultivation
and much tending; a tall, delicate stem with the head set upon it in a
manner which, as a thing seen and remembered, should doubtless count for
us as a gift of the gods. She's the perfect type of the object _raised_
or bred, and everything about her hangs together and conduces to the
effect, from the angle of her elbow to the way she drops that vague,
conventional, dry little 'Oh!' which dispenses with all further
performance. That degree of completeness is always satisfying. But I
didn't satisfy her, and she didn't understand me. I don't think they
usually understand."

"She's no worse than I then."

"Ah she didn't try."

"No, she doesn't try. But she probably thought you a monster of conceit,
and she would think so still more if she were to hear you talk about her
trying."

"Very likely--very likely," said Gabriel Nash. "I've an idea a good many
people think that. It strikes me as comic. I suppose it's a result of my
little system."

"What little system?"

"Oh nothing more wonderful than the idea of being just the same to every
one. People have so bemuddled themselves that the last thing they can
conceive is that one should be simple."

"Lord, do you call yourself simple?" Nick ejaculated.

"Absolutely; in the sense of having no interest of my own to push, no
nostrum to advertise, no power to conciliate, no axe to grind. I'm not a
savage--ah far from it!--but I really think I'm perfectly independent."

"Well, that's always provoking!" Nick knowingly returned.

"So it would appear, to the great majority of one's fellow-mortals; and
I well remember the pang with which I originally made that discovery. It
darkened my spirit at a time when I had no thought of evil. What we
like, when we're unregenerate, is that a new-comer should give us a
password, come over to our side, join our little camp or religion, get
into our little boat, in short, whatever it is, and help us to row it.
It's natural enough; we're mostly in different tubs and cockles,
paddling for life. Our opinions, our convictions and doctrines and
standards, are simply the particular thing that will make the boat
go--_our boat_, naturally, for they may very often be just the thing
that will sink another. If you won't get in people generally hate you."

"Your metaphor's very lame," said Nick. "It's the overcrowded boat that
goes to the bottom."

"Oh I'll give it another leg or two! Boats can be big, in the infinite
of space, and a doctrine's a raft that floats the better the more
passengers it carries. A passenger jumps over from time to time, not so
much from fear of sinking as from a want of interest in the course or
the company. He swims, he plunges, he dives, he dips down and visits the
fishes and the mermaids and the submarine caves; he goes from craft to
craft and splashes about, on his own account, in the blue, cool water.
The regenerate, as I call them, are the passengers who jump over in
search of better fun. I jumped over long ago."

"And now of course you're at the head of the regenerate; for, in your
turn"--Nick found the figure delightful--"you all form a select school
of porpoises."

"Not a bit, and I know nothing about heads--in the sense you mean. I've
grown a tail if you will; I'm the merman wandering free. It's the
jolliest of trades!"

Before they had gone many steps further Nick Dormer stopped short with a
question. "I say, my dear fellow, do you mind mentioning to me whether
you're the greatest humbug and charlatan on earth, or a genuine
intelligence, one that has sifted things for itself?"

"I do lead your poor British wit a dance--I'm so sorry," Nash replied
benignly. "But I'm very sincere. And I _have_ tried to straighten out
things a bit for myself."

"Then why do you give people such a handle?"

"Such a handle?"

"For thinking you're an--for thinking you're a mere _farceur_."

"I daresay it's my manner: they're so unused to any sort of candour."

"Well then why don't you try another?" Nick asked.

"One has the manner that one can, and mine moreover's a part of my
little system."

"Ah if you make so much of your little system you're no better than any
one else," Nick returned as they went on.

"I don't pretend to be better, for we're all miserable sinners; I only
pretend to be bad in a pleasanter, brighter way--by what I can see. It's
the simplest thing in the world; just take for granted our right to be
happy and brave. What's essentially kinder and more helpful than that,
what's more beneficent? But the tradition of dreariness, of stodginess,
of dull, dense, literal prose, has so sealed people's eyes that they've
ended by thinking the most natural of all things the most perverse. Why
so keep up the dreariness, in our poor little day? No one can tell me
why, and almost every one calls me names for simply asking the question.
But I go on, for I believe one can do a little good by it. I want so
much to do a little good," Gabriel Nash continued, taking his
companion's arm. "My persistence is systematic: don't you see what I
mean? I won't be dreary--no, no, no; and I won't recognise the
necessity, or even, if there be any way out of it, the accident, of
dreariness in the life that surrounds me. That's enough to make people
stare: they're so damned stupid!"

"They think you so damned impudent," Nick freely explained.

At this Nash stopped him short with a small cry, and, turning his eyes,
Nick saw under the lamps of the quay that he had brought a flush of pain
into his friend's face. "I don't strike you that way?"

"Oh 'me!' Wasn't it just admitted that I don't in the least make you
out?"

"That's the last thing!" Nash declared, as if he were thinking the idea
over, with an air of genuine distress. "But with a little patience we'll
clear it up together--if you care enough about it," he added more
cheerfully. Letting his companion proceed again he continued: "Heaven
help us all, what do people mean by impudence? There are many, I think,
who don't understand its nature or its limits; and upon my word I've
literally seen mere quickness of intelligence or of perception, the jump
of a step or two, a little whirr of the wings of talk, mistaken for it.
Yes, I've encountered men and women who thought you impudent if you
weren't simply so stupid as they. The only impudence is unprovoked, or
even mere dull, aggression, and I indignantly protest that I'm never
guilty of _that_ clumsiness. Ah for what do they take one, with _their_
beastly presumption? Even to defend myself sometimes I've to make
believe to myself that I care. I always feel as if I didn't successfully
make others think so. Perhaps they see impudence in that. But I daresay
the offence is in the things that I take, as I say, for granted; for if
one tries to be pleased one passes perhaps inevitably for being pleased
above all with one's self. That's really not my case--I find my capacity
for pleasure deplorably below the mark I've set. This is why, as I've
told you, I cultivate it, I try to bring it up. And I'm actuated by
positive benevolence; I've that impudent pretension. That's what I mean
by being the same to every one, by having only one manner. If one's
conscious and ingenious to that end what's the harm--when one's motives
are so pure? By never, _never_ making the concession, one may end by
becoming a perceptible force for good."

"What concession are you talking about, in God's name?" Nick demanded.

"Why, that we're here all for dreariness. It's impossible to grant it
sometimes if you wish to deny it ever."

"And what do you mean then by dreariness? That's modern slang and
terribly vague. Many good things are dreary--virtue and decency and
charity, and perseverance and courage and honour."

"Say at once that life's dreary, my dear fellow!" Gabriel Nash
exclaimed.

"That's on the whole my besetting impression."

"_Cest là que je vous attends!_ I'm precisely engaged in trying what can
be done in taking it the other way. It's my little personal experiment.
Life consists of the personal experiments of each of us, and the point
of an experiment is that it shall succeed. What we contribute is our
treatment of the material, our rendering of the text, our style. A sense
of the qualities of a style is so rare that many persons should
doubtless be forgiven for not being able to read, or at all events to
enjoy, us; but is that a reason for giving it up--for not being, in this
other sphere, if one possibly can, an Addison, a Ruskin, a Renan? Ah we
must write our best; it's the great thing we can do in the world, on the
right side. One has one's form, _que diable_, and a mighty good thing
that one has. I'm not afraid of putting all life into mine, and without
unduly squeezing it. I'm not afraid of putting in honour and courage and
charity--without spoiling them: on the contrary I shall only do them
good. People may not read you at sight, may not like you, but there's a
chance they'll come round; and the only way to court the chance is to
keep it up--always to keep it up. That's what I do, my dear man--if you
don't think I've perseverance. If some one's touched here and there, if
you give a little impression of truth and charm, that's your reward;
besides of course the pleasure for yourself."

"Don't you think your style's a trifle affected?" Nick asked for further
amusement.

"That's always the charge against a personal manner: if you've any at
all people think you've too much. Perhaps, perhaps--who can say? The
lurking unexpressed is infinite, and affectation must have begun, long
ago, with the first act of reflective expression--the substitution of
the few placed articulate words for the cry or the thump or the hug. Of
course one isn't perfect; but that's the delightful thing about art,
that there's always more to learn and more to do; it grows bigger the
more one uses it and meets more questions the more they come up. No
doubt I'm rough still, but I'm in the right direction: I make it my
business to testify for the fine."

"Ah the fine--there it stands, over there!" said Nick Dormer. "I'm not
so sure about yours--I don't know what I've got hold of. But Notre Dame
_is_ truth; Notre Dame _is_ charm; on Notre Dame the distracted mind can
rest. Come over with me and look at her!"

They had come abreast of the low island from which the great cathedral,
disengaged to-day from her old contacts and adhesions, rises high and
fair, with her front of beauty and her majestic mass, darkened at that
hour, or at least simplified, under the stars, but only more serene and
sublime for her happy union far aloft with the cool distance and the
night. Our young men, fantasticating as freely as I leave the reader to
estimate, crossed the wide, short bridge which made them face toward the
monuments of old Paris--the Palais de Justice, the Conciergerie, the
holy chapel of Saint Louis. They came out before the church, which looks
down on a square where the past, once so thick in the very heart of
Paris, has been made rather a blank, pervaded however by the everlasting
freshness of the vast cathedral-face. It greeted Nick Dormer and Gabriel
Nash with a kindness the long centuries had done nothing to dim. The
lamplight of the old city washed its foundations, but the towers and
buttresses, the arches, the galleries, the statues, the vast
rose-window, the large full composition, seemed to grow clearer while
they climbed higher, as if they had a conscious benevolent answer for
the upward gaze of men.

"How it straightens things out and blows away one's vapours--anything
that's _done_!" said Nick; while his companion exclaimed blandly and
affectionately:

"The dear old thing!"

"The great point's to do something, instead of muddling and questioning;
and, by Jove, it makes me want to!"

"Want to build a cathedral?" Nash inquired.

"Yes, just that."

"It's you who puzzle _me_ then, my dear fellow. You can't build them out
of words."

"What is it the great poets do?" asked Nick.

"_Their_ words are ideas--their words are images, enchanting
collocations and unforgettable signs. But the verbiage of parliamentary
speeches--!"

"Well," said Nick with a candid, reflective sigh, "you can rear a great
structure of many things--not only of stones and timbers and painted
glass." They walked round this example of one, pausing, criticising,
admiring, and discussing; mingling the grave with the gay and paradox
with contemplation. Behind and at the sides the huge, dusky vessel of
the church seemed to dip into the Seine or rise out of it, floating
expansively--a ship of stone with its flying buttresses thrown forth
like an array of mighty oars. Nick Dormer lingered near it in joy, in
soothing content, as if it had been the temple of a faith so dear to him
that there was peace and security in its precinct. And there was comfort
too and consolation of the same sort in the company at this moment of
Nash's equal appreciation, of his response, by his own signs, to the
great effect. He took it all in so and then so gave it all out that Nick
was reminded of the radiance his boyish admiration had found in him of
old, the easy grasp of everything of that kind. "Everything of that
kind" was to Nick's sense the description of a wide and bright domain.

They crossed to the farther side of the river, where the influence of
the Gothic monument threw a distinction even over the Parisian
smartnesses--the municipal rule and measure, the importunate
symmetries, the "handsomeness" of everything, the extravagance of
gaslight, the perpetual click on the neat bridges. In front of a quiet
little café on the left bank Gabriel Nash said, "Let's sit down"--he was
always ready to sit down. It was a friendly establishment and an
unfashionable quarter, far away from the caravan-series; there were the
usual little tables and chairs on the quay, the muslin curtains behind
the glazed front, the general sense of sawdust and of drippings of
watery beer. The place was subdued to stillness, but not extinguished,
by the lateness of the hour; no vehicles passed, only now and then a
light Parisian foot. Beyond the parapet they could hear the flow of the
Seine. Nick Dormer said it made him think of the old Paris, of the great
Revolution, of Madame Roland, _quoi_! Gabriel said they could have
watery beer but were not obliged to drink it. They sat a long time; they
talked a great deal, and the more they said the more the unsaid came up.
Presently Nash found occasion to throw out: "I go about my business like
any good citizen--that's all."

"And what is your business?"

"The spectacle of the world."

Nick laughed out. "And what do you do with that?"

"What does any one do with spectacles? I look at it. I see."

"You're full of contradictions and inconsistencies," Nick however
objected. "You described yourself to me half an hour ago as an apostle
of beauty."

"Where's the inconsistency? I do it in the broad light of day, whatever
I do: that's virtually what I meant. If I look at the spectacle of the
world I look in preference at what's charming in it. Sometimes I've to
go far to find it--very likely; but that's just what I do. I go far--as
far as my means permit me. Last year I heard of such a delightful little
spot; a place where a wild fig-tree grows in the south wall, the outer
side, of an old Spanish city. I was told it was a deliciously brown
corner--the sun making it warm in winter. As soon as I could I went
there."

"And what did you do?"

"I lay on the first green grass--I liked it."

"If that sort of thing's all you accomplish you're not encouraging."

"I accomplish my happiness--it seems to me that's something. I have
feelings, I have sensations: let me tell you that's not so common. It's
rare to have them, and if you chance to have them it's rare not to be
ashamed of them. I go after them--when I judge they won't hurt any one."

"You're lucky to have money for your travelling expenses," said Nick.

"No doubt, no doubt; but I do it very cheap. I take my stand on my
nature, on my fortunate character. I'm not ashamed of it, I don't think
it's so horrible, my character. But we've so befogged and befouled the
whole question of liberty, of spontaneity, of good humour and
inclination and enjoyment, that there's nothing that makes people stare
so as to see one natural."

"You're always thinking too much of 'people.'"

"They say I think too little," Gabriel smiled.

"Well, I've agreed to stand for Harsh," said Nick with a roundabout
transition.

"It's you then who are lucky to have money."

"I haven't," Nick explained. "My expenses are to be paid."

"Then you too must think of 'people.'"

Nick made no answer to this, but after a moment said: "I wish very much
you had more to show for it."

"To show for what?"

"Your little system--the æsthetic life."

Nash hesitated, tolerantly, gaily, as he often did, with an air of being
embarrassed to choose between several answers, any one of which would be
so right. "Oh having something to show's such a poor business. It's a
kind of confession of failure."

"Yes, you're more affected than anything else," said Nick impatiently.

"No, my dear boy, I'm more good-natured: don't I prove it? I'm rather
disappointed to find you not more accessible to esoteric doctrine. But
there is, I confess, another plane of intelligence, honourable, and very
honourable, in its way, from which it may legitimately appear important
to have something to show. If you must confine yourself to that plane I
won't refuse you my sympathy. After all that's what I have to show! But
the degree of my sympathy must of course depend on the nature of the
demonstration you wish to make."

"You know it very well--you've guessed it," Nick returned, looking
before him in a conscious, modest way which would have been called
sheepish had he been a few years younger.

"Ah you've broken the scent with telling me you're going back to the
House of Commons," said Nash.

"No wonder you don't make it out! My situation's certainly absurd
enough. What I really hanker for is to be a painter; and of portraits,
on the whole, I think. That's the abject, crude, ridiculous fact. In
this out-of-the-way corner, at the dead of night, in lowered tones, I
venture to disclose it to you. Isn't that the æsthetic life?"

"Do you know how to paint?" asked Nash.

"Not in the least. No element of burlesque is therefore wanting to my
position."

"That makes no difference. I'm so glad."

"So glad I don't know how?"

"So glad of it all. Yes, that only makes it better. You're a delightful
case, and I like delightful cases. We must see it through. I rejoice I
met you again."

"Do you think I can do anything?" Nick inquired.

"Paint good pictures? How can I tell without seeing some of your work?
Doesn't it come back to me that at Oxford you used to sketch very
prettily? But that's the last thing that matters."

"What does matter then?" Nick asked with his eyes on his companion.

"To be on the right side--on the side of the 'fine.'"

"There'll be precious little of the 'fine' if I produce nothing but
daubs."

"Ah you cling to the old false measure of success! I must cure you of
that. There'll be the beauty of having been disinterested and
independent; of having taken the world in the free, brave, personal
way."

"I shall nevertheless paint decently if I can," Nick presently said.

"I'm almost sorry! It will make your case less clear, your example less
grand."

"My example will be grand enough, with the fight I shall have to make."

"The fight? With whom?"

"With myself first of all. I'm awfully against it."

"Ah but you'll have me on the other side," Nash smiled.

"Well, you'll have more than a handful to meet--everything, every one
that belongs to me, that touches me near or far; my family, my blood, my
heredity, my traditions, my promises, my circumstances, my prejudices;
my little past--such as it is; my great future--such as it has been
supposed it may be."

"I see, I see. It's splendid!" Nash exclaimed. "And Mrs. Dallow into the
bargain," he added.

"Yes, Mrs. Dallow if you like."

"Are you in love with her?"

"Not in the least."

"Well, she is with you--so I understood."

"Don't say that," said Nick Dormer with sudden sternness.

"Ah you are, you are!" his companion pronounced, judging apparently from
this accent.

"I don't know _what_ I am--heaven help me!" Nick broke out, tossing his
hat down on his little tin table with vehemence. "I'm a freak of nature
and a sport of the mocking gods. Why should they go out of their way to
worry me? Why should they do everything so inconsequent, so improbable,
so preposterous? It's the vulgarest practical joke. There has never been
anything of the sort among us; we're all Philistines to the core, with
about as much esthetic sense as that hat. It's excellent soil--I don't
complain of it--but not a soil to grow that flower. From where the devil
then has the seed been dropped? I look back from generation to
generation; I scour our annals without finding the least little
sketching grandmother, any sign of a building or versifying or
collecting or even tulip-raising ancestor. They were all as blind as
bats, and none the less happy for that. I'm a wanton variation, an
unaccountable monster. My dear father, rest his soul, went through life
without a suspicion that there's anything in it that can't be boiled
into blue-books, and became in that conviction a very distinguished
person. He brought me up in the same simplicity and in the hope of the
same eminence. It would have been better if I had remained so. I think
it's partly your fault that I haven't," Nick went on. "At Oxford you
were very bad company for me--my evil genius: you opened my eyes, you
communicated the poison. Since then, little by little, it has been
working within me; vaguely, covertly, insensibly at first, but during
the last year or two with violence, pertinacity, cruelty. I've resorted
to every antidote in life; but it's no use--I'm stricken. _C'est Vénus
toute entière à sa proie attachée_--putting Venus for 'art.' It tears me
to pieces as I may say."

"I see, I follow you," said Nash, who had listened to this recital with
radiant interest and curiosity. "And that's why you are going to stand."

"Precisely--it's an antidote. And at present you're another."

"Another?"

"That's why I jumped at you. A bigger dose of you may disagree with me
to that extent that I shall either die or get better."

"I shall control the dilution," said Nash. "Poor fellow--if you're
elected!" he added.

"Poor fellow either way. You don't know the atmosphere in which I live,
the horror, the scandal my apostasy would provoke, the injury and
suffering it would inflict. I believe it would really kill my mother.
She thinks my father's watching me from the skies."

"Jolly to make him jump!" Nash suggested.

"He'd jump indeed--come straight down on top of me. And then the
grotesqueness of it--to _begin_ all of a sudden at my age."

"It's perfect indeed, it's too lovely a case," Nash raved.

"Think how it sounds--a paragraph in the London papers: 'Mr. Nicholas
Dormer, M. P. for Harsh and son of the late Right Honourable and so
forth and so forth, is about to give up his seat and withdraw from
public life in order to devote himself to the practice of
portrait-painting--and with the more commendable perseverance by reason
of all the dreadful time he has lost. Orders, in view of this,
respectfully solicited.'"

"The nineteenth century's a sweeter time than I thought," said Nash.
"It's the portrait then that haunts your dreams?"

"I wish you could see. You must of course come immediately to my place
in London."

"Perfidious wretch, you're capable of having talent--which of course
will spoil everything!" Gabriel wailed.

"No, I'm too old and was too early perverted. It's too late to go
through the mill."

"You make _me_ young! Don't miss your election at your peril. Think of
the edification."

"The edification--?"

"Of your throwing it all up the next moment."

"That would be pleasant for Mr. Carteret," Nick brooded.

"Mr. Carteret--?"

"A dear old family friend who'll wish to pay my agent's bill."

"Serve him right for such depraved tastes."

"You do me good," said Nick as he rose and turned away.

"Don't call me useless then."

"Ah but not in the way you mean. It's only if I don't get in that I
shall perhaps console myself with the brush," Nick returned with
humorous, edifying elegance while they retraced their steps.

"For the sake of all the muses then don't stand. For you _will_ get in."

"Very likely. At any rate I've promised."

"You've promised Mrs. Dallow?"

"It's her place--she'll _put_ me in," Nick said.

"Baleful woman! But I'll pull you out!" cried Gabriel Nash.




X


For several days Peter Sherringham had business in hand which left him
neither time nor freedom of mind to occupy himself actively with the
ladies of the Hôtel de la Garonne. There were moments when they brushed
across his memory, but their passage was rapid and not lighted with
complacent attention; for he shrank from bringing to the proof the
question of whether Miriam would be an interest or only a bore. She had
left him after their second meeting with a quickened sympathy, but in
the course of a few hours that flame had burned dim. Like most other men
he was a mixture of impulse and reflexion, but was peculiar in this,
that thinking things over almost always made him think less
conveniently. He found illusions necessary, so that in order to keep an
adequate number going he often forbade himself any excess of that
exercise. Mrs. Rooth and her daughter were there and could certainly be
trusted to make themselves felt. He was conscious of their anxiety and
their calculations as of a frequent oppression, and knew that whatever
results might ensue he should have to do the costly thing for them. An
idea of tenacity, of worrying feminine duration, associated itself with
their presence; he would have assented with a silent nod to the
proposition--enunciated by Gabriel Nash--that he was saddled with them.
Remedies hovered before him, but these figured also at the same time as
complications; ranging vaguely from the expenditure of money to the
discovery that he was in love. This latter accident would be
particularly tedious; he had a full perception of the arts by which the
girl's mother might succeed in making it so. It wouldn't be a
compensation for trouble, but a trouble which in itself would require
compensations. Would that balm spring from the spectacle of the young
lady's genius? The genius would have to be very great to justify a
rising young diplomatist in making a fool of himself.

With the excuse of pressing work he put off Miss Rooth from day to day,
and from day to day he expected to hear her knock at his door. It would
be time enough when they ran him to earth again; and he was unable to
see how after all he could serve them even then. He had proposed
impetuously a course of the theatres; but that would be a considerable
personal effort now that the summer was about to begin--a free bid for
bad air, stale pieces, and tired actors. When, however, more than a week
had elapsed without a reminder of his neglected promise it came over him
that he must himself in honour give a sign. There was a delicacy in such
unexpected and such difficult discretion--he was touched by being let
alone. The flurry of work at the embassy was over and he had time to ask
himself what in especial he should do. He wanted something definite to
suggest before communicating with the Hôtel de la Garonne.

As a consequence of this speculation he went back to Madame Carré to ask
her to reconsider her stern judgement and give the young English
lady--to oblige him--a dozen lessons of the sort she knew so well how to
give. He was aware that this request scarcely stood on its feet; for in
the first place Madame Carré never reconsidered when once she had got
her impression, and in the second never wasted herself on subjects whom
nature had not formed to do her honour. He knew his asking her to strain
a point to please him would give her a false idea--save that for that
matter she had it already--of his relations, actual or prospective, with
the girl; but he decided he needn't care for this, since Miriam herself
probably wouldn't care. What he had mainly in mind was to say to the old
actress that she had been mistaken--the _jeune Anglaise_ wasn't such a
_grue_. This would take some courage, but it would also add to the
amusement of his visit.

He found her at home, but as soon as he had expressed his conviction she
began: "Oh, your _jeune Anglaise_, I know a great deal more about her
than you! She has been back to see me twice; she doesn't go the longest
way round. She charges me like a grenadier and asks me to give
her--guess a little what!--private recitations all to herself. If she
doesn't succeed it won't be for want of knowing how to thump at doors.
The other day when I came in she was waiting for me; she had been there
two hours. My private recitations--have you an idea what people pay for
them?"

"Between artists, you know, there are easier conditions," Sherringham
laughed.

"How do I know if she's an artist? She won't open her mouth to me; what
she wants is to make me say things to _her_. She does make me--I don't
know how--and she sits there gaping at me with her big eyes. They look
like open pockets!"

"I daresay she'll profit by it," said Sherringham.

"I daresay _you_ will! Her face is stupid while she watches me, and when
she has tired me out she simply walks away. However, as she comes
back--!"

Madame Carré paused a moment, listened and then cried: "Didn't I tell
you?"

Sherringham heard a parley of voices in the little antechamber, and the
next moment the door was pushed open and Miriam Rooth bounded into the
room. She was flushed and breathless, without a smile, very direct.

"Will you hear me to-day? I know four things," she immediately broke
out. Then seeing Sherringham she added in the same brisk, earnest tone,
as if the matter were of the highest importance: "Oh how d'ye do? I'm
very glad you're here." She said nothing else to him than this, appealed
to him in no way, made no allusion to his having neglected her, but
addressed herself to Madame Carré as if he had not been there; making no
excuses and using no flattery; taking rather a tone of equal
authority--all as if the famous artist had an obvious duty toward her.
This was another variation Peter thought; it differed from each of the
attitudes in which he had previously seen her. It came over him suddenly
that so far from there being any question of her having the histrionic
nature she simply had it in such perfection that she was always acting;
that her existence was a series of parts assumed for the moment, each
changed for the next, before the perpetual mirror of some curiosity or
admiration or wonder--some spectatorship that she perceived or imagined
in the people about her. Interested as he had ever been in the
profession of which she was potentially an ornament, this idea startled
him by its novelty and even lent, on the spot, a formidable, a really
appalling character to Miriam Rooth. It struck him abruptly that a woman
whose only being was to "make believe," to make believe she had any and
every being you might like and that would serve a purpose and produce a
certain effect, and whose identity resided in the continuity of her
personations, so that she had no moral privacy, as he phrased it to
himself, but lived in a high wind of exhibition, of figuration--such a
woman was a kind of monster in whom of necessity there would be nothing
to "be fond" of, because there would be nothing to take hold of. He felt
for a moment how simple he had been not to have achieved before this
analysis of the actress. The girl's very face made it vivid to him
now--the discovery that she positively had no countenance of her own,
but only the countenance of the occasion, a sequence, a variety--capable
possibly of becoming immense--of representative movements. She was
always trying them, practising them, for her amusement or profit,
jumping from one to the other and extending her range; and this would
doubtless be her occupation more and more as she acquired ease and
confidence. The expression that came nearest belonging to her, as it
were, was the one that came nearest being a blank--an air of inanity
when she forgot herself in some act of sincere attention. Then her eye
was heavy and her mouth betrayed a commonness; though it was perhaps
just at such a moment that the fine line of her head told most. She had
looked slightly _bête_ even when Sherringham, on their first meeting at
Madame Carré's, said to Nick Dormer that she was the image of the Tragic
Muse.

Now, at any rate, he seemed to see that she might do what she liked with
her face. It was an elastic substance, an element of gutta-percha, like
the flexibility of the gymnast, the lady at the music-hall who is shot
from the mouth of a cannon. He winced a little at this coarser view of
the actress; he had somehow always looked more poetically at that
priestess of art. Yet what was she, the priestess, when one came to
think of it, but a female gymnast, a mountebank at higher wages? She
didn't literally hang by her heels from a trapeze and hold a fat man in
her teeth, but she made the same use of her tongue, of her eyes, of the
imitative trick, that her muscular sister made of leg and jaw. It was an
odd circumstance that Miss Rooth's face seemed to him to-day a finer
instrument than old Madame Carré's. It was doubtless that the girl's was
fresh and strong and had a future in it, while poor Madame Carré's was
worn and weary and had only a past.

The old woman said something, half in jest, half in real resentment,
about the brutality of youth while Miriam went to a mirror and quickly
took off her hat, patting and arranging her hair as a preliminary to
making herself heard. Sherringham saw with surprise and amusement that
the keen Frenchwoman, who had in her long life exhausted every
adroitness, was in a manner helpless and coerced, obliging all in spite
of herself. Her young friend had taken but a few days and a couple of
visits to become a successful force; she had imposed herself, and Madame
Carré, while she laughed--yet looked terrible too, with such high
artifices of eye and gesture--was reduced to the last line of defence;
that of pronouncing her coarse and clumsy, saying she might knock her
down, but that this proved nothing. She spoke jestingly enough not to
offend, but her manner betrayed the irritation of an intelligent woman
who at an advanced age found herself for the first time failing to
understand. What she didn't understand was the kind of social product
thus presented to her by Gabriel Nash; and this suggested to Sherringham
that the _jeune Anglaise_ was perhaps indeed rare, a new type, as Madame
Carré must have seen innumerable varieties. He saw the girl was
perfectly prepared to be abused and that her indifference to what might
be thought of her discretion was a proof of life, health, and spirit,
the insolence of conscious resources.

When she had given herself a touch at the glass she turned round, with a
rapid "_Ecoutez maintenant_!" and stood leaning a moment--slightly
lowered and inclined backward, her hands behind her and supporting
her--on the _console_ before the mirror. She waited an instant, turning
her eyes from one of her companions to the other as to take possession
of them--an eminently conscious, intentional proceeding, which made
Sherringham ask himself what had become of her former terror and if that
and her tears had all been a comedy: after which, abruptly straightening
herself, she began to repeat a short French poem, an ingenious thing of
the day, that she had induced Madame Carré to say over to her. She had
learned it, practised it, rehearsed it to her mother, and had now been
childishly eager to show what she could do with it. What she mainly did
was to reproduce with a crude fidelity, but in extraordinary detail, the
intonations, the personal quavers and cadences of her model.

"How bad you make me seem to myself and if I were you how much better I
should say it!" was Madame Carré's first criticism.

Miriam allowed her, however, little time to develop it, for she broke
out, at the shortest intervals, with the several other specimens of
verse to which the old actress had handed her the key. They were all
fine lyrics, of tender or ironic intention, by contemporary poets, but
depending for effect on taste and art, a mastery of the rare shade and
the right touch, in the interpreter. Miriam had gobbled them up, and she
gave them forth in the same way as the first, with close, rude,
audacious mimicry. There was a moment for Sherringham when it might have
been feared their hostess would see in the performance a designed
burlesque of her manner, her airs and graces, her celebrated simpers and
grimaces, so extravagant did it all cause these refinements to appear.
When it was over the old woman said, "Should you like now to hear how
_you_ do?" and, without waiting for an answer, phrased and trilled the
last of the pieces, from beginning to end, exactly as her visitor had
done, making this imitation of an imitation the drollest thing
conceivable. If she had suffered from the sound of the girl's echo it
was a perfect revenge. Miriam had dropped on a sofa, exhausted, and she
stared at first, flushed and wild; then she frankly gave way to
pleasure, to interest and large laughter. She said afterwards, to defend
herself, that the verses in question, and indeed all those she had
recited, were of the most difficult sort: you had to do them; they
didn't do themselves--they were things in which the _gros moyens_ were
of no avail.

"Ah my poor child, your means are all _gros moyens_; you appear to have
no others," Madame Carré replied. "You do what you can, but there are
people like that; it's the way they're made. They can never come nearer
to fine truth, to the just indication; shades don't exist for them, they
don't see certain differences. It was to show you a difference that I
repeated that thing as you repeat it, as you represent my doing it. If
you're struck with the little the two ways have in common so much the
better. But you seem to me terribly to _alourdir_ everything you touch."

Peter read into this judgement a deep irritation--Miriam clearly set the
teeth of her instructress on edge. She acted on her nerves, was made up
of roughnesses and thicknesses unknown hitherto to her fine,
free-playing finger-tips. This exasperation, however, was a degree of
flattery; it was neither indifference nor simple contempt; it
acknowledged a mystifying reality in the _jeune Anglaise_ and even a
shade of importance. The latter remarked, serenely enough, that the
things she wanted most to do were just those that were not for the
_gros moyens_, the vulgar obvious dodges, the starts and shouts that any
one could think of and that the _gros public_ liked. She wanted to do
what was most difficult, and to plunge into it from the first; and she
explained as if it were a discovery of her own that there were two kinds
of scenes and speeches: those which acted themselves, of which the
treatment was plain, the only way, so that you had just to take it; and
those open to interpretation, with which you had to fight every step,
rendering, arranging, doing the thing according to your idea. Some of
the most effective passages and the most celebrated and admired, like
the frenzy of Juliet with her potion, were of the former sort; but it
was the others she liked best.

Madame Carré received this revelation good-naturedly enough, considering
its want of freshness, and only laughed at the young lady for looking so
nobly patronising while she gave it. Her laughter appeared partly
addressed to the good faith with which Miriam described herself as
preponderantly interested in the subtler problems of her art.
Sherringham was charmed with the girl's pluck--if it was pluck and not
mere density; the stout patience with which she submitted, for a
purpose, to the old woman's rough usage. He wanted to take her away, to
give her a friendly caution, to advise her not to become a bore, not to
expose herself. But she held up her beautiful head as to show how little
she cared at present for any exposure, and that (it was half
coarseness--Madame Carré was so far right--and half fortitude) she had
no intention of coming away so long as; there was anything to be picked
up. She sat and still she sat, challenging her hostess with every sort
of question--some reasonable, some ingenious, some strangely futile and
some highly indiscreet; but all with the effect that, contrary to
Peter's expectation, their distinguished friend warmed to the work of
answering and explaining, became interested, was content to keep her and
to talk. Yes, she took her ease; she relieved herself, with the rare
cynicism of the artist--all the crudity, the irony and intensity of a
discussion of esoteric things--of personal mysteries, of methods and
secrets. It was the oddest hour our young man had ever spent, even in
the course of investigations which had often led him into the _cuisine_,
the distillery or back shop, of the admired profession. He got up
several times to come away; then he remained, partly in order not to
leave Miriam alone with her terrible initiatress, partly because he was
both amused and edified, and partly because Madame Carré held him by the
appeal of her sharp, confidential, old eyes, addressing her talk to
himself, with Miriam but a pretext and subject, a vile illustration. She
undressed this young lady, as it were, from head to foot, turned her
inside out, weighed and measured and sounded her: it was all, for
Sherringham, a new revelation of the point to which, in her profession
and nation, an intelligence of the business, a ferocious analysis, had
been carried and a special vocabulary developed. What struck him above
all was the way she knew her grounds and reasons, so that everything was
sharp and clear in her mind and lay under her hand. If she had rare
perceptions she had traced them to their source; she could give an
account of what she did; she knew perfectly why, could explain it,
defend it, amplify it, fight for it: all of which was an intellectual
joy to her, allowing her a chance to abound and insist and discriminate.
There was a kind of cruelty or at least of hardness in it all, to poor
Peter's shy English sense, that sense which can never really reconcile
itself to any question of method and form, and has extraneous sentiments
to "square," to pacify with compromises and superficialities, the
general plea for innocence in everything and often the flagrant proof of
it. In theory there was nothing he valued more than just such a logical
passion as Madame Carré's, but it was apt in fact, when he found himself
at close quarters with it, to appear an ado about nothing.

If the old woman was hard it was not that many of her present
conclusions about the _jeune Anglaise_ were not indulgent, but that she
had a vision of the great manner, of right and wrong, of the just and
the false, so high and religious that the individual was nothing before
it--a prompt and easy sacrifice. It made our friend uncomfortable, as he
had been made uncomfortable by certain _feuilletons_, reviews of the
theatres in the Paris newspapers, which he was committed to thinking
important but of which, when they were very good, he was rather ashamed.
When they were very good, that is when they were very thorough, they
were very personal, as was inevitable in dealing with the most personal
of the arts: they went into details; they put the dots on the _i_'s;
they discussed impartially the qualities of appearance, the physical
gifts of the poor aspirant, finding them in some cases reprehensibly
inadequate Peter could never rid himself of a dislike to these
pronouncements; in the case of the actresses especially they struck him
as brutal and offensive--unmanly as launched by an ensconced,
moustachioed critic over a cigar. At the same time he was aware of the
dilemma (he hated it; it made him blush still more) in which his
objection lodged him. If one was right in caring for the actor's art one
ought to have been interested in every honest judgement of it, which,
given the peculiar conditions, would be useful in proportion as it
should be free. If the criticism that recognised frankly these
conditions seemed an inferior or an unholy thing, then what was to be
said for the art itself? What an implication, if the criticism was
tolerable only so long as it was worthless--so long as it remained vague
and timid! This was a knot Peter had never straightened out: he
contented himself with feeling that there was no reason a theatrical
critic shouldn't be a gentleman, at the same time that he often dubbed
it an odious trade, which no gentleman could possibly follow. The best
of the fraternity, so conspicuous in Paris, were those who didn't follow
it--those who, while pretending to write about the stage, wrote about
everything else.

It was as if Madame Carré, in pursuance of her inflamed sense that the
art was everything and the individual nothing save as he happened to
serve it, had said: "Well, if she _will_ have it she shall; she shall
know what she's in for, what I went through, battered and broken in as
we all have been--all who are worthy, who have had the honour. She shall
know the real point of view." It was as if she were still beset with
Mrs. Rooth's twaddle and muddle, her hypocrisy, her idiotic
scruples--something she felt all need to belabour, to trample on. Miriam
took it all as a bath, a baptism, with shuddering joy and gleeful
splashes; staring, wondering, sometimes blushing and failing to follow,
but not shrinking nor wounded; laughing, when convicted, at her own
expense and feeling evidently that this at last was the high cold air of
art, an initiation, a discipline that nothing could undo. Sherringham
said he would see her home--he wanted to talk to her and she must walk
away with him. "And it's understood then she may come back," he added to
Madame Carré. "It's _my_ affair of course. You'll take an interest in
her for a month or two; she'll sit at your feet."

The old actress had an admirable shrug. "Oh I'll knock her about--she
seems stout enough!"




XI


When they had descended to the street Miriam mentioned to Peter that she
was thirsty, dying to drink something: upon which he asked her if she
should have an objection to going with him to a café.

"Objection? I've spent my life in cafés! They're warm in winter and you
get your lamplight for nothing," she explained. "Mamma and I have sat in
them for hours, many a time, with a _consommation_ of three sous, to
save fire and candles at home. We've lived in places we couldn't sit in,
if you want to know--where there was only really room if we were in bed.
Mamma's money's sent out from England and sometimes it usedn't to come.
Once it didn't come for months--for months and months. I don't know how
we lived. There wasn't any to come; there wasn't any to get home. That
isn't amusing when you're away in a foreign town without any friends.
Mamma used to borrow, but people wouldn't always lend. You needn't be
afraid--she won't borrow of _you_. We're rather better now--something
has been done in England; I don't understand what. It's only fivepence a
year, but it has been settled; it comes regularly; it used to come only
when we had written and begged and waited. But it made no
difference--mamma was always up to her ears in books. They served her
for food and drink. When she had nothing to eat she began a novel in
ten volumes--the old-fashioned ones; they lasted longest. She knows
every _cabinet de lecture_ in every town; the little, cheap, shabby
ones, I mean, in the back streets, where they have odd volumes and only
ask a sou and the books are so old that they smell like close rooms. She
takes them to the cafés--the little, cheap, shabby cafés too--and she
reads there all the evening. That's very well for her, but it doesn't
feed me. I don't like a diet of dirty old novels. I sit there beside her
with nothing to do, not even a stocking to mend; she doesn't think that
_comme il faut_. I don't know what the people take me for. However,
we've never been spoken to: any one can see mamma's a great lady. As for
me I daresay I might be anything dreadful. If you're going to be an
actress you must get used to being looked at. There were people in
England who used to ask us to stay; some of them were our cousins--or
mamma says they were. I've never been very clear about our cousins and I
don't think they were at all clear about us. Some of them are dead; the
others don't ask us any more. You should hear mamma on the subject of
our visits in England. It's very convenient when your cousins are
dead--that explains everything. Mamma has delightful phrases: 'My family
is almost extinct.' Then your family may have been anything you like.
Ours of course was magnificent. We did stay in a place once where there
was a deer-park, and also private theatricals. I played in them; I was
only fifteen years old, but I was very big and I thought I was in
heaven. I'll go anywhere you like; you needn't be afraid; we've been in
places! I've learned a great deal that way--sitting beside mamma and
watching people, their faces, their types, their movements. There's a
great deal goes on in cafés: people come to them to talk things over,
their private affairs, their complications; they have important
meetings. Oh I've observed scenes between men and women--very quiet,
terribly quiet, but awful, pathetic, tragic! Once I saw a woman do
something that I'm going to do some day when I'm great--if I can get the
situation. I'll tell you what it is sometime--I'll do it for you. Oh it
is the book of life!"

So Miriam discoursed, familiarly, disconnectedly, as the pair went their
way down the Rue de Constantinople; and she continued to abound in
anecdote and remark after they were seated face to face at a little
marble table in an establishment Peter had selected carefully and where
he had caused her, at her request, to be accommodated with _sirop
d'orgeat_. "I know what it will come to: Madame Carré will want to keep
me." This was one of the felicities she presently threw off.

"To keep you?"

"For the French stage. She won't want to let you have me." She said
things of that kind, astounding in self-complacency, the assumption of
quick success. She was in earnest, evidently prepared to work, but her
imagination flew over preliminaries and probations, took no account of
the steps in the process, especially the first tiresome ones, the hard
test of honesty. He had done nothing for her as yet, given no
substantial pledge of interest; yet she was already talking as if his
protection were assured and jealous. Certainly, however, she seemed to
belong to him very much indeed as she sat facing him at the Paris café
in her youth, her beauty, and her talkative confidence. This degree of
possession was highly agreeable to him and he asked nothing more than to
make it last and go further. The impulse to draw her out was
irresistible, to encourage her to show herself all the way; for if he
was really destined to take her career in hand he counted on some good
equivalent--such for instance as that she should at least amuse him.

"It's very singular; I know nothing like it," he said--"your equal
mastery of two languages."

"Say of half-a-dozen," Miriam smiled.

"Oh I don't believe in the others to the same degree. I don't imagine
that, with all deference to your undeniable facility, you'd be judged
fit to address a German or an Italian audience in their own tongue. But
you might a French, perfectly, and they're the most particular of all;
for their idiom's supersensitive and they're incapable of enduring the
_baragouinage_ of foreigners, to which we listen with such complacency.
In fact your French is better than your English--it's more conventional;
there are little queernesses and impurities in your English, as if you
had lived abroad too much. Ah you must work that."

"I'll work it with _you_. I like the way you speak."

"You must speak beautifully; you must do something for the standard."

"For the standard?"

"Well, there isn't any after all." Peter had a drop. "It has gone to the
dogs."

"Oh I'll bring it back. I know what you mean."

"No one knows, no one cares; the sense is gone--it isn't in the public,"
he continued, ventilating a grievance he was rarely able to forget, the
vision of which now suddenly made a mission full of possible sanctity
for his companion. "Purity of speech, on our stage, doesn't exist. Every
one speaks as he likes and audiences never notice; it's the last thing
they think of. The place is given up to abominable dialects and
individual tricks, any vulgarity flourishes, and on top of it all the
Americans, with every conceivable crudity, come in to make confusion
worse confounded. And when one laments it people stare; they don't know
what one means."

"Do you mean the grand manner, certain pompous pronunciations, the style
of the Kembles?"

"I mean any style that _is_ a style, that's a system, a consistency, an
art, that contributes a positive beauty to utterance. When I pay ten
shillings to hear you speak I want you to know how, _que diable_! Say
that to people and they're mostly lost in stupor; only a few, the very
intelligent, exclaim: 'Then you want actors to be affected?'"

"And do you?" asked Miriam full of interest.

"My poor child, what else under the sun should they be? Isn't their
whole art the affectation _par excellence_? The public won't stand that
to-day, so one hears it said. If that be true it simply means that the
theatre, as I care for it, that is as a personal art, is at an end."

"Never, never, never!" the girl cried in a voice that made a dozen
people look round.

"I sometimes think it--that the personal art is at an end and that
henceforth we shall have only the arts, capable no doubt of immense
development in their way--indeed they've already reached it--of the
stage-carpenter and the costumer. In London the drama is already
smothered in scenery; the interpretation scrambles off as it can. To get
the old personal impression, which used to be everything, you must go to
the poor countries, and most of all to Italy."

"Oh I've had it; it's very personal!" said Miriam knowingly.

"You've seen the nudity of the stage, the poor, painted, tattered screen
behind, and before that void the histrionic figure, doing everything it
knows how, in complete possession. The personality isn't our English
personality and it may not always carry us with it; but the direction's
right, and it has the superiority that it's a human exhibition, not a
mechanical one."

"I can act just like an Italian," Miriam eagerly proclaimed.

"I'd rather you acted like an Englishwoman if an Englishwoman would only
act."

"Oh, I'll show you!"

"But you're not English," said Peter sociably, his arms on the table.

"I beg your pardon. You should hear mamma about our 'race.'"

"You're a Jewess--I'm sure of that," he went on.

She jumped at this, as he was destined to see later she would ever jump
at anything that might make her more interesting or striking; even at
things that grotesquely contradicted or excluded each other. "That's
always possible if one's clever. I'm very willing, because I want to be
the English Rachel."

"Then you must leave Madame Carré as soon as you've got from her what
she can give."

"Oh, you needn't fear; you shan't lose me," the girl replied with
charming gross fatuity. "My name's Jewish," she went on, "but it was
that of my grandmother, my father's mother. She was a baroness in
Germany. That is, she was the daughter of a baron."

Peter accepted this statement with reservations, but he replied: "Put
all that together and it makes you very sufficiently of Rachel's tribe."

"I don't care if I'm of her tribe artistically. I'm of the family of the
artists--_je me fiche_ of any other! I'm in the same style as that
woman--I know it."

"You speak as if you had seen her," he said, amused at the way she
talked of "that woman." "Oh I know all about her--I know all about all
the great actors. But that won't prevent me from speaking divine
English."

"You must learn lots of verse; you must repeat it to me," Sherringham
went on. "You must break yourself in till you can say anything. You must
learn passages of Milton, passages of Wordsworth."

"Did _they_ write plays?"

"Oh it isn't only a matter of plays! You can't speak a part properly
till you can speak everything else, anything that comes up, especially
in proportion as it's difficult. That gives you authority."

"Oh yes, I'm going in for authority. There's more chance in English,"
the girl added in the next breath. "There are not so many others--the
terrible competition. There are so many here--not that I'm afraid," she
chattered on. "But we've got America and they haven't. America's a great
place."

"You talk like a theatrical agent. They're lucky not to have it as we
have it. Some of them do go, and it ruins them."

"Why, it fills their pockets!" Miriam cried.

"Yes, but see what they pay. It's the death of an actor to play to big
populations that don't understand his language. It's nothing then but
the _gros moyens_; all his delicacy perishes. However, they'll
understand _you_."

"Perhaps I shall be too affected," she said.

"You won't be more so than Garrick or Mrs. Siddons or John Kemble or
Edmund Kean. They understood Edmund Kean. All reflexion is affectation,
and all acting's reflexion."

"I don't know--mine's instinct," Miriam contended.

"My dear young lady, you talk of 'yours'; but don't be offended if I
tell you that yours doesn't exist. Some day it will--if the thing comes
off. Madame Carré's does, because she has reflected. The talent, the
desire, the energy are an instinct; but by the time these things become
a performance they're an instinct put in its place."

"Madame Carré's very philosophic. I shall never be like her."

"Of course you won't--you'll be original. But you'll have your own
ideas."

"I daresay I shall have a good many of yours"--and she smiled at him
across the table.

They sat a moment looking at each other. "Don't go in for coquetry,"
Peter then said. "It's a waste of time."

"Well, that's civil!" the girl cried.

"Oh I don't mean for me, I mean for yourself I want you to be such good
faith. I'm bound to give you stiff advice. You don't strike me as
flirtatious and that sort of thing, and it's much in your favour."

"In my favour?"

"It does save time."

"Perhaps it saves too much. Don't you think the artist ought to have
passions?"

Peter had a pause; he thought an examination of this issue premature.
"Flirtations are not passions," he replied. "No, you're simple--at least
I suspect you are; for of course with a woman one would be clever to
know."

She asked why he pronounced her simple, but he judged it best and more
consonant with fair play to defer even a treatment of this branch of the
question; so that to change the subject he said: "Be sure you don't
betray me to your friend Mr. Nash."

"Betray you? Do you mean about your recommending affectation?"

"Dear me, no; he recommends it himself. That is, he practises it, and on
a scale!"

"But he makes one hate it."

"He proves what I mean," said Sherringham: "that the great comedian's
the one who raises it to a science. If we paid ten shillings to listen
to Mr. Nash we should think him very fine. But we want to know what it's
supposed to be."

"It's too odious, the way he talks about us!" Miriam cried assentingly.

"About 'us'?"

"Us poor actors."

"It's the competition he dislikes," Peter laughed.

"However, he's very good-natured; he lent mamma thirty pounds," the girl
added honestly. Our young man, at this information, was not able to
repress a certain small twinge noted by his companion and of which she
appeared to mistake the meaning. "Of course he'll get it back," she went
on while he looked at her in silence a little. Fortune had not supplied
him profusely with money, but his emotion was caused by no foresight of
his probably having also to put his hand in his pocket for Mrs. Rooth.
It was simply the instinctive recoil of a fastidious nature from the
idea of familiar intimacy with people who lived from hand to mouth,
together with a sense that this intimacy would have to be defined if it
was to go much further. He would wish to know what it was supposed to
be, like Nash's histrionics. Miriam after a moment mistook his thought
still more completely, and in doing so flashed a portent of the way it
was in her to strike from time to time a note exasperatingly, almost
consciously vulgar, which one would hate for the reason, along with
others, that by that time one would be in love with her. "Well then, he
won't--if you don't believe it!" she easily laughed. He was saying to
himself that the only possible form was that they should borrow only
from him. "You're a funny man. I make you blush," she persisted.

"I must reply with the _tu quoque_, though I've not that effect on you."

"I don't understand," said the girl.

"You're an extraordinary young lady."

"You mean I'm horrid. Well, I daresay I am. But I'm better when you know
me."

He made no direct rejoinder to this, but after a moment went on: "Your
mother must repay that money. I'll give it her."

"You had better give it _him_!" cried Miriam. "If once mamma has it--!"
She interrupted herself and with another and a softer tone, one of her
professional transitions, remarked: "I suppose you've never known any
one that was poor."

"I'm poor myself. That is, I'm very far from rich. But why receive
favours--?" And here he in turn checked himself with the sense that he
was indeed taking a great deal on his back if he pretended already--he
had not seen the pair three times--to regulate their intercourse with
the rest of the world. But the girl instantly carried out his thought
and more than his thought.

"Favours from Mr. Nash? Oh he doesn't count!"

The way she dropped these words--they would have been admirable on the
stage--made him reply with prompt ease: "What I meant just now was that
you're not to tell him, after all my swagger, that I consider that you
and I are really required to save our theatre."

"Oh if we can save it he shall know it!" She added that she must
positively get home; her mother would be in a state: she had really
scarce ever been out alone. He mightn't think it, but so it was. Her
mother's ideas, those awfully proper ones, were not all talk. She _did_
keep her! Sherringham accepted this--he had an adequate and indeed an
analytic vision of Mrs. Rooth's conservatism; but he observed at the
same time that his companion made no motion to rise. He made none
either; he only said:

"We're very frivolous, the way we chatter. What you want to do to get
your foot in the stirrup is supremely difficult. There's everything to
overcome. You've neither an engagement nor the prospect of an
engagement."

"Oh you'll get me one!" Her manner presented this as so certain that it
wasn't worth dilating on; so instead of dilating she inquired abruptly a
second time: "Why do you think I'm so simple?"

"I don't then. Didn't I tell you just now that you were extraordinary?
That's the term, moreover, that you applied to yourself when you came to
see me--when you said a girl had to be a kind of monster to wish to go
on the stage. It remains the right term and your simplicity doesn't
mitigate it. What's rare in you is that you have--as I suspect at
least--no nature of your own." Miriam listened to this as if preparing
to argue with it or not, only as it should strike her as a sufficiently
brave picture; but as yet, naturally, she failed to understand. "You're
always at concert pitch or on your horse; there are no intervals. It's
the absence of intervals, of a _fond_ or background, that I don't
comprehend. You're an embroidery without a canvas."

"Yes--perhaps," the girl replied, her head on one side as if she were
looking at the pattern of this rarity. "But I'm very honest."

"You can't be everything, both a consummate actress and a flower of the
field. You've got to choose."

She looked at him a moment. "I'm glad you think I'm so wonderful."

"Your feigning may be honest in the sense that your only feeling is your
feigned one," Peter pursued. "That's what I mean by the absence of a
ground or of intervals. It's a kind of thing that's a labyrinth!"

"I know what I am," she said sententiously.

But her companion continued, following his own train. "Were you really
so frightened the first day you went to Madame Carré's?"

She stared, then with a flush threw back her head. "Do you think I was
pretending?"

"I think you always are. However, your vanity--if you had any!--would be
natural."

"I've plenty of that. I'm not a bit ashamed to own it."

"You'd be capable of trying to 'do' the human peacock. But excuse the
audacity and the crudity of my speculations--it only proves my interest.
What is it that you know you are?"

"Why, an artist. Isn't that a canvas?"

"Yes, an intellectual, but not a moral."

"Ah it's everything! And I'm a good girl too--won't that do?"

"It remains to be seen," Sherringham laughed. "A creature who's
absolutely _all_ an artist--I'm curious to see that."

"Surely it has been seen--in lots of painters, lots of musicians."

"Yes, but those arts are not personal like yours. I mean not so much so.
There's something left for--what shall I call it?--for character."

She stared again with her tragic light. "And do you think I haven't a
character?" As he hesitated she pushed back her chair, rising rapidly.

He looked up at her an instant--she seemed so "plastic"; and then rising
too answered: "Delightful being, you've a hundred!"




XII


The summer arrived and the dense air of the Paris theatres became in
fact a still more complicated mixture; yet the occasions were not few on
which Sherringham, having placed a box near the stage (most often a
stuffy, dusky _baignoire_) at the disposal of Mrs. Rooth and her
daughter, found time just to look in, as he said, to spend a part of the
evening with them and point the moral of the performance. The pieces,
the successes of the winter, had entered the automatic phase: they went
on by the force of the impetus acquired, deriving little fresh life from
the interpretation, and in ordinary conditions their strong points, as
rendered by the actors, would have been as wearisome to this student as
an importunate repetition of a good story. But it was not long before he
became aware that the conditions couldn't be taken for ordinary. There
was a new infusion in his consciousness--an element in his life which
altered the relations of things. He was not easy till he had found the
right name for it--a name the more satisfactory that it was simple,
comprehensive, and plausible. A new "distraction," in the French sense,
was what he flattered himself he had discovered; he could recognise that
as freely as possible without being obliged to classify the agreeable
resource as a new entanglement. He was neither too much nor too little
diverted; he had all his usual attention to give to his work: he had
only an employment for his odd hours which, without being imperative,
had over various others the advantage of a certain continuity.

And yet, I hasten to add, he was not so well pleased with it but that
among his friends he maintained for the present a rich reserve about it.
He had no irresistible impulse to describe generally how he had
disinterred a strange, handsome girl whom he was bringing up for the
theatre. She had been seen by several of his associates at his rooms,
but was not soon to be seen there again. His reserve might by the
ill-natured have been termed dissimulation, inasmuch as when asked by
the ladies of the embassy what had become of the young person who had
amused them that day so cleverly he gave it out that her whereabouts was
uncertain and her destiny probably obscure; he let it be supposed in a
word that his benevolence had scarcely survived an accidental, a
charitable occasion. As he went about his customary business, and
perhaps even put a little more conscience into the transaction of it,
there was nothing to suggest to others that he was engaged in a private
speculation of an absorbing kind. It was perhaps his weakness that he
carried the apprehension of ridicule too far; but his excuse may have
dwelt in his holding it unpardonable for a man publicly enrolled in the
service of his country to be markedly ridiculous. It was of course not
out of all order that such functionaries, their private situation
permitting, should enjoy a personal acquaintance with stars of the
dramatic, the lyric, or even the choregraphic stage: high diplomatists
had indeed not rarely, and not invisibly, cultivated this privilege
without its proving the sepulchre of their reputation. That a gentleman
who was not a fool should consent a little to become one for the sake of
a celebrated actress or singer--_cela s'était vu_, though it was not
perhaps to be recommended. It was not a tendency that was encouraged at
headquarters, where even the most rising young men were not incited to
believe they could never fall. Still, it might pass if kept in its
place; and there were ancient worthies yet in the profession--though not
those whom the tradition had helped to go furthest--who held that
something of the sort was a graceful ornament of the diplomatic
character. Sherringham was aware he was very "rising"; but Miriam Rooth
was not yet a celebrated actress. She was only a young artist in
conscientious process of formation and encumbered with a mother still
more conscientious than herself. She was a _jeune Anglaise_--a "lady"
withal--very earnest about artistic, about remunerative problems. He had
accepted the office of a formative influence; and that was precisely
what might provoke derision. He was a ministering angel--his patience
and good nature really entitled him to the epithet and his rewards would
doubtless some day define themselves; but meanwhile other promotions
were in precarious prospect, for the failure of which these would not
even in their abundance, be a compensation. He kept an unembarrassed eye
on Downing Street, and while it may frankly be said for him that he was
neither a pedant nor a prig he remembered that the last impression he
ought to wish to produce there was that of a futile estheticism.

He felt the case sufficiently important, however, when he sat behind
Miriam at the play and looked over her shoulder at the stage; her
observation being so keen and her comments so unexpected in their
vivacity that his curiosity was refreshed and his attention stretched
beyond its wont. If the exhibition before the footlights had now lost
much of its annual brilliancy the fashion in which she followed it was
perhaps exhibition enough. The attendance of the little party was,
moreover, in most cases at the Théâtre Français; and it has been
sufficiently indicated that our friend, though the child of a sceptical
age and the votary of a cynical science, was still candid enough to take
the serious, the religious view of that establishment the view of M.
Sarcey and of the unregenerate provincial mind. "In the trade I follow
we see things too much in the hard light of reason, of calculation," he
once remarked to his young charge; "but it's good for the mind to keep
up a superstition or two; it leaves a margin--like having a second horse
to your brougham for night-work. The arts, the amusements, the esthetic
part of life, are night-work, if I may say so without suggesting that
they're illicit. At any rate you want your second horse--your
superstition that stays at home when the sun's high--to go your rounds
with. The Français is my second horse."

Miriam's appetite for this interest showed him vividly enough how rarely
in the past it had been within her reach; and she pleased him at first
by liking everything, seeing almost no differences and taking her deep
draught undiluted. She leaned on the edge of the box with bright
voracity; tasting to the core, yet relishing the surface, watching each
movement of each actor, attending to the way each thing was said or done
as if it were the most important thing, and emitting from time to time
applausive or restrictive sounds. It was a charming show of the critical
spirit in ecstasy. Sherringham had his wonder about it, as a part of the
attraction exerted by this young lady was that she caused him to have
his wonder about everything she did. Was it in fact a conscious show, a
line taken for effect, so that at the Comédie her own display should be
the most successful of all? That question danced attendance on the
liberal intercourse of these young people and fortunately as yet did
little to embitter Sherringham's share of it. His general sense that she
was personating had its especial moments of suspense and perplexity, and
added variety and even occasionally a degree of excitement to their
commerce. At the theatre, for the most part, she was really flushed with
eagerness; and with the spectators who turned an admiring eye into the
dim compartment of which she pervaded the front she might have passed
for a romantic or at least an insatiable young woman from the country.

Mrs. Rooth took a more general view, but attended immensely to the
story, in respect to which she manifested a patient good faith which had
its surprises and its comicalities for her daughter's patron. She found
no play too tedious, no _entr'acte_ too long, no _baignoire_ too hot, no
tissue of incidents too complicated, no situation too unnatural and no
sentiments too sublime. She gave him the measure of her power to sit and
sit--an accomplishment to which she owed in the struggle for existence
such superiority as she might be said to have achieved. She could
out-sit everybody and everything; looking as if she had acquired the
practice in repeated years of small frugality combined with large
leisure--periods when she had nothing but hours and days and years to
spend and had learned to calculate in any situation how long she could
stay. "Staying" was so often a saving--a saving of candles, of fire and
even (as it sometimes implied a scheme for stray refection) of food.
Peter saw soon enough how bravely her shreds and patches of gentility
and equanimity hung together, with the aid of whatever casual pins and
other makeshifts, and if he had been addicted to studying the human
mixture in its different combinations would have found in her an
interesting compendium of some of the infatuations that survive a hard
discipline. He made indeed without difficulty the reflexion that her
life might have taught her something of the real, at the same time that
he could scarce help thinking it clever of her to have so persistently
declined the lesson. She appeared to have put it by with a deprecating,
ladylike smile--a plea of being too soft and bland for experience.

She took the refined, sentimental, tender view of the universe,
beginning with her own history and feelings. She believed in everything
high and pure, disinterested and orthodox, and even at the Hôtel de la
Garonne was unconscious of the shabby or the ugly side of the world. She
never despaired: otherwise what would have been the use of being a
Neville-Nugent? Only not to have been one--that would have been
discouraging. She delighted in novels, poems, perversions,
misrepresentations, and evasions, and had a capacity for smooth,
superfluous falsification which made our young man think her sometimes
an amusing and sometimes a tedious inventor. But she wasn't dangerous
even if you believed her; she wasn't even a warning if you didn't. It
was harsh to call her a hypocrite, since you never could have resolved
her back into her character, there being no reverse at all to her
blazonry. She built in the air and was not less amiable than she
pretended, only that was a pretension too. She moved altogether in a
world of elegant fable and fancy, and Sherringham had to live there with
her for Miriam's sake, live there in sociable, vulgar assent and despite
his feeling it rather a low neighbourhood. He was at a loss how to take
what she said--she talked sweetly and discursively of so many
things--till he simply noted that he could only take it always for
untrue. When Miriam laughed at her he was rather disagreeably affected:
"dear mamma's fine stories" was a sufficiently cynical reference to the
immemorial infirmity of a parent. But when the girl backed her up, as
he phrased it to himself, he liked that even less.

Mrs. Rooth was very fond of a moral and had never lost her taste for
edification. She delighted in a beautiful character and was gratified to
find so many more than she had supposed represented in the contemporary
French drama. She never failed to direct Miriam's attention to them and
to remind her that there is nothing in life so grand as a sublime act,
above all when sublimely explained. Peter made much of the difference
between the mother and the daughter, thinking it singularly marked--the
way one took everything for the sense, or behaved as if she did, caring
only for the plot and the romance, the triumph or defeat of virtue and
the moral comfort of it all, and the way the other was alive but to the
manner and the art of it, the intensity of truth to appearances. Mrs.
Rooth abounded in impressive evocations, and yet he saw no link between
her facile genius and that of which Miriam gave symptoms. The poor lady
never could have been accused of successful deceit, whereas the triumph
of fraud was exactly what her clever child achieved. She made even the
true seem fictive, while Miriam's effort was to make the fictive true.
Sherringham thought it an odd unpromising stock (that of the
Neville-Nugents) for a dramatic talent to have sprung from, till he
reflected that the evolution was after all natural: the figurative
impulse in the mother had become conscious, and therefore higher,
through finding an aim, which was beauty, in the daughter. Likely enough
the Hebraic Mr. Rooth, with his love of old pots and Christian
altar-cloths, had supplied in the girl's composition the esthetic
element, the sense of colour and form. In their visits to the theatre
there was nothing Mrs. Rooth more insisted on than the unprofitableness
of deceit, as shown by the most distinguished authors--the folly and
degradation, the corrosive effect on the spirit, of tortuous ways. Their
companion soon gave up the futile task of piecing together her
incongruous references to her early life and her family in England. He
renounced even the doctrine that there was a residuum of truth in her
claim of great relationships, since, existent or not, he cared equally
little for her ramifications. The principle of this indifference was at
bottom a certain desire to disconnect and isolate Miriam; for it was
disagreeable not to be independent in dealing with her, and he could be
fully so only if she herself were.

The early weeks of that summer--they went on indeed into August--were
destined to establish themselves in his memory as a season of pleasant
things. The ambassador went away and Peter had to wait for his own
holiday, which he did during the hot days contentedly enough--waited in
spacious halls and a vast, dim, bird-haunted garden. The official world
and most other worlds withdrew from Paris, and the Place de la Concorde,
a larger, whiter desert than ever, became by a reversal of custom
explorable with safety. The Champs Elysées were dusty and rural, with
little creaking booths and exhibitions that made a noise like
grasshoppers; the Arc de Triomphe threw its cool, thick shadow for a
mile; the Palais de l'Industrie glittered in the light of the long days;
the cabmen, in their red waistcoats, dozed inside their boxes, while
Sherringham permitted himself a "pot" hat and rarely met a friend. Thus
was Miriam as islanded as the chained Andromeda, and thus was it
possible to deal with her, even Perseus-like, in deep detachment. The
theatres on the boulevard closed for the most part, but the great temple
of the Rue de Richelieu, with an esthetic responsibility, continued
imperturbably to dispense examples of style. Madame Carré was going to
Vichy, but had not yet taken flight, which was a great advantage for
Miriam, who could now solicit her attention with the consciousness that
she had no engagements _en ville_.

"I make her listen to me--I make her tell me," said the ardent girl, who
was always climbing the slope of the Rue de Constantinople on the shady
side, where of July mornings a smell of violets came from the moist
flower-stands of fat, white-capped _bouquetières_ in the angles of
doorways. Miriam liked the Paris of the summer mornings, the clever
freshness of all the little trades and the open-air life, the cries, the
talk from door to door, which reminded her of the south, where, in the
multiplicity of her habitations, she had lived; and most of all, the
great amusement, or nearly, of her walk, the enviable baskets of the
laundress piled up with frilled and fluted whiteness--the certain
luxury, she felt while she passed with quick prevision, of her own dawn
of glory. The greatest amusement perhaps was to recognise the pretty
sentiment of earliness, the particular congruity with the hour, in the
studied, selected dress of the little tripping women who were taking the
day, for important advantages, while it was tender. At any rate she
mostly brought with her from her passage through the town good humour
enough--with the penny bunch of violets she always stuck in the front of
her dress--for whatever awaited her at Madame Carré's. She declared to
her friend that her dear mistress was terribly severe, giving her the
most difficult, the most exhausting exercises, showing a kind of rage
for breaking her in.

"So much the better," Sherringham duly answered; but he asked no
questions and was glad to let the preceptress and the pupil fight it out
together. He wanted for the moment to know as little as possible about
their ways together: he had been over-dosed with that knowledge while
attending at their second interview. He would send Madame Carré her
money--she was really most obliging--and in the meantime was certain
Miriam could take care of herself. Sometimes he remarked to her that she
needn't always talk "shop" to him: there were times when he was mortally
tired of shop--of hers. Moreover, he frankly admitted that he was tired
of his own, so that the restriction was not brutal. When she replied,
staring, "Why, I thought you considered it as such a beautiful,
interesting art!" he had no rejoinder more philosophic than "Well, I do;
but there are moments when I'm quite sick of it all the same," At other
times he put it: "Oh yes, the results, the finished thing, the dish
perfectly seasoned and served: not the mess of preparation--at least not
always--not the experiments that spoil the material."

"I supposed you to feel just these questions of study, of the artistic
education, as you've called it to me, so fascinating," the girl
persisted. She was sometimes so flatly lucid.

"Well, after all, I'm not an actor myself," he could but impatiently
sigh.

"You might be one if you were serious," she would imperturbably say. To
this her friend replied that Mr. Gabriel Nash ought to hear this; which
made her promise with a certain grimness that she would settle _him_ and
his theories some day. Not to seem too inconsistent--for it was cruel to
bewilder her when he had taken her up to enlighten--Peter repeated over
that for a man like himself the interest of the whole thing depended on
its being considered in a large, liberal way and with an intelligence
that lifted it out of the question of the little tricks of the trade,
gave it beauty and elevation. But she hereupon let him know that Madame
Carré held there were no _little_ tricks, that everything had its
importance as a means to a great end, and that if you were not willing
to try to _approfondir_ the reason why, in a given situation, you should
scratch your nose with your left hand rather than with your right, you
were not worthy to tread any stage that respected itself.

"That's very well, but if I must go into details read me a little
Shelley," groaned the young man in the spirit of a high _raffiné_.

"You're worse than Madame Carré; you don't know what to invent; between
you you'll kill me!" the girl declared. "I think there's a secret league
between you to spoil my voice, or at least to weaken my _souffle_,
before I get it. But _à la guerre comme à la guerre_! How can I read
Shelley, however, when I don't understand him?"

"That's just what I want to make you do. It's a part of your general
training. You may do without that of course--without culture and taste
and perception; but in that case you'll be nothing but a vulgar
_cabotine_, and nothing will be of any consequence." He had a theory
that the great lyric poets--he induced her to read, and recite as well,
long passages of Wordsworth and Swinburne--would teach her many of the
secrets of the large utterance, the mysteries of rhythm, the
communicableness of style, the latent music of the language and the art
of "composing" copious speeches and of retaining her stores of free
breath. He held in perfect sincerity that there was a general sense of
things, things of the mind, which would be of the highest importance to
her and to which it was by good fortune just in his power to contribute.
She would do better in proportion as she had more knowledge--even
knowledge that might superficially show but a remote connexion with her
business. The actor's talent was essentially a gift, a thing by itself,
implanted, instinctive, accidental, equally unconnected with intellect
and with virtue--Sherringham was completely of that opinion; but it
struck him as no _bêtise_ to believe at the same time that
intellect--leaving virtue for the moment out of the question--might be
brought into fruitful relation with it. It would be a bigger thing if a
better mind were projected upon it--projected without sacrificing the
mind. So he lent his young friend books she never read--she was on
almost irreconcilable terms with the printed page save for spouting
it--and in the long summer days, when he had leisure, took her to the
Louvre to admire the great works of painting and sculpture. Here, as on
all occasions, he was struck with the queer jumble of her taste, her
mixture of intelligence and puerility. He saw she never read what he
gave her, though she sometimes would shamelessly have liked him to
suppose so; but in the presence of famous pictures and statues she had
remarkable flashes of perception. She felt these things, she liked them,
though it was always because she had an idea she could use them. The
belief was often presumptuous, but it showed what an eye she had to her
business. "I could look just like that if I tried." "That's the dress I
mean to wear when I do Portia." Such were the observations apt to drop
from her under the suggestion of antique marbles or when she stood
before a Titian or a Bronzino.

When she uttered them, and many others besides, the effect was sometimes
irritating to her adviser, who had to bethink himself a little that she
was no more egotistical than the histrionic conscience required. He
wondered if there were necessarily something vulgar in the histrionic
conscience--something condemned only to feel the tricky, personal
question. Wasn't it better to be perfectly stupid than to have only one
eye open and wear for ever in the great face of the world the expression
of a knowing wink? At the theatre, on the numerous July evenings when
the Comédie Française exhibited the repertory by the aid of exponents
determined the more sparse and provincial audience should have a taste
of the tradition, her appreciation was tremendously technical and showed
it was not for nothing she was now in and out of Madame Carré's
innermost counsels. But there were moments when even her very acuteness
seemed to him to drag the matter down, to see it in a small and
superficial sense. What he flattered himself he was trying to do for
her--and through her for the stage of his time, since she was the
instrument, and incontestably a fine one, that had come to his hand--was
precisely to lift it up, make it rare, keep it in the region of
distinction and breadth. However, she was doubtless right and he was
wrong, he eventually reasoned: you could afford to be vague only if you
hadn't a responsibility. He had fine ideas, but she was to act them out,
that is to apply them, and not he; and application was of necessity a
vulgarisation, a smaller thing than theory. If she should some day put
forth the great art it wasn't purely fanciful to forecast for her, the
matter would doubtless be by that fact sufficiently transfigured and it
wouldn't signify that some of the onward steps should have been lame.

This was clear to him on several occasions when she recited or motioned
or even merely looked something for him better than usual; then she
quite carried him away, making him wish to ask no more questions, but
only let her disembroil herself in her own strong fashion. In these
hours she gave him forcibly if fitfully that impression of beauty which
was to be her justification. It was too soon for any general estimate of
her progress; Madame Carré had at last given her a fine understanding as
well as a sore, personal, an almost physical, sense of how bad she was.
She had therefore begun on a new basis, had returned to the alphabet and
the drill. It was a phase of awkwardness, the splashing of a young
swimmer, but buoyancy would certainly come out of it. For the present
there was mainly no great alteration of the fact that when she did
things according to her own idea they were not, as yet and seriously
judged, worth the devil, as Madame Carré said, and when she did them
according to that of her instructress were too apt to be a gross parody
of that lady's intention. None the less she gave glimpses, and her
glimpses made him feel not only that she was not a fool--this was small
relief--but that he himself was not.

He made her stick to her English and read Shakespeare aloud to him. Mrs.
Rooth had recognised the importance of apartments in which they should
be able to receive so beneficent a visitor, and was now mistress of a
small salon with a balcony and a rickety flower-stand--to say nothing of
a view of many roofs and chimneys--a very uneven waxed floor, an empire
clock, an _armoire à glace_, highly convenient for Miriam's posturings,
and several cupboard doors covered over, allowing for treacherous gaps,
with the faded magenta paper of the wall. The thing had been easily
done, for Sherringham had said: "Oh we must have a sitting-room for our
studies, you know, and I'll settle it with the landlady," Mrs. Rooth had
liked his "we"--indeed she liked everything about him--and he saw in
this way that she heaved with no violence under pecuniary obligations so
long as they were distinctly understood to be temporary. That he should
have his money back with interest as soon as Miriam was launched was a
comfort so deeply implied that it only added to intimacy. The window
stood open on the little balcony, and when the sun had left it Peter and
Miriam could linger there, leaning on the rail and talking above the
great hum of Paris, with nothing but the neighbouring tiles and tall
tubes to take account of. Mrs. Rooth, in limp garments much ungirdled,
was on the sofa with a novel, making good her frequent assertion that
she could put up with any life that would yield her these two
conveniences. There were romantic works Peter had never read and as to
which he had vaguely wondered to what class they were addressed--the
earlier productions of M. Eugène Sue, the once-fashionable compositions
of Madame Sophie Gay--with which Mrs. Rooth was familiar and which she
was ready to enjoy once more if she could get nothing fresher. She had
always a greasy volume tucked under her while her nose was bent upon the
pages in hand. She scarcely looked up even when Miriam lifted her voice
to show their benefactor what she could do. These tragic or pathetic
notes all went out of the window and mingled with the undecipherable
concert of Paris, so that no neighbour was disturbed by them. The girl
shrieked and wailed when the occasion required it, and Mrs. Rooth only
turned her page, showing in this way a great esthetic as well as a great
personal trust.

She rather annoyed their visitor by the serenity of her confidence--for
a reason he fully understood only later--save when Miriam caught an
effect or a tone so well that she made him in the pleasure of it forget
her parent's contiguity. He continued to object to the girl's English,
with its foreign patches that might pass in prose but were offensive in
the recitation of verse, and he wanted to know why she couldn't speak
like her mother. He had justly to acknowledge the charm of Mrs. Rooth's
voice and tone, which gave a richness even to the foolish things she
said. They were of an excellent insular tradition, full both of natural
and of cultivated sweetness, and they puzzled him when other indications
seemed to betray her--to refer her to more common air. They were like
the reverberation of some far-off tutored circle.

The connexion between the development of Miriam's genius and the
necessity of an occasional excursion to the country--the charming
country that lies in so many directions beyond the Parisian
_banlieue_--would not have been immediately apparent to a superficial
observer; but a day, and then another, at Versailles, a day at
Fontainebleau and a trip, particularly harmonious and happy, to
Rambouillet, took their places in our young man's plan as a part of the
indirect but contributive culture, an agency in the formation of taste.
Intimations of the grand manner for instance would proceed in abundance
from the symmetrical palace and gardens of Louis XIV. Peter "adored"
Versailles and wandered there more than once with the ladies of the
Hôtel de la Garonne. They chose quiet hours, when the fountains were
dry; and Mrs. Rooth took an armful of novels and sat on a bench in the
park, flanked by clipped hedges and old statues, while her young
companions strolled away, walked to the Trianon, explored the long,
straight vistas of the woods. Rambouillet was vague and vivid and sweet;
they felt that they found a hundred wise voices there; and indeed there
was an old white chateau which contained nothing but ghostly sounds.
They found at any rate a long luncheon, and in the landscape the very
spirit of silvery summer and of the French pictorial brush.

I have said that in these days Sherringham wondered about many things,
and by the time his leave of absence came this practice had produced a
particular speculation. He was surprised that he shouldn't be in love
with Miriam Rooth and considered at moments of leisure the causes of his
exemption. He had felt from the first that she was a "nature," and each
time she met his eyes it seemed to come to him straighter that her
beauty was rare. You had to get the good view of her face, but when
you did so it was a splendid mobile mask. And the wearer of this
high ornament had frankness and courage and variety--no end of the
unusual and the unexpected. She had qualities that seldom went
together--impulses and shynesses, audacities and lapses, something
coarse, popular, and strong all intermingled with disdains and languors
and nerves. And then above all she was _there_, was accessible, almost
belonged to him. He reflected ingeniously that he owed his escape to a
peculiar cause--to the fact that they had together a positive outside
object. Objective, as it were, was all their communion; not personal and
selfish, but a matter of art and business and discussion. Discussion had
saved him and would save him further, for they would always have
something to quarrel about. Sherringham, who was not a diplomatist for
nothing, who had his reasons for steering straight and wished neither to
deprive the British public of a rising star nor to exchange his actual
situation for that of a yoked _impresario_, blessed the beneficence, the
salubrity, the pure exorcism of art. At the same time, rather
inconsistently and feeling that he had a completer vision than before of
that oddest of animals the artist who happens to have been born a woman,
he felt warned against a serious connexion--he made a great point of the
"serious"--with so slippery and ticklish a creature. The two ladies had
only to stay in Paris, save their candle-ends and, as Madame Carré had
enjoined, practise their scales: there were apparently no autumn visits
to English country-houses in prospect for Mrs. Rooth. Peter parted with
them on the understanding that in London he would look as thoroughly as
possible into the question of an engagement. The day before he began his
holiday he went to see Madame Carré, who said to him, "_Vous devriez
bien nous la laisser_."

"She _has_ something then----?"

"She has most things. She'll go far. It's the first time in my life of
my beginning with a mistake. But don't tell her so. I don't flatter her.
She'll be too puffed up."

"Is she very conceited?" Sherringham asked.

"_Mauvais sujet!_" said Madame Carré.

It was on the journey to London that he indulged in some of those
questionings of his state that I have mentioned; but I must add that by
the time he reached Charing Cross--he smoked a cigar deferred till after
the Channel in a compartment by himself--it had suddenly come over him
that they were futile. Now that he had left the girl a subversive,
unpremeditated heart-beat told him--it made him hold his breath a minute
in the carriage--that he had after all not escaped. He _was_ in love
with her: he had been in love with her from the first hour.




BOOK THIRD




XIII


The drive from Harsh to the Place, as it was called thereabouts, could
be achieved by swift horses in less than ten minutes; and if Mrs.
Dallow's ponies were capital trotters the general high pitch of the
occasion made it all congruous they should show their speed. The
occasion was the polling-day an hour after the battle. The ponies had
kept pace with other driven forces for the week before, passing and
repassing the neat windows of the flat little town--Mrs. Dallow had the
complacent belief that there was none in the kingdom in which the
flower-stands looked more respectable between the stiff muslin
curtains--with their mistress behind them on her all but silver wheels.
Very often she was accompanied by the Liberal candidate, but even when
she was not the equipage seemed scarce less to represent his easy,
friendly confidence. It moved in a radiance of ribbons and hand-bills
and hand-shakes and smiles; of quickened commerce and sudden intimacy;
of sympathy which assumed without presuming and gratitude which promised
without soliciting. But under Julia's guidance the ponies pattered now,
with no indication of a loss of freshness, along the firm, wide avenue
which wound and curved, to make up in large effect for not undulating,
from the gates opening straight on the town to the Palladian mansion,
high, square, grey, and clean, which stood among terraces and fountains
in the centre of the park. A generous steed had been sacrificed to bring
the good news from Ghent to Aix, but no such extravagance was after all
necessary for communicating with Lady Agnes.

She had remained at the house, not going to the Wheatsheaf, the Liberal
inn, with the others; preferring to await in privacy and indeed in
solitude the momentous result of the poll. She had come down to Harsh
with the two girls in the course of the proceedings. Julia hadn't
thought they would do much good, but she was expansive and indulgent now
and had generously asked them. Lady Agnes had not a nice canvassing
manner, effective as she might have been in the character of the high,
benignant, affable mother--looking sweet participation but not
interfering--of the young and handsome, the shining, convincing,
wonderfully clever and certainly irresistible aspirant. Grace Dormer had
zeal without art, and Lady Agnes, who during her husband's lifetime had
seen their affairs follow the satisfactory principle of a tendency to
defer to supreme merit, had never really learned the lesson that voting
goes by favour. However, she could pray God if, she couldn't make love
to the cheesemonger, and Nick felt she had stayed at home to pray for
him. I must add that Julia Dallow was too happy now, flicking her whip
in the bright summer air, to say anything so ungracious even to herself
as that her companion had been returned in spite of his nearest female
relatives. Besides, Biddy _had_ been a rosy help: she had looked
persuasively pretty, in white and blue, on platforms and in recurrent
carriages, out of which she had tossed, blushing and making people feel
they would remember her eyes, several words that were telling for their
very simplicity.

Mrs. Dallow was really too glad for any definite reflexion, even for
personal exultation, the vanity of recognising her own large share of
the work. Nick was in and was now beside her, tired, silent, vague,
beflowered and beribboned, and he had been splendid from beginning to
end, beautifully good-humoured and at the same time beautifully
clever--still cleverer than she had supposed he could be. The sense of
her having quickened his cleverness and been repaid by it or by his
gratitude--it came to the same thing--in a way she appreciated was not
assertive and jealous: it was lost for the present in the general happy
break of the long tension. So nothing passed between them in their
progress to the house; there was no sound in the park but the pleasant
rustle of summer--it seemed an applausive murmur--and the swift roll of
the vehicle.

Lady Agnes already knew, for as soon as the result was declared Nick had
despatched a mounted man to her, carrying the figures on a scrawled
card. He himself had been far from getting away at once, having to
respond to the hubbub of acclamation, to speak yet again, to thank his
electors individually and collectively, to chaff the Tories without
cheap elation, to be carried hither and yon, and above all to pretend
that the interest of the business was now greater for him than ever. If
he had said never a word after putting himself in Julia's hands to go
home it was partly perhaps because the consciousness had begun to
glimmer within him, on the contrary, of some sudden shrinkage of that
interest. He wanted to see his mother because he knew she wanted to fold
him close in her arms. They had been open there for this purpose the
last half-hour, and her expectancy, now no longer an ache of suspense,
was the reason of Julia's round pace. Yet this very impatience in her
somehow made Nick wince a little. Meeting his mother was like being
elected over again.

The others had not yet come back, and Lady Agnes was alone in the
large, bright drawing-room. When Nick went in with Julia he saw her at
the further end; she had evidently been walking up and down the whole
length of it, and her tall, upright, black figure seemed in possession
of the fair vastness after the manner of an exclamation-point at the
bottom of a blank page. The room, rich and simple, was a place of
perfection as well as of splendour in delicate tints, with precious
specimens of French furniture of the last century ranged against walls
of pale brocade, and here and there a small, almost priceless picture.
George Dallow had made it, caring for these things and liking to talk
about them--scarce ever about anything else; so that it appeared to
represent him still, what was best in his kindly, limited nature, his
friendly, competent, tiresome insistence on harmony--on identity of
"period." Nick could hear him yet, and could see him, too fat and with a
congenital thickness in his speech, lounging there in loose clothes with
his eternal cigarette. "Now my dear fellow, _that_'s what I call form: I
don't know what you call it"--that was the way he used to begin. All
round were flowers in rare vases, but it looked a place of which the
beauty would have smelt sweet even without them.

Lady Agnes had taken a white rose from one of the clusters and was
holding it to her face, which was turned to the door as Nick crossed the
threshold. The expression of her figure instantly told him--he saw the
creased card he had sent her lying on one of the beautiful bare
tables--how she had been sailing up and down in a majesty of
satisfaction. The inflation of her long plain dress and the brightened
dimness of her proud face were still in the air. In a moment he had
kissed her and was being kissed, not in quick repetition, but in tender
prolongation, with which the perfume of the white rose was mixed. But
there was something else too--her sweet smothered words in his ear: "Oh
my boy, my boy--oh your father, your father!" Neither the sense of
pleasure nor that of pain, with Lady Agnes--as indeed with most of the
persons with whom this history is concerned--was a liberation of
chatter; so that for a minute all she said again was, "I think of Sir
Nicholas and wish he were here"; addressing the words to Julia, who had
wandered forward without looking at the mother and son.

"Poor Sir Nicholas!" said Mrs. Dallow vaguely.

"Did you make another speech?" Lady Agnes asked.

"I don't know. Did I?" Nick appealed.

"I don't know!"--and Julia spoke with her back turned, doing something
to her hat before the glass.

"Oh of course the confusion, the bewilderment!" said Lady Agnes in a
tone rich in political reminiscence.

"It was really immense fun," Mrs. Dallow went so far as to drop.

"Dearest Julia!" Lady Agnes deeply breathed. Then she added: "It was you
who made it sure."

"There are a lot of people coming to dinner," said Julia.

"Perhaps you'll have to speak again," Lady Agnes smiled at her son.

"Thank you; I like the way you talk about it!" cried Nick. "I'm like
Iago: 'from this time forth I never will speak word!'"

"Don't say that, Nick," said his mother gravely.

"Don't be afraid--he'll jabber like a magpie!" And Julia went out of the
room.

Nick had flung himself on a sofa with an air of weariness, though not of
completely extinct cheer; and Lady Agnes stood fingering her rose and
looking down at him. His eyes kept away from her; they seemed fixed on
something she couldn't see. "I hope you've thanked Julia handsomely,"
she presently remarked.

"Why of course, mother."

"She has done as much as if you hadn't been sure."

"I wasn't in the least sure--and she has done everything."

"She has been too good--but _we_'ve done something. I hope you don't
leave out your father," Lady Agnes amplified as Nick's glance appeared
for a moment to question her "we."

"Never, never!" Nick uttered these words perhaps a little mechanically,
but the next minute he added as if suddenly moved to think what he could
say that would give his mother most pleasure: "Of course his name has
worked for me. Gone as he is he's still a living force." He felt a good
deal of a hypocrite, but one didn't win such a seat every day in the
year. Probably indeed he should never win another.

"He hears you, he watches you, he rejoices in you," Lady Agnes opined.

This idea was oppressive to Nick--that of the rejoicing almost as much
as of the watching. He had made his concession, but, with a certain
impulse to divert his mother from following up her advantage, he broke
out: "Julia's a tremendously effective woman."

"Of course she is!" said Lady Agnes knowingly.

"Her charming appearance is half the battle"--Nick explained a little
coldly what he meant. But he felt his coldness an inadequate protection
to him when he heard his companion observe with something of the same
sapience:

"A woman's always effective when she likes a person so much."

It discomposed him to be described as a person liked, and so much, and
by a woman; and he simply said abruptly: "When are you going away?"

"The first moment that's civil--to-morrow morning. _You_'ll stay on I
hope."

"Stay on? What shall I stay on for?"

"Why you might stay to express your appreciation."

Nick considered. "I've everything to do."

"I thought everything was done," said Lady Agnes.

"Well, that's just why," her son replied, not very lucidly. "I want to
do other things--quite other things. I should like to take the next
train," And he looked at his watch.

"When there are people coming to dinner to meet you?"

"They'll meet _you_--that's better."

"I'm sorry any one's coming," Lady Agnes said in a tone unencouraging to
a deviation from the reality of things. "I wish we were alone--just as a
family. It would please Julia to-day to feel that we _are_ one. Do stay
with her to-morrow."

"How will that do--when she's alone?"

"She won't be alone, with Mrs. Gresham."

"Mrs. Gresham doesn't count."

"That's precisely why I want you to stop. And her cousin, almost her
brother: what an idea that it won't do! Haven't you stayed here before
when there has been no one?"

"I've never stayed much, and there have always been people. At any rate
it's now different."

"It's just because it's different. Besides, it isn't different and it
never was," said Lady Agnes, more incoherent in her earnestness than it
often happened to her to be. "She always liked you and she likes you now
more than ever--if you call _that_ different!" Nick got up at this and,
without meeting her eyes, walked to one of the windows, where he stood
with his back turned and looked out on the great greenness. She watched
him a moment and she might well have been wishing, while he appeared to
gaze with intentness, that it would come to him with the same force as
it had come to herself--very often before, but during these last days
more than ever--that the level lands of Harsh, stretching away before
the window, the French garden with its symmetry, its screens and its
statues, and a great many more things of which these were the
superficial token, were Julia's very own to do with exactly as she
liked. No word of appreciation or envy, however, dropped from the young
man's lips, and his mother presently went on: "What could be more
natural than that after your triumphant contest you and she should have
lots to settle and to talk about--no end of practical questions, no end
of urgent business? Aren't you her member, and can't her member pass a
day with her, and she a great proprietor?"

Nick turned round at this with an odd expression. "_Her_ member--am I
hers?"

Lady Agnes had a pause--she had need of all her tact. "Well, if the
place is hers and you represent the place--!" she began. But she went no
further, for Nick had interrupted her with a laugh.

"What a droll thing to 'represent,' when one thinks of it! And what does
_it_ represent, poor stupid little borough with its strong, though I
admit clean, smell of meal and its curiously fat-faced inhabitants? Did
you ever see such a collection of fat faces turned up at the hustings?
They looked like an enormous sofa, with the cheeks for the gathers and
the eyes for the buttons."

"Oh well, the next time you shall have a great town," Lady Agnes
returned, smiling and feeling that she _was_ tactful.

"It will only be a bigger sofa! I'm joking, of course?" Nick pursued,
"and I ought to be ashamed of myself. They've done me the honour to
elect me and I shall never say a word that's not civil about them, poor
dears. But even a new member may blaspheme to his mother."

"I wish you'd be serious to your mother"--and she went nearer him.

"The difficulty is that I'm two men; it's the strangest thing that ever
was," Nick professed with his bright face on her. "I'm two quite
distinct human beings, who have scarcely a point in common; not even the
memory, on the part of one, of the achievements or the adventures of the
other. One man wins the seat but it's the other fellow who sits in it."

"Oh Nick, don't spoil your victory by your perversity!" she cried as she
clasped her hands to him.

"I went through it with great glee--I won't deny that: it excited me,
interested me, amused me. When once I was in it I liked it. But now that
I'm out of it again----!"

"Out of it?" His mother stared. "Isn't the whole point that you're in?"

"Ah _now_ I'm only in the House of Commons."

For an instant she seemed not to understand and to be on the point of
laying her finger quickly to her lips with a "Hush!"--as if the late Sir
Nicholas might have heard the "only." Then while a comprehension of the
young man's words promptly superseded that impulse she replied with
force: "You'll be in the Lords the day you determine to get there."

This futile remark made Nick laugh afresh, and not only laugh, but kiss
her, which was always an intenser form of mystification for poor Lady
Agnes and apparently the one he liked best to inflict; after which he
said: "The odd thing is, you know, that Harsh has no wants. At least
it's not sharply, not articulately conscious of them. We all pretended
to talk them over together, and I promised to carry them in my heart of
hearts. But upon my honour I can't remember one of them. Julia says the
wants of Harsh are simply the national wants--rather a pretty phrase for
Julia. She means _she_ does everything for the place; _she_'s really
their member and this house in which we stand their legislative chamber.
Therefore the _lacunae_ I've undertaken to fill out are the national
wants. It will be rather a job to rectify some of them, won't it? I
don't represent the appetites of Harsh--Harsh is gorged. I represent the
ideas of my party. That's what Julia says."

"Oh never mind what Julia says!" Lady Agnes broke out impatiently. This
impatience made it singular that the very next word she uttered should
be: "My dearest son, I wish to heaven you'd marry her. It would be so
fitting now!" she added.

"Why now?" Nick frowned.

"She has shown you such sympathy, such devotion."

"Is it for that she has shown it?"

"Ah you might _feel_--I can't tell you!" said Lady Agnes reproachfully.

He blushed at this, as if what he did feel was the reproach. "Must I
marry her because you like her?"

"I? Why we're _all_ as fond of her as we can be."

"Dear mother, I hope that any woman I ever may marry will be a person
agreeable not only to you, but also, since you make a point of it, to
Grace and Biddy. But I must tell you this--that I shall marry no woman
I'm not unmistakably in love with."

"And why are you not in love with Julia--charming, clever, generous as
she is?" Lady Agnes laid her hands on him--she held him tight. "Dearest
Nick, if you care anything in the world to make me happy you'll stay
over here to-morrow and be nice to her."

He waited an instant. "Do you mean propose to her?"

"With a single word, with the glance of an eye, the movement of your
little finger"--and she paused, looking intensely, imploringly up into
his face--"in less time than it takes me to say what I say now, you may
have it all." As he made no answer, only meeting her eyes, she added
insistently: "You know she's a fine creature--you know she is!"

"Dearest mother, what I seem to know better than anything else in the
world is that I love my freedom. I set it far above everything."

"Your freedom? What freedom is there in being poor?" Lady Agnes fiercely
demanded. "Talk of that when Julia puts everything she possesses at your
feet!"

"I can't talk of it, mother--it's too terrible an idea. And I can't talk
of _her_, nor of what I think of her. You must leave that to me. I do
her perfect justice."

"You don't or you'd marry her to-morrow," she passionately argued.
"You'd feel the opportunity so beautifully rare, with everything in the
world to make it perfect. Your father would have valued it for you
beyond everything. Think a little what would have given _him_ pleasure.
That's what I meant when I spoke just now of us all. It wasn't of Grace
and Biddy I was thinking--fancy!--it was of him. He's with you always;
he takes with you, at your side, every step you take yourself. He'd
bless devoutly your marriage to Julia; he'd feel what it would be for
you and for us all. I ask for no sacrifice and he'd ask for none. We
only ask that you don't commit the crime----!"

Nick Dormer stopped her with another kiss; he murmured "Mother, mother,
mother!" as he bent over her. He wished her not to go on, to let him
off; but the deep deprecation in his voice didn't prevent her saying:

"You know it--you know it perfectly. All and more than all that I can
tell you you know." He drew her closer, kissed her again, held her as he
would have held a child in a paroxysm, soothing her silently till it
could abate. Her vehemence had brought with it tears; she dried them as
she disengaged herself. The next moment, however, she resumed, attacking
him again: "For a public man she'd be the perfect companion. She's made
for public life--she's made to shine, to be concerned in great things,
to occupy a high position and to help him on. She'd back you up in
everything as she has backed you in this. Together there's nothing you
couldn't do. You can have the first house in England--yes, the very
first! What freedom _is_ there in being poor? How can you do anything
without money, and what money can you make for yourself--what money will
ever come to you? That's the crime--to throw away such an instrument of
power, such a blessed instrument of good."

"It isn't everything to be rich, mother," said Nick, looking at the
floor with a particular patience--that is with a provisional docility
and his hands in his pockets. "And it isn't so fearful to be poor."

"It's vile--it's abject. Don't I know?"

"Are you in such acute want?" he smiled.

"Ah don't make me explain what you've only to look at to see!" his
mother returned as if with a richness of allusion to dark elements in
her fate.

"Besides," he easily went on, "there's other money in the world than
Julia's. I might come by some of that."

"Do you mean Mr. Carteret's?" The question made him laugh as her feeble
reference five minutes before to the House of Lords had done. But she
pursued, too full of her idea to take account of such a poor substitute
for an answer: "Let me tell you one thing, for I've known Charles
Carteret much longer than you and I understand him better. There's
nothing you could do that would do you more good with him than to marry
Julia. I know the way he looks at things and I know exactly how that
would strike him. It would please him, it would charm him; it would be
the thing that would most prove to him that you're in earnest. You need,
you know, to do something of that sort," she said as for plain speaking.

"Haven't I come in for Harsh?" asked Nick.

"Oh he's very canny. He likes to see people rich. _Then_ he believes in
them--then he's likely to believe more. He's kind to you because you're
your father's son; but I'm sure your being poor takes just so much off."

"He can remedy that so easily," said Nick, smiling still. "Is my being
kept by Julia what you call my making an effort for myself?"

Lady Agnes hesitated; then "You needn't insult Julia!" she replied.

"Moreover, if I've _her_ money I shan't want his," Nick unheedingly
remarked.

Again his mother waited before answering; after which she produced: "And
pray wouldn't you wish to be independent?"

"You're delightful, dear mother--you're very delightful! I particularly
like your conception of independence. Doesn't it occur to you that at a
pinch I might improve my fortune by some other means than by making a
mercenary marriage or by currying favour with a rich old gentleman?
Doesn't it occur to you that I might work?"

"Work at politics? How does that make money, honourably?"

"I don't mean at politics."

"What do you mean then?"--and she seemed to challenge him to phrase it
if he dared. This demonstration of her face and voice might have
affected him, for he remained silent and she continued: "Are you elected
or not?"

"It seems a dream," he rather flatly returned.

"If you are, act accordingly and don't mix up things that are as wide
asunder as the poles!" She spoke with sternness and his silence appeared
again to represent an admission that her sternness counted for him.
Possibly she was touched by it; after a few moments, at any rate, during
which nothing more passed between them, she appealed to him in a gentler
and more anxious key, which had this virtue to touch him that he knew it
was absolutely the first time in her life she had really begged for
anything. She had never been obliged to beg; she had got on without it
and most things had come to her. He might judge therefore in what a
light she regarded this boon for which in her bereft old age she humbled
herself to be a suitor. There was such a pride in her that he could feel
what it cost her to go on her knees even to her son. He did judge how it
was in his power to gratify her; and as he was generous and imaginative
he was stirred and shaken as it came over him in a wave of figurative
suggestion that he might make up to her for many things. He scarcely
needed to hear her ask with a pleading wail that was almost tragic:
"Don't you see how things have turned out for us? Don't you know how
unhappy I am, don't you know what a bitterness----?" She stopped with a
sob in her voice and he recognised vividly this last tribulation, the
unhealed wound of her change of life and her lapse from eminence to
flatness. "You know what Percival is and the comfort I have of him. You
know the property and what he's doing with it and what comfort I get
from _that_! Everything's dreary but what you can do for us.
Everything's odious, down to living in a hole with one's girls who don't
marry. Grace is impossible--I don't know what's the matter with her; no
one will look at her, and she's so conceited with it--sometimes I feel
as if I could beat her! And Biddy will never marry, and we're three
dismal women in a filthy house, and what are three dismal women, more or
less, in London?"

So with an unexpected rage of self-exposure she poured out her
disappointments and troubles, tore away the veil from her sadness and
soreness. It almost scared him to see how she hated her life, though at
another time it might have been amusing to note how she despised her
gardenless house. Of course it wasn't a country-house, and she couldn't
get used to that. Better than he could do--for it was the sort of thing
into which in any case a woman enters more than a man--she felt what a
lift into brighter air, what a regilding of his sisters' possibilities,
his marriage to Julia would effect for them. He couldn't trace the
difference, but his mother saw it all as a shining picture. She hung the
bright vision before him now--she stood there like a poor woman crying
for a kindness. What was filial in him, all the piety he owed,
especially to the revived spirit of his father, more than ever present
on a day of such public pledges, became from one moment to the other as
the very handle to the door of the chamber of concessions. He had the
impulse, so embarrassing when it is a question of consistent action, to
see in a touching, an interesting light any forcibly presented side of
the life of another: such things effected a union with something in
_his_ life, and in the recognition of them was no soreness of sacrifice
and no consciousness of merit.

Rapidly, at present, this change of scene took place before his
spiritual eye. He found himself believing, because his mother
communicated the belief, that it depended but on his own conduct richly
to alter the social outlook of the three women who clung to him and who
declared themselves forlorn. This was not the highest kind of motive,
but it contained a spring, it touched into life again old injunctions
and appeals. Julia's wide kingdom opened out round him and seemed
somehow to wear the face of his own possible future. His mother and
sisters floated in the rosy element as if he had breathed it about them.
"The first house in England" she had called it; but it might be the
first house in Europe, the first in the world, by the fine air and the
high humanities that should fill it. Everything beautiful in his actual,
his material view seemed to proclaim its value as never before; the
house rose over his head as a museum of exquisite rewards, and the image
of poor George Dallow hovered there obsequious, expressing that he had
only been the modest, tasteful organiser, or even upholsterer, appointed
to set it all in order and punctually retire. Lady Agnes's tone in fine
penetrated further than it had done yet when she brought out with
intensity: "Don't desert us--don't desert us."

"Don't desert you----?"

"Be great--be great. I'm old, I've lived, I've seen. Go in for a great
material position. That will simplify everything else."

"I'll do what I can for you--anything, everything I can. Trust me--leave
me alone," Nick went on.

"And you'll stay over--you'll spend the day with her?"

"I'll stay till she turns me out!"

His mother had hold of his hand again now: she raised it to her lips
and kissed it. "My dearest son, my only joy!" Then: "I don't see how you
can resist her," she added.

"No more do I!"

She looked about--there was so much to look at--with a deep exhalation.
"If you're so fond of art, what art is equal to all this? The joy of
living in the midst of it--of seeing the finest works every day! You'll
have everything the world can give."

"That's exactly what was just passing in my own mind. It's too much,"
Nick reasoned.

"Don't be selfish!"

"Selfish?" he echoed.

"Unselfish then. You'll share it with us."

"And with Julia a little, I hope," he said.

"God bless you!" cried his mother, looking up at him. Her eyes were
detained by the sudden sense of something in his own that was not clear
to her; but before she could challenge it he asked abruptly:

"Why do you talk so of poor Biddy? Why won't she marry?"

"You had better ask Peter Sherringham," said Lady Agnes.

"What has he to do with it?"

"How odd of you not to know--when it's so plain how she thinks of him
that it's a matter of common gossip."

"Yes, if you will--we've made it so, and she takes it as an angel. But
Peter likes her."

"Does he? Then it's the more shame to him to behave as he does. He had
better leave his wretched actresses alone. That's the love of art too!"
mocked Lady Agnes.

But Nick glossed it all over. "Biddy's so charming she'll easily marry
some one else."

"Never, if she loves him. However, Julia will bring it about--Julia
will help her," his mother pursued more cheerfully. "That's what you'll
do for us--that _she'll_ do everything!"

"Why then more than now?" he asked.

"Because we shall be yours."

"You're mine already."

"Yes, but she isn't. However, she's as good!" Lady Agnes exulted.

"She'll turn me out of the house," said Nick.

"Come and tell me when she does! But there she is--go to her!" And she
gave him a push toward one of the windows that stood open to the
terrace. Their hostess had become visible outside; she passed slowly
along the terrace with her long shadow. "Go to her," his mother
repeated--"she's waiting for you."

Nick went out with the air of a man as ready to pass that way as
another, and at the same moment his two sisters, still flushed with
participation, appeared in a different quarter.

"We go home to-morrow, but Nick will stay a day or two," Lady Agnes said
to them.

"Dear old Nick!" Grace ejaculated looking at her with intensity.

"He's going to speak," she went on. "But don't mention it."

"Don't mention it?" Biddy asked with a milder stare. "Hasn't he spoken
enough, poor fellow?"

"I mean to Julia," Lady Agnes replied.

"Don't you understand, you goose?"--and Grace turned on her sister.




XIV


The next morning brought the young man many letters and telegrams, and
his coffee was placed beside him in his room, where he remained until
noon answering these communications. When he came out he learned that
his mother and sisters had left the house. This information was given
him by Mrs. Gresham, whom he found dealing with her own voluminous
budget at one of the tables in the library. She was a lady who received
thirty letters a day, the subject-matter of which, as well as of her
punctual answers in a hand that would have been "ladylike" in a
manageress, was a puzzle to those who observed her.

She told Nick that Lady Agnes had not been willing to disturb him at his
work to say good-bye, knowing she should see him in a day or two in
town. He was amused at the way his mother had stolen off--as if she
feared further conversation might weaken the spell she believed herself
to have wrought. The place was cleared, moreover, of its other visitors,
so that, as Mrs. Gresham said, the fun was at an end. This lady
expressed the idea that the fun was after all rather a bore. At any rate
now they could rest, Mrs. Dallow and Nick and she, and she was glad Nick
was going to stay for a little quiet. She liked Harsh best when it was
not _en fête_: then one could see what a sympathetic old place it was.
She hoped Nick was not dreadfully fagged--she feared Julia was
completely done up. Julia, however, had transported her exhaustion to
the grounds--she was wandering about somewhere. She thought more people
would be coming to the house, people from the town, people from the
country, and had gone out so as not to have to see them. She had not
gone far--Nick could easily find her. Nick intimated that he himself was
not eager for more people, whereupon Mrs. Gresham rather archly smiled.
"And of course you hate _me_ for being here." He made some protest and
she added: "But I'm almost part of the house, you know--I'm one of the
chairs or tables." Nick declared that he had never seen a house so well
furnished, and Mrs. Gresham said: "I believe there _are_ to be some
people to dinner; rather an interference, isn't it? Julia lives so in
public. But it's all for you." And after a moment she added: "It's a
wonderful constitution." Nick at first failed to seize her allusion--he
thought it a retarded political reference, a sudden tribute to the great
unwritten instrument by which they were all governed and under the happy
operation of which his fight had been so successful. He was on the point
of saying, "The British? Wonderful!" when he gathered that the intention
of his companion had been simply to praise Mrs. Dallow's fine
robustness. "The surface so delicate, the action so easy, yet the frame
of steel."

He left Mrs. Gresham to her correspondence and went out of the house;
wondering as he walked if she wanted him to do the same thing his mother
wanted, so that her words had been intended for a prick--whether even
the two ladies had talked over their desire together. Mrs. Gresham was a
married woman who was usually taken for a widow, mainly because she was
perpetually "sent for" by her friends, who in no event sent for Mr.
Gresham. She came in every case, with her air of being _répandue_ at
the expense of dingier belongings. Her figure was admired--that is it
was sometimes mentioned--and she dressed as if it was expected of her to
be smart, like a young woman in a shop or a servant much in view. She
slipped in and out, accompanied at the piano, talked to the neglected
visitors, walked in the rain, and after the arrival of the post usually
had conferences with her hostess, during which she stroked her chin and
looked familiarly responsible. It was her peculiarity that people were
always saying things to her in a lowered voice. She had all sorts of
acquaintances and in small establishments sometimes wrote the _menus_.
Great ones, on the other hand, had no terrors for her--she had seen too
many. No one had ever discovered whether any one else paid her. People
only knew what _they_ did.

If Lady Agnes had in the minor key discussed with her the propriety of a
union between the mistress of Harsh and the hope of the Dormers this
last personage could take the circumstance for granted without
irritation and even with cursory indulgence; for he was got unhappy now
and his spirit was light and clear. The summer day was splendid and the
world, as he looked at it from the terrace, offered no more worrying
ambiguity than a vault of airy blue arching over a lap of solid green.
The wide, still trees in the park appeared to be waiting for some daily
inspection, and the rich fields, with their official frill of hedges, to
rejoice in the light that smiled upon them as named and numbered acres.
Nick felt himself catch the smile and all the reasons of it: they made
up a charm to which he had perhaps not hitherto done justice--something
of the impression he had received when younger from showy "views" of
fine country-seats that had pressed and patted nature, as by the fat
hands of "benches" of magistrates and landlords, into supreme
respectability and comfort. There were a couple of peacocks on the
terrace, and his eye was caught by the gleam of the swans on a distant
lake, where was also a little temple on an island; and these objects
fell in with his humour, which at another time might have been ruffled
by them as aggressive triumphs of the conventional.

It was certainly a proof of youth and health on his part that his
spirits had risen as the plot thickened and that after he had taken his
jump into the turbid waters of a contested election he had been able to
tumble and splash not only without a sense of awkwardness but with a
considerable capacity for the frolic. Tepid as we saw him in Paris he
had found his relation to his opportunity surprisingly altered by his
little journey across the Channel, had seen things in a new perspective
and breathed an air that set him and kept him in motion. There had been
something in it that went to his head--an element that his mother and
his sisters, his father from beyond the grave, Julia Dallow, the Liberal
party and a hundred friends, were both secretly and overtly occupied in
pumping into it. If he but half-believed in victory he at least liked
the wind of the onset in his ears, and he had a general sense that when
one was "stuck" there was always the nearest thing at which one must
pull. The embarrassment, that is the revival of scepticism, which might
produce an inconsistency shameful to exhibit and yet difficult to
conceal, was safe enough to come later. Indeed at the risk of presenting
our young man as too whimsical a personage I may hint that some such
sickly glow had even now begun to tinge one quarter of his inward
horizon.

I am afraid, moreover, that I have no better excuse for him than the one
he had touched on in that momentous conversation with his mother which
I have thought it useful to reproduce in full. He was conscious of a
double nature; there were two men in him, quite separate, whose leading
features had little in common and each of whom insisted on having an
independent turn at life. Meanwhile then, if he was adequately aware
that the bed of his moral existence would need a good deal of making
over if he was to lie upon it without unseemly tossing, he was also
alive to the propriety of not parading his inconsistencies, not letting
his unregulated passions become a spectacle to the vulgar. He had none
of that wish to appear deep which is at the bottom of most forms of
fatuity; he was perfectly willing to pass for decently superficial; he
only aspired to be decently continuous. When you were not suitably
shallow this presented difficulties; but he would have assented to the
proposition that you must be as subtle as you can and that a high use of
subtlety is in consuming the smoke of your inner fire. The fire was the
great thing, not the chimney. He had no view of life that counted out
the need of learning; it was teaching rather as to which he was
conscious of no particular mission. He enjoyed life, enjoyed it
immensely, and was ready to pursue it with patience through as many
channels as possible. He was on his guard, however, against making an
ass of himself, that is against not thinking out his experiments before
trying them in public. It was because, as yet, he liked life in general
better than it was clear to him he liked particular possibilities that,
on the occasion of a constituency's holding out a cordial hand to him
while it extended another in a different direction, a certain bloom of
boyhood that was on him had not paled at the idea of a match.

He had risen to the fray as he had risen to matches at school, for his
boyishness could still take a pleasure in an inconsiderate show of
agility. He could meet electors and conciliate bores and compliment
women and answer questions and roll off speeches and chaff
adversaries--he could do these things because it was amusing and
slightly dangerous, like playing football or ascending an Alp, pastimes
for which nature had conferred on him an aptitude not so very different
in kind from a due volubility on platforms. There were two voices to
admonish him that all this was not really action at all, but only a
pusillanimous imitation of it: one of them fitfully audible in the
depths of his own spirit and the other speaking, in the equivocal
accents of a very crabbed hand, from a letter of four pages by Gabriel
Nash. However, Nick carried the imitation as far as possible, and the
flood of sound floated him. What more could a working faith have done?
He had not broken with the axiom that in a case of doubt one should hold
off, for this applied to choice, and he had not at present the slightest
pretension to choosing. He knew he was lifted along, that what he was
doing was not first-rate, that nothing was settled by it and that if
there was a hard knot in his life it would only grow harder with
keeping. Doing one's sum to-morrow instead of to-day doesn't make the
sum easier, but at least makes to-day so.

Sometimes in the course of the following fortnight it seemed to him he
had gone in for Harsh because he was sure he should lose; sometimes he
foresaw that he should win precisely to punish him for having tried and
for his want of candour; and when presently he did win he was almost
scared at his success. Then it appeared to him he had done something
even worse than not choose--he had let others choose for him. The beauty
of it was that they had chosen with only their own object in their eye,
for what did they know about his strange alternative? He was rattled
about so for a fortnight--Julia taking care of this--that he had no time
to think save when he tried to remember a quotation or an American
story, and all his life became an overflow of verbiage. Thought couldn't
hear itself for the noise, which had to be pleasant and persuasive, had
to hang more or less together, without its aid. Nick was surprised at
the airs he could play, and often when, the last thing at night, he shut
the door of his room, found himself privately exclaiming that he had had
no idea he was such a mountebank.

I must add that if this reflexion didn't occupy him long, and if no
meditation, after his return from Paris, held him for many moments,
there was a reason better even than that he was tired, that he was busy,
that he appreciated the coincidence of the hit and the hurrah, the
hurrah and the hit. That reason was simply Mrs. Dallow, who had suddenly
become a still larger fact in his consciousness than his having turned
actively political. She _was_ indeed his being so--in the sense that if
the politics were his, how little soever, the activity was hers. She had
better ways of showing she was clever than merely saying clever
things--which in general only prove at the most that one would be clever
if one could. The accomplished fact itself was almost always the
demonstration that Mrs. Dallow could; and when Nick came to his senses
after the proclamation of the victor and the drop of the uproar her
figure was, of the whole violent dance of shadows, the only thing that
came back, that stayed. She had been there at each of the moments,
passing, repassing, returning, before him, beside him, behind him. She
had made the business infinitely prettier than it would have been
without her, added music and flowers and ices, a finer charm, converting
it into a kind of heroic "function," the form of sport most dangerous.
It had been a garden-party, say, with one's life at stake from pressure
of the crowd. The concluded affair had bequeathed him thus not only a
seat in the House of Commons, but a perception of what may come of women
in high embodiments and an abyss of intimacy with one woman in
particular.

She had wrapped him up in something, he didn't know what--a sense of
facility, an overpowering fragrance--and they had moved together in an
immense fraternity. There had been no love-making, no contact that was
only personal, no vulgarity of flirtation: the hurry of the days and the
sharpness with which they both tended to an outside object had made all
that irrelevant. It was as if she had been too near for him to see her
separate from himself; but none the less, when he now drew breath and
looked back, what had happened met his eyes as a composed picture--a
picture of which the subject was inveterately Julia and her ponies:
Julia wonderfully fair and fine, waving her whip, cleaving the crowd,
holding her head as if it had been a banner, smiling up into
second-storey windows, carrying him beside her, carrying him to his
doom. He had not reckoned at the time, in the few days, how much he had
driven about with her; but the image of it was there, in his consulted
conscience, as well as in a personal glow not yet chilled: it looked
large as it rose before him. The things his mother had said to him made
a rich enough frame for it all, and the whole impression had that night
kept him much awake.




XV


While, after leaving Mrs. Gresham, he was hesitating which way to go and
was on the point of hailing a gardener to ask if Mrs. Dallow had been
seen, he noticed, as a spot of colour in an expanse of shrubbery, a
far-away parasol moving in the direction of the lake. He took his course
toward it across the park, and as the bearer of the parasol strolled
slowly it was not five minutes before he had joined her. He went to her
soundlessly, on the grass--he had been whistling at first, but as he got
nearer stopped--and it was not till he was at hand that she looked
round. He had watched her go as if she were turning things over in her
mind, while she brushed the smooth walks and the clean turf with her
dress, slowly made her parasol revolve on her shoulder and carried in
the other hand a book which he perceived to be a monthly review.

"I came out to get away," she said when he had begun to walk with her.

"Away from me?"

"Ah that's impossible." Then she added: "The day's so very nice."

"Lovely weather," Nick dropped. "You want to get away from Mrs. Gresham,
I suppose."

She had a pause. "From everything!"

"Well, I want to get away too."

"It has been such a racket. Listen to the dear birds."

"Yes, our noise isn't so good as theirs," said Nick. "I feel as if I had
been married and had shoes and rice thrown after me," he went on. "But
not to you, Julia--nothing so good as that."

Julia made no reply; she only turned her eyes on the ornamental water
stretching away at their right. In a moment she exclaimed, "How nasty
the lake looks!" and Nick recognised in her tone a sign of that odd
shyness--a perverse stiffness at a moment when she probably but wanted
to be soft--which, taken in combination with her other qualities, was so
far from being displeasing to him that it represented her nearest
approach to extreme charm. _He_ was not shy now, for he considered this
morning that he saw things very straight and in a sense altogether
superior and delightful. This enabled him to be generously sorry for his
companion--if he were the reason of her being in any degree
uncomfortable, and yet left him to enjoy some of the motions, not in
themselves without grace, by which her discomfort was revealed. He
wouldn't insist on anything yet: so he observed that her standard in
lakes was too high, and then talked a little about his mother and the
girls, their having gone home, his not having seen them that morning,
Lady Agnes's deep satisfaction in his victory, and the fact that she
would be obliged to "do something" for the autumn--take a house or
something or other.

"I'll lend her a house," said Mrs. Dallow.

"Oh Julia, Julia!" Nick half groaned.

But she paid no attention to his sound; she only held up her review and
said: "See what I've brought with me to read--Mr. Hoppus's article."

"That's right; then _I_ shan't have to. You'll tell me about it." He
uttered this without believing she had meant or wished to read the
article, which was entitled "The Revision of the British Constitution,"
in spite of her having encumbered herself with the stiff, fresh
magazine. He was deeply aware she was not in want of such inward
occupation as periodical literature could supply. They walked along and
he added: "But is that what we're in for, reading Mr. Hoppus? Is it the
sort of thing constituents expect? Or, even worse, pretending to have
read him when one hasn't? Oh what a tangled web we weave!"

"People are talking about it. One has to know. It's the article of the
month."

Nick looked at her askance. "You say things every now and then for which
I could really kill you. 'The article of the month,' for instance: I
could kill you for that."

"Well, kill me!" Mrs. Dallow returned.

"Let me carry your book," he went on irrelevantly. The hand in which she
held it was on the side of her on which he was walking, and he put out
his own hand to take it. But for a couple of minutes she forbore to give
it up, so that they held it together, swinging it a little. Before she
surrendered it he asked where she was going.

"To the island," she answered.

"Well, I'll go with you--and I'll kill you there."

"The things I say are the right things," Julia declared.

"It's just the right things that are wrong. It's because you're so
political," Nick too lightly explained. "It's your horrible ambition.
The woman who has a salon should have read the article of the month. See
how one dreadful thing leads to another."

"There are some things that lead to nothing," said Mrs. Dallow.

"No doubt--no doubt. And how are you going to get over to your island?"

"I don't know."

"Isn't there a boat?"

"I don't know."

Nick had paused to look round for the boat, but his hostess walked on
without turning her head. "Can you row?" he then asked.

"Don't you know I can do everything?"

"Yes, to be sure. That's why I want to kill you. There's the boat."

"Shall you drown me?" she asked.

"Oh let me perish with you!" Nick answered with a sigh. The boat had
been hidden from them by the bole of a great tree which rose from the
grass at the water's edge. It was moored to a small place of embarkation
and was large enough to hold as many persons as were likely to wish to
visit at once the little temple in the middle of the lake, which Nick
liked because it was absurd and which Mrs. Dallow had never had a
particular esteem for. The lake, fed by a natural spring, was a liberal
sheet of water, measured by the scale of park scenery; and though its
principal merit was that, taken at a distance, it gave a gleam of
abstraction to the concrete verdure, doing the office of an open eye in
a dull face, it could also be approached without derision on a sweet
summer morning when it made a lapping sound and reflected candidly
various things that were probably finer than itself--the sky, the great
trees, the flight of birds. A man of taste, coming back from Rome a
hundred years before, had caused a small ornamental structure to be
raised, from artificial foundations, on its bosom, and had endeavoured
to make this architectural pleasantry as nearly as possible a
reminiscence of the small ruined rotunda which stands on the bank of the
Tiber and is pronounced by _ciceroni_ once sacred to Vesta. It was
circular, roofed with old tiles, surrounded by white columns and
considerably dilapidated. George Dallow had taken an interest in it--it
reminded him not in the least of Rome, but of other things he liked--and
had amused himself with restoring it. "Give me your hand--sit there and
I'll ferry you," Nick said.

Julia complied, placing herself opposite him in the boat; but as he took
up the paddles she declared that she preferred to remain on the
water--there was too much malice prepense in the temple. He asked her
what she meant by that, and she said it was ridiculous to withdraw to an
island a few feet square on purpose to meditate. She had nothing to
meditate about that required so much scenery and attitude.

"On the contrary, it would be just to change the scene and the _pose_.
It's what we have been doing for a week that's attitude; and to be for
half an hour where nobody's looking and one hasn't to keep it up is just
what I wanted to put in an idle irresponsible day for. I'm not keeping
it up now--I suppose you've noticed," Nick went on as they floated and
he scarcely dipped the oars.

"I don't understand you"--and Julia leaned back in the boat.

He gave no further explanation than to ask in a minute: "Have you people
to dinner to-night?"

"I believe there are three or four, but I'll put them off if you like."

"Must you _always_ live in public, Julia?" he continued.

She looked at him a moment and he could see how she coloured. "We'll go
home--I'll put them off."

"Ah no, don't go home; it's too jolly here. Let them come, let them
come, poor wretches!"

"How little you know me," Julia presently broke out, "when, ever so
many times, I've lived here for months without a creature!"

"Except Mrs. Gresham, I suppose."

"I have had to have the house going, I admit."

"You're perfect, you're admirable, and I don't criticise you."

"I don't understand you!" she tossed back.

"That only adds to the generosity of what you've done for me," Nick
returned, beginning to pull faster. He bent over the oars and sent the
boat forward, keeping this up for a succession of minutes during which
they both remained silent. His companion, in her place, motionless,
reclining--the seat in the stern was most comfortable--looked only at
the water, the sky, the trees. At last he headed for the little temple,
saying first, however, "Shan't we visit the ruin?"

"If you like. I don't mind seeing how they keep it."

They reached the white steps leading up to it. He held the boat and his
companion got out; then, when he had made it fast, they mounted together
to the open door. "They keep the place very well," Nick said, looking
round. "It's a capital place to give up everything in."

"It might do at least for you to explain what you mean." And Julia sat
down.

"I mean to pretend for half an hour that I don't represent the burgesses
of Harsh. It's charming--it's very delicate work. Surely it has been
retouched."

The interior of the pavilion, lighted by windows which the circle of
columns was supposed outside and at a distance to conceal, had a vaulted
ceiling and was occupied by a few pieces of last-century furniture,
spare and faded, of which the colours matched with the decoration of the
walls. These and the ceiling, tinted and not exempt from indications of
damp, were covered with fine mouldings and medallions. It all made a
very elegant little tea-house, the mistress of which sat on the edge of
a sofa rolling her parasol and remarking, "You ought to read Mr.
Hoppus's article to me."

"Why, is _this_ your salon?" Nick smiled.

"What makes you always talk of that? My salon's an invention of your
own."

"But isn't it the idea you're most working for?"

Suddenly, nervously, she put up her parasol and sat under it as if not
quite sensible of what she was doing. "How much you know me! I'm not
'working' for anything--that you'll ever guess."

Nick wandered about the room and looked at various things it
contained--the odd volumes on the tables, the bits of quaint china on
the shelves. "They do keep it very well. You've got charming things."

"They're supposed to come over every day and look after them."

"They must come over in force."

"Oh no one knows."

"It's spick and span. How well you have everything done!"

"I think you've some reason to say so," said Mrs. Dallow. Her parasol
was now down and she was again rolling it tight.

"But you're right about my not knowing you. Why were you so ready to do
so much for me?"

He stopped in front of her and she looked up at him. Her eyes rested
long on his own; then she broke out: "Why do you hate me so?"

"Was it because you like me personally?" Nick pursued as if he hadn't
heard her. "You may think that an odd or positively an odious question;
but isn't it natural, my wanting to know?"

"Oh if you don't know!" Julia quite desperately sighed.

"It's a question of being sure."

"Well then if you're not sure----!"

"Was it done for me as a friend, as a man?"

"You're not a man--you're a child," his hostess declared with a face
that was cold, though she had been smiling the moment before.

"After all I was a good candidate," Nick went on.

"What do I care for candidates?"

"You're the most delightful woman, Julia," he said as he sat down beside
her, "and I can't imagine what you mean by my hating you."

"If you haven't discovered that I like you, you might as well."

"Might as well discover it?"

She was grave--he had never seen her so pale and never so beautiful. She
had stopped rolling her parasol; her hands were folded in her lap and
her eyes bent on them. Nick sat looking at them as well--a trifle
awkwardly. "Might as well have hated me," she said.

"We've got on so beautifully together all these days: why shouldn't we
get on as well for ever and ever?" he brought out. She made no answer,
and suddenly he said: "Ah Julia, I don't know what you've done to me,
but you've done it. You've done it by strange ways, but it will serve.
Yes, I hate you," he added in a different tone and with his face all
nearer.

"Dear Nick, dear Nick----!" she began. But she stopped, feeling his
nearness and its intensity, a nearness now so great that his arm was
round her, that he was really in possession of her. She closed her eyes
but heard him ask again, "Why shouldn't it be for ever, for ever?" in a
voice that had for her ear a vibration none had ever had.

"You've done it, you've done it," Nick repeated.

"What do you want of me?" she appealed.

"To stay with me--this way--always."

"Ah not this way," she answered softly, but as if in pain and making an
effort, with a certain force, to detach herself.

"This way then--or this!" He took such pressing advantage of her that he
had kissed her with repetition. She rose while he insisted, but he held
her yet, and as he did so his tenderness turned to beautiful words. "If
you'll marry me, why shouldn't it be so simple, so right and good?" He
drew her closer again, too close for her to answer. But her struggle
ceased and she rested on him a minute; she buried her face in his
breast.

"You're hard, and it's cruel!" she then exclaimed, shaking herself free.

"Hard--cruel?"

"You do it with so little!" And with this, unexpectedly to Nick, Julia
burst straight into tears. Before he could stop her she was at the door
of the pavilion as if she wished to get immediately away. There,
however, he stayed her, bending over her while she sobbed, unspeakably
gentle with her.

"So little? It's with everything--with everything I have."

"I've done it, you say? What do you accuse me of doing?" Her tears were
already over.

"Of making me yours; of being so precious, Julia, so exactly what a man
wants, as it seems to me. I didn't know you could," he went on, smiling
down at her. "I didn't--no, I didn't."

"It's what I say--that you've always hated me."

"I'll make it up to you!" he laughed.

She leaned on the doorway with her forehead against the lintel. "You
don't even deny it."

"Contradict you _now_? I'll admit it, though it's rubbish, on purpose to
live it down."

"It doesn't matter," she said slowly; "for however much you might have
liked me you'd never have done so half as much as I've cared for you."

"Oh I'm so poor!" Nick murmured cheerfully.

With her eyes looking at him as in a new light she slowly shook her
head. Then she declared: "You never can live it down."

"I like that! Haven't I asked you to marry me? When did you ever ask
me?"

"Every day of my life! As I say, it's hard--for a proud woman."

"Yes, you're too proud even to answer me."

"We must think of it, we must talk of it."

"Think of it? I've thought of it ever so much."

"I mean together. There are many things in such a question."

"The principal thing is beautifully to give me your word."

She looked at him afresh all strangely; then she threw off: "I wish I
didn't adore you!" She went straight down the steps.

"You don't adore me at all, you know, if you leave me now. Why do you
go? It's so charming here and we're so delightfully alone."

"Untie the boat; we'll go on the water," Julia said.

Nick was at the top of the steps, looking down at her. "Ah stay a
little--_do_ stay!" he pleaded.

"I'll get in myself, I'll pull off," she simply answered.

At this he came down and bent a little to undo the rope. He was close to
her and as he raised his head he felt it caught; she had seized it in
her hands and she pressed her lips, as he had never felt lips pressed,
to the first place they encountered. The next instant she was in the
boat.

This time he dipped the oars very slowly indeed; and, while for a period
that was longer than it seemed to them they floated vaguely, they mainly
sat and glowed at each other as if everything had been settled. There
were reasons enough why Nick should be happy; but it is a singular fact
that the leading one was the sense of his having escaped a great and
ugly mistake. The final result of his mother's appeal to him the day
before had been the idea that he must act with unimpeachable honour. He
was capable of taking it as an assurance that Julia had placed him under
an obligation a gentleman could regard but in one way. If she herself
had understood it so, putting the vision, or at any rate the
appreciation, of a closer tie into everything she had done for him, the
case was conspicuously simple and his course unmistakably plain. That is
why he had been gay when he came out of the house to look for her: he
could be gay when his course was plain. He could be all the gayer,
naturally, I must add, that, in turning things over as he had done half
the night, what he had turned up oftenest was the recognition that Julia
now had a new personal power with him. It was not for nothing that she
had thrown herself personally into his life. She had by her act made him
live twice as intensely, and such an office, such a service, if a man
had accepted and deeply tasted it, was certainly a thing to put him on
his honour. He took it as distinct that there was nothing he could do in
preference that wouldn't be spoiled for him by any deflexion from that
point. His mother had made him uncomfortable by bringing it so heavily
up that Julia was in love with him--he didn't like in general to be told
such things; but the responsibility seemed easier to carry and he was
less shy about it when once he was away from other eyes, with only
Julia's own to express that truth and with indifferent nature all
about. Besides, what discovery had he made this morning but that he also
was in love?

"You've got to be a very great man, you know," she said to him in the
middle of the lake. "I don't know what you mean about my salon, but I
_am_ ambitious."

"We must look at life in a large, bold way," he concurred while he
rested his oars.

"That's what I mean. If I didn't think you could I wouldn't look at
you."

"I could what?"

"Do everything you ought--everything I imagine, I dream of. You _are_
clever: you can never make me believe the contrary after your speech on
Tuesday, Don't speak to me! I've seen, I've heard, and I know what's in
you. I shall hold you to it. You're everything you pretend not to be."

Nick looked at the water while she talked. "Will it always be so
amusing?" he asked.

"Will what always be?"

"Why my career."

"Shan't I make it so?"

"Then it will be yours--it won't be mine," said Nick.

"Ah don't say that--don't make me out that sort of woman! If they should
say it's me I'd drown myself."

"If they should say what's you?"

"Why your getting on. If they should say I push you and do things for
you. Things I mean that you can't do yourself."

"Well, won't you do them? It's just what I count on."

"Don't be dreadful," Julia said. "It would be loathsome if I were
thought the cleverest. That's not the sort of man I want to marry."

"Oh I shall make you work, my dear!"

"Ah _that_----!" she sounded in a tone that might come back to a man
after years.

"You'll do the great thing, you'll make my life the best life," Nick
brought out as if he had been touched to deep conviction. "I daresay
that will keep me in heart."

"In heart? Why shouldn't you be in heart?" And her eyes, lingering on
him, searching him, seemed to question him still more than her lips.

"Oh it will be all right!" he made answer.

"You'll like success as well as any one else. Don't tell me--you're not
so ethereal!"

"Yes, I shall like success."

"So shall I! And of course I'm glad you'll now be able to do things,"
Julia went on. "I'm glad you'll have things. I'm glad I'm not poor."

"Ah don't speak of that," Nick murmured. "Only be nice to my mother. We
shall make her supremely happy."

"It wouldn't be for your mother I'd do it--yet I'm glad I like your
people," Mrs. Dallow rectified. "Leave them to me!"

"You're generous--you're noble," he stammered.

"Your mother must live at Broadwood; she must have it for life. It's not
at all bad."

"Ah Julia," her companion replied, "it's well I love you!"

"Why shouldn't you?" she laughed; and after this no more was said
between them till the boat touched shore. When she had got out she
recalled that it was time for luncheon; but they took no action in
consequence, strolling in a direction which was not that of the house.
There was a vista that drew them on, a grassy path skirting the
foundations of scattered beeches and leading to a stile from which the
charmed wanderer might drop into another division of Mrs. Dallow's
property. She said something about their going as far as the stile, then
the next instant exclaimed: "How stupid of you--you've forgotten Mr.
Hoppus!"

Nick wondered. "We left him in the temple of Vesta. Darling, I had other
things to think of there."

"I'll send for him," said Julia.

"Lord, can you think of him now?" he asked.

"Of course I can--more than ever."

"Shall we go back for him?"--and he pulled up.

She made no direct answer, but continued to walk, saying they would go
as far as the stile. "Of course I know you're fearfully vague," she
presently resumed.

"I wasn't vague at all. But you were in such a hurry to get away."

"It doesn't signify. I've another at home."

"Another summer-house?" he more lightly suggested.

"A copy of Mr. Hoppus."

"Mercy, how you go in for him! Fancy having two!"

"He sent me the number of the magazine, and the other's the one that
comes every month."

"Every month; I see"--but his manner justified considerably her charge
of vagueness. They had reached the stile and he leaned over it, looking
at a great mild meadow and at the browsing beasts in the distance.

"Did you suppose they come every day?" Julia went on.

"Dear no, thank God!" They remained there a little; he continued to look
at the animals and before long added: "Delightful English pastoral
scene. Why do they say it won't paint?"

"Who says it won't?"

"I don't know--some of them. It will in France; but somehow it won't
here."

"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Dallow demanded.

He appeared unable to satisfy her on this point; instead of answering
her directly he at any rate said: "Is Broadwood very charming?"

"Have you never been there? It shows how you've treated me. We used to
go there in August. George had ideas about it," she added. She had never
affected not to speak of her late husband, especially with Nick, whose
kinsman he had in a manner been and who had liked him better than some
others did.

"George had ideas about a great many things."

Yet she appeared conscious it would be rather odd on such an occasion to
take this up. It was even odd in Nick to have said it. "Broadwood's just
right," she returned at last. "It's neither too small nor too big, and
it takes care of itself. There's nothing to be done: you can't spend a
penny."

"And don't you want to use it?"

"We can go and stay with _them_," said Julia.

"They'll think I bring them an angel." And Nick covered her white hand,
which was resting on the stile, with his own large one.

"As they regard you yourself as an angel they'll take it as natural of
you to associate with your kind."

"Oh _my_ kind!" he quite wailed, looking at the cows.

But his very extravagance perhaps saved it, and she turned away from him
as if starting homeward, while he began to retrace his steps with her.
Suddenly she said: "What did you mean that night in Paris?"

"That night----?"

"When you came to the hotel with me after we had all dined at that place
with Peter."

"What did I mean----?"

"About your caring so much for the fine arts. You seemed to want to
frighten me."

"Why should you have been frightened? I can't imagine what I had in my
head: not now."

"You _are_ vague," said Julia with a little flush.

"Not about the great thing."

"The great thing?"

"That I owe you everything an honest man has to offer. How can I care
about the fine arts now?"

She stopped with lighted eyes on him. "Is it because you think you _owe_
it--" and she paused, still with the heightened colour in her cheek,
then went on--"that you've spoken to me as you did there?" She tossed
her head toward the lake.

"I think I spoke to you because I couldn't help it."

"You _are_ vague!" And she walked on again.

"You affect me differently from any other woman."

"Oh other women----! Why shouldn't you care about the fine arts now?"
she added.

"There'll be no time. All my days and my years will be none too much for
what you expect of me."

"I don't expect you to give up anything. I only expect you to do more."

"To do more I must do less. I've no talent."

"No talent?"

"I mean for painting."

Julia pulled up again. "That's odious! You _have_--you must."

He burst out laughing. "You're altogether delightful. But how little you
know about it--about the honourable practice of any art!"

"What do you call practice? You'll have all our things--you'll live in
the midst of them."

"Certainly I shall enjoy looking at them, being so near them."

"Don't say I've taken you away then."

"Taken me away----?"

"From the love of art. I like them myself now, poor George's treasures.
I didn't of old so much, because it seemed to me he made too much of
them--he was always talking."

"Well, I won't always talk," said Nick.

"You may do as you like--they're yours."

"Give them to the nation," Nick went on.

"I like that! When we've done with them."

"We shall have done with them when your Vandykes and Moronis have cured
me of the delusion that I may be of _their_ family. Surely that won't
take long."

"You shall paint _me_," said Julia.

"Never, never, never!" He spoke in a tone that made his companion
stare--then seemed slightly embarrassed at this result of his emphasis.
To relieve himself he said, as they had come back to the place beside
the lake where the boat was moored, "Shan't we really go and fetch Mr.
Hoppus?"

She hesitated. "You may go; I won't, please."

"That's not what I want."

"Oblige me by going. I'll wait here." With which she sat down on the
bench attached to the little landing.

Nick, at this, got into the boat and put off; he smiled at her as she
sat there watching him. He made his short journey, disembarked and went
into the pavilion; but when he came out with the object of his errand he
saw she had quitted her station, had returned to the house without him.
He rowed back quickly, sprang ashore and followed her with long steps.
Apparently she had gone fast; she had almost reached the door when he
overtook her.

"Why did you basely desert me?" he asked, tenderly stopping her there.

"I don't know. Because I'm so happy."

"May I tell mother then?"

"You may tell her she shall have Broadwood."




XVI


He lost no time in going down to see Mr. Carteret, to whom he had
written immediately after the election and who had answered him in
twelve revised pages of historical parallel. He used often to envy Mr.
Carteret's leisure, a sense of which came to him now afresh, in the
summer evening, as he walked up the hill toward the quiet house where
enjoyment had ever been mingled for him with a vague oppression. He was
a little boy again, under Mr. Carteret's roof--a little boy on whom it
had been duly impressed that in the wide, plain, peaceful rooms he was
not to "touch." When he paid a visit to his father's old friend there
were in fact many things--many topics--from which he instinctively kept
his hands. Even Mr. Chayter, the immemorial blank butler, who was so
like his master that he might have been a twin brother, helped to remind
him that he must be good. Mr. Carteret seemed to Nick a very grave
person, but he had the sense that Chayter thought him rather frivolous.

Our young man always came on foot from the station, leaving his
portmanteau to be carried: the direct way was steep and he liked the
slow approach, which gave him a chance to look about the place and smell
the new-mown hay. At this season the air was full of it--the fields were
so near that it was in the clean, still streets. Nick would never have
thought of rattling up to Mr. Carteret's door, which had on an old
brass plate the proprietor's name, as if he had been the principal
surgeon. The house was in the high part, and the neat roofs of other
houses, lower down the hill, made an immediate prospect for it, scarcely
counting, however, since the green country was just below these,
familiar and interpenetrating, in the shape of small but thick-tufted
gardens. Free garden-growths flourished in all the intervals, but the
only disorder of the place was that there were sometimes oats on the
pavements. A crooked lane, with postern doors and cobble-stones, opened
near Mr. Carteret's house and wandered toward the old abbey; for the
abbey was the secondary fact of Beauclere--it came after Mr. Carteret.
Mr. Carteret sometimes went away and the abbey never did; yet somehow
what was most of the essence of the place was that it could boast of the
resident in the squarest of the square red houses, the one with the
finest of the arched hall-windows, in three divisions, over the widest
of the last-century doorways. You saw the great church from the
doorstep, beyond gardens of course, and in the stillness you could hear
the flutter of the birds that circled round its huge short towers. The
towers had been finished only as time finishes things, by lending
assurances to their lapses. There is something right in old monuments
that have been wrong for centuries: some such moral as that was usually
in Nick's mind as an emanation of Beauclere when he saw the grand line
of the roof ride the sky and draw out its length.

When the door with the brass plate was opened and Mr. Chayter appeared
in the middle distance--he always advanced just to the same spot, as a
prime minister receives an ambassador--Nick felt anew that he would be
wonderfully like Mr. Carteret if he had had an expression. He denied
himself this freedom, never giving a sign of recognition, often as the
young man had been at the house. He was most attentive to the visitor's
wants, but apparently feared that if he allowed a familiarity it might
go too far. There was always the same question to be asked--had Mr.
Carteret finished his nap? He usually had not finished it, and this left
Nick what he liked--time to smoke a cigarette in the garden or even to
take before dinner a turn about the place. He observed now, every time
he came, that Mr. Carteret's nap lasted a little longer. There was each
year a little more strength to be gathered for the ceremony of dinner:
this was the principal symptom--almost the only one--that the
clear-cheeked old gentleman gave of not being so fresh as of yore. He
was still wonderful for his age. To-day he was particularly careful:
Chayter went so far as to mention to Nick that four gentlemen were
expected to dinner--an exuberance perhaps partly explained by the
circumstance that Lord Bottomley was one of them.

The prospect of Lord Bottomley was somehow not stirring; it only made
the young man say to himself with a quick, thin sigh, "This time I _am_
in for it!" And he immediately had the unpolitical sense again that
there was nothing so pleasant as the way the quiet bachelor house had
its best rooms on the big garden, which seemed to advance into them
through their wide windows and ruralise their dulness.

"I expect it will be a lateish eight, sir," said Mr. Chayter,
superintending in the library the production of tea on a large scale.
Everything at Mr. Carteret's seemed to Nick on a larger scale than
anywhere else--the tea-cups, the knives and forks, the door-handles, the
chair-backs, the legs of mutton, the candles, and the lumps of coal:
they represented and apparently exhausted the master's sense of pleasing
effect, for the house was not otherwise decorated. Nick thought it
really hideous, but he was capable at any time of extracting a degree of
amusement from anything strongly characteristic, and Mr. Carteret's
interior expressed a whole view of life. Our young man was generous
enough to find in it a hundred instructive intimations even while it
came over him--as it always did at Beauclere--that this was the view he
himself was expected to take. Nowhere were the boiled eggs at breakfast
so big or in such big receptacles; his own shoes, arranged in his room,
looked to him vaster there than at home. He went out into the garden and
remembered what enormous strawberries they should have for dinner. In
the house was a great deal of Landseer, of oilcloth, of woodwork painted
and "grained."

Finding there would be time before the evening meal or before Mr.
Carteret was likely to see him he quitted the house and took a stroll
toward the abbey. It covered acres of ground on the summit of the hill,
and there were aspects in which its vast bulk reminded him of the ark
left high and dry upon Ararat. It was the image at least of a great
wreck, of the indestructible vessel of a faith, washed up there by a
storm centuries before. The injury of time added to this appearance--the
infirmities round which, as he knew, the battle of restoration had begun
to be fought. The cry had been raised to save the splendid pile, and the
counter-cry by the purists, the sentimentalists, whatever they were, to
save it from being saved. They were all exchanging compliments in the
morning papers.

Nick sauntered about the church--it took a good while; he leaned against
low things and looked up at it while he smoked another cigarette. It
struck him as a great pity such a pile should be touched: so much of the
past was buried there that it was like desecrating, like digging up a
grave. Since the years were letting it down so gently why jostle the
elbow of slow-fingering time? The fading afternoon was exquisitely pure;
the place was empty; he heard nothing but the cries of several children,
which sounded sweet, who were playing on the flatness of the very old
tombs. He knew this would inevitably be one of the topics at dinner, the
restoration of the abbey; it would give rise to a considerable deal of
orderly debate. Lord Bottomley, oddly enough, would probably oppose the
expensive project, but on grounds that would be characteristic of him
even if the attitude were not. Nick's nerves always knew on this spot
what it was to be soothed; but he shifted his position with a slight
impatience as the vision came over him of Lord Bottomley's treating a
question of esthetics. It was enough to make one want to take the other
side, the idea of having the same taste as his lordship: one would have
it for such different reasons.

Dear Mr. Carteret would be deliberate and fair all round and would, like
his noble friend, exhibit much more architectural knowledge than he,
Nick, possessed: which would not make it a whit less droll to our young
man that an artistic idea, so little really assimilated, should be
broached at that table and in that air. It would remain so outside of
their minds and their minds would remain so outside of it. It would be
dropped at last, however, after half an hour's gentle worrying, and the
conversation would incline itself to public affairs. Mr. Carteret would
find his natural level--the production of anecdote in regard to the
formation of early ministries. He knew more than any one else about the
personages of whom certain cabinets would have consisted if they had not
consisted of others. His favourite exercise was to illustrate how
different everything might have been from what it was, and how the
reason of the difference had always been somebody's inability to "see
his way" to accept the view of somebody else--a view usually at the time
discussed in strict confidence with Mr. Carteret, who surrounded his
actual violation of that confidence thirty years later with many
precautions against scandal. In this retrospective vein, at the head of
his table, the old gentleman enjoyed a hearing, or at any rate commanded
a silence, often intense. Every one left it to some one else to ask
another question; and when by chance some one else did so every one was
struck with admiration at any one's being able to say anything. Nick
knew the moment when he himself would take a glass of a particular port
and, surreptitiously looking at his watch, perceive it was ten o'clock.
That timepiece might as well mark 1830.

All this would be a part of the suggestion of leisure that invariably
descended upon him at Beauclere--the image of a sloping shore where the
tide of time broke with a ripple too faint to be a warning. But there
was another admonition almost equally sure to descend upon his spirit
during a stroll in a summer hour about the grand abbey; to sink into it
as the light lingered on the rough red walls and the local accent of the
children sounded soft in the churchyard. It was simply the sense of
England--a sort of apprehended revelation of his country. The dim annals
of the place were sensibly, heavily in the air--foundations bafflingly
early, a great monastic life, wars of the Roses, with battles and blood
in the streets, and then the long quietude of the respectable centuries,
all corn-fields and magistrates and vicars--and these things were
connected with an emotion that arose from the green country, the rich
land so infinitely lived in, and laid on him a hand that was too ghostly
to press and yet somehow too urgent to be light. It produced a throb he
couldn't have spoken of, it was so deep, and that was half imagination
and half responsibility. These impressions melted together and made a
general appeal, of which, with his new honours as a legislator, he was
the sentient subject. If he had a love for that particular scene of life
mightn't it have a love for him and expect something of him? What fate
could be so high as to grow old in a national affection? What a fine
sort of reciprocity, making mere soreness of all the balms of
indifference!

The great church was still open and he turned into it and wandered a
little in the twilight that had gathered earlier there. The whole
structure, with its immensity of height and distance, seemed to rest on
tremendous facts--facts of achievement and endurance--and the huge
Norman pillars to loom through the dimness like the ghosts of heroes.
Nick was more struck with its thick earthly than with its fine spiritual
reference, and he felt the oppression of his conscience as he walked
slowly about. It was in his mind that nothing in life was really clear,
all things were mingled and charged, and that patriotism might be an
uplifting passion even if it had to allow for Lord Bottomley and for Mr.
Carteret's blindness on certain sides. He presently noticed that
half-past seven was about to strike, and as he went back to his old
friend's he couldn't have said if he walked in gladness or in gloom.

"Mr. Carteret will be in the drawing-room at a quarter to eight, sir,"
Chayter mentioned, and Nick as he went to dress asked himself what was
the use of being a member of Parliament if one was still sensitive to an
intimation on the part of such a functionary that one ought already to
have begun that business. Chayter's words but meant that Mr. Carteret
would expect to have a little comfortable conversation with him before
dinner. Nick's usual rapidity in dressing was, however, quite adequate
to the occasion, so that his host had not appeared when he went down.
There were flowers in the unfeminine saloon, which contained several
paintings in addition to the engravings of pictures of animals; but
nothing could prevent its reminding Nick of a comfortable
committee-room.

Mr. Carteret presently came in with his gold-headed stick, a laugh like
a series of little warning coughs and the air of embarrassment that our
young man always perceived in him at first. He was almost eighty but was
still shy--he laughed a great deal, faintly and vaguely, at nothing, as
if to make up for the seriousness with which he took some jokes. He
always began by looking away from his interlocutor, and it was only
little by little that his eyes came round; after which their limpid and
benevolent blue made you wonder why they should ever be circumspect. He
was clean-shaven and had a long upper lip. When he had seated himself he
talked of "majorities" and showed a disposition to converse on the
general subject of the fluctuation of Liberal gains. He had an
extraordinary memory for facts of this sort, and could mention the
figures relating to the returns from innumerable places in particular
years. To many of these facts he attached great importance, in his
simple, kindly, presupposing way; correcting himself five minutes later
if he had said that in 1857 some one had had 6014 instead of 6004.

Nick always felt a great hypocrite as he listened to him, in spite of
the old man's courtesy--a thing so charming in itself that it would have
been grossness to speak of him as a bore. The difficulty was that he
took for granted all kinds of positive assent, and Nick, in such
company, found himself steeped in an element of tacit pledges which
constituted the very medium of intercourse and yet made him draw his
breath a little in pain when for a moment he measured them. There would
have been no hypocrisy at all if he could have regarded Mr. Carteret as
a mere sweet spectacle, the last or almost the last illustration of a
departing tradition of manners. But he represented something more than
manners; he represented what he believed to be morals and ideas, ideas
as regards which he took your personal deference--not discovering how
natural that was--for participation. Nick liked to think that his
father, though ten years younger, had found it congruous to make his
best friend of the owner of so nice a nature: it gave a softness to his
feeling for that memory to be reminded that Sir Nicholas had been of the
same general type--a type so pure, so disinterested, so concerned for
the public good. Just so it endeared Mr. Carteret to him to perceive
that he considered his father had done a definite work, prematurely
interrupted, which had been an absolute benefit to the people of
England. The oddity was, however, that though both Mr. Carteret's aspect
and his appreciation were still so fresh this relation of his to his
late distinguished friend made the latter appear to Nick even more
irrecoverably dead. The good old man had almost a vocabulary of his own,
made up of old-fashioned political phrases and quite untainted with the
new terms, mostly borrowed from America; indeed his language and his
tone made those of almost any one who might be talking with him sound by
contrast rather American. He was, at least nowadays, never severe nor
denunciatory; but sometimes in telling an anecdote he dropped such an
expression as "the rascal said to me" or such an epithet as "the vulgar
dog."

Nick was always struck with the rare simplicity--it came out in his
countenance--of one who had lived so long and seen so much of affairs
that draw forth the passions and perversities of men. It often made him
say to himself that Mr. Carteret must have had many odd parts to have
been able to achieve with his means so many things requiring cleverness.
It was as if experience, though coming to him in abundance, had dealt
with him so clean-handedly as to leave no stain, and had moreover never
provoked him to any general reflexion. He had never proceeded in any
ironic way from the particular to the general; certainly he had never
made a reflexion upon anything so unparliamentary as Life. He would have
questioned the taste of such an extravagance and if he had encountered
it on the part of another have regarded it as an imported foreign toy
with the uses of which he was unacquainted. Life, for him, was a purely
practical function, not a question of more or less showy phrasing. It
must be added that he had to Nick's perception his variations--his back
windows opening into grounds more private. That was visible from the way
his eye grew cold and his whole polite face rather austere when he
listened to something he didn't agree with or perhaps even understand;
as if his modesty didn't in strictness forbid the suspicion that a thing
he didn't understand would have a probability against it. At such times
there was something rather deadly in the silence in which he simply
waited with a lapse in his face, not helping his interlocutor out. Nick
would have been very sorry to attempt to communicate to him a matter he
wouldn't be likely to understand. This cut off of course a multitude of
subjects.

The evening passed exactly as he had foreseen, even to the markedly
prompt dispersal of the guests, two of whom were "local" men, earnest
and distinct, though not particularly distinguished. The third was a
young, slim, uninitiated gentleman whom Lord Bottomley brought with him
and concerning whom Nick was informed beforehand that he was engaged to
be married to the Honourable Jane, his lordship's second daughter. There
were recurrent allusions to Nick's victory, as to which he had the fear
that he might appear to exhibit less interest in it than the company
did. He took energetic precautions against this and felt repeatedly a
little spent with them, for the subject always came up once more. Yet it
was not as his but as theirs that they liked the triumph. Mr. Carteret
took leave of him for the night directly after the other guests had
gone, using at this moment the words he had often used before:

"You may sit up to any hour you like. I only ask that you don't read in
bed."




XVII


Nick's little visit was to terminate immediately after luncheon the
following day: much as the old man enjoyed his being there he wouldn't
have dreamed of asking for more of his time now that it had such great
public uses. He liked infinitely better that his young friend should be
occupied with parliamentary work than only occupied in talking it over
with him. Talking it over, however, was the next best thing, as on the
morrow, after breakfast, Mr. Carteret showed Nick he considered. They
sat in the garden, the morning being warm, and the old man had a table
beside him covered with the letters and newspapers the post had poured
forth. He was proud of his correspondence, which was altogether on
public affairs, and proud in a manner of the fact that he now dictated
almost everything. That had more in it of the statesman in retirement, a
character indeed not consciously assumed by Mr. Carteret, but always
tacitly attributed to him by Nick, who took it rather from the pictorial
point of view--remembering on each occasion only afterwards that though
he was in retirement he had not exactly been a statesman. A young man, a
very sharp, handy young man, came every morning at ten o'clock and wrote
for him till luncheon. The young man had a holiday to-day in honour of
Nick's visit--a fact the mention of which led Nick to make some not
particularly sincere speech about _his_ being ready to write anything
if Mr. Carteret were at all pressed.

"Ah but your own budget--what will become of that?" the old gentleman
objected, glancing at Nick's pockets as if rather surprised not to see
them stuffed out with documents in split envelopes. His visitor had to
confess that he had not directed his letters to meet him at Beauclere:
he should find them in town that afternoon. This led to a little homily
from Mr. Carteret which made him feel quite guilty; there was such an
implication of neglected duty in the way the old man said, "You won't do
them justice--you won't do them justice." He talked for ten minutes, in
his rich, simple, urbane way, about the fatal consequences of getting
behind. It was his favourite doctrine that one should always be a little
before, and his own eminently regular respiration seemed to illustrate
the idea. A man was certainly before who had so much in his rear.

This led to the bestowal of a good deal of general advice on the
mistakes to avoid at the beginning of a parliamentary career--as to
which Mr. Carteret spoke with the experience of one who had sat for
fifty years in the House of Commons. Nick was amused, but also mystified
and even a little irritated, by his talk: it was founded on the idea of
observation and yet our young man couldn't at all regard him as an
observer. "He doesn't observe _me_," he said to himself; "if he did he
would see, he wouldn't think----!" The end of this private cogitation
was a vague impatience of all the things his venerable host took for
granted. He didn't see any of the things Nick saw. Some of these latter
were the light touches the summer morning scattered through the sweet
old garden. The time passed there a good deal as if it were sitting
still with a plaid under its feet while Mr. Carteret distilled a little
more of the wisdom he had laid up in his fifty years. This immense term
had something fabulous and monstrous for Nick, who wondered whether it
were the sort of thing his companion supposed _he_ had gone in for. It
was not strange Mr. Carteret should be different; he might originally
have been more--well, to himself Nick was not obliged to phrase it: what
our young man meant was more of what it was perceptible to him that his
old friend was not. Should even he, Nick, be like that at the end of
fifty years? What Mr. Carteret was so good as to expect for him was that
he should be much more distinguished; and wouldn't this exactly mean
much more like that? Of course Nick heard some things he had heard
before; as for instance the circumstances that had originally led the
old man to settle at Beauclere. He had been returned for that
borough--it was his second seat--in years far remote, and had come to
live there because he then had a conscientious conviction, modified
indeed by later experience, that a member should be constantly resident.
He spoke of this now, smiling rosily, as he might have spoken of some
wild aberration of his youth; yet he called Nick's attention to the fact
that he still so far clung to his conviction as to hold--though of what
might be urged on the other side he was perfectly aware--that a
representative should at least be as resident as possible. This gave
Nick an opening for something that had been on and off his lips all the
morning.

"According to that I ought to take up my abode at Harsh."

"In the measure of the convenient I shouldn't be sorry to see you do
it."

"It ought to be rather convenient," Nick largely smiled. "I've got a
piece of news for you which I've kept, as one keeps that sort of
thing--for it's very good--till the last." He waited a little to see if
Mr. Carteret would guess, and at first thought nothing would come of
this. But after resting his young-looking eyes on him for a moment the
old man said:

"I should indeed be very happy to hear that you've arranged to take a
wife."

"Mrs. Dallow has been so good as to say she'll marry me," Nick returned.

"That's very suitable. I should think it would answer."

"It's very jolly," said Nick. It was well Mr. Carteret was not what his
guest called observant, or he might have found a lower pitch in the
sound of this sentence than in the sense.

"Your dear father would have liked it."

"So my mother says."

"And _she_ must be delighted."

"Mrs. Dallow, do you mean?" Nick asked.

"I was thinking of your mother. But I don't exclude the charming lady. I
remember her as a little girl. I must have seen her at Windrush. Now I
understand the fine spirit with which she threw herself into your
canvass."

"It was her they elected," said Nick.

"I don't know," his host went on, "that I've ever been an enthusiast for
political women, but there's no doubt that in approaching the mass of
electors a graceful, affable manner, the manner of the real English
lady, is a force not to be despised."

"Julia's a real English lady and at the same time a very political
woman," Nick remarked.

"Isn't it rather in the family? I remember once going to see her mother
in town and finding the leaders of both parties sitting with her."

"My principal friend, of the others, is her brother Peter. I don't think
he troubles himself much about that sort of thing," said Nick.

"What does he trouble himself about?" Mr. Carteret asked with a certain
gravity.

"He's in the diplomatic service; he's a secretary in Paris."

"That may be serious," said the old man.

"He takes a great interest in the theatre. I suppose you'll say that may
be serious too," Nick laughed.

"Oh!"--and Mr. Carteret looked as if he scarcely understood. Then he
continued; "Well, it can't hurt you."

"It can't hurt me?"

"If Mrs. Dallow takes an interest in your interests."

"When a man's in my situation he feels as if nothing could hurt him."

"I'm very glad you're happy," said Mr. Carteret. He rested his mild eyes
on our young man, who had a sense of seeing in them for a moment the
faint ghost of an old story, the last strange flicker, as from cold
ashes, of a flame that had become the memory of a memory. This glimmer
of wonder and envy, the revelation of a life intensely celibate, was for
an instant infinitely touching. Nick had harboured a theory, suggested
by a vague allusion from his father, who had been discreet, that their
benevolent friend had had in his youth an unhappy love-affair which had
led him to forswear for ever the commerce of woman. What remained in him
of conscious renunciation gave a throb as he looked at his bright
companion, who proposed to take the matter so much the other way. "It's
good to marry and I think it's right. I've not done right, I know that.
If she's a good woman it's the best thing," Mr. Carteret went on. "It's
what I've been hoping for you. Sometimes I've thought of speaking to
you."

"She's a very good woman," said Nick.

"And I hope she's not poor." Mr. Carteret spoke exactly with the same
blandness.

"No indeed, she's rich. Her husband, whom I knew and liked, left her a
large fortune."

"And on what terms does she enjoy it?"

"I haven't the least idea," said Nick.

Mr. Carteret considered. "I see. It doesn't concern you. It needn't
concern you," he added in a moment.

Nick thought of his mother at this, but he returned: "I daresay she can
do what she likes with her money."

"So can I, my dear young friend," said Mr. Carteret.

Nick tried not to look conscious, for he felt a significance in the old
man's face. He turned his own everywhere but toward it, thinking again
of his mother. "That must be very pleasant, if one has any."

"I wish you had a little more."

"I don't particularly care," said Nick.

"Your marriage will assist you; you can't help that," Mr. Carteret
declared. "But I should like you to be under obligations not quite so
heavy."

"Oh I'm so obliged to her for caring for me----!"

"That the rest doesn't count? Certainly it's nice of her to like you.
But why shouldn't she? Other people do."

"Some of them make me feel as if I abused it," said Nick, looking at his
host. "That is, they don't make me, but I feel it," he corrected.

"I've no son "--and Mr. Carteret spoke as if his companion mightn't have
been sure. "Shan't you be very kind to her?" he pursued. "You'll gratify
her ambition."

"Oh she thinks me cleverer than I am."

"That's because she's in love," the old gentleman hinted as if this were
very subtle. "However, you must be as clever as we think you. If you
don't prove so----!" And he paused with his folded hands.

"Well, if I don't?" asked Nick.

"Oh it won't do--it won't do," said Mr. Carteret in a tone his companion
was destined to remember afterwards. "I say I've no son," he continued;
"but if I had had one he should have risen high."

"It's well for me such a person doesn't exist. I shouldn't easily have
found a wife."

"He would have gone to the altar with a little money in his pocket."

"That would have been the least of his advantages, sir," Nick declared.

"When are you to be married?" Mr. Carteret asked.

"Ah that's the question. Julia won't yet say."

"Well," said the old man without the least flourish, "you may consider
that when it comes off I'll make you a settlement."

"I feel your kindness more than I can express," Nick replied; "but that
will probably be the moment when I shall be least conscious of wanting
anything."

"You'll appreciate it later--you'll appreciate it very soon. I shall
like you to appreciate it," Mr. Carteret went on as if he had a just
vision of the way a young man of a proper spirit should feel. Then he
added; "Your father would have liked you to appreciate it."

"Poor father!" Nick exclaimed vaguely, rather embarrassed, reflecting on
the oddity of a position in which the ground for holding up his head as
the husband of a rich woman would be that he had accepted a present of
money from another source. It was plain he was not fated to go in for
independence; the most that he could treat himself to would be
dependence that was duly grateful "How much do you expect of me?" he
inquired with a grave face.

"Well, Nicholas, only what your father did. He so often spoke of you, I
remember, at the last, just after you had been with him alone--you know
I saw him then. He was greatly moved by his interview with you, and so
was I by what he told me of it. He said he should live on in you--he
should work in you. It has always given me a special feeling, if I may
use the expression, about you."

"The feelings are indeed not usual, dear Mr. Carteret, which take so
munificent a form. But you do--oh you do--expect too much," Nick brought
himself to say.

"I expect you to repay me!" the old man returned gaily. "As for the
form, I have it in my mind."

"The form of repayment?"

"The form of repayment!"

"Ah don't talk of that now," said Nick, "for, you see, nothing else is
settled. No one has been told except my mother. She has only consented
to my telling you."

"Lady Agnes, do you mean?"

"Ah no; dear mother would like to publish it on the house-tops. She's so
glad--she wants us to have it over to-morrow. But Julia herself," Nick
explained, "wishes to wait. Therefore kindly mention it for the present
to no one."

"My dear boy, there's at this rate nothing to mention! What does Julia
want to wait for?"

"Till I like her better--that's what she says."

"It's the way to make you like her worse," Mr. Carteret knowingly
declared. "Hasn't she your affection?"

"So much so that her delay makes me exceedingly unhappy."

Mr. Carteret looked at his young friend as if he didn't strike him as
quite wretched; but he put the question: "Then what more does she want?"
Nick laughed out at this, though perceiving his host hadn't meant it as
an epigram; while the latter resumed: "I don't understand. You're
engaged or you're not engaged."

"She is, but I'm not. That's what she says about it. The trouble is she
doesn't believe in me."

Mr. Carteret shone with his candour. "Doesn't she love you then?"

"That's what I ask her. Her answer is that she loves me only too well.
She's so afraid of being a burden to me that she gives me my freedom
till I've taken another year to think."

"I like the way you talk about other years!" Mr. Carteret cried. "You
had better do it while I'm here to bless you."

"She thinks I proposed to her because she got me in for Harsh," said
Nick.

"Well, I'm sure it would be a very pretty return."

"Ah she doesn't believe in me," the young man repeated.

"Then I don't believe in _her_."

"Don't say that--don't say that. She's a very rare creature. But she's
proud, shy, suspicious."

"Suspicious of what?"

"Of everything. She thinks I'm not persistent."

"Oh, oh!"--Nick's host deprecated such freedom.

"She can't believe I shall arrive at true eminence."

"A good wife should believe what her husband believes," said Mr.
Carteret.

"Ah unfortunately"--and Nick took the words at a run--"I don't believe
it either."

Mr. Carteret, who might have been watching an odd physical rush, spoke
with a certain dryness. "Your dear father did."

"I think of that--I think of that," Nick replied.

"Certainly it will help me. If I say we're engaged," he went on, "it's
because I consider it so. She gives me my liberty, but I don't take it."

"Does she expect you to take back your word?"

"That's what I ask her. _She_ never will. Therefore we're as good as
tied."

"I don't like it," said Mr. Carteret after a moment. "I don't like
ambiguous, uncertain situations. They please me much better when they're
definite and clear." The retreat of expression had been sounded in his
face--the aspect it wore when he wished not to be encouraging. But after
an instant he added in a tone more personal: "Don't disappoint me, dear
boy."

"Ah not willingly!" his visitor protested.

"I've told you what I should like to do for you. See that the conditions
come about promptly in which I _may_, do it. Are you sure you do
everything to satisfy Mrs. Dallow?" Mr. Carteret continued.

"I think I'm very nice to her," Nick declared. "But she's so ambitious.
Frankly speaking, it's a pity for her that she likes me."

"She can't help that!" the old man charmingly said.

"Possibly. But isn't it a reason for taking me as I am? What she wants
to do is to take me as I may be a year hence."

"I don't understand--since you tell me that even then she won't take
back her word," said Mr. Carteret.

"If she doesn't marry me I think she'll never marry again at all."

"What then does she gain by delay?"

"Simply this, as I make it out," said Nick--"that she'll feel she has
been very magnanimous. She won't have to reproach herself with not
having given me a chance to change."

"To change? What does she think you liable to do?"

Nick had a pause. "I don't know!" he then said--not at all candidly.

"Everything has altered: young people in my day looked at these
questions more naturally," Mr. Carteret observed. "A woman in love has
no need to be magnanimous. If she plays too fair she isn't in love," he
added shrewdly.

"Oh, Julia's safe--she's safe," Nick smiled.

"If it were a question between you and another gentleman one might
comprehend. But what does it mean, between you and nothing?"

"I'm much obliged to you, sir," Nick returned. "The trouble is that she
doesn't know what she has got hold of."

"Ah, if you can't make it clear to her!"--and his friend showed the note
of impatience.

"I'm such a humbug," said the young man. And while his companion stared
he continued: "I deceive people without in the least intending it."

"What on earth do you mean? Are you deceiving me?"

"I don't know--it depends on what you think."

"I think you're flighty," said Mr. Carteret, with the nearest approach
to sternness Nick had ever observed in him. "I never thought so before."

"Forgive me; it's all right. I'm not frivolous; that I promise you I'm
not."

"You _have_ deceived me if you are."

"It's all right," Nick stammered with a blush.

"Remember your name--carry it high."

"I will--as high as possible."

"You've no excuse. Don't tell me, after your speeches at Harsh!" Nick
was on the point of declaring again that he was a humbug, so vivid was
his inner sense of what he thought of his factitious public utterances,
which had the cursed property of creating dreadful responsibilities and
importunate credulities for him. If _he_ was "clever" (ah the idiotic
"clever"!) what fools many other people were! He repressed his impulse
and Mr. Carteret pursued. "If, as you express it, Mrs. Dallow doesn't
know what she has got hold of, won't it clear the matter up a little by
informing her that the day before your marriage is definitely settled to
take place you'll come into something comfortable?"

A quick vision of what Mr. Carteret would be likely to regard as
something comfortable flitted before Nick, but it didn't prevent his
replying: "Oh I'm afraid that won't do any good. It would make her like
you better, but it wouldn't make her like me. I'm afraid she won't care
for any benefit that comes to me from another hand than hers. Her
affection's a very jealous sentiment."

"It's a very peculiar one!" sighed Mr. Carteret. "Mine's a jealous
sentiment too. However, if she takes it that way don't tell her."

"I'll let you know as soon as she comes round," said Nick.

"And you'll tell your mother," Mr. Carteret returned. "I shall like
_her_ to know."

"It will be delightful news to her. But she's keen enough already."

"I know that. I may mention now that she has written to me," the old man
added.

"So I suspected."

"We've--a--corresponded on the subject," Mr. Carteret continued to
confess. "My view of the advantageous character of such an alliance has
entirely coincided with hers."

"It was very good-natured of you then to leave me to speak first," said
Nick.

"I should have been disappointed if you hadn't. I don't like all you've
told me. But don't disappoint me now."

"Dear Mr. Carteret!" Nick vaguely and richly sounded.

"I won't disappoint _you_," that gentleman went on with a finer point
while he looked at his big old-fashioned watch.




BOOK FOURTH




XVIII


At first Peter Sherringham thought of asking to be transferred to
another post and went so far, in London, as to take what he believed
good advice on the subject. The advice, perhaps struck him as the better
for consisting of a strong recommendation to do nothing so foolish. Two
or three reasons were mentioned to him why such a request would not, in
the particular circumstances, raise him in the esteem of his superiors,
and he promptly recognised their force. He next became aware that it
might help him--not with his superiors but with himself--to apply for an
extension of leave, and then on further reflexion made out that, though
there are some dangers before which it is perfectly consistent with
honour to flee, it was better for every one concerned that he should
fight this especial battle on the spot. During his holiday his plan of
campaign gave him plenty of occupation. He refurbished his arms, rubbed
up his strategy, laid down his lines of defence.

There was only one thing in life his mind had been much made up to, but
on this question he had never wavered: he would get on, to the utmost,
in his profession. That was a point on which it was perfectly lawful to
be unamiable to others--to be vigilant, eager, suspicious, selfish. He
had not in fact been unamiable to others, for his affairs had not
required it: he had got on well enough without hardening his heart.
Fortune had been kind to him and he had passed so many competitors on
the way that he could forswear jealousy and be generous. But he had
always flattered himself his hand wouldn't falter on the day he should
find it necessary to drop bitterness into his cup. This day would be
sure to dawn, since no career could be all clear water to the end; and
then the sacrifice would find him ready. His mind was familiar with the
thought of a sacrifice: it is true that no great plainness invested
beforehand the occasion, the object or the victim. All that particularly
stood out was that the propitiatory offering would have to be some
cherished enjoyment. Very likely indeed this enjoyment would be
associated with the charms of another person--a probability pregnant
with the idea that such charms would have to be dashed out of sight. At
any rate it never had occurred to Sherringham that he himself might be
the sacrifice. You had to pay to get on, but at least you borrowed from
others to do it. When you couldn't borrow you didn't get on, for what
was the situation in life in which you met the whole requisition
yourself?

Least of all had it occurred to our friend that the wrench might come
through his interest in that branch of art on which Nick Dormer had
rallied him. The beauty of a love of the theatre was precisely in its
being a passion exercised on the easiest terms. This was not the region
of responsibility. It was sniffed at, to its discredit, by the austere;
but if it was not, as such people said, a serious field, was not the
compensation just that you couldn't be seriously entangled in it?
Sherringham's great advantage, as he regarded the matter, was that he
had always kept his taste for the drama quite in its place. His
facetious cousin was free to pretend that it sprawled through his life;
but this was nonsense, as any unprejudiced observer of that life would
unhesitatingly attest. There had not been the least sprawling, and his
interest in the art of Garrick had never, he was sure, made him in any
degree ridiculous. It had never drawn down from above anything
approaching a reprimand, a remonstrance, a remark. Sherringham was
positively proud of his discretion, for he was not a little proud of
what he did know about the stage. Trifling for trifling, there were
plenty of his fellows who had in their lives infatuations less edifying
and less confessable. Hadn't he known men who collected old
invitation-cards and were ready to commit _bassesses_ for those of the
eighteenth century? hadn't he known others who had a secret passion for
shuffleboard? His little weaknesses were intellectual--they were a part
of the life of the mind. All the same, on the day they showed a symptom
of interfering they should be plucked off with a turn of the wrist.

Sherringham scented interference now, and interference in rather an
invidious form. It might be a bore, from the point of view of the
profession, to find one's self, as a critic of the stage, in love with a
_coquine_; but it was a much greater bore to find one's self in love
with a young woman whose character remained to be estimated. Miriam
Rooth was neither fish nor flesh: one had with her neither the
guarantees of one's own class nor the immunities of hers. What _was_
hers if one came to that? A rare ambiguity on this point was part of the
fascination she had ended by throwing over him. Poor Peter's scheme for
getting on had contained no proviso against his falling in love, but it
had embodied an important clause on the subject of surprises. It was
always a surprise to fall in love, especially if one was looking out for
it; so this contingency had not been worth official paper. But it
became a man who respected the service he had undertaken for the State
to be on his guard against predicaments from which the only issue was
the rigour of matrimony. Ambition, in the career, was probably
consistent with marrying--but only with opening one's eyes very wide to
do it. That was the fatal surprise--to be led to the altar in a dream.
Sherringham's view of the proprieties attached to such a step was high
and strict; and if he held that a man in his position was, above all as
the position improved, essentially a representative of the greatness of
his country, he considered that the wife of such a personage would
exercise in her degree--for instance at a foreign court--a function no
less symbolic. She would in short always be a very important quantity,
and the scene was strewn with illustrations of this general truth. She
might be such a help and might be such a blight that common prudence
required some test of her in advance. Sherringham had seen women in the
career, who were stupid or vulgar, make such a mess of things as would
wring your heart. Then he had his positive idea of the perfect
ambassadress, the full-blown lily of the future; and with this idea
Miriam Rooth presented no analogy whatever.

The girl had described herself with characteristic directness as "all
right"; and so she might be, so she assuredly was: only all right for
what? He had made out she was not sentimental--that whatever capacity
she might have for responding to a devotion or for desiring it was at
any rate not in the direction of vague philandering. With him certainly
she had no disposition to philander. Sherringham almost feared to dwell
on this, lest it should beget in him a rage convertible mainly into
caring for her more. Rage or no rage it would be charming to be in love
with her if there were no complications; but the complications were
just what was clearest in the prospect. He was perhaps cold-blooded to
think of them, but it must be remembered that they were the particular
thing his training had equipped him for dealing with. He was at all
events not too cold-blooded to have, for the two months of his holiday,
very little inner vision of anything more abstract than Miriam's face.
The desire to see it again was as pressing as thirst, but he tried to
practise the endurance of the traveller in the desert. He kept the
Channel between them, but his spirit consumed every day an inch of the
interval, until--and it was not long--there were no more inches left.
The last thing he expected the future ambassadress to have been was
_fille de théâtre_. The answer to this objection was of course that
Miriam was not yet so much of one but that he could easily, by a
handsome "worldly" offer, arrest her development. Then came worrying
retorts to that, chief among which was the sense that to his artistic
conscience arresting her development would be a plan combining on his
part fatuity, not to say imbecility, with baseness. It was exactly to
her development the poor girl had the greatest right, and he shouldn't
really alter anything by depriving her of it. Wasn't she the artist to
the tips of her tresses--the ambassadress never in the world--and
wouldn't she take it out in something else if one were to make her
deviate? So certain was that demonic gift to insist ever on its own.

Besides, _could_ one make her deviate? If she had no disposition to
philander what was his warrant for supposing she could be corrupted into
respectability? How could the career--his career--speak to a nature that
had glimpses as vivid as they were crude of such a different range and
for which success meant quite another sauce to the dish? Would the
brilliancy of marrying Peter Sherringham be such a bribe to
relinquishment? How could he think so without pretensions of the sort he
pretended exactly not to flaunt?--how could he put himself forward as so
high a prize? Relinquishment of the opportunity to exercise a rare
talent was not, in the nature of things, an easy effort to a young lady
who was herself presumptuous as well as ambitious. Besides, she might
eat her cake and have it--might make her fortune both on the stage and
in the world. Successful actresses had ended by marrying dukes, and was
not that better than remaining obscure and marrying a commoner? There
were moments when he tried to pronounce the girl's "gift" not a force to
reckon with; there was so little to show for it as yet that the caprice
of believing in it would perhaps suddenly leave him. But his conviction
that it was real was too uneasy to make such an experiment peaceful, and
he came back, moreover, to his deepest impression--that of her being of
the inward mould for which the only consistency is the play of genius.
Hadn't Madame Carré declared at the last that she could "do anything"?
It was true that if Madame Carré had been mistaken in the first place
she might also be mistaken in the second. But in this latter case she
would be mistaken with him--and such an error would be too like a truth.

How, further, shall we exactly measure for him--Sherringham felt the
discomfort of the advantage Miriam had of him--the advantage of her
presenting herself in a light that rendered any passion he might
entertain an implication of duty as well as of pleasure? Why there
should have been this implication was more than he could say; sometimes
he held himself rather abject, or at least absurdly superstitious, for
seeing it. He didn't know, he could scarcely conceive, of another case
of the same general type in which he would have recognised it. In
foreign countries there were very few ladies of Miss Rooth's intended
profession who would not have regarded it as too strong an order that,
to console them for not being admitted into drawing-rooms, they should
have no offset but the exercise of a virtue in which no one would
believe. This was because in foreign countries actresses were not
admitted into drawing-rooms: that was a pure English drollery,
ministering equally little to real histrionics and to the higher tone of
these resorts. Did the oppressive sanctity which made it a burden to
have to reckon with his young friend come then from her being English?
Peter could recall cases in which that privilege operated as little as
possible as a restriction. It came a great deal from Mrs. Rooth, in whom
he apprehended depths of calculation as to what she might achieve for
her daughter by "working" the idea of a life blameless amid dire
obsessions. Her romantic turn of mind wouldn't in the least prevent her
regarding that idea as a substantial capital, to be laid out to the best
worldly advantage. Miriam's essential irreverence was capable, on a
pretext, of making mince-meat of it--that he was sure of; for the only
capital she recognised was the talent which some day managers and agents
would outbid each other in paying for. Yet as a creature easy at so many
points she was fond of her mother, would do anything to oblige--that
might work in all sorts of ways--and would probably like the loose
slippers of blamelessness quite as well as having to meet some of the
queer high standards of the opposite camp.

Sherringham, I may add, had no desire that she should indulge a
different preference: it was distasteful to him to compute the
probabilities of a young lady's misbehaving for his advantage--that
seemed to him definitely base--and he would have thought himself a
blackguard if, even when a prey to his desire, he had not wished the
thing that was best for the object of it. The thing best for Miriam
might be to become the wife of the man to whose suit she should incline
her ear. That this would be the best thing for the gentleman in question
by no means, however, equally followed, and Sherringham's final
conviction was that it would never do for him to act the part of that
hypothetic personage. He asked for no removal and no extension of leave,
and he proved to himself how well he knew what he was about by never
addressing a line, during his absence, to the Hôtel de la Garonne. He
would simply go straight, inflicting as little injury on Peter
Sherringham as on any one else. He remained away to the last hour of his
privilege and continued to act lucidly in having nothing to do with the
mother and daughter for several days after his return to Paris.

It was when this discipline came to an end one afternoon after a week
had passed that he felt most the force of the reference we have just
made to Mrs. Rooth's private calculations. He found her at home, alone,
writing a letter under the lamp, and as soon as he came in she cried out
that he was the very person to whom the letter was addressed. She could
bear it no longer; she had permitted herself to reproach him with his
terrible silence--to ask why he had quite forsaken them. It was an
illustration of the way in which her visitor had come to regard her that
he put rather less than more faith into this description of the crumpled
papers lying on the table. He was not even sure he quite believed Miriam
to have just gone out. He told her mother how busy he had been all the
while he was away and how much time above all he had had to give in
London to seeing on her daughter's behalf the people connected with the
theatres.

"Ah if you pity me tell me you've got her an engagement!" Mrs. Rooth
cried while she clasped her hands.

"I took a great deal of trouble; I wrote ever so many notes, sought
introductions, talked with people--such impossible people some of them.
In short I knocked at every door, I went into the question
exhaustively." And he enumerated the things he had done, reported on
some of the knowledge he had gathered. The difficulties were immense,
and even with the influence he could command, such as it was, there was
very little to be achieved in face of them. Still he had gained ground:
two or three approachable fellows, men with inferior theatres, had
listened to him better than the others, and there was one in particular
whom he had a hope he really might have interested. From him he had
extracted benevolent assurances: this person would see Miriam, would
listen to her, would do for her what he could. The trouble was that no
one would lift a finger for a girl unless she were known, and yet that
she never could become known till innumerable fingers had been lifted.
You couldn't go into the water unless you could swim, and you couldn't
swim until you had been in the water.

"But new performers appear; they get theatres, they get audiences, they
get notices in the newspapers," Mrs. Rooth objected. "I know of these
things only what Miriam tells me. It's no knowledge that I was born to."

"It's perfectly true. It's all done with money."

"And how do they come by money?" Mrs. Rooth candidly asked.

"When they're women people give it to them."

"Well, what people now?"

"People who believe in them."

"As you believe in Miriam?"

Peter had a pause. "No, rather differently. A poor man doesn't believe
in anything the same way that a rich man does."

"Ah don't call yourself poor!" groaned Mrs. Rooth.

"What good would it do me to be rich?"

"Why you could take a theatre. You could do it all yourself."

"And what good would that do me?"

"Ah don't you delight in her genius?" demanded Mrs. Rooth.

"I delight in her mother. You think me more disinterested than I am,"
Sherringham added with a certain soreness of irritation.

"I know why you didn't write!" Mrs. Rooth declared archly.

"You must go to London," Peter said without heeding this remark.

"Ah if we could only get there it would be a relief. I should draw a
long breath. There at least I know where I am and what people are. But
here one lives on hollow ground!"

"The sooner you get away the better," our young man went on.

"I know why you say that."

"It's just what I'm explaining."

"I couldn't have held out if I hadn't been so sure of Miriam," said Mrs.
Rooth.

"Well, you needn't hold out any longer."

"Don't _you_ trust her?" asked Sherringham's hostess.

"Trust her?"

"You don't trust yourself. That's why you were silent, why we might have
thought you were dead, why we might have perished ourselves."

"I don't think I understand you; I don't know what you're talking
about," Peter returned. "But it doesn't matter."

"Doesn't it? Let yourself go. Why should you struggle?" the old woman
agreeably inquired.

Her unexpected insistence annoyed her visitor, and he was silent again,
meeting her eyes with reserve and on the point of telling her that he
didn't like her tone. But he had his tongue under such control that he
was able presently to say instead of this--and it was a relief to him to
give audible voice to the reflexion--"It's a great mistake, either way,
for a man to be in love with an actress. Either it means nothing
serious, and what's the use of that? or it means everything, and that's
still more delusive."

"Delusive?"

"Idle, unprofitable."

"Surely a pure affection is its own beautiful reward," Mrs. Rooth
pleaded with soft reasonableness.

"In such a case how can it be pure?"

"I thought you were talking of an English gentleman," she replied.

"Call the poor fellow whatever you like: a man with his life to lead,
his way to make, his work, his duties, his career to attend to. If it
means nothing, as I say, the thing it means least of all is marriage."

"Oh my own Miriam!" Mrs. Rooth wailed.

"Fancy, on the other hand, the complication when such a man marries a
woman who's on the stage."

Mrs. Rooth looked as if she were trying to follow. "Miriam isn't on the
stage yet."

"Go to London and she soon will be."

"Yes, and then you'll have your excuse."

"My excuse?"

"For deserting us altogether."

He broke into laughter at this, the logic was so droll. Then he went on:
"Show me some good acting and I won't desert you."

"Good acting? Ah what's the best acting compared with the position of a
true English lady? If you'll take her as she is you may have her," Mrs.
Rooth suddenly added.

"As she is, with all her ambitions unassuaged?"

"To marry _you_--might not that be an ambition?"

"A very paltry one. Don't answer for her, don't attempt that," said
Peter. "You can do much better."

"Do you think _you_ can?" smiled Mrs. Rooth.

"I don't want to; I only want to let it alone. She's an artist; you must
give her her head," the young man pursued. "You must always give an
artist his head."

"But I've known great ladies who were artists. In English society
there's always a field."

"Don't talk to me of English society! Thank goodness, in the first
place, I don't live in it. Do you want her to give up her genius?" he
demanded.

"I thought you didn't care for it."

"She'd say, 'No I thank you, dear mamma.'"

"My wonderful child!" Mrs. Rooth almost comprehendingly murmured.

"Have you ever proposed it to her?"

"Proposed it?"

"That she should give up trying."

Mrs. Rooth hesitated, looking down. "Not for the reason you mean. We
don't talk about love," she simpered.

"Then it's so much less time wasted. Don't stretch out your hand to the
worse when it may some day grasp the better," Peter continued. Mrs.
Rooth raised her eyes at him as if recognising the force there might be
in that, and he added: "Let her blaze out, let her look about her. Then
you may talk to me if you like."

"It's very puzzling!" the old woman artlessly sighed.

He laughed again and then said: "Now don't tell me I'm not a good
friend."

"You are indeed--you're a very noble gentleman. That's just why a quiet
life with you----"

"It wouldn't be quiet for _me_!" he broke in. "And that's not what
Miriam was made for."

"_Don't say that_ for my precious one!" Mrs. Rooth quavered.

"Go to London--go to London," her visitor repeated.

Thoughtfully, after an instant, she extended her hand and took from the
table the letter on the composition of which he had found her engaged.
Then with a quick movement she tore it up. "That's what Mr. Dashwood
says."

"Mr. Dashwood?"

"I forgot you don't know him. He's the brother of that lady we met the
day you were so good as to receive us; the one who was so kind to
us--Mrs. Lovick."

"I never heard of him."

"Don't you remember how she spoke of him and that Mr. Lovick didn't seem
very nice about him? She told us that if he were to meet us--and she was
so good as to intimate that it would be a pleasure to him to do so--he
might give us, as she said, a tip."

Peter achieved the effort to recollect. "Yes he comes back to me. He's
an actor."

"He's a gentleman too," said Mrs. Rooth.

"And you've met him, and he _has_ given you a tip?"

"As I say, he wants us to go to London."

"I see, but even I can tell you that."

"Oh yes," said Mrs. Rooth; "but _he_ says he can help us."

"Keep hold of him then, if he's in the business," Peter was all for
that.

"He's a perfect gentleman," said Mrs. Rooth. "He's immensely struck with
Miriam."

"Better and better. Keep hold of him."

"Well, I'm glad you don't object," she grimaced.

"Why should I object?"

"You don't regard us as _all_ your own?"

"My own? Why, I regard you as the public's--the world's."

She gave a little shudder. "There's a sort of chill in that. It's grand,
but it's cold. However, I needn't hesitate then to tell you that it's
with Mr. Dashwood Miriam has gone out."

"Why hesitate, gracious heaven?" But in the next breath Sherringham
asked: "Where have they gone?"

"You don't like it!" his hostess laughed.

"Why should it be a thing to be enthusiastic about?"

"Well, he's charming and _I_ trust him."

"So do I," said Sherringham.

"They've gone to see Madame Carré."

"She has come back then?"

"She was expected back last week. Miriam wants to show her how she has
improved."

"And _has_ she improved?"

"How can I tell--with my mother's heart?" asked Mrs. Rooth. "I don't
judge; I only wait and pray. But Mr. Dashwood thinks she's wonderful."

"That's a blessing. And when did he turn up?"

"About a fortnight ago. We met Mrs. Lovick at the English church, and
she was so good as to recognise us and speak to us. She said she had
been away with her children--otherwise she'd have come to see us. She
had just returned to Paris."

"Yes, I've not yet seen her. I see Lovick," Peter added, "but he doesn't
talk of his brother-in-law."

"I didn't, that day, like his tone about him," Mrs. Rooth observed. "We
walked a little way with Mrs. Lovick after church and she asked Miriam
about her prospects and if she were working. Miriam said she had no
prospects."

"That wasn't very nice to me," Sherringham commented.

"But when you had left us in black darkness what _were_ our prospects?"

"I see. It's all right. Go on."

"Then Mrs. Lovick said her brother was to be in Paris a few days and she
would tell him to come and see us. He arrived, she told him and he came.
_Voilà_!" said Mrs. Rooth.

"So that now--so far as _he_ is concerned--Miss Rooth has prospects?"

"He isn't a manager unfortunately," she qualified.

"Where does he act?"

"He isn't acting just now; he has been abroad. He has been to Italy, I
believe, and is just stopping here on his way to London."

"I see; he _is_ a perfect gentleman," said Sherringham.

"Ah you're jealous of him!"

"No, but you're trying to make me so. The more competitors there are for
the glory of bringing her out the better for her."

"Mr. Dashwood wants to take a theatre," said Mrs. Rooth.

"Then perhaps he's our man."

"Oh if you'd help him!" she richly cried.

"Help him?"

"Help him to help us."

"We'll all work together; it will be very jolly," said Sherringham
gaily. "It's a sacred cause, the love of art, and we shall be a happy
band. Dashwood's his name?" he added in a moment. "Mrs. Lovick wasn't a
Dashwood."

"It's his _nom de théâtre_--Basil Dashwood. Do you like it?" Mrs. Rooth
wonderfully inquired.

"You say that as Miriam might. Her talent's catching!"

"She's always practising--always saying things over and over to seize
the tone. I've her voice in my ears. He wants _her_ not to have any."

"Not to have any what?"

"Any _nom de théâtre_. He wants her to use her own; he likes it so much.
He says it will do so well--you can't better it."

"He's a capital adviser," said Sherringham, getting up. "I'll come back
to-morrow."

"I won't ask you to wait for them--they may be so long," his hostess
returned.

"Will he come back with her?" Peter asked while he smoothed his hat.

"I hope so, at this hour. With my child in the streets I tremble. We
don't live in cabs, as you may easily suppose."

"Did they go on foot?" Sherringham continued.

"Oh yes; they started in high spirits."

"And is Mr. Basil Dashwood acquainted with Madame Carré?"

"Ah no, but he longed to be introduced to her; he persuaded Miriam to
take him. Naturally she wishes to oblige him. She's very nice to him--if
he can do anything."

"Quite right; that's the way!" Peter cheerfully rang out.

"And she also wanted him to see what she can do for the great critic,"
Mrs. Rooth added--"that terrible old woman in the red wig."

"That's what I should like to see too," Peter permitted himself to
acknowledge.

"Oh she has gone ahead; she's pleased with herself. 'Work, work, work,'
said Madame Carré. Well, she has worked, worked, worked. That's what
Mr. Dashwood is pleased with even more than with other things."

"What do you mean by other things?"

"Oh her genius and her fine appearance."

"He approves of her fine appearance? I ask because you think he knows
what will take."

"I know why you ask!" Mrs. Rooth bravely mocked. "He says it will be
worth hundreds of thousands to her."

"That's the sort of thing I like to hear," Peter returned. "I'll come in
to-morrow," he repeated.

"And shall you mind if Mr. Dash wood's here?"

"Does he come every day?"

"Oh they're always at it."

"At it----?" He was vague.

"Why she acts to him--every sort of thing--and he says if it will do."

"How many days has he been here then?"

Mrs. Rooth reflected. "Oh I don't know! Since he turned up they've
passed so quickly."

"So far from 'minding' it I'm eager to see him," Sherringham declared;
"and I can imagine nothing better than what you describe--if he isn't an
awful ass."

"Dear me, if he isn't clever you must tell us: we can't afford to be
deceived!" Mrs. Rooth innocently wailed. "What do we know--how can we
judge?" she appealed.

He had a pause, his hand on the latch. "Oh, I'll tell you frankly what I
think of him!"




XIX


When he got into the street he looked about him for a cab, but was
obliged to walk some distance before encountering one. In this little
interval he saw no reason to modify the determination he had formed in
descending the steep staircase of the Hôtel de la Garonne; indeed the
desire prompting it only quickened his pace. He had an hour to spare and
would also go to see Madame Carré. If Miriam and her companion had
proceeded to the Rue de Constantinople on foot he would probably reach
the house as soon as they. It was all quite logical: he was eager to see
Miriam--that was natural enough; and he had admitted to Mrs. Rooth that
he was keen on the subject of Mrs. Lovick's theatrical brother, in whom
such effective aid might perhaps reside. To catch Miriam really
revealing herself to the old actress after the jump she believed herself
to have taken--since that was her errand--would be a very happy stroke,
the thought of which made her benefactor impatient. He presently found
his cab and, as he bounded in, bade the coachman drive fast. He learned
from Madame Carré's portress that her illustrious _locataire_ was at
home and that a lady and a gentleman had gone up some time before.

In the little antechamber, after his admission, he heard a high voice
come from the salon and, stopping a moment to listen, noted that Miriam
was already launched in a recitation. He was able to make out the
words, all the more that before he could prevent the movement the
maid-servant who had led him in had already opened the door of the
room--one of the leaves of it, there being, as in most French doors, two
of these--before which, within, a heavy curtain was suspended. Miriam
was in the act of rolling out some speech from the English poetic
drama--

    "For I am sick and capable of fears,
    Oppressed with wrongs and therefore full of fears."

He recognised one of the great tirades of Shakespeare's Constance and
saw she had just begun the magnificent scene at the beginning of the
third act of _King John_, in which the passionate, injured mother and
widow sweeps in wild organ-tones the entire scale of her irony and
wrath. The curtain concealed him and he lurked three minutes after he
had motioned to the _femme de chambre_ to retire on tiptoe. The trio in
the salon, absorbed in the performance, had apparently not heard his
entrance or the opening of the door, which was covered by the girl's
splendid declamation. Peter listened intently, arrested by the spirit
with which she attacked her formidable verses. He had needed to hear her
set afloat but a dozen of them to measure the long stride she had taken
in his absence; they assured him she had leaped into possession of her
means. He remained where he was till she arrived at

    "Then speak again; not all thy former tale,
    But this one word, whether thy tale be true."

This apostrophe, briefly responded to in another voice, gave him time
quickly to raise the curtain and show himself, passing into the room
with a "Go on, go on!" and a gesture earnestly deprecating a stop.

Miriam, in the full swing of her part, paused but for an instant and let
herself ring out again, while Peter sank into the nearest chair and she
fixed him with her illumined eyes, that is, with those of the raving
Constance. Madame Carré, buried in a chair, kissed her hand to him, and
a young man who, near the girl, stood giving the cue, stared at him over
the top of a little book. "Admirable, magnificent, go on," Sherringham
repeated--"go on to the end of the scene, do it all!" Miriam's colour
rose, yet he as quickly felt that she had no personal emotion in seeing
him again; the cold passion of art had perched on her banner and she
listened to herself with an ear as vigilant as if she had been a
Paganini drawing a fiddle-bow. This effect deepened as she went on,
rising and rising to the great occasion, moving with extraordinary ease
and in the largest, clearest style at the dizzy height of her idea. That
she had an idea was visible enough, and that the whole thing was very
different from all Sherringham had hitherto heard her attempt. It
belonged quite to another class of effort; she was now the finished
statue lifted from the ground to its pedestal. It was as if the sun of
her talent had risen above the hills and she knew she was moving and
would always move in its guiding light. This conviction was the one
artless thing that glimmered like a young joy through the tragic mask of
Constance, and Sherringham's heart beat faster as he caught it in her
face. It only showed her as more intelligent, and yet there had been a
time when he thought her stupid! Masterful the whole spirit in which she
carried the scene, making him cry to himself from point to point, "How
she feels it, sees it and really 'renders' it!"

He looked now and again at Madame Carré and saw she had in her lap an
open book, apparently a French prose version, brought by her visitors,
of the play; but she never either glanced at him or at the volume: she
only sat screwing into the girl her hard, bright eyes, polished by
experience like fine old brasses. The young man uttering the lines of
the other speakers was attentive in another degree; he followed Miriam,
in his own copy, to keep sure of the cue; but he was elated and
expressive, was evidently even surprised; he coloured and smiled, and
when he extended his hand to assist Constance to rise, after the
performer, acting out her text, had seated herself grandly on "the huge
firm earth," he bowed over her as obsequiously as if she had been his
veritable sovereign. He was a good-looking young man, tall,
well-proportioned, straight-featured and fair, of whom manifestly the
first thing to be said on any occasion was that he had remarkably the
stamp of a gentleman. He earned this appearance, which proved inveterate
and importunate, to a point that was almost a denial of its spirit: so
prompt the question of whether it could be in good taste to wear any
character, even that particular one, so much on one's sleeve. It was
literally on his sleeve that this young man partly wore his own; for it
resided considerably in his garments, and in especial in a certain
close-fitting dark blue frock-coat, a miracle of a fit, which moulded
his juvenility just enough and not too much, and constituted, as
Sherringham was destined to perceive later, his perpetual uniform or
badge. It was not till afterwards that Peter began to feel exasperated
by Basil Dashwood's "type"--the young stranger was of course Basil
Dashwood--and even by his blue frock-coat, the recurrent, unvarying,
imperturbable good form of his aspect. This unprofessional air ended by
striking the observer as the very profession he had adopted, and was
indeed, so far as had as yet been indicated, his mimetic capital, his
main qualification for the stage.

The ample and powerful manner in which Miriam handled her scene produced
its full impression, the art with which she surmounted its difficulties,
the liberality with which she met its great demand upon the voice, and
the variety of expression that she threw into a torrent of objurgation.
It was a real composition, studded with passages that called a
suppressed tribute to the lips and seeming to show that a talent capable
of such an exhibition was capable of anything.

    "But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,
    Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:
    Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast,
    And with the half-blown rose."

As the girl turned to her imagined child with this exquisite
apostrophe--she addressed Mr. Dashwood as if he were playing Arthur, and
he lowered his book, dropped his head and his eyes and looked handsome
and ingenuous--she opened at a stroke to Sherringham's vision a prospect
that they would yet see her express tenderness better even than anything
else. Her voice was enchanting in these lines, and the beauty of her
performance was that though she uttered the full fury of the part she
missed none of its poetry.

"Where did she get hold of that--where did she get hold of that?" Peter
wondered while his whole sense vibrated. "She hadn't got hold of it when
I went away." And the assurance flowed over him again that she had found
the key to her box of treasures. In the summer, during their weeks of
frequent meeting, she had only fumbled with the lock. One October day,
while he was away, the key had slipped in, had fitted, or her finger at
last had touched the right spring and the capricious casket had flown
open.

It was during the present solemnity that, excited by the way she came
out and with a hundred stirred ideas about her wheeling through his
mind, he was for the first time and most vividly visited by a percept